ref: a00feb029ddcea6188f4324169e5f2b6a389de4e
dir: /troff/aam-017.ms/
.ce .ps 14 .B 17 .SH ACCESSING .R .PP .ps 10 Unsub cased the back hallways where workers entered the mall. Loading docks. Maintenance tunnels. Smoking nooks. He was surprised at the intricacy of the complex (he'd never had the pleasure), but he supposed all this compressed pretzel smell had to snake its way towards the aerosol dispensers somehow. .PP .ps 10 The \fIwa\fR of this corridor was seriously off. .PP .ps 10 Unsub rounded a corner and through a small window in a dilapidated service door he was confronted with a career\-altering view of Europa, daughter of Agenor, descending an escalator, resplendent in whatever the \fIHel\fR that was she was wearing. He had to put on his sunglasses. .PP .ps 10 It was that much. .PP .ps 10 This would do. If she was already to the stage of making public appearances, she'd almost certainly use this same route again. It was easier than carving new channels. .PP .ps 10 The persistence of audiences. .PP .ps 10 Unsub scanned the area surrounding the escalator, began calculating. The angles looked good. .PP .ps 10 This would do. .SH ENTERING THE MALL .R .PP .ps 10 SL wasn't sure if he was ready. There had been no mall in his little home town. Walking here had already been quite an undertaking. But all of that was prologue. Here was a chance to trace his circuit within the (relative) safety of a firmly established commercial tradition. Here was a place where people had already seen a man dressed head to toe in white, carrying a walking stick inscribed with \fISanskrit\fR vowels. Here was a place with a Waldenbooks. .PP .ps 10 He entered. .PP .ps 10 Reliably, the Waldenbooks had stocked numerous titles normally reserved for direct sales market comic shops. Titles he'd read about in COMICS SCENE magazine but that had remained forever unobtainable from grocery store spinner racks. .PP .ps 10 One hand holding open his small backpack, SL transferred every single comic book from the Waldenbooks rack into his bag. Because this was the city, no one noticed him, or cared what he was doing. The store would treat shrinkage as a matter of course, part of the cost of doing business. .PP .ps 10 "You know," Esmé said, suddenly appearing from over SL's shoulder, "Shoplifting raises prices for everyone." .PP .ps 10 SL regarded the young woman, young enough to be his daughter, but also inarguably correct. He sensed instinctively that this must be some sort of test. The kind of test he'd come here to pass, to walk through, to carry on and pass down to the next generation, for the benefit of the whole world. .PP .ps 10 "Not for me," he said. "I never pay." .PP .ps 10 Esmé smiled.