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Saberhagen, Fred - After the Fact down and down the scale, descending to an
improbable bass. Half-
hypnotized, Jerry watched and listened as if his own mental processes had been
slowed down by the transformation in the world around him.
At last Booth reached the bottom of the stairs and was approaching
Jerry, following in the footsteps of Lincoln and his party almost two hours
earlier. Each of the widely spaced footfalls of the actor was marked by a very
faint sound, a fading rumble hard to identify, following the dull subterranean
thump of heel impact. When Jerry realized that rumbling sound would have been
a jingle were it not so slow and deep, he remembered that Booth was wearing
spurs. Of course; there was a getaway horse waiting for him in the alley.
Paradoxically, despite the enormous elongation of each moment in
Jerry's own almost-hypnotized time-frame, Booth's slow and steady walk was
already carrying the actor past him. For the briefest of moments Booth's eye
caught Jerry's, and a slow change, a kind of half-recognition, began its
passage across the actor's face. But
Booth had no thought to spare now for anything but his purpose, and he did not
pause in his determined progress. His eyes shifting slowly as Jerry saw
them looked forward again. If anything Booth walked a little faster.
Jerry got to his feet, realizing as soon as he willed the movement that time
for him had not been slowed down. Stepping into the aisle, he felt that he was
moving at normal speed in a slow-motion universe. Intent on overtaking Booth,
he shot past seated rows of nearly frozen matrons and distinguished gentlemen,
their applauding hands suspended before their faces, past army officers
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Saberhagen, Fred - After the Fact with mustached mouths and ladies with rouged
lips, all stretched open in distorted laughter at the doings of the actors.
He realized that Pilgrim's device must have caused more than a mere difference
in speed. The thousand eyes that were fixed with anticipation on the stage did
not see Jerry. The swiftness of his speeding passage did not stir their
feathers or ruffle their gowns.
Activating the watch-stem to its first stop had partially disconnected him
from the world around him, rendered him somehow out of phase with it. But not
out of phase with Booth& could their mutual counter-purposes be somehow
linking them? Or had the effect, whatever it was, merely not kicked in yet? In
any event, so far as others were concerned, Pilgrim's little device was
concealing him as well as giving him a few precious seconds of advantage. If
only he could learn how to use that advantage before it was too late!
Unchallenged, John Wilkes Booth had reached the white door and opened it.
Before Jerry caught up with him he was already three-
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fourths of the way through the doorway. The actor had turned a sidelong glance
at the two army officers seated nearest to the door, but both of them were
watching the play, and ignored Booth. Now already the actor was closing the
door behind him, and if what
Pilgrim had told Jerry was correct, in another moment that door would be
blocked solidly from the inside
Jerry, his fear rapidly mounting toward panic, sprinted forward so that to
himself he seemed to float amid a frozen waxwork audience.
At the last moment he shot through the gradually narrowing aperture of the
white door, past Booth and into the small blind hallway that ran behind the
boxes.
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Saberhagen, Fred - After the Fact
But his passage was not entirely a clean one. Trying to slide past the door
even as Booth was pushing it closed from inside, Jerry caromed at high speed
off the actor's shoulder, to go spinning on into the dark little vestibule.
There Jerry bounced off a wall and collapsed to the floor.
At the moment of the physical collision, the time-distortion effect ceased to
operate. Once past Booth, Jerry found himself suddenly conscious of his extra
burden of momentum. It was more than he ought to have been able to achieve by
running, more as if he had jumped from a speeding automobile. First Booth's
shoulder and then the wall, with stunning impact, absorbed the burden from
him.
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