A Girl in Time

by John Birmingham

  The man laughed. A couple of his outriders chuckled along with him.

  “Have you been living on the moon or something, little girl?” he said. “If she is your friend, you would know how much trouble she's in and how much worse you just made it for her.”

  “But I don't,” Cady protested. “I don't know any of that. I don't understand. I don't know what's happening.”

  He smiled, but his eyes were cold.

  “I can tell you what's happening,” he said. “You're coming with us. Both of you.”

  Smith got to ride in another horseless carriage, but this one had none of the amenity of the last two. In a strange way, it reminded him of the stage coaches with which he was familiar. A big, black crate of a thing, it was obviously designed to carry a large number of passengers within its ugly, angular confines. They were railroaded out of the apartment, down onto the street and into the back of the six-wheeled vehicle in less than a minute.

  Or at least, he and Cady were.

  Miss Georgia was taken away separately. To what end, he could not imagine and did not care to.

  He desperately wanted to reach into the pocket of his waistcoat to satisfy himself he still had the watch, but his hands remained chained behind him. He twisted about once or twice, trying to feel the weight of the chronometer, but a black-clad Homelander cuffed him hard upon the side of his head and warned him not to mess around; although, he used much stronger language than that.

  Cady was trussed up a couple of places down from him, with two officers separating them, preventing any exchange of intelligence or even reassurance. The seating arrangement recalled the omnibus they had ridden in London, except here the passengers lined the walls and faced inwards. The Homelanders talked quietly among themselves on the ride to the jug—he assumed that's where they were headed—but Smith gleaned nothing useful from their exchanges. Mostly they seemed fixated on the same game of running ball as the Uber man had been earlier.

  The marshal found himself quietly pleased that their team had lost.

  The journey was no less comfortable than a coach in his own era, save for the pressing sense of confinement. The Homelanders' steel omnibus enjoyed only two small windows on the rear doorway, and they were protected by some manner of iron grillwork. Outside, the city rolled on with its business.

  The trip came to an end inside the basement of a building. He felt them descend a series of inclines just before the vehicle drew up and a Homelander threw wide the rear doors. Strong hands gripped his upper arms and pushed him out. He looked around hoping to take a fix on their location but could see nothing but the grey concrete walls and low ceiling of whatever guardhouse now held them. He tried to talk with Cady, but got a baton in the guts for his trouble.

  “Just sit tight, Smith. I'll get us out of this,” she said and it sounded like the greatest of all the lies she had been forced to utter that morning. Her bold claim occasioned some hilarity among their captors.

  They were quickly separated and he found himself at a counter, where a rotund, pasty-faced fellow relieved him of all his goods.

  The deputies, if that's what they were, patted him down.

  They found his Marshal's badge, and one of them bellowed directly in his face.

  “What the hell is this?”

  Before Smith could answer somebody whipped him on the back of his legs with a heavy baton. He had taken some whuppins over the years, and he was ready for this one. He did not go all the way down, which may have been unwise.

  It encouraged one of the men to jab him fiercely with the end of his club, just below the rib cage.

  That doubled him over with a loud “oof” even if it still didn't drop him all the way to the floor.

  Smith would be damned if he was gonna roll in the dirt for these varmints.

  “Impersonating a law officer? Oh, you are neck deep in the wet brown now, big feller.”

  They did not pummel him as he expected. Instead, one of the deputies grabbed a handful of his hair to haul him back upright. He was pushed into the edge of the counter, like a drunk with no credit being run out of a bar.

  A Homelander deposited Ms. Cady's bright pink bag on the counter.

  “Careful,” he said. There's a loaded rifle wrapped in a towel, and the towel is really fucking rank.”

  His chums all laughed.

  A deputy unlocked his manacles and Smith rolled his shoulders in relief and rubbed at the chaffing on his wrists. It was a fierce temptation to haul off and throw some punches around, but he kept his own counsel and thanked the good lord for an excellent opportunity to practice his saintly forbearance.

  The pale-faced functionary slid a piece of paper across the counter and a large buff-colored envelope.

  “Small personal items in the envelope, including your belt and any jewelry. Watches, rings that sort of thing. They all go in here.”

  Smith stiffened at the mention of his watch.

  “All of it,” the clerk insisted. “You'll get it back on release. You will be searched. Any contraband will be confiscated and a note of your noncompliance made to the court.”

  Smith did as he was told, but slowly, wondering the whole time if he might get away with holding on to Wu's chronometer. It was not like these fellers were familiar with pocket watches. They wore their timepiece on the wrist if they wore one at all.

  He decided to hand it over. The bookkeeper here appeared to be making an honest record of his possessions. And as bad as it felt giving up the watch of his own volition, he could not contemplate losing it as contraband.

  Smith took the small, golden circle out of his waistcoat and dropped it into the brown paper envelope.

  It felt like letting go of a safeline in flood waters.

  “Sign here,” said the clerk.

  He scratched out his John Hancock.

  The man pulled a gizmo out from under the counter. It looked like a much larger version of the phone Cady was using.

  “Place your hands on the scanner one at a time,” he said.

  Smith did as he was told. The window lit up with a bar of blue light and he snatched his hand away, earning him a rebuke from the clerk and another quick baton-whuppin from the Homeland deputies.

  “Please leave your hand in place until the scan is complete, sir.”

  He complied with some reluctance. It would hurt a lot less than a billy club to the kidneys.

  The clerk then produced a tiny white stick and told him to open his mouth for the purposes of collecting his saliva!

  “The hell I will. I ain't no droolin' lackwit.”

  One of the deputies spoke up. “Open your mouth, or I'll fucking tase you, and we'll take the swab anyway.”

  Without the watch, he did not understand what they meant by “tase,” but he did not seem well situated to make inquiries.

  Smith opened his mouth. The clerk pulled on a pair of thin rubber gloves and swabbed the inside of his cheeks.

  And it was done.

  They had taken everything. His weapons. Supplies.

  And the watch.

  His heart slowed, then sped up as he looked on helplessly while it disappeared with the clerk and the rest of his other things.

  In all of his misadventures, he had never once lost control of Mr. Wu's chronometer.

  Icy fingers traced a delicate dance up his spine.

  The deputies were not of a mind to have him standing around contemplating his lot, however. Smith soon found himself hurried along. In less than a minute, he was sitting at a table in a plain, boxlike room, three bare walls and a large mirror wherein he could watch himself be chained to a steel hoop affixed to the metal tabletop.

  “There you go, Buffalo Bill,” one of them joked. Or Smith assumed he was joking. “All trussed up for the slaughter pen.”

  Both of the Homelanders laughed.

  Of the many low places he had fetched up since losing his way, this felt like one of the worst.

  The men who secured him did not stay. Smith was left to st
ew in his own juices, but that did not much bother him, as they had surely calculated it must. He was awake to that game.

  No, he was much more concerned at losing the watch, at least to begin with.

  Granted, he had not lost it as such, and they had the better part of the day left to reclaim it, but at 9:45 in the evening it would pass from its current inert state into something akin to a loaded gun with the hammer cocked. Just one squeeze on the trigger and whoever was holding that thing would be gone, along with his only way back to little Elspeth.

  If Smith allowed himself to dwell on that circumstance, it was quite possible that he would go quickly and quietly mad. So, as difficult as it was, he tried to empty his head of such thoughts and waited instead for the questions he knew were coming. He needed to convince these people he was no lawbreaker.

  He did wonder whether he would understand them, given that he had lost the watch and with it the translation of all that was said to him. But, “tasing” aside, he took some comfort from the relative ease with which Miss Cady had conversed with the natives of old London.

  Smith snorted softly and shook his head at that.

  He had readily taken to thinking of it as “old”, adopting her perspective, when in fact, to him, the London of the late 1880's had been a marvel of the future, with industries and conveniences almost impossible to imagine out on the wild frontier of America.

  There was no accounting for how much he'd had to adjust his thinking since this began. Sometimes it felt like trying to hit a mirage with a rifle you just knew did not have the range anyway. Sometimes he just gave up and waited. More'n once he'd landed somewhere with fair shelter and clean water, with hard tack and salt meat in his viands bag, and no earthly idea of where or when he'd fetched up, and so he waited for the watch to run down its twenty-four hours.

  This helpless passage felt akin to that, but without the prospect of resolution at the end. It was a miserable interlude, but there weren't nothing to be done but the enduring of it.

  And so he waited.

  And he waited.

  And he waited some more.

  Eventually Smith had been so long in waiting that he desperately needed to relieve himself, but he was chained to a table in a room with no facilities for a man to make his water.

  This, too, he thought likely a stratagem by his captors, and as much as he thought ill of them for the low cunning of if, he had to admit to its effectiveness. He was getting to bursting point and could see only two ways forward. Either he wet his britches, or he cried out for help.

  The discomfort had become real pain by the time he folded.

  “Hey!” he yelled out, and was surprised by how loud his voice was in this small, bare box of a room. “Hey! A feller could use some relief in here. Less'n you want to have to mop up after him. And believe me, you don't.”

  Nothing.

  Another minute passed. A minute which convinced him he was not far from shaming himself.

  “HEY!” he shouted.

  The door opened.

  It was not the man who had arrested them. This one was dressed in a civilian suit, not too remarkably different from the duds a Philadelphia dandy might wear. He was followed into the room by a woman, dressed in a similar fashion to Cady.

  The man tossed something at him, getting a reaction from Smith, who flinched.

  It was his badge.

  It landed on the table top with a harsh, metallic ring.

  “So, Marshal Smith, is it?”

  He summoned up what dignity he could, vowing to himself that he would not be chivvied into reaction.

  “John Titanic Smith, sir,” he said, his eyes watering with the terrible pressure of his need for relief.

  “Titanic? Really? And you're sticking with that?”

  “Goddamn you,” Smith snapped. “You need to bring me a bucket or take me to the outhouse, but you need to do it now, less'n our accommodations here are to get filled to the brim with my waters.”

  The woman seemed amused.

  Her offsider merely nodded, as though happy to have proven something to himself. He produced a small key and unchained Smith while the lady stood back, her hand ostentatiously laid on the grip of her pistol.

  “Come with me,” the man said.

  Smith did not need telling twice.

  There were a couple of uniformed fellers waiting in the corridor outside. They escorted him to a bathroom that was just two doors down and watched on while he stood at a steel trough and let loose a geyser.

  Never had he known such a merciful release. He groaned with the dizzy pleasure of unleashing the flood torrent of his own personal Mississippi.

  After washing and drying his hands, he was returned to his cell and refastened to the table. Smith was not inclined to protest. He was grateful for not having been forced to wet himself, especially in front of a woman.

  She scraped a chair across the floor and set herself down opposite him when he was fixed to his restraints again.

  “So,” said the woman. “Marshal John Smith. Is that who you say you are? John Smith? Seriously?”

  “That is my name. It is no nevermind to me if you do not care for it.”

  The man did not sit down in the empty chair next to his colleague. He leaned over the table. Loomed over it, to be entirely accurate.

  “I'm Special Agent Brubaker,” he said, “and this is Special Agent Forsyth, and for what it's worth, no we don't care for it, Mr. Smith. And Homeland Security especially does not care for people like you putting themselves about as officers of the law.”

  Smith held on to his temper. He was still feeling oddly well-disposed to them after his toilet visit, but he did not take well to having his integrity questioned. It was not his way to take any man's insolence without a due and dispassionate reckoning.

  He uncurled his fingers, which had started to bunch into fists.

  “I do not recall representing myself as a peace officer to you or to any of your hired janissaries,” he said. His voice was low, and he took a breath and attempted to sound less like a mountain bear woken hungry from its hibernation. “Do they allege that I did?”

  The question seemed to bring them up short. But Smith had a bad moment when he remembered he had indeed introduced himself to Miss Georgia as a marshal. Had they spoken to her yet? They must have. It had been hours since their arrest. Had he just stepped into a trap of his own setting?

  He tried to stop his fears running off with his reason. Chasing down their own panicked thoughts was what brought most men undone when answering to the law.

  “We have the badge,” Brubaker said nodding to where it lay on the tabletop. Smith did not attempt to pick it up. Had he not been restrained, he still would not have done so. The less connection between him and his badge, the better it seemed, at least for now.

  “It is a genuine antique,” he improvised, “from the western district of Arkansas. Somewhere round the 1870s according to the feller I bought it from. If you were even halfway competent investigators, you would know that. But from what I've seen of your operations this morning y'all ain't much better than bandits.”

  It was rank foolishness baiting them like that, but it felt like a cool drink of water in the Arizona Badlands. Got a response, too. The lines of Forsyth's already sharp features seemed drawn just a little deeper, and Brubaker's eyes darkened with such malevolent intent that Smith thought it entirely likely he was about to get himself severely beaten.

  “Do you know how many John Smith's there are in America right now?” Brubaker asked. He answered his own question almost immediately. “Just a touch over seventy-four thousand,” he said. “None of them are federal marshals though. There was a special agent John Smith of the FBI, but he retired. Probably a whole heap of them over at the CIA. And here and there we got a couple on this or that local police department. Patrolmen, detectives. Nothing special. But no John Titanic Smith in the US Federal Marshals. In fact, no John Titanic Smith anywhere. Seventy-four thousand John Smiths to choo
se from, and you aren't any one of them. You aren't anybody as far as we can tell. So, you wanna tell us who the hell you really are. My colleagues will have it out of your accomplices before I sit down to dinner tonight, so best you just give it up.”

  Smith wasn't sure what was happening here but he did not like the tone of this man or the description of Cady and Georgia as accomplices.

  “I have told you my name,” he said. “I don't have any others to give you.”

  Brubaker looked as though he'd be more'n happy to pick away at this particular mystery for hours, but his colleague Forsyth decide to shake the pan.

  “All right then, Smith. What were you doing at Ms. Eliadis's place this morning?”

  “T'weren’t doing nothing,” he said. “Miss Cady and she are friends. Real wheel horses, they are. Ain't seen each other for a while, though. It was just a courtesy call, was all.”

  “What are you, Cletus the slack-jawed sheriff of Yokeltown or something?” said Brubaker. “Ain't nobody done talk like that no more, pardner. So lay off the audition.”

  He leaned in over the table to emphasize the gravity of his intent.

  ”You were detained at the address of a known political felon, a serial offender convicted of multiple counts under the Gowdy-Chabot Act and of criminal trespass on a Federal security reserve, and while there of aiding the attempted escape of a declared alien descendant, one Matthew Aleveda. The only reason Ms. Eliadis isn't back down in Texas helping Señor Aleveda build the wall is that her employers made a strong case to the community sentencing panel that a crucial commercial project would be unduly disrupted were they to lose her services.”

  “Hence her home detention,” said Forsyth, as though that explained everything.

  “And hence you are in a world of hurt for breaching that detention agreement without written permission or clear and present justification,” said Brubaker.

  So, thought Smith, turns out old Wu's watch has indeed been doing a powerful job of translating the gibberish these people speak. He had a bit less than half of no idea what in hell they were talking about. His blank expression served only to further inflame Brubaker's rage.