Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Of all the souls wandering the Commons of Time Terminal Eighty-Six, none felt as out of place Skeeter Jackson. He wasn’t lost, which was more than he could say of three-quarters of the people around him. But his status was so changed, he couldn’t help but reflect wryly on how odd it was to be trundling a heavy cart stencilled “Station Maintenance” through Edo Castletown, past crowds of kimono-clad tourists jostling elbows with Victorian gents and bustled ladies and a few forlorn, middle-aged men with paunches, bald knees, and Roman tunics.
Confidence man to bathroom-cleaning man wasn’t quite the transition Skeeter had hoped for, when he’d decided to give up his life of petty crime. There wasn’t much glamor in a cart full of mops, detergent bottles, and vending-machine supplies. On the other hand, he did not miss having to dodge station security every ten minutes, or sweating bullets every time some chance acquaintance glanced his way. And while he didn’t eat high on anybody’s hog, at least he didn’t regularly miss meals, anymore, thanks to the uncertainty of a pickpocket’s income.
Skeeter was very glad he’d switched careers. But he wasn’t quite used to it yet.
A wry smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. As confused as he sometimes felt, the other up-time residents were goggle-eyed with shock to find La-La Land’s most notorious confidence artist walking the straight and narrow, working the first honest job of his life. It had only taken an act of God and Ianira Cassondra to get him that job. But he couldn’t have continued in his old career, not after the pain his greed and stupidity had caused the only friends he possessed in the world. He frequently marveled that he still possessed any friends at all. Never mind ones close enough to help him start his life over again. After what Skeeter had done, he wouldn’t have blamed Marcus and Ianira if they’d never spoken to him again. Whatever their reasons, he wouldn’t let them down.
As Skeeter maneuvered his cart through the bustling hoards of eminently lost humanity trying to find their way back to hotels, to restaurants that were impossible to find in the station’s sprawling maze, or simply standing still and screaming for junior at the top of panic-stricken lungs, the public address system came to life from speakers five stories overhead. “Your attention, please. Gate One is due to open in three minutes. All departures, be advised that if you have not cleared Station Medical, you will not be permitted to pass Primary. Please have your baggage ready for customs inspection by agents of the Bureau of Access Time Functions, who will assess your taxes due on down-time acquisitions…”
A familiar voice, the sound of friendship in the middle of all the chaos, sounded at his ear. “Double-gate day, yes?”
Startled, Skeeter turned to find Ianira Cassondra smiling up at him.
“Ianira! What are you doing up here in Edo Castletown?” The lovely cassondra of ancient Ephesus could usually be found at her kiosk down in Little Agora, surrounded by her adoring up-time acolytes. Ianira’s self-proclaimed worshipers flocked to TT-86 by the thousands each year, on pilgrimage to honor the woman they considered the Goddess incarnate on earth.
Ianira, blithely ignoring the adoring worshippers who trailed her like pilot fish in the wake of an ancient schooner, swept long strands of glossy, raven’s-wing hair back from her forehead. “I have been to visit Kit Carson, at the Neo Edo. The Council of Seven asked him to participate in the Festival of Mars next week.”
Kit Carson, the planet’s most famous and successful individual ever to enter the business of scouting the gates through time, had retired to TT-86. Having pushed most of the famous tour gates now operating through the terminal, Kit Carson was one of the station’s major tourist draws, in his own right, despite his status as essentially a recluse who had vowed never to return to that up-time world again. Skeeter, however, steered clear of Kit whenever possible, on general principle. He tended to avoid the older male relatives of any girl he’d tried to finagle into bed with him. Kit, he avoided even more cautiously than others. Kit Carson could seriously cripple a man, just looking crosswise at him. The day Kit had hunted him down and read him the riot act about staying away from Kit’s granddaughter, Skeeter would’ve welcomed a double-gate day. He’d have crawled through an unstable gate, if one had been available, by the time Kit had finished with him.
Skeeter smiled ruefully. “Double-gate day, is right. And I’ve got this funny feeling we’ll be neck deep in lunatics before the day’s over. First Primary, then Britannia, and tomorrow, another double-gate day.”
“Yes,” Ianira nodded. “The Wild West Gate opens tomorrow.”
“And that new tour gate they’re ripping half the station apart over, adding to the Commons.”
“At least, there won’t be any tourists coming through for it, yet,” Ianira smiled.
“No. For now, it’s the Britannia tours, packing in the loons. In record numbers.” He shook his head. “Between your acolytes and all those crazies coming in for the Ripper Season, this place is turning into the biggest nuthouse ever built under one roof. And those Scheherazade Gate construction workers… eergh!” He gave a mock shudder. “What slimy boulder did they turn over, hiring that bunch of thugs?”
As Ianira fell into step alongside Skeeter’s push cart, she glanced up with a reproachful glint in her eyes. “You must not be so irritated by the construction workers, Skeeter. Most of them are very good men. And surely you, of all up-timers on station, must understand their beliefs and customs are different? As a down-timer, I understand this very well.”
“Oh, I understand, all right. But some of the guys on the Scheherazade Gate crew are throwbacks to the Dark Ages. Or maybe the Stone Ages. Honestly, Ianira, everybody on station’s had trouble with some of them.”
She sighed. “Yes, I know. We do have a problem, Skeeter. The Council of Seven has met about them, already. But you, Skeeter,” she changed the subject as they navigated a goldfish pond with its ornate bridge and carefully manicured shrubbery, “you are ready for the Britannia? There are only seven hours left. Your case is packed? And you will not be late?”
Skeeter let go the heavy handle of his push cart with one hand and rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment. “Yes, I’m packed and ready. I still can’t believe you pulled off something like that.” About seven hours from now, the first official Ripper Watch tour of the season was scheduled to arrive in London, on the very evening of the first murder officially attributed to Jack the Ripper. And thanks to Ianira, Skeeter would spend the next eight days in London, courtesy of Time Tours, working the gate as a baggage porter. Hauling suitcases wasn’t the world’s greatest job either; but carrying rich tourists’ luggage beat hell out of scrubbing La-La Land’s bathrooms for a living. He’d been doing that for weeks, now. And Ripper Watch tour tickets were selling for five-digit figures on the black market, when they could be found at all. Every one of the Ripper tours had been sold out for over a year.
Skeeter rubbed his nose and smiled wryly. “Time Tours baggage porter. Who’d’ve believed that, huh? They never would’ve trusted me, if you hadn’t offered to replace anything that went missing on my watch.”
“They will learn,” she said firmly, giving him a much-needed boost of confidence. Ianira rested a hand on his arm. “You will do well, Skeeter. But will you try to go with the scholars? To see who is this terrible man, the Ripper?”
Skeeter shook his head. “No way. The videotapes will be bad enough.”
“Yes,” Ianira said quietly. “I do not wish to see any of them.”
“Huh. Better avoid Victoria Station, then,” Skeeter muttered as he bumped his cart across the division between Edo Castletown and Victoria Station, the portion of Commons which served the Britannia Gate. Bottles of cleaning solution rattled and boxes of toilet paper rolls, feminine supplies, and condoms (latex, spray-on, and natural for those going to appropriate down-time destinations) bounced and jiggled as he shoved the cart across the cobblestones. Mop handles sticking out the top like pungee stakes threatened tourists too slow to dodge—and on every side, pure-bred lunatics threatened everything in sight, including Skeeter and his awkward cart.
“God help us,” Skeeter muttered, “Ripper Watch Season is really in full swing.”
Ripperoons had come crawling out of the woodwork like swarming termites. So had the crazies preying on them. Saviors of the Gates, convinced the Savior would appear through one of the temporal gates… the Shifters, who drifted from station to station seeking Eternal Truth from the manifestations of unstable gates… Hell’s Minions, whose up-time leader had convinced his disciples to carry out Satan’s work with as many unsuspecting tourists and down-timers as possible… and, of course, the Ripper Cults.
Those were visible everywhere, holding hand-scrawled signs, peddling cheap literature and ratty flowers, hawking cheap trinkets in the shape of bloody knives. Most of them carried as sacred talismans the authentic surgical knives Goldie Morran was selling out of her shop, and all of them were talking incessantly in a roar of excited conversation about the one topic on everyone’s mind.
“Do you suppose they’ll catch him?”
“—listen, my brothers, I tell you, Jack is Lord, traveling to this world from another dimension to show us the error of our sins! Repent and join with Jack to condemn evil, for He cannot die and He knows the lust in your hearts—”
“No, how can they catch him, no one in 1888 ever discovered who he was.”
“—I don’t care if you do have a ticket for the Britannia, you can’t take that surgical knife with you, it’s against BATF rules—”
“—let the Sons of Jack show you the way to salvation! Condemn all whores and loose women! A whore is the downfall of righteousness, the destruction of civilization. Follow the example of Jack and rid our great society of the stain of all sexual activity—”
“Yes, but they’re putting video cameras at all the murder sites, so maybe we’ll find out who he was, at least!”
“—somebody ought to confiscate all those goddamned knives Goldie’s selling, before these loons start cutting one another up like Christmas turkeys—”
“—a donation, please, for Brother Jack! He will come to Shangri-La to lead us into the paths of truth. Support his good works with your spare change—”
“A hundred bucks says it’s that crazy cotton merchant from Liverpool, what’s-his-name, Maybrick.”
“Go back up time, you sick lunatics! What kind of idiots are you? Jack the Ripper, an alien from another planet—?”
“Hah! Shows what you know! A hundred-fifty says it was the Queen’s personal physician, Sir William Gull, hushing up the scandal over Victoria’s grandson and his secret marriage, you know, the Catholic wife and daughter!”
“—you want me to what? I’m not following Brother Jack or anybody else in a crusade against evil. My God, mister, I’m an actress! Are you trying to put me out of work?”
“—help us, please, Save Our Sisters! S.O.S. is determined to rescue the Ripper’s victims before he can strike, they’re so unimportant, surely we can change history just this once—”
“Oh, don’t tell me you bought that Royal Conspiracy garbage? There’s absolutely no evidence to support that cockamamie story! I tell you, it’s James Maybrick, the arsenic addict who hated his unfaithful American wife!”
“—all right, dump that garbage into the trash bin, nobody wants to read your pamphlets, anyway, and station maintenance is tired of sweeping them up. We’ve got parents complaining about the language in your brochures, left lying around where any school kid can find them—”
“No, you’re both wrong, it’s the gay lover of the Duke of Clarence, the queen’s grandson, the tutor with the head injury who went crazy!”
Skeeter shook his head. La-La Land, gone totally insane. Everyone was trying to out-guess and out-bet one another as to who the real Ripper would turn out to be. Speculation was flying wild, from genuine Scotland Yard detectives to school kids to TT-86’s shop owners, restauranteurs, and resident call girls. Scholars had been pouring into the station for weeks, heading down time to cover the biggest murder mystery of the last couple of centuries. The final members of the official Ripper Watch Team had assembled three days ago, when Primary had last cycled, bringing in a couple of dandified reporters who’d refused to go down time any sooner than absolutely necessary and a criminal sociologist who’d just come back from another down-time research trip. They’d arrived barely in time to make the first Ripper murder in London. And today, of course, the first hoard of tourists permitted tickets for the Ripper Season tours would be arriving, cheeks flushed, bankrolls clutched in avaricious hands, panting to be in at the kill and ready to descend on the station’s outfitters to buy everything they’d need for eight days in London of 1888.
“Who do you think it is?” Ianira asked, having to shout over the roar.
Skeeter snorted. “It’s probably some schmuck nobody’s ever heard of before. A sick puppy who just snapped one day and decided to kill a bunch of penniless prostitutes. Jack the Ripper wasn’t the only madman who ripped up women with a knife, after all. The way those Ripperologists have been talking, there were hundreds of so-called ‘rippers’ during the 1880s and 1890s. Jack was just better with his PR, sending those horrible letters to the press.”
Ianira shuddered, echoing Skeeter’s own feelings on the subject.
If Skeeter had still been a betting man, he might have laid a few wagers, himself. But Skeeter Jackson had learned a very harsh lesson about making wagers. He’d very nearly lost his home, his life, and his only friends, thanks to that last ill-considered, ruinous wager he’d made with Goldie Morran. He’d finally realized, very nearly too late, that his life of petty crime hurt a lot more people than just the rich, obnoxious tourists he’d made a living ripping off. For Skeeter, at any rate, ripping time was over. For good.
Unfortunately, for the rest of La-La Land, it was just getting started.
As though on cue, the station’s PA system crackled to life as Primary cycled open. The station announcer blared out instructions for the newly arriving tourists—and at Skeeter’s side, Ianira Cassondra faltered. Her eyes glazed in sudden pain and a violent tremble struck her, so hard she stumbled against him and nearly fell.
“Ianira!” He caught and held her up, horrified by the tremors ripping through her. All color had drained from her face. Ianira squeezed shut her eyes for a long, terrifying moment. Then whatever was wrong passed. She sagged against him.
“Forgive me…” Her voice came out whispery, weak.
He held her up as carefully as he would’ve held a priceless Ming vase. “What’s wrong, Ianira, what happened?”
“A vision,” she choked out. “A warning. Such power… I have never Seen with such power, never have I felt such fear… something terrible is to happen… is happening now, I think…”
Skeeter’s blood ran cold. He didn’t pretend to understand everything this seemingly fragile woman he braced so carefully was capable of. Trained in the ancient arts of the Temple of Ephesus as a child, some twenty-five hundred years before Skeeter’s birth, Ianira occasionally said and did things that raised the hair on the back of Skeeter’s neck. Ianira’s acolytes, who followed her everywhere, pressed closer, exclaiming in worry. Those farther back, unable to see clearly, demanded to know what was wrong.
“Dammit, get back!” Skeeter turned on the whole lot of them. “Can’t you see she needs air?”
Shocked faces gawped at him like so many fish, but they backed away a few paces. Ianira sagged against him, trembling violently. He guided her toward a bench, but she shook her head. “No, Skeeter. I am fine, now.” To prove it, she straightened and took a step under her own power, wobbly, but determined.
Worried acolytes formed a corridor for her. Skeeter glared silently at them, guiding her by the elbow, determined not to allow her to fall. Speaking as quietly as possible, in the probably vain hope their vidcams and tape recorders wouldn’t pick up the question, he murmured, “What kind of vision was it, Ianira?”
She shivered again. “A warning,” she whispered. “A warning of dark anger. The darkest I have ever touched. Violence, terrible fear…”
“Sounds like everyday life, up time.” He tried to make light of it, hoping to make her smile.
Ianira, the gifted Cassondra of Ephesus, did not smile. She shuddered. Then choked out, “It is from up time the danger comes.”
He stared down at her. Then a prickle ran up his back. It occurred to him that Primary had just cycled. Skeeter narrowed his eyes, gazing off toward the end of Commons where Primary precinct would be filled with tourists shoving their way into the station. Screw the bathroom floors. I’m not letting her out of my sight.
They reached the junction between five of the terminal’s major zones, a no-man’s land where the corners of Urbs Romae and Victoria Station ran into El Dorado, Little Agora, and Valhalla, not too far from the new construction site where the Arabian Nights sector was going up. It was there in that no-man’s land, with Ianira’s acolytes making it impossible to see for any distance, that Skeeter heard the first rumbles. An angry swell of voices heralded the approach of trouble. Skeeter glanced swiftly around, trying to pin down the source. It sounded like it was coming from two directions at once—and was apparently triangulating straight toward them.
“Ianira…”
Four things occurred simultaneously.
Tourists screamed and broke into a dead run. A full-blown riot engulfed them, led by enraged construction workers shouting in Arabic. A wild-eyed young kid burst through the crowd and yelled something that sounded like, “No! Aahh!”—then pointed an enormous black-powder pistol right at Skeeter and Ianira. Gunfire erupted just as someone else lunged out of the crowd and swept Ianira sideways in a flying tackle. The blow slammed her against Skeeter, knocked them both sideways. They crashed to the floor. The maintenance cart toppled, spilling ammonia bottles, mop handles, and toilet paper rolls underfoot. Screams and alarm klaxons deafened him. Skeeter rolled awkwardly under running feet and came to his hands and knees, searching wildly for Ianira. He couldn’t see her anywhere. Couldn’t see anything but fleeing tourists and spilled cleaning supplies and embattled construction workers. They were locked in hand-to-hand combat with Ianira’s howling acolytes.
“Ianira!”
He gained his feet, was rocked sideways by a body blow as a cursing construction worker smashed into him. They both went down. Skeeter’s skull connected with El Dorado’s gold-tinted paving stones. He saw stars, cursed furiously. Before he could roll to his hands and knees again, security killed the station lights. The entire Commons plunged into utter blackness. Shrieking riot faded to an uncertain roar. Somebody stumbled over Skeeter in the darkness, tripped and went down, even as Skeeter clawed his way back to his feet.
“Ianira!”
He strained for any sound of her voice, heard nothing but the sobs and cries of frantic tourists, maddened acolytes, and screaming, erstwhile combatants. Somebody ran past him, with such purpose and certainty it could only be security. They must be using that night-vision equipment Mike Benson had ordered before the start of Ripper Season. The riot helmets had their own infrared light-sources built in, for just this kind of station emergency. Then the lights came up and Skeeter discovered himself hemmed in by a solid wall of security officers, armed with night sticks and handcuffs. They waded in, cuffing more rioters, breaking up combatants with scant regard for who was attempting to throttle whom. “Break it up! Move it—”
Skeeter peered wildly through the crowd, recognized the nearest officer. “Wally! Have you seen Ianira Cassondra?”
Wally Klontz stared at him, visibly startled. “What?”
“Ianira! Some crazy kid shot at us! Then somebody else knocked us both down and now she’s missing!”
“Oh, Jeezus H., that’s all we need! Somebody taking pot-shots at the most important religious figure of the twenty-first century!” A brief query over Wally’s squawky produced a flat negative. Nobody from security had seen her, anywhere.
Skeeter let loose a torrent of fluent Mongolian curses that would’ve impressed even Yesukai the Valiant. Wally Klontz frowned and spoke into the squawky again. “Station alert, Signal Eight-Delta, repeat, Signal Eight-Delta, missing person, Ianira Cassondra. Expedite, condition red.”
The squawky crackled. “Oh, shit! Ten-four, that’s a Signal Eight-Delta, Ianira Cassondra. Condition red. Expediting.”
More sirens hooted insanely overhead, a shrieking rhythm that drove Skeeter’s pulse rate into the stratosphere and left his head aching. But the pain in his head was nothing to the agony in his heart. Wally let him pass the security cordon around the riot zone, then he fought his way clear of the riot’s fringe, searching frantically for a flash of white Ephesian gown, the familiar gloss of her dark hair. But he couldn’t find her, not even a trace. Skeeter bit his lip, shaking and sick. He had allowed the unthinkable to happen. Someone wanted Ianira Cassondra dead. And whoever that someone was, they had snatched her right out of his grasp, in the middle of a riot. If they killed Ianira…
They wouldn’t get out of Shangri-La Station alive.
No one attacked the family of a Yakka Mongol and lived to boast of it.
Skeeter Jackson, adopted by the Khan of all the Yakka Mongols, a displaced up-time kid who had been declared their living bogda, spirit of the upper air in human form, the child named honorary uncle to an infant who one day would terrorize the world as Genghis Khan, had just declared blood feud.
Margo Smith glanced at her wristwatch for the tenth time in three minutes, fizzing like a can of soda shaken violently and popped open. Less than seven hours! Just seven more hours and she would step through the Britannia Gate into history. And, coincidentally, into her fiancé’s arms. She could hardly wait to see Malcolm Moore’s face when she showed up at the Time Tours gatehouse in London, guiding the final contingent of the Ripper Watch Team. Malcolm had been in London for a month, already, acclimating the other Ripper Watch Team members. Margo hadn’t lived through four longer, lonelier weeks since that gawdawful misadventure of hers in southern Africa, going after Goldie Morran’s ill-fated diamonds.
But she’d learned her lessons—dozens of them, in fact—and after months of the hardest work she’d ever tackled, her gruelling efforts had finally paid off. Her grandfather was letting her go back down time again. And not through just any old gate, either. The Britannia! To study the most famous murder mystery since the disappearance of the Dauphin during the French Revolution. All that stood between her and the chance to earn herself a place in scholarly history—not to mention Malcolm Moore’s embrace—was seven hours and one shooting lesson.
One she dreaded.
The elite crowd gathered in the time terminal’s weapons range talked nonstop in a fashion unique to an assemblage of late-arriving wealthy tourists, world-class scholars, and self-important reporters—each hotly defending his or her own pet theories as to “whodunnit.” They ignored her utterly, even when she stuffed earmuffs and lexan-lensed safety glasses into their gesticulating, waving hands. Most of the students stationed along the firing line were tourists holding ordinary tickets, many of them for the Wild West tour set to leave tomorrow.
The Denver-bound tourists, headed for some sort of action cowboy shoot down time, cast envious glances at the lucky ones who’d managed to beg, borrow, buy, or steal Ripper Watch tickets. Those were Margo’s new charges, although they didn’t know it yet. The mere tourists heading for London, Margo ignored. Her attention was focused on the three individuals with whom she would be spending the next three solid months, as their time guide.
Dominica Nosette, whose name, face, and body seemed quintessentially French, yet who was as staidly British as kippers and jellied eels, was chattering away with her partner Guy Pendergast. And Shahdi Feroz… Margo gulped, just approaching Dr. Feroz where she stood locked in conversation with a Ripper Watch tourist at the next lane over. Dr. Feroz had spent the past four months studying the rise of cults and cult violence in Imperial Rome, through the Porta Romae. At previous training classes like this one, Margo had met all the other team members now in London, before they’d left the station with Malcolm. But none of the others possessed the credentials or the fieldwork record Shahdi Feroz did. Not even the team’s nominal leader, Conroy Melvyn, a seedy-looking Englishman who bore the impressive title of Scotland Yard Chief Inspector.
Looking as Persian as her name and voice sounded, Dr. Feroz awed Margo. Not only was she exotic and beautiful in a way that made Margo feel her own youth and inexperience as keenly as a Minnesota winter wind, Shahdi Feroz was absolutely brilliant. Reading Dr. Feroz’ work, virtually all of it based on first-hand study of down-time populations, reminded Margo of what she’d seen in New York during her agonizing, mercifully short stay there, and of things she’d seen during her few, catastrophic trips through TT-86’s time gates. Not to mention—and she winced from the memory—her own childhood.
Margo’s lack of education—a high-school GED and one semester of college which Kit had arranged for up time, augmented with months of intensive study on the station—caused her to stammer like a stupid schoolgirl with stagefright. “Dr. Feroz. Your, uh, safety goggles and muffs, earmuffs, I mean, for your ears, to protect them…” Oh, for God’s sake, stop shaking, Margo!
“Thank you, my dear.” The inflection of dismissal in her voice reduced Margo to the status of red-faced child. She fled back down the line of shooting benches, toward Ann Vinh Mulhaney, resident projectile weapons instructor, and the reassuring familiarity of a routine she knew well: preparing for a shooting lesson. Ann, at least, greeted her with a warm smile.
“So, are you all set for London?”
“Oh, boy, am I just! I’ve been packed for two whole days! I still can’t believe Kit managed to swing it with Bax to let me go!” She had no idea what it had taken to convince Granville Baxter, CEO of Time Tours, Inc. on station, to give Margo that gate pass. And not just a one-cycle pass, either, but a gate pass that would let her stay the entire three months of East End Ripper murders.
Ann chuckled. “Grandpa wants you to get some field experience, kid.”
Margo flushed. “I know.” She glanced at the journalists, at the woman whose scholarly work was breaking new ground in the understanding of the criminal mind in historical cultures. “I know I haven’t really got enough experience to guide the Ripper Watch Team through the East End. Not yet, even though I’ve been to the East End once.” That trip, and her own greenhorn mistakes, she preferred not to remember too closely. “But I’ll get the experience, Ann, and I’ll do a good job. I know I can do this.”
Ann ruffled Margo’s short hair affectionately. “Of course you can, Margo. Any girl who could talk Kit Carson into training her to become the world’s first woman time scout can handle mere journalists and eggheads. Bet Malcolm will be happy to see you, too,” Ann added with a wink.
Margo grinned. “He sure will! He’ll finally have somebody else to send on all the lousy errands!”
Ann laughed. “Let’s get this class started, shall we?”
“Right!”
Margo needed to prove to Ann, to Kit, and to Malcolm that she was capable of time scouting. And—perhaps most importantly—Margo needed to prove it to herself. So she dredged up a bright smile to hide her nervousness, hoped she didn’t look as young as she felt in such illustrious, enormously educated company, and wondered if the team members could possibly take seriously a hot-headed, Irish alley-cat of a time guide who’d just turned seventeen-and-a-half last week…
Her smile, which had been known to cause cardiac arrest, was one of the few weapons currently available in her self-defense arsenal, so she dredged up a heart-stopping one and got to work. “Hi! Is everybody ready to get in some weapons practice?”
Heads swivelled and Margo was the abrupt focus of multiple, astonished stares.
Oh, Lordy, here we go.… “I’m Margo Smith, I’ll be one of your time guides to London—”
“You?” The sound was incredulous, just short of scathing. Another voice from further down the line of shooting benches said, “What high school is that kid playing hooky from?“
Margo’s face flamed. So did her temper. She bit down on it, though, and forced a brittle smile. Ann Mulhaney, the rat, just stood off to one side, waiting to see how she handled herself. Oh, God, another test.… One she’d better pass, too, drat it. So Margo ignored the incredulous looks and scathing remarks and simply got on with the job. “Most of the other guides are already in London,” she said firmly. “I’ve been assigned the job of shepherding you through weapons training, so let’s get organized, shall we? We’ve got a lot to do. Everyone’s signed in, been assigned a lane and a shooting partner? Yes? Good. We’ll get started, then.”
Dominica Nosette interrupted, in a voice acid enough to burn holes through solid steel. “Why d’you insist we learn to shoot? It isn’t proper, isn’t decent, handling such things. I’m a photojournalist, not some macho copper swaggering about and giving orders with a billycock, nor yet some IRA terrorist. I’m not about to pick up one of those nasty things.”
Hoo boy, here we go…
Margo said as patiently as possible—which wasn’t very—“You don’t have to carry one with you. But you will have to pass the mandatory safety class if you want to be a part of the Ripper Watch Team. Not my rules, sorry, but I will enforce them. London’s East End is a very dangerous neighborhood under the best of conditions. We’re going into areas that will be explosive as a powderkeg. Tempers will be running hot. In the East End, gangs of thieves and cutthroat muggers routinely knife prostitutes to death, just to steal the few pence in their pockets. Any stranger will be singled out by suspicious minds—”
“Oh, sod off, I’ve never needed a gun, not on a single one of my photo shoots, and I’ve trailed mob hit men!”
Oh, man, it’s gonna be a long three months…
Margo steeled herself to keep smiling if it killed her, and vowed to cope. “Ms. Nosette, I am fully aware of your credentials. No one is questioning your status as a competent journalist. But you may not appreciate just how dangerous it’s going to be for us, even for the team members born in England, trying to blend in with Victorian East End Londoners. It’s your right to choose not to carry a personal weapon. But the rules of the Ripper Watch Team are clear. You must be familiar with their use, because many of us will be carrying them. And the more you know about the kind of gun some Nichol-based gang member pulls on you, the more likely you’ll be to survive the encounter—”
“Miss Smith,” Dr. Shahdi Feroz interrupted gently, “I am sorry to disagree with you, but I have been to London’s East End, several years ago. Most of the Nichol gangs did not carry guns. Straight razors were the weapon of choice. So popular, laws against carrying them were suggested by London constables, even by Parliament.”
Margo was left with her mouth hanging open and blood scalding her cheeks until her whole face hurt. She wanted desperately to dig a hole through the concrete floor with the toe of her shoe and crawl down through it, pulling the top in after herself. Before she could recover her shattered composure, never mind think of anything to say that wouldn’t sound completely witless, the station’s alarm klaxons screamed out a warning that shook through the weapons range like thunder. Margo gasped, jerking her gaze around.
“What’s going on?” Dominica Nosette demanded.
“Station emergency!” Margo shouted above the strident skronkk! Ann had already bolted toward her office. Margo was right behind, literally saved by the bell. Oh, God, how’m I ever gonna face that bunch again? Ann flung open her office door, snatched up the telephone, dialed a code that plugged her into the station’s security system. Margo crowded in, then barricaded the doorway so tourists and the Ripper Watch Team couldn’t barge in, as well. A moment later, Ann hung up, white-faced and shaken. “There’s been a shooting! Skeeter and Ianira! Security’s just put out a station-wide alarm. Ianira’s missing! And there’s a station riot underway!”
Her voice carried out through the doorway to the milling throng of tourists and Ripperologists. For one agonizing second, indecision crucified Margo. Ianira was a friend, a good friend, but Margo had a job to do here. And no matter how desperately she wanted to run from her own embarrassing mistake, she had to finish that job.
Dominica Nosette and Guy Pendergast, however, showed no such hesitation.
They grabbed equipment bags and ran.
“Margo! Go after those idiots!” Ann was already striding toward the exit, blocking the way with her body. “Nobody else leaves this range, is that clear? Nobody!” Diminuitive as she was, none of the others challenged her. They’d all seen her shoot. And nobody wanted to face down the Royal Irish Constabulary revolvers she abruptly clutched in either hand, rather than wearing benignly in twin holsters.
Margo, however, broke and ran, pounding up the stairs after the fleeing British reporters. “Hey! Wait!” Yeah, like they’re really gonna stop just because I said so…
They didn’t even slow down.
Seconds later, Margo—hard on their heels and gaining ground—emerged straight into chaos. A seething mass of frightened, confused tourists tried to rush in fifty-eleven directions at once, kids crying, women shouting for husbands, fathers grimly dragging youngsters toward anything that promised shelter. The awesome noise smote Margo like a physical blow, a fist made up of alarm klaxons, medi-van sirens, and screaming, shouting voices. Security squads raced past. Officers were jamming riot helmets on, even as they ran.
Margo’s AWOL reporters surged right into the thick of utter chaos, dragging out cameras and recorders on the fly and pounding along in the wake of security. Margo swore under her breath and darted after them. She was small enough to dodge and weave with all the skill of a trained acrobat. An instant later, however, total darkness crashed down, engulfing the whole Commons. Margo skidded to a halt—or tried to, anyway. She caromed into at least half-a-dozen shrieking people before she managed to stop her headlong rush. Sobs of terror rose on every side. The insane wail of the klaxons shook through the darkness.
Margo stood panting in a film of sweat. The hair on her arms stood starkly erect. Unreasoning fear surged. Booted feet pounded past through the total blackness, startling Margo until she realized those odd helmets she’d seen security putting on were Mike Benson’s new night-vision helmets. What seemed hours, but couldn’t have been longer than a few minutes later, the lights started coming back up, moving gradually inward from the far edges of Commons. Margo blinked as the overhead lights flickered back to life in banks, illuminating Edo Castletown at one far end of the station and the Anachronism’s Camelot sector and Outer Mongolia at the other end, around several twists and turns where the Commons snaked through the massive cave system into which TT-86 had been built.
Tourists clung to one another, badly shaken. Margo searched the crowd for her charges and finally caught a glimpse of purposeful movement. The Ripper Watch reporters were on the move again. She swore in gutter Latin that would’ve shocked Cicero and pounded after them. “Are you crazy?” she demanded, catching up at last. “You can’t go in there!”
Dominica Nosette flashed her a pitying smile. “Love, never tell a reporter what she can’t do—can’t is one word we don’t understand.”
Then they reached the zone of destruction. They’d beat SLUR-TV, the in-station televison news crew, to the punch. Dominica and Guy started filming steadily on every side as more reporters arrived, trailing cameras and lights and microphones. Then Margo caught her first glimpse of the blood and the broken bones.
Oh, my God…
While the newsies interviewed shaken eyewitnesses, station security zipped up a body bag with an extremely deceased individual inside. It wasn’t the first time Margo had seen a dead person. Not even the second. And her mother’s murder had been far more brutal a shock. But blood had stained the golden “bricks” of El Dorado’s floor, leaking down between the paving stones in rivulets and runnels, where Margo had never expected to see it. And if that glimpse into the body bag had been accurate, the dead man had been shot in the face, point-blank.
With a very large caliber firearm.
What in God’s name happened up here?
Margo began to tremble violently as the remembered smell of burnt toast and spreading, stinking puddles of blood smashed into her from her own childhood, from that long-ago morning when it had been her mother’s body zipped up and carted out, and her father led away in handcuffs.… She wrapped both arms around herself, biting her lips to keep them from shaking. Violence like this happened in places like New York or London or even Minnesota, where drunkards beat their wives to death. But murder wasn’t supposed to happen in a place like La-La Land, not where happy tourists gathered for vacations of a lifetime, where residents pursued dreams that came true every single day, where delightful amounts of money changed hands and everybody had fun in the process. Margo discovered she’d pressed the back of her hand against her mouth, unable to drag her gaze away from the macabre load as security carried away the grey zippered bag with the remains of a stranger inside.
Who is he? she wondered grimly. Or, rather, who had he been? He hadn’t been dressed in a tourist costume, or as one of those construction workers building the new section of the station. More than a dozen of the Arabian Nights crewmen, bruised and bleeding, were being dragged off in handcuffs. Then station medical arrived, having to fight their way past newsies filming white-faced, bleeding, dazed survivors. Among the worst injured were the Lady of Heaven Templars, members of the cult which had singled out Ianira as their prophetess. And Ianira was missing, might be dead.… Ugly cuts, swollen bruises, and visibly broken bones had so badly injured more than a dozen Templars, medi-vans were required to rush them out of the riot zone.
“Margo!”
She stumbled around, dazed, and found her grandfather cutting through the crowd like an ice-breaking ship plowing through arctic seas. Margo ran to him, threw her arms around him. “Kit!”
Her grandfather hugged her close for a long moment, then murmured, “Hey, it’s over, Imp, what’s wrong?” He peered worriedly into her eyes.
“I know.” She gulped, feeling stupid from lingering shock. “It’s just… stuff like that isn’t supposed to happen. Not here.”
Lines of grief etched deeper into Kit’s lean cheeks. “I know,” he said quietly. “It isn’t. I hate it, too. Which is why we’re going to do something about it.”
“Do what? I mean, what can we possibly do? And what happened, exactly? I got here a little late.”
Kit thinned his lips. “Ansar Majlis is what happened.”
“Answer who?”
The grim look in his eyes frightened Margo, worse than she was already. “Ansar Majlis,” he said it again. “The Ansar Majlis Brotherhood is one of the most dangerous cults to form up time in the past fifty years. Where’s Ann?”
“On the weapons range. She stayed with Dr. Feroz and the tourists, to keep anybody else from leaving. I tried to catch up with the reporters. They went charging straight up here, but they out-ran me.” She ducked her head. “I’m sorry. I did try to stop them.”
Kit muttered under his breath. “I’m sure you did. Listen, Imp, we’ve got big trouble on this station, with Ianira Cassondra missing. I don’t have to tell you the repercussions of that, both on station and up time. And with the Ansar Majlis involved, this riot may be the first of a whole lot of station riots. When word of this gets out…” He thinned his lips. “Next time Primary cycles, we are going to be neck deep in more trouble than you can shake an entire tree at. I want you to find Marcus. Try the Down Time Bar & Grill. Tell him we need search parties organized, Found Ones as well as up-time residents. And see if you can find out how Skeeter is.”
“Skeeter’s hurt? Ann said there’d been a shooting…” She swallowed hard, abruptly queasy to her toes. Margo and Skeeter Jackson might have a mutually uncivil history, but the idea of someone having shot the admittedly charming, one-time con artist left Margo sicker and colder than before. She’d gradually been changing her opinion of Skeeter Jackson, particularly since he’d become Marcus and Ianira’s latest rescue project. An apparently successful one.
But Kit was shaking his head. “No, not shot, just banged up. Security said he had a lump on his temple the size of a goose egg. Should’ve had medical look at it, but he bolted into this mess, trying to find Ianira. Get Marcus busy organizing the Found Ones, okay? And find out if Marcus needs help looking after the girls.”
Margo drew a shaky breath. “Kit…”
If we can’t find Ianira, ever…
“Yes, I know. When you’ve got all that set up, meet me at the aerie.”
“Bull’s office? Won’t Bull be busy conducting the official investigation?”
“Yes. Which is why you and I are going to be there.” When Margo gave him her best look of blank befuddlement, Kit explained. “In a major station emergency, every single time scout in residence becomes a de facto member of station security. Same with the independent guides, the ones not on a company payroll, or with specific tour commitments to meet. And I’d say a riot, a murder, and a kidnapping qualify as a major station emergency in anybody’s book. We’re going to be busy, Margo, busier than you’ve been since you arrived on station.”
He must have noticed the sudden panic Margo couldn’t choke down, try as she might, because he said more gently, “Don’t worry about the Ripper Watch tour, kid. You’ll get to London, all right. But the Britannia doesn’t open for almost six and a half hours and right now, we’ve got a murderer loose somewhere in this station. A killer who’s very likely got Ianira Cassondra in his hands.”
Margo shuddered. It was one thing, studying a serial murderer like Jack the Ripper, whose victims were quite well known. Hunting for a madman loose in TT-86 was another prospect altogether—one that terrified her. “Okay, Kit.” She managed to keep her voice fairly steady. “I’ll find Marcus, get the down-timers organized, try to find out about Skeeter, then meet you at Bull’s office.”
“Good girl. And for God’s sake, Imp, don’t let those damned newsies follow you!”
She tried to imagine the kind of story any reporter would take up time about this disaster, tried to imagine the impact that story would have, particularly the disappearance of the inspiration for the fastest-growing cult religion in the world, and nodded, jaw clenched.
“Right.”
“Get moving, then. I’ll see you later.”
Margo turned her back on the chaos of the riot zone and headed for the popular residents’ bar where Marcus worked, wondering how badly Skeeter had been injured and just who had grabbed Ianira—and what they were doing to her, now they had her. Margo bit her lip. What would Marcus do if they couldn’t find her? Or if—she swallowed hard at the thought—if they didn’t find her alive? And their little girls? They weren’t even old enough to understand what had happened…
Margo’s fear edged over into terror, mingled with helpless anger. If those little girls had been left motherless… Today’s riot would be small potatoes compared to the explosion yet to come. And violence of that magnitude could get a station closed down, permanently. Even one as famous and profitable as TT-86. After the bombing destruction of TT-66 by whichever group of middle eastern religious fanatics had blown the station sky-high, all it would take was another major station rocked by violence to shut down the whole time-tourism industry. There was already a powerful up-time Senator trying to close down the stations. If TT-86 went under because of riots and on-station murders, Kit wouldn’t need to kick her out of time-scout training to wreck her dreams.
Up-time politics would wreck them for her.