The Man of Bronze by James Alan Gardner Read Free Book Online Page B

off.
    As soon as the thug seized the Uzi, a coating of frost sprang up around the gun’s barrel. I thought,
Didn’t I see that effect in a Batman film? Or was it Bugs Bunny?
I enjoyed it more in films than in real life. Three seconds after the man grabbed the pistol, he squeezed and the weapon fell apart in his hand. Fragments of brittle metal showered to the floor like hail.
    “So why did the gun go all frosty,” Reuben asked, “but the guy himself isn’t iced up at all?”
    “Reuben,” I replied, “this is hardly the time to quibble about physics. That silver stuff looks more like magic than science.”
    “Even magic has rules. So how does it work? Maybe like a self-cleaning freezer?”
    “If you really want to know, we could try an experiment.”
    The OR had a large double sink where the surgery team could wash the blood-specked tools of their trade after an operation. The sink sported one of those spray attachments, a nozzle on a hose, for aiming jets of water at stubborn bits of human tissue that wouldn’t come off the cutlery. I grabbed the hose, turned the water on full, and aimed the squirt nozzle at the mirror-clad hoodlum on the floor.
    Instant ice: a white crust froze hard around the man as soon as water came close to his frigid exterior. I had time to think,
Brilliant, we’ll immobilize this thug in his own private glacier . . .
    Then:
crack!
The sound reminded me of my last trip to Antarctica, when a crevasse had ripped open under my feet. The ice that had just solidified around the silver shell exploded outward in a barrage of diamond-like pellets. I shielded my head with my arms, as others in the room screamed. Glass shattered, a nurse fell, and a metal bedpan clanged like a bell . . . but I suffered only a few modest stings. No worse than getting shot with a dozen BBs at point-blank range.
    However, note to self: DON ’ T SPRAY MORE WATER.
    “Huh,” Reuben said, “it
is
self-cleaning.”
    The man began to get to his feet. I’d been afraid of that. As long as he stayed on his hands and knees, people could dodge quickly enough to keep away from him. Once he was standing, however, he’d move faster . . . unless he collapsed from pain when he tried to put weight on his ankle. Such a collapse was unlikely. Before the operation, Dr. Jacek must have anesthetized the lower part of the gunman’s leg; furthermore, the armor might serve as a splint to support the damaged leg bones. In the long run, frisking free and easy on a broken tib-fib might leave the mercenary hobbled for life. In the short run, though, he could cause cryogenic chaos, lunging about the OR and giving freezer burn to anyone he touched—not to mention raising such a ruckus that the thugs upstairs would hear. If I tried to intervene, I’d just get gelatoed myself . . .
    Unless . . .
    Okay. New strategy.
    I whipped off one of the Uzis I still had strapped around my shoulders. “Stay down,” I told the rising bad guy, swinging my gun at his head, eye level. It wouldn’t have hurt him if he’d let it make contact, but reflexes are reflexes: he ducked automatically and—thanks to his ankle—awkwardly. A nanosecond later, I brought the pistol back on a return arc. The man was already off balance and perhaps distracted as he realized,
I didn’t need to duck.
When the Uzi came back, maybe part of his mind was saying
Don’t flinch
while his combat training shouted
Dodge! Dodge!
and his ankle chimed in with
Hey, remember me? I’m still broken.
    The upshot was that the man fell down. Sloppily. The impact of his fall did cold, messy things to the floor, leaving sections of the linoleum looking like shattered glass.
    The Uzi I’d swung had never actually made contact with the ruffian. I handed the pistol to Reuben. “Take this.” I whipped off the other Uzi too. “Here’s its brother. If our friend tries to stand, keep clubbing him on the head as long as the guns hold out. Don’t shoot, and avoid too much noise. We don’t want