Chapter 6
Chapter 6
Polly Nichols needed a drink.
It’d been nearly seven hours since her last glass of gin and she was beginning to shake, she needed another so badly. There was no money in her pockets, either, to buy more. Worse, trade had been miserably slow all day, everywhere from the Tower north to Spitalfields Market and east to the Isle of Dogs. Not one lousy whoreson during the whole long day had been willing to pay for the price of a single glass of gin to calm her shaking nerves. She hadn’t much left to sell, either, or pawn, for that matter.
Polly wore cheap, spring-sided men’s boots with steel-tipped heels, which might’ve been worth something to a pawn broker, had she not cut back the uppers to fit her small legs and feet. Worse, without boots, she could not continue to ply her trade. With rain falling nearly every day and an unnatural chill turning the season cold and miserable, she’d catch her death in no time without proper boots to keep her feet warm and dry.
But, God, how she needed a drink…
Maybe she could sell her little broken mirror. Any mirror was a valuable commodity in a doss house—which made Polly reluctant to give it up. For a woman in her business, a mirror was an important professional tool. She frowned. What else might she be able to sell? Her pockets were all but empty as she felt through them. The mirror… her comb… and a crackle of paper. The letters! Her fingers trembled slightly as she withdrew the carefully folded sheets of foolscap. That miserable little puff, Morgan, had lied to her about these letters. There was no name on the paper, other than a signature. She suspected she could figure out who the letter-writer was if she could only get the letters translated from Welsh into English. A translation would make Polly a rich woman. But that wouldn’t get her a drink right now.
Well, she could always sell some of the letters, couldn’t she? With the agreement that as soon as they found out the identity of the author, they would share the spoils between them. Or, if Polly found out quickly enough, she might simply buy them back by saying she’d had them translated and Morgan had lied to her and the letters were worthless. Yes, that was what she would do. Sell three of the four now, to get her gin money, then get them back with a lie and figure out who to blackmail with the whole set of four. But who to convince to buy them in the first place?
It must be someone as desperate for money as herself, to buy into the scheme. But it couldn’t be anyone like an ordinary pawn broker. No, it had to be someone she could trust, someone who would trust her. That left one of a few friends she had made on the streets. Which meant she wouldn’t be able to get much up front. But then, Polly didn’t need much right now, just enough to buy herself a few glasses of gin and a bed for a night or two. She could always get the letters back the moment she had money from her next paying customer, if it came to that.
The decision as to which of her friends to approach was made for her when Polly saw Annie Chapman walking down Whitechapel Road. Polly broke into a broad smile. Annie Chapman was a prostitute, same as herself, and certainly needed money. Dark Annie ought to buy into a blackmail scheme, all right. Annie was seriously ill, although to look at her, a body wouldn’t guess it. But she was dying slowly of a lung and brain ailment which had put her into workhouse infirmaries occasionally and siphoned much of what she earned on the streets for medicines.
Yes, Annie ought to be quite interested in making a great deal of money quickly.
“Well, if it isn’t Annie Chapman!” she said with a bright smile.
The other woman was very small, barely five feet tall, but stoutly built, with pallid skin and wide blue eyes and beautiful teeth that Polly, herself, would have given much to be able to flash at a customer when she smiled. Annie’s dark brown hair was wavy and had probably been lustrous before her illness had struck. Her nose was too thick for beauty and at forty-five she was past her best years, but she was a steady little individual, meeting life quietly and trying to hold on in the face of overwhelming poverty, too little to eat, and an illness that sapped her strength and left her moving slowly when she was able to walk at all.
Annie Chapman smiled, genuinely pleased by the greeting. “Polly, how are you?”
“Oh, I’m good, Annie, I’m good. I’d be better if I ’ad a gin or two, eh?”
The two women chuckled for a moment. Annie was not the drinker Polly was, but the other woman enjoyed her rum, when there was enough money to be spared for it, same as most other women walking these dismal streets.
“Say, Annie, ’ow’s your ’ealth been these past few weeks?”
The other woman’s eyes darkened. “Not good,” she said quietly, with a hoarse rasp in her voice. “It’s this rain and cold. Makes my lungs ache, so it’s hard to breathe.” She sounded like it hurt her to breathe.
“I’d imagine a good bit more money would ’elp, eh? Maybe even enough to take you someplace warm and dry, right out o’ London?”
“Daft, are you, love?” Annie laughed, not unkindly. “Now, just tell me Polly, how would I get that sort of money?”
Polly winked and leaned close. “Well, as it ’appens I just might be set to come into a small fortune, y’see. And I might be willin’ to share it.” She showed Annie the letters in her pocket and explained her scheme—and let on like she knew who the author was and was only willing to share the money because she was totally broke, herself, and needed a bed for the night. When she finished her proposition, Annie glared at her. “But Polly! That’s blackmail!” The anger in the other woman’s eyes and rasping voice astonished Polly.
She drew herself up defensively. “An’ if it is? Bloke should ’ave thought of that before ’e went about dippin’ ’is Hampton into a bloke’s arse’ole! Besides, Annie, this ’ere bastard’s rich as sin. And what’ve you got, eh? A dead ’usband and a sickness eatin’ away at you, ’til you can’t ’ardly stand up. If we went to a magistrate, this ’ere bloke would go t’prison. I’m not talkin’ about ’urting a decent sort of chap, I’m talkin’ about makin’ a right depraved bastard pay for ’is crimes against God an’ nature. An’ ’ow better should ’e pay, than to ’elp a sick woman? I ask you that, Annie Chapman, ’ow better to pay for ’is sins than to ’elp a woman ’oo needs it most? Think of it, Annie. Enough money t’go someplace where it don’t rain ’alf the year an’ the fogs don’t make it near impossible to breathe of a night. Someplace warm, even in winter. A decent ’ouse wiv a roof over and enough to eat, so’s you aren’t weak all the time, wot lets the sickness gets a better grip than ever. Annie, think of it, enough money to pay a real doctor an’ get the sort of medicines rich folk ’ave…”
Annie’s expression had crumpled. Tears filled her eyes. “You’re right,” she whispered. “Isn’t my fault I’m sick. Not my fault this nasty chap went out and seduced a half-grown boy, either. God, to have enough money for real medicine. A warm place to live…” She coughed, swaying weakly. Misery and longing ploughed deep gullies into her face.
Polly patted her shoulder. “That’s right, Annie. I’ll share wiv you. There’s four letters. You take three of ’em. All I need’s enough money to pay me doss ’ouse for a few nights. Can you spare that much, Annie? A few pence for now… and a lifetime of medicine and rest in warm beds, after?”
Annie was searching through her pockets. “I’ve got to have enough for my own doss house tonight,” she muttered, digging out a few coins. “I’ve had some luck today, though. Made enough money to pay for almost a week’s lodging. Here.” She gave Polly a shilling. “That’s fourpence a letter. Is it enough?” she asked anxiously.
Polly Nichols had to work hard not to snatch the shilling out of Annie’s hand. She was looking at enough money to buy four brimming glassfuls of gin. “Oh, Annie, that’s a gracious plenty.” She accepted the shilling and handed over three of her precious letters. “An’ ’ere you are, luv, three tickets to the life you deserve.”
Annie actually hugged her.
Polly flushed and muttered, “I’ll not forget this, Annie. An’ we’ll send the letter to this nasty Mr. Eddy together, eh? Tomorrow, Annie. Meet me at the Britannia pub tomorrow an’ we’ll compose a lovely letter to Mr. Eddy an’ send it off. You got a better education than I ’ave, you can write it out all posh, like, eh?”
By tomorrow she would have found someone to translate her remaining letter for her and be able to keep that promise. And she just might let Annie keep one of the letters, after all, rather than buying them all back.
Annie smiled at her, eyes swimming with gratitude. “You’re a grand friend, Polly Nichols. God bless you.”
They said their goodbyes, Annie tucking three of the letters into her pockets while Polly pocketed the remaining letter and her precious shilling. As they went their separate ways, Polly smiled widely. Then she headed for the nearest public house as fast as her steel-capped boots would carry her there. She needed a drink, all right.
To celebrate!
Skeeter wasn’t certain what, exactly, he was looking for as he worked the Britannia Gate’s baggage line. But the Britannia was the first gate to cycle since Ianira’s disappearance. If Skeeter had kidnapped someone as world-famous as Ianira Cassondra, intending something more subtle than simply killing her and dumping the body somewhere, he’d have tried to smuggle her out through the first open gate available.
For one thing, it would be far easier to torture a victim down a gate. Fewer people to hear—or at least care about—the screams. And if her abductor really was the person who’d shoved her out of the way of an assassin’s bullet, if he actually was interested in keeping her alive, then getting her off the station would be imperative. Too many people had far too many opportunities to strike at Ianira on station, even if her rescuer tried to keep her hidden. In a gossip-riddled place like La-La Land, nothing stayed secret for long. Certainly not an abduction of someone as beloved and strikingly recognizable as Ianira.
So Skeeter had abandoned his search of the station, donned a shapeless working man’s shirt and the creaseless trousers of the Victorian era—the costume worn by all Time Tours baggage handlers working the Britannia—and reported for work, as planned. As Ianira had planned… He couldn’t think about that now, couldn’t dwell on the fear and the dull, aching anger, not if he hoped to catch what might be a very fleeting, subtle clue betraying a smuggler.
How someone might successfully sneak someone through a gate occupied Skeeter’s thoughts as hotel bellhops arrived in steady streams from hotels up and down Commons, bringing cartloads of luggage tagged for London. Tourists generally carried no more on their person than an average passenger was permitted to carry aboard a jetliner, which meant—and Skeeter stared in dismay at the flood of baggage carts on direct approach to the Britannia’s lounge—that bellhops and baggage handlers had to transport every last trunk, carpet bag, portmanteau, and ladies’ toiletry case from hotel room door to down-time destination, through a gate which opened only so wide and stayed open only so long.
Sloppy handling, broken contents, and lost luggage had resulted in the firing of many a baggage handler, not to mention four baggage managers in just the past few months. And Celosia Enyo, the latest in that dismal line of unhappy managers, was not the kind of woman to tolerate mistakes by anyone, not on this gate’s cycle, anyway. After all, this wasn’t just any gate opening. This was a Shangri-La Event: Ripper Season’s official kickoff. And true to ’eighty-sixer predictions, the social gala on the other side of the departures-lounge barricades had roared to boisterous, ghoulish life.
“I don’t care what those experts say,” a severely dressed woman was saying as she passed through the check-in procedures, “I think it was that barber-surgeon, the bigamist. George Chapman.”
Her companion, an equally severe woman with upswept, greying hair, said, “Chapman? His real name was Severin Klosowski, wasn’t it? I don’t think he was a very likely suspect.”
“Well, Inspector Abberline named him as a leading candidate! Klosowski killed lots of women. Wives, mistresses, girlfriends—”
“Yes, but he didn’t use a knife, my dear, he poisoned them. The Ripper wasn’t that devious. Klosowski killed his women when they got too inconvenient. Or too expensive to keep. Jack the Ripper killed for the pleasure of it.”
And behind those two, a professonrial-looking little man in a seedy suit was holding forth at length to a drab little woman with a dumpy build and a rabbitty, frightened look in her eyes: “A serial killer needs to punish the woman or women he hated in his own life. He acts out the violence he wished he’d had the nerve to commit against the women who injured him. Jack the Ripper simply transferred that violence to the prostitutes of London’s East End. That’s why it can’t be Klosowski,” he added, nodding at the two severely dressed women in line ahead of him. “Personally, I favor the Mysterious Lodger, that Canadian chap, G. Wentworth Bell Smith. He went about in rubberized boots, changing clothes at all hours, railing against loose women. I’d stake my reputation on it, Bell Smith’s the man…”
The nearest of the ladies championing Chapman rounded on the Bell-Smith supporter. “A killer proven is a killer proven!” she insisted, refusing to be swayed in her convictions by any amount of evidence or reason. “Mark my words, Claudia,” she turned back to her friend, “Chapman or Klosowski, whichever name you prefer, he’ll turn out to be the Ripper! I’m sure of it…”
While overhead, on the immense SLUR television screen, the scholarly debate raged on. “—a very common pattern,” Scotland Yard Inspector Conroy Melvyn was saying in a taped interview with fellow Ripper Watch Team member Pavel Kostenka, “for a male serial killer to attack and kill prostitutes. Bloke sees ’em as a substitute for the powerful woman in ’is life, the one ’e feels powerless to strike at, instead.”
“Indeed,” Dr. Koskenka was nodding. “Not only this, but a prostitute represents a morally fallen woman. And prostitutes,” Dr. Kostenka added heavily, “were and still are the most easily available women to such killers. Add to that the historical tendency of police to dismiss a prostitute’s murder as less important than the murder of a ‘respectable’ woman and streetwalkers surge into prominence as victims of mass murderers—”
Skeeter tuned out the debate as best he could and grunted under the weight of massive steamer trunks, portmanteaus, carpet bags, leather cases, smaller trunks and satchels until his back ached. The arriving luggage was transferred case by case to a growing pile at the base of a newly installed, massive conveyor system which Time Tours’ new baggage manager had finally had the good sense to install. Skeeter glanced up to the gate platform, five stories overhead. Thank God for the conveyer. Some of those steamer trunks weighed more than Skeeter did. Considerably more. He eyed the gridwork stairs he’d be climbing soon and blessed that conveyer system fervently.
Geographically speaking, the Britannia was the highest of Shangri-La’s active tour gates. When it opened, tourists climbed up to an immense metal gridwork platform which hovered near the steel beams and girders of the ceiling. Until the advent of that conveyer, sweating baggage handlers and porters had climbed that same ramp, gasping and hurrying to make it through before the gate disappeared into thin air once more.
“Sheesh,” Skeeter muttered, grabbing another trunk by its leather handles and hauling it over to the conveyer, “what’s in some of these monsters? Uranium bricks?” One of the other baggage handlers, a down-timer who worked most gate openings as a porter, grunted sympathetically as Skeeter groused, “They’re only staying in London eight days, for Chrissake. And they’ll be bringing back more than they left with!”
They would, too. Right down to the last yammering, whining kid in line. Parents had to pay a hefty amount of extra cash demanded by Time Tours, Inc., for children’s tickets, a policy put into place after a couple of kids had managed to get themselves fatally separated from tours out of other stations. Children on a time tour were like gasoline on an open campfire. But parents still brought their brats with them in droves, and a surprising number paid the extra fees for kids’ tickets. Others simply dropped the kids off at the station school to “have fun” in the zany world of the station while Mommy and Daddy went time hopping.
Skeeter dragged over another portmanteau. Why anybody would take a child into something like the Ripper terror . . . He could see it now. My summer vacation: how a serial killer cut up women who make their living sleeping with strangers for money. And kids had grown up fast in his day.
“C’mon, Jackson,” an angry voice snapped practically in his ear, “enough goofing off! Put your back into it! Those baggage carts are piling up fast. And more are coming in from the hotels every minute!”
Skeeter found the baggage manager right behind him, glaring at him through narrowed, suspicious eyes. He resisted the urge to flip her a bird and said, “Yes, ma’am!” Just exactly how he was supposed to work faster than top speed, Skeeter wasn’t quite sure, but he made a valiant effort. He cleared the cart in front of him and shoved it out of the way so another could take its place. Celosia Enyo watched him sharply for the next couple of minutes, then stalked further down the line, browbeating some other unfortunate. At least she was impartially horrible to everyone. Of course, after the miserable track record her four immediate predecessors had compiled between them, Enyo doubtless sweat bullets every time a gate opened, hoping she’d still have a job when it closed again. Skeeter could sympathize. Not much, maybe—anybody that universally rude deserved a dose of unpleasantness right back, again. But he could sympathize some.
Of course, Skeeter grunted sharply and dropped another case onto the stack, by that same logic, he’d still be working off his own karma when he was four-hundred ninety. Yeah, well, at least I was never obnoxious to anybody I ripped off.… A polite thief, that’s what he’d been, by God. But no longer a thief, thanks to Marcus and Ianira.
Skeeter blinked sweat out of his eyes, fighting a sudden tightness in his chest as he emptied yet another baggage cart. Surely Marcus realized he could trust Skeeter? After what Skeeter’d gone through in Rome, damn near dying in that gladiatorial combat in the Circus Maximus before wrenching Marcus out of slavery again, surely Marcus could’ve trusted him enough to let him know they were alive, at least? Whoever was trying to kill them, he had to realize that Skeeter, of all people, wouldn’t betray him and his daughters?
He ground his teeth in silent misery. If somebody had tried to shoot his wife, if he’d walked into his daughters’ daycare center to find two armed thugs trying to drag off his kids, would he have risked contacting anybody? Just on the remote chance they might be followed, trying to bring help? Skeeter knew he wouldn’t have. Wouldn’t have dared risk his loved ones, no matter what risks he, himself, might have been willing to run. The realization hurt, even as he was forced to admit he understood the silence. But the girls were just babies, Artemisia not yet four, Gelasia barely turned one. Marcus couldn’t stay in hiding with them, not for long. Which was doubtless what the faceless bastards trying to kill them were counting on. If Skeeter were Marcus, he’d seriously consider trying to jump station. Through any gate that opened.
Skeeter closed his hands around the stout handles of yet another steamer trunk and heaved it into place, wishing bitterly he could get his hands on whoever had dragged Ianira away through that riot. It must have been staged. Create a perfect diversion, shoot her down in the midst of the chaos… Only somebody had interrupted the attempt. Had the shooter dragged her off? To finish the job at his leisure? Or someone else? Skeeter couldn’t bear to keep thinking in ragged circles like this, but he couldn’t not think about her, either, not considering what he owed her.
Skeeter wiped sweat from his forehead. Just another few minutes, he told himself fiercely. Another few minutes and the gate would have cycled, all this ridiculous luggage would be on the other side of the Britannia, and he could get back to combing the station with the finest-toothed comb ever invented by humanity.
Meanwhile…
Watching the freakshow beyond the barricades helped keep his mind off it and watching the tourists inside the barricades occupied the rest of his mind, searching faces for clues, for any similarity to the face in his memory, that wild-eyed kid with the black-powder pistol. Gawkers formed an impenetrable barrier around the edges of the departures lounge, so thick, security had formed cordons to permit ticketed tourists, uniformed Time Tours employees, freelance guides, baggage handlers, and supply couriers to reach the roped-off lounge. The noise was appalling. Troops of howler monkeys had nothing on the mob of humanity packed into the confined spaces of Victoria Station. And every man-jack one of ’em wanted to be able to tell his grandchildren some day, “I was there, kids, I was there when the first Ripper tour went through, let me tell you, it was something…”
It was something, all right.
There weren’t words disgusting enough to describe it, that electric air of anticipation, of excitement that left the air supercharged with the feeling that a major event is happening right before your eyes, an excitement sensed in the nerve endings of skin and hair, completely independent of sight and sound and smell. Skeeter was the kind of soul who loved excitement, thrived on it, in fact. But this… this kind of excitement was a perversion, even Skeeter could sense that, and Skeeter Jackson’s moral code, formed during his years with the Yakka Mongols, didn’t exactly mesh with most of up-time humanity’s. What was it going to be like when next week’s gate opened? When all these people and probably a couple hundred more, besides, newly arrived through Primary, jammed in to learn who the ghoul really was?
Maybe after he dragged all this luggage through the Britannia and came back to look for Ianira some more, he’d volunteer to haul baggage to Denver for a couple of weeks, just to miss out on the whole sordid thing? The Wild West Gate opened tomorrow, after all, and Time Tours was perennially short of baggage handlers. If only they’d found Ianira by then, and Marcus, and little Artemisia and bright-eyed, laughing Gelasia.
If, if, IF!
It was the not knowing that was intolerable, the not knowing or being able to find out. He wanted this job over with, so he could get back to searching. Skeeter stared intently through the crowd, trying to spot anybody he might recognize from The Found Ones. Any news was better than none. But he couldn’t see a single down-timer in that crowd who wasn’t already busy to distraction hauling luggage. Which meant they wouldn’t know spit about the search underway, either.
God, how much longer until this blasted gate cycled?
He peered up at the huge chronometer boards suspended from the distant ceiling, picking out the countdown for Gate Two: five minutes. At the rate time was creeping past, it might as well be five years.
“Jackson! Do you really like scrubbing toilets that much?”
He started so violently he nearly dropped the carpet bag dangling from his hands. Celosia Enyo was glaring at him, lips thinned to a murderous white line.
“Sorry, ma’am,” he muttered. “I was hoping I might see someone who’d heard about Ianira—”
“We’re all worried! But that gate doesn’t give a damn who’s missing or found. We get that—” she jabbed a finger toward the small mountain of luggage “—through the gate on time or some millionaire will have your head on his dinner platter for having to buy a new wardrobe in London. Worry about your friends on your own time. Or by God, your own time is all you’ll have!”
She was absolutely right, in a cold-blooded, mercenary sense. The moment she turned away to snarl at someone else, Skeeter gave her a flying eagle salute and dragged another portmanteau off a groaning luggage cart. He scowled at the enormous stack of luggage on the conveyer already, mentally damning Time Tours for insane greed. No wonder the last four baggage managers had failed disastrously with gate logistics. Time Tours was sending through too many blistering tourists at once.
Never mind way too many trunks per tourist.
If he’d kept accurate count, the last five steamer trunks and three portmanteaus alone had belonged to the same guy. Benny Catlin, whoever the hell he was. Rich as sin, if he could cart that much luggage through in just one direction. The big conveyer rumbled to life with one jolting squeal and a grating of metal gears. Then the rubberized surface began moving upward, ready to carry all that luggage to the platform overhead. Skeeter glanced around to look for the boss. Enyo wasn’t in sight, but the shift supervisor was busy sending handlers aloft. He caught Skeeter’s eye and said, “Get up top, Jackson. Start hauling that stuff off the conveyer as it arrives.”
“Yessir!”
The climb up to the Britannia platform was a long one, particularly after all the hauling he’d done in the past few minutes, but the view was spectacular. Commons spread out beneath his feet, a full five stories deep, riotous with color and sound. Costumed tourists scurried like rainbow-hued bugs whipped around in the currents and eddies of a slow-motion river. Great banners—bright holiday-colored ribbons curling and floating through a hundred-foot depth of open air from balconies and catwalks—proclaimed to the world that Ripper Season had begun, and advertised other not-to-be-missed down-time events. A cat’s-cradle tangle of meshwork bridges stretched right across Commons from one side to the other, supported from below by steel struts or suspended from above by steel cables disappearing into the ceiling. The noise from hundreds of human throats lapped at the edges of the high platform like crashing surf against jagged rocks, leaping and splashing back again, indistinct and unintelligible from sheer distance.
And booming above it all came the voice of the public address system, echoing down the vast length of Commons: “Your attention, please. Gate Two is due to open in two minutes…”
The first luggage on the conveyor belt arrived with a jolt and scrape against the gridwork platform. Skeeter joined a human-chain effort, hauling luggage clear of the moving conveyor and piling it on the platform. Railings ran all the way around, with a wide metal gate set into one side. Until the Britannia actually opened, that wide metal gate led to a sheer, hundred-foot drop to the cobblestones of Victoria Station. Despite the railing, Skeeter stayed well away from the edge as he hauled, piled, and stacked a steadily increasing jumble of trunks, cases, and soft-sided carpet bags across the broad stretch of platform.
At the far corner, a second conveyor system rumbled to life, moving downward rather than up. Celosia Enyo was testing the system, making sure everything was ready for the returning tour and all of its luggage. So engrossed was Skeeter in the monumental task of shifting the arriving baggage, the gate’s opening took him by surprise. A skull-shaking backlash of subharmonics rattled his very bones. Skeeter jumped, wanting instinctively to cover his ears, although that wouldn’t have done any good. The gate’s frequency was too low for actual human hearing. He glanced around—and gasped.
A kaleidoscope of shimmering color, dopplering through the entire rainbow spectrum, had appeared in the middle of empty air right at the edge of the platform. The colors scintillated like a sheen of oil on water, sunlight on a raven’s glossy feathers. The hair on Skeeter’s arms stood starkly erect. He’d seen gates open hundreds of times, had stepped through a number of them, when he’d had the money for a tour or had conned someone else into paying for it. But he’d never been this close to the massive Britannia as it began its awe-striking cycle a hundred feet above the Commons floor.
From below, a wall of noise came surging up to the platform, gasps and cries of astonishment from hundreds of spectators. A point of absolute darkness appeared dead center in the wild flashes of color. The blackness expanded rapidly, a hole through time, through the very fabric of reality… Something hard banged into Skeeter’s elbow. He yelped, jumped guiltily, then grabbed the steamer trunk thrust at him. It went awkwardly onto the top of the stack, canted at an angle, too unstable for anything else to go on top. The next portmanteau to arrive thudded against the steel gridwork, starting a new pile.
Skeeter rearranged wetness on his brow with a limp, soaked sleeve, then straightened his aching back and started piling up the next stack, all while keeping one eye on the massive gate rumbling open behind him. The blackness widened steadily until it stretched the full width of the platform. A Time Tours guide climbed up from the Commons floor and opened the broad metal gate at the edge of the platform to its full extent, as well.
A blur of motion caught his eye and the first returnee arrived, rushing at them with the speed of a runaway bullet train. Skeeter resisted the urge to jump out of the way. Then the apparent motion slowed and a gentleman in fancy evening clothes, protected by a wet India-rubber rain slicker, stepped calmly onto the platform and turned to assist the returning tourists through. Men and women in silks and expensively cut garb, most of them holding 1880’s style umbrellas and brushing water off their heavy cloaks, jostled their way through, many chattering excitedly. Quite a few others had gone slightly greenish and stumbled every few steps. Guides in servants’ uniforms and working men’s rougher clothes helped those who seemed worst off to stagger through the open gate. Porters rushed through on their heels, tracking mud onto the platform, then a mad scramble ensued to get all the arriving luggage—every bit of it slick with what must be a drenching downpour on the other side of the gate—onto the downward-rumbling conveyer. Below, tourists raced up the five flights of stairs to hurry through in the other direction. Skeeter worked fiendishly. He hauled trunks which arrived from down time onto the downward-rumbling conveyer, in an effort to clear the jam at the gate. Then the Britannia was finally clear and outbound tourists rushed past, laughing excitedly and squealing as they stepped off the edge of the platform into what their hindbrains insisted was a hundred-foot sheer drop to the floor below.
“Get that outbound baggage moving!”
Skeeter lunged to the task, along with a dozen other porters. He staggered through the open gate and emerged into a rain-lashed garden. It was nearly dark. Worse, the ground was cut up from all the foot traffic across it, muddy and treacherous with slick leaves. There was a flagstone path, but that was crowded with tourists and guides and gatehouse staff holding umbrellas. The porters didn’t have time to wait for them to clear out of the way. Following the lead of more experienced baggage handlers in front of him, Skeeter plunged into the muddy grass and slogged his way toward the gatehouse. The rain was icy, slashing against his clothing and soaking him to the skin. He dumped his first load at the back door of the three-story gatehouse and pelted back through the open gate to grab another load. The sensation was dizzying, disorienting.
Then he was through and staggering a little, himself, across the platform. His muddy shoes slipped on wet metal. Skeeter windmilled and lurched against a stack of luggage waiting to be ferried through. The topmost steamer trunk, a massive thing, slid sideways and started to topple toward the edge of the platform. The corner of the trunk was well out beyond the periphery of the open Britannia gate, teetering out where it would plunge the full hundred feet to the Commons floor. As Skeeter went to one bruised knee, furious shouts and blistering curses erupted. Then somebody lunged past him to grab the steamer trunk by the handle before it could fall.
“Don’t just sit there, goddamn you!” A short, skinny tourist stood glaring murderously down at him, arms straining to keep the trunk from falling. The young man’s whiskered face had gone ashen under the lights overhead. “Grab this trunk! I can’t hold the weight!” The kid’s voice was light, breathless, furious.
His whole knee ached where he’d landed on it, but Skeeter staggered back his feet and leaned over the piles of trunks and cases to secure a wet-handed grip on the corner that had already gone over the end of the platform. Hauling together, Skeeter and the tourist pulled the heavy trunk back onto the platform. The tourist was actually shaking, whether with fright or rage, Skeeter wasn’t certain.
But he wasn’t so shaken he didn’t blow up in Skeeter’s face. “What the hell did you think you were doing? Were you trying to shove that trunk over the edge? Goddammit, do you have any idea what would’ve happened if that trunk had gone over? If you’ve been drinking, I’ll make sure you never work on this station again!” The young man’s face was deathly pale, eyes blazing against the unnatural pallor of his skin and the dark, heavy whiskers of his mutton-chop sideburns and moustache, which he must’ve acquired from Paula Booker’s cosmetology salon, because up-time men didn’t grow facial hair in that quantity or shape any more. The furious tourist, fists balled up and white-knuckled, shrilled out, “My God, do you realize what you almost caused?”
“Well, it didn’t fall, did it?” Skeeter snapped, halting the tirade mid-stream. “And if you stand there cursing much longer, you’re gonna miss your stinking gate!” Skeeter shouldered the trunk himself, having to carry it across his back, the thing was so heavy. The short and brutish little tourist, white-lipped and silent now, stalked through the open gate on Skeeter’s heels, evidently intent on following to make sure Skeeter didn’t drop it again. So much for my new job. After this guy gets done complaining, I’ll be lucky if I still have the job scrubbing toilets.
It was, of course, still raining furiously in the Spaldergate House garden. Skeeter did slip again, the muddy ground was so churned up beside the crowded flagstone walkway. The furious man on his heels grabbed at the trunk again as Skeeter lurched and slid sideways. “Listen, you drunken idiot!” he shouted above steady pouring of the rain. “Lay off the booze or the pills before you show up for work!”
“Stuff it,” Skeeter said crudely. He regained his feet and finally gained the house, where he gratefully lowered his burden to the floor.
“Where are you going?” the irate young man demanded when Skeeter headed back into the downpour.
He flung the answer over one aching shoulder. “Back to the station!”
“But who’s going to cart this out to the carriage? Take it to the hotel?”
“Carry it yourself!”
The skinny, whiskered little tourist was still sputtering at the back door when Skeeter re-entered the now-visibly shrunken Britannia Gate. He passed several other porters bent double under heavy loads, trying to get the last of the pile through, then was back on the metal gridwork platform. All that remained of the departing tour was a harried Time Tours guide who plunged through as Skeeter reappeared. Then he was alone with the mud and a single uniformed Time Tours employee who swung shut the big metal safety gate as the Britannia shrank rapidly back in on itself and vanished for another eight days.
Skeeter—wet, shivering, exhausted—slowly descended the stairs once again and slid his timecard through the reader at the bottom, “clocking out” so his brief stay in the London timestream would be recorded properly. The baggage manager was waiting, predictably irate. Skeeter listened in total, sodden silence, taking the upbraiding he’d expected. This evidently puzzled the furious Enyo, because she finally snapped, “Well? Aren’t you going to protest your innocence?”
“Why bother?” Skeeter said tiredly. “You’ve already decided I’m guilty. So just fire me and get it over with so I can put on some dry clothes and start looking for my friends again.”
Thirty seconds later, he was on his way, metaphoric pink slip in hand. Well, that was probably the shortest job on record. Sixty-nine minutes from hired to fired. He never had liked the idea of hauling luggage for a bunch of jackass tourists, anyway. Scrubbing toilets was dirtier, but at least more dignified than bowing and scraping and apologizing for being alive. And when the job was over, something, at least, was clean.
Which was more than he could say of himself at the moment. Mud covered his trousers, squelched from his wet shoes, and dripped with the trickling rainwater down one whole sleeve where he’d caught himself from a nasty fall, that last time through. Wonder what was in that lousy trunk, anyway? The way he acted, you’d’ve thought it was his heirloom china. God, tourists!
Maybe that idiot would do them all a favor and get himself nice and permanently lost in London? But that thought only brought the pain surging back. Skeeter blinked away wetness that had nothing to do with the rainwater dripping out of his hair, then speeded up. He had to get out of these wet, filthy clothes and hook up with the search teams again. Very few people knew this station the way Skeeter did. If he couldn’t find her…
He clenched his jaw muscles.
He had to find her.
Nothing else mattered at all.