Chapter 9 
Chapter 9
Brian Hendrickson had come from a family whose older sons enlisted for life in the Royal Navy. Brian—a third son born in the islands—had become a historian rather than a sailor. But his military upbringing lingered in a meticulous personality and a tendency to run his library with martial efficiency. His accent, a delightfully odd one, was right at home in La-La Land.
Kit, taking advantage of Margo’s mood after the shopping trip, escorted her from Clothes and Stuff directly to the reference desk in La-La Land’s library. It was high time she started learning more than remedial math, firearms history, and martial arts.
“Brian, this is Margo, my granddaughter. Margo, Brian Hendrickson, TT-86’s resident librarian.”
He smiled pleasantly and kissed the air above her hand, Continental-style. “Most pleased to meet you, Miss Margo.”
She blinked, clearly startled. Brian Hendrickson startled most newcomers to TT-86.
“Where are you from?” Margo blurted.
A dazzling smile came and went. “It is more a matter of where I am not from, actually. I was born in the British Virgins, spent the first three years of my life in Glasgow, then my father was posted to Hong Kong. Let’s see . . . I’ve nearly forgotten the Falklands, haven’t I? I took my university degrees from Cambridge.”
“Oh.” She looked a little round-eyed.
Kit grinned. “Which brings us to the reason we’re here. She needs advanced lessons.”
“Hmm, yes, I should think so, if rumors are true.”
“They’re true,” Kit sighed. “Detailed histories, languages, the works.”
The librarian tapped well-manicured fingertips against the desktop. “Yes. I should think Latin to start, followed by French—modern, middle, and old—to cover all bets. And Italian and Greek. And we’d better throw in the main Chinese dialects—”
“You’re not serious?” Margo broke in, her voice echoing the panic in her eyes. “Latin? And . . . and Chinese and all those Frenches . . . and . . .”
Brian blinked. “Well, yes, I am serious. Goodness, Miss Margo, you can’t expect to scout if you don’t speak at least ten languages fluently.” “Ten?” She glanced wildly at Kit. “TEN?”
Kit only rubbed the side of his nose. “Well, that’s a fairly limited beginning, but yes, ten might prove just barely adequate. I speak twenty fluently and can make myself understood in considerably more than that. I did warn you, Margo. Scouting is a scholarly business, above all else. When you’re not down time exploring a gate, you’re studying. Constantly.”
“But—”
“I don’t make up these rules just to upset you.”
“I know, I know,” she wailed, “I understand that, but . . .”
“He’s right, Miss Margo,” the librarian said quietly. “My steadiest customers are never the tourists. They’re the guides and the scouts. Particularly the scouts. They spend hours here every day, learning and learning. In fact, if you’ll examine the gentlemen at the computers over there or back in the language labs, you’ll discover half the scouts who work out of TT-86 on a regular basis. Excuse me, please.”
Kit glanced around. John Merylbone, a fairly new scout despite his age—he was pushing fifty—had come up to the desk.
“Brian, sorry to interrupt, but I need help. I’m looking for information on early British scholars’ costumes. I’d heard there was a good general reference by Cunnington and Lucas from 1978.”
Brian stared at the scout for long, unblinking moments, giving the distinct impression that John’s request was utterly beneath his notice. Margo whispered, “Isn’t that a little rude?”
Kit smiled. “No, actually he’s thinking. Watch.”
Brian started talking. “Well, yes, that’s a very good general reference, but it contains a good bit more than you’ll need. Covers all manner of charity costumes, through several centuries, actually. I’d recommend Rymer’s Foedera, vol. VII, or Statutes of the Colleges of Oxford for the Royal Commission—that’s translated from the Latin, which is useful—or perhaps Gibson’s Statua Antiqua Universitatis Oxoniensis. Loggan also did some excellent work in Cantabrigia Illustrata and Oxonia Illustrata.”
The librarian was busy jotting down names and titles while he spoke.
“Good grief! He didn’t even use the computer!”
Kit only smiled. “Don’t look so horrified. Nobody’s asking you to learn as much as Brian knows. Nobody knows as much as Brian Hendrickson. He has a photographic memory. Useful for a research librarian on a time terminal.”
“Oh. I was beginning to worry.”
“You do that,” Kit laughed. “I like it better when you’re worried. Proves you’re thinking.”
She put out a pink tongue. “You’re mean and horrible. Why does everybody else like you?”
Kit scratched his head. “Search me. Guess it’s my good looks and charm.”
Margo actually laughed. When she relaxed, his granddaughter was a remarkably pretty girl, with no trace of that Irish alley-cat glare. He sighed, feeling old before he was ready for it.
“What’s wrong?” Margo asked.
“Nothing,” Kit said, forcing a smile. “Let’s set up your study schedule.”
Brian returned from helping the other scout and they got down to business. He assigned Margo a language lab, where she was to spend four hours every other day learning the first of the languages on her list. The next four hours of her library days (after lunch, which Kit agreed to have delivered to her from the Neo Edo so she wouldn’t need to leave the library) were to be devoted to detailed historical studies.
“Let’s start her with American history, since that’s what she’s likeliest to absorb readily,” Brian suggested. “Then we’ll put her on European history, working backwards from the twentieth century. We’ll tackle Africa, Asia, South America, India, and the Middle East a little later in the program, after she’s settled down into the study routine and is capable of absorbing cultural detail significantly different from her own.”
Kit and Brian agreed she’d be better off leaving the library during the evenings to eat dinner and do homework, and to alternate library days with continued weapons training. With any luck, the physical exercise would leave her tired enough to sleep after homework sessions.
By the time they were done setting up her schedule, Margo was visibly horrified and trying hard not to show it. She gave him a brave smile as they left the library. “One thing’s for sure, life’ll never be the same around you. Latin, Chinese, and French, oh my . . .”
“Better that than lions, tigers, or bears,” Kit chuckled. “Just remember, you can never truly understand a nation or its people until you can speak its language.”
“Right,” she sighed, giving him another brave smile. “I just hope scouting is worth all this agony.”
Kit resisted the urge to ruffle her short hair. “I doubt you’ll be disappointed. Surprised, probably—almost undoubtedly. But disappointed? No, I don’t think so. Time travel is never what people expect it to be. And that,” he smiled, “is half the fun.”
“Well, goodness, I hope so. My head already hurts and I haven’t even started yet!”
Kit laughed. “That’s because you’re stretching your brain, possibly for the first time. Cheer up. By the time you’re done, not only will you have the equivalent of several Ph.D.s you didn’t have to pay some university to earn, you’ll have the ability to do field research most Ph.D.s still can’t afford to do. Education,” he smiled, “is never a waste of time.”
She gave him an odd look, but said nothing. Kit found himself fervently hoping that the trip to London would convince Margo she needed every bit of the “brain work” he and Brian had outlined. Margo loose for a week in London, even with Malcolm Moore along to protect her . . . Kit was so apprehensive, that before he went to bed that night, he found himself standing in the living room doorway, just watching her sleep.
Young, vulnerable . . .
He turned away silently and went to bed.
But not to sleep.
Malcolm came for Margo early in the morning the day the Britannia Gate was due to open.
“Hi!” The world was wonderful this morning. Today was the day she would finally step through a gate into history.
“Sleep well?” Malcolm asked.
Margo laughed. “I was so excited I hardly closed my eyes all night.”
“Thought as much,” he chuckled. “Kit up yet?”
“In the shower.”
“All packed?”
“Yes!”
“Good. We have one last appointment before we go.”
Uh-oh. Margo regarded him suspiciously. “What is it?”
A pained smile came and went. “You’re not going to like it, but I think it’s vital.”
“What?”
“We need to visit Paula Booker.” Margo wondered who the devil that was. “For?”
“Your hair.”
Margo touched her short, flame-colored hair. “What’s wrong with my hair?”
“Nothing—for here and now. Everything for down time. That color stands out. We want to be inconspicuous. The less noticed you are, the better.”
“What are you going to do about it? Dye it?” Margo asked sarcastically.
“Yep.”
She stared. “Oh, no.”
Malcolm sighed. “I knew this wouldn’t be well received. That’s why I wanted Kit’s opinion.”
“On what?” Kit asked, emerging from the bathroom. He was—uncharacteristically—clad only in a towel. His hair was still wet and he hadn’t shaved yet. Margo stared, knowing it was rude, but she couldn’t help it.
There were scars. Terrible ones.
“Margo’s hair,” Malcolm said. “I think Paula should dye it.”
Margo managed to drag her stare from Kit’s whip-scarred torso and met his gaze. He ignored her stricken look and merely studied her critically. “Yes,” he said slowly, “I didn’t think it was too important yet, but you’re probably right. She’s awfully noticeable.”
“Thanks for the compliment,” Margo muttered. The last thing she wanted to be was “noticeable” if attracting attention earned her scars like Kit’s, but the timing was rotten. She’d spent the last twenty-four hours trying hopelessly to memorize Latin declensions and conjugations and whatever else all those verb and noun forms were called. All those fickle, changeable word endings left her head spinning. She’d tried—really tried—and now as a reward they wanted to dye her best feature some hideous, drab color to match the clothes they’d picked for her to wear.
Margo wanted to cry or scream at something or wail about how monstrously unfair it was. Instead, she swallowed it raw. Time was ticking away and she was still not much closer to scouting than the day she’d stepped through Primary into La-La Land with a heart full of bright hopes and no notion how murderously difficult it was going to be.
You’ll see, she promised. When we get to London, you’ll see. I’ll prove to you both I can do this.
“Okay,” she said finally. “I guess I go down time looking like a mud hen. Sven keeps telling me, be invisible. I should’ve seen this coming, huh?” Then, in a bright tone that turned a bitter complaint into a cheery joke, she said, “Let’s get this over with and get down time before I’m too old to enjoy it!”
Kit laughed and even Malcolm chuckled. Margo swept out of the apartment before she gave it all away by crying. Malcolm caught up and fell into step.
“You know, Margo,” he said conversationally, “it might help to think of this as the biggest game of dress-up you ever played.”
She glanced up, startled. “Dress-up? Oh, good grief, Malcolm, I haven’t played dress-up since—” She broke off abruptly, recalling the beating her father had given her for liberating her mother’s makeup. “Well, not in a long time,” she temporized, covering the stumble she’d made with a bright smile. “It’s just you caught me off guard and . . . well . . . nothing’s like I expected it to be. Nothing.”
“Very little in life usually is,” Malcolm said, without the trace of a smile.
“I suppose so. But I don’t have to like it.” Malcolm’s glance was keen. “No one said you had to, Margo. Do you think I enjoy groveling for a job every day of my life, living on rice and dried beans, and swallowing my pride when people are rude, callous, or downright cruel? But I do it and smile because that’s the price of living my dream.”
Margo chewed that over as they left Residential behind and emerged into the throng crowding Frontier Town. A lad sporting an oversized cowboy hat and an undersized leather gun-belt drew and fired his pretend six-shooter at a diving pterosaur. It splashed into a nearby fishpond. “Got him!” the lad crowed.
Unperturbed, the pterosaur emerged with a wriggling goldfish nearly as large as it was. The kid’s father laughed and called him over. He practically swaggered back.
Margo smiled. “I’d say he’s living his dream, huh?” Then more seriously, “Not too many people ever get the chance to try that, do they? I think you’re the first person I ever met who was doing it.” Except, maybe, Billy Pandropolous, and his dream was more akin to nightmare for everyone who came close to him. “I envy you.”
“You know,” Malcolm said quietly, “you may be the first person ever to do that.”
“Huh. You got lousy friends, then. They can’t see what’s right in front of ’em. Moneys not everything.” She flushed suddenly, realizing she’d just insulted Malcolm’s friends—at least one of whom was Kit Carson.
“How right you are,” Malcolm said with a smile. “I’m glad you’re beginning to see that. Some people never figure it out. This way.” He nodded toward Urbs Romae. “Better hustle or we’ll be late.”
Paula Booker’s establishment was tucked away in one corner of the Commons. Margo was expecting a hair-styling salon. What they entered looked more like the waiting room of an upscale medical clinic. Just as they entered, two men emerged from an inner sanctum. One assisted the other, who shuffled awkwardly as though his groin hurt. The first one said sympathetically, “You think that’s bad, you should see what she did to mine.”
“Yeah,” the second man said through clenched teeth, “but a whole new foreskin? God, I hurt. . . .”
Margo stared until they had passed through the outer door and vanished down the Commons.
“What was that all about?”
“Zipper Jockeys.” Astonishingly, Malcolm Moore wore the blackest scowl she’d ever seen.
“Zipper Jockeys?” she echoed.
“They’re here for one of the sex tours. Bastards go down time and spend the whole trip brothel hopping. Paula takes revenge on ’em, though. Does corrective surgery more than they deserve, so their modern circumcisions won’t arouse suspicion in most places that TT-86’s gates lead to, circumcisions were practiced only by the Jewish. Anti-Semitism being the ugly thing it was in many down-time cultures . . .”
“Oh. That’s lousy. The anti-Semitism, I mean.”
“Yes. Bigotry is. But Zipper Jockeys deserve what they get. Paula ranks them down around the level of flatworms, which personally I think is too high on the evolutionary scale. She makes sure they hurt good and hard before they head out to rape women. If she could get away with it, she’d castrate them.”
Margo glared after the departing men. “Someone should do something! Someone should stop it!”
“Yes,” Malcolm said tightly. “Someone should. Time Tours won’t. They make money off the trade. So does the government. A lot of money. Half the Zipper Jockeys that go down time have to be quarantined when they come back, until Medical can deal with the venereal diseases they pick up.”
“That’s disgusting!”
“Personally, I think they should be marooned down time to die from whatever they catch.”
No compromise softened Malcolm Moore’s voice. All at once, Margo realized how very much she liked this time guide. “Thanks, Malcolm.”
He shot her a startled look. “For what?”
“Nothing. Just thanks. What about my hair?”
He shook himself visibly and gave her one last penetrating look, then stepped over to a reception window. “Malcolm Moore, for the 8:15 appointment.”
“Have a seat, please.”
They didn’t have to wait long. The inner door opened to reveal the most astonishing individual Margo had ever laid eyes on. She knew her mouth had fallen open, but she couldn’t help it. “Hi, Paula,” Malcolm said, rising to his feet.
“Hello, Malcolm.” Paula Booker was . . . Cadaverous.
That was the only word to describe the cosmetologist’s appearance. Tall—she topped out at six feet in flat, surgical-style shoes—and gaunt. Paula’s face had hollows like a skull’s. White hair wisped around a face the color of a bloodless corpse. But she wasn’t old. If Paula Booker were a day over thirty-five, Margo would eat her own shoes.
With those pale eyes and that funereal expression, TT-86’s cosmetologist looked very much like a female Lurch from an unknown branch of the Addams Family Tree.
“How are you this morning?” Paula asked as Malcolm shook her hand.
Even Paula’s voice was soft and creepy.
Margo realized how intensely she was staring when both Malcolm and Paula turned and stared back.
“I—uh—”
To Margo’s astonishment, Paula started laughing. The sight was so disturbing, Margo actually had trouble getting to her feet. She tripped over her own shoe and stumbled.
“Malcolm,” Paula Booker winked, “let’s show this young lady my photographs, shall we?”
Margo followed uneasily as Paula Booker escorted them into a private office. One wall was covered—literally covered—with photos of one of the most beautiful women Margo had ever seen. Ash-blonde hair, sparkling blue eyes, fine bone structure above hollowed cheeks—
“My God! It’s you!” Margo blurted.
Paula laughed again. “Aren’t I a great walking advertisement?”
“You . . .” Margo stared from the photos to the apparition before her and back again. “You did that to yourself?”
Paula’s grin was a terrifying vision. “Indeed I did. Every morning I put on the finishing touches with makeup.”
“But you could’ve been a movie star! A world-famous model!”
“Oh, I was. A model, that is. It was dead boring.” Paula’s eyes twinkled. “This is much more fun. And I get to do such interesting plastic surgery, too. I have a medical degree just for that. Somebody Caucasian wants to go to Edo, I doctor them a little and presto, they’re virtually indistinguishable from a native-born Japanese. I can alter skin tone, hair color, whatever’s required.”
Margo thought about the man limping out of Paula’s clinic and grinned. “That’s terrific!” She fluffed her own hair. “What can we do about this? Everyone says I have to dye it.”
Paula studied Margo for several moments. “Yes, but we won’t want to go too dark, unless you want her looking as funereal as I do?” She glanced at Malcolm. “Black hair with that skin tone will look terrible. Even dark brown is going to make her look anemic.”
“Can’t be helped. Use your judgment on how dark, but she can’t go scouting looking like that.”
“No,” Paula agreed. “Definitely not. Red hair was associated with witches throughout most of the Middle Ages. Probably one reason red hair is relatively rare today—the gene pool was reduced through burning at the stake. All right, Margo, let’s get started. Malcolm, you’re welcome to sit in the waiting room. This will take a while.”
How long could it take to dye one head of very short hair brown? Margo’s answer came when Paula revealed her intention to dye every bit of Margo’s hair: body-wide.
“You can’t be serious!”
“Dead serious. And you’ll need to touch up the roots every four weeks.”
“But—but—” That seemed to have become virtually the only thing Margo was capable of saying, lately.
Three hours later, Margo emerged, forlorn as a wet cat. She took one look into the waiting room’s mirror and burst into tears—again.
“Hey,” Malcolm said, rising hastily to his feet, “you look great!”
“No, I don’t!” Margo wailed. “I look . . . I look awful.”
The mirror revealed a pinched, pale face like an orphan someone had beaten and left for dead in some unspeakable sewer. She’d have died before revealing the ignominy of having hair dye applied elsewhere with a cotton swab.
“Hey, shh. Let’s grab a bite of lunch somewhere then change into our costumes and pick up your luggage. We only have a couple of hours before the Britannia Gate opens.”
Not even that prospect had the power to dispel the gloom that had settled over Margo. Just one other little consideration she hadn’t foreseen in becoming a time scout. To get what she wanted, Margo had to give up being pretty.
That blow, after all the other battles she’d fought through nearly seventeen miserable years of being made to feel stupid, unwanted, unloved, and a burden to everyone who knew her was nearly more than Margo could bear. The solitary, single thing that kept her from breaking down into hysterical tears was the knowledge that such a childish display would destroy her chances of scouting forever.
Her chin quivered despite her best efforts to keep it still, but she held it high. She was going to do this. No matter what it took, no matter how many obstacles Kit Carson threw in her path. She was going to scout or die trying.
And nothing was going to stand in her way.
Nothing.