“Card?”

“A handgun permit with a photo. I can’t sell you handgun ammo unless you can show me one. If you want to buy ammo without a P.C., you’re gonna hafta go up to Westchester.”

The gunslinger stared at the man blankly. This was all gabble to him. He understood none of it. His Mortcypedia had some vague notion of what the man meant, but Mort’s ideas were too vague to be trusted in this case. Mort had never owned a gun in his life. He did his nasty work in other ways.

The man sidled another step to the left without taking his eyes from his customer’s face and the gunslinger thought: He’s got a gun. He expects me to make trouble . . . or maybe he wants me to make trouble. Wants an excuse to shoot me.

Improvise.

He remembered the gunslingers sitting in their blue and white carriage down the street. Gunslingers, yes, peacekeepers, men charged with keeping the world from moving on. But these had looked—at least on a passing glance—to be nearly as soft and unobservant as everyone else in this world of lotus-eaters; just two men in uniforms and caps, slouched down in the seats of their carriage, drinking coffee. He might have misjudged. He hoped for all their sakes—that he had not.

“Oh! I understand,” the gunslinger said, and drew an apologetic smile on Jack Mort’s face. “I’m sorry. I guess I haven’t kept track of how much the world has moved on—changed—since I last owned a gun.”

“No harm done,” the clerk said, relaxing minutely. Maybe the guy was all right. Or maybe he was pulling a gag.

“I wonder if I could look at that cleaning kit?” Roland pointed to a shelf behind the clerk.

“Sure.” The clerk turned to get it, and when he did, the gunslinger removed the wallet from Mort’s inside jacket pocket. He did this with the flickering speed of a fast draw. The clerk’s back was to him for less than four seconds, but when he turned back to Mort, the wallet was on the floor.

“It’s a beaut,” the clerk said, smiling, having decided the guy was okay after all. Hell, he knew how lousy you felt when you made a horse’s ass of yourself. He had done it in the Marines enough times. “And you don’t need a goddam permit to buy a cleaning kit, either. Ain’t freedom wonderful?”

“Yes,” the gunslinger said seriously, and pretended to look closely at the cleaning kit, although a single glance was enough to show him that it was a shoddy thing in a shoddy box. While he looked, he carefully pushed Mort’s wallet under the counter with his foot.

After a moment he pushed it back with a passable show of regret. “I’m afraid I’ll have to pass.”

“All right,” the clerk said, losing interest abruptly. Since the guy wasn’t crazy and was obviously a looker, not a buyer, their relationship was at an end. Bullshit walks. “Anything else?” His mouth asked while his eyes told blue-suit to get out.