A Girl in Time

by John Birmingham

  Smith didn't know about that world war business. He knew about his own war, of course, and he'd seen a couple of nasty ones on his travels. But he did know that they didn't speak the frog tongue in the antipodes. He'd once hung a man who'd dug for gold down there, and he had kept Smith awake the whole night before his appointment with the drop, telling his life story. Weren't no Frenchies in it.

  “Yeah,” he conceded. “Don't seem like we could be responsible for that.”

  “No” said Cady, and a glint of steel entered her voice. “But we are responsible for doing something about this.”

  Smith did not like the sound of that.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, Marshal, I'm fixing to break my friend out of this hoosegow.”

  Smith knew she was gently mocking his manner of speech. But he didn’t care. It was but gentle mockery after all, the sort of thing old friends might do between each other.

  “You want to take her with us?”

  “If she wants to come.”

  He didn't know what to make of that. He didn't even know whether it was possible for three people to step through the years together.

  “Well, I suppose together you still don't weigh as much as Chester. And he had four legs. And you …”

  Smith trailed off.

  “I'm doing it,” she said. “Or at least I'm going to give her the chance to say no.”

  “You'll have to explain everything,” he said. “What odds she'll believe you?”

  Cady turned the question over while they stood in front of the massive grey fortress of the Homeland Security.

  “I don't know,” she admitted, “but I do know we need that watch back.”

  “That's the first thing you've said that I truly understood,” Smith said.

  First thing you've said that I truly agreed with, too, he added, but only to himself.

  The Homeland Security was not a welcoming place. There was the counter in the foyer, presumably for visitors to announce themselves, but who ever worked at it was hidden behind solid steel shutters. They were still closed. After banging on them without luck, Cady addressed herself to a device hanging from the ceiling, a little box that put Smith in mind of a tiny daguerreotype.

  She swore up a storm at that thing with no more luck than she'd had banging on the shutters. Eventually, she advised that they would be best served by staking out the perfidious Homelanders while threatening apocalyptic retribution from the law firm of Dexter and Calvino. Without her phone, however, she had no way of putting the legal hounds on to them. So they set to waiting out the ‘gestapo’, as Cady now preferred to call them.

  Smith had no idea who these ‘gestapo’ fellers were—Mexican soup cooks maybe?—but they had surely done Cady McCall some grievous injustice at one time or other. She hated those fellers.

  “We're not leaving until we get our shit back,” she yelled at the daguerreotype.

  They were another hour delayed and inconvenienced by this initial hoo-haa. Another hour closer to Wu's gold watch cocking the firing hammer again. The shadows lengthened outside, and three parties entered and left the barracks, none of them inclined to make inquires on their behalf. One group ignored them completely. Another character, all on his lonesome, begged their pardon in a put upon fashion as he brushed them off and hurried away. The third one merely cussed at them. It was only when Cady informed Smith, loudly, that she was going to buy a phone, call her lawyers and commence proceedings, that the shutters rattled open and an older, tired-looking functionary pushed their belongings across the counter along with a couple of forms and one of the ink pencils you found in many of the time periods Smith thought of as ‘later.’

  “Sign here,” he said without emotion or energy.

  “How about we check nothing's missing first,” Cady said in a voice that could have scratched a deep furrow into the steel shutter behind which this character had been hiding.

  She quickly collected her phone and wallet and the go-bag with her notebooks and food bars and other small items in it. Smith ignored the pink valise, instead tearing open the buff colored envelope and tipping out the contents. His marshal's badge clattered out first, followed by sundry coins and banknotes, and a small stainless steel fire lighter he had acquired in a German city sometime in the 20th century.

  But he saw no watch. His heart slowed down. Almost stopped.

  He shook the envelope, opened it wide, peered inside, and eventually tore it apart.

  “That's government property, sir,” said the clerk.

  His heart restarted and tried to gallop away out of his chest.

  “Smith?” Cady said, her voice sharp with anxiety.

  “It's not here,” he snapped. “They took it.”

  He glared at the clerk, who stepped back from the counter and dropped a hand toward the pistol holstered at his hip.

  “There was a gold pocket watch in here,” Smith said. “I gave it up and I signed for it downstairs. They told me it would be returned. You better return it right now, mister, or there will be blood, I guarantee it.”

  The clerk was not much impressed by the promise of violence in Titanic Smith's voice. Smith adjudged that was due less to the man being armed than it was to this not being the first time he and his colleagues had connived at a dodge such as this. Smith had been given occasion to lock up two of his own deputies for stealing from prisoners. He knew how it went.

  “If you have a complaint, sir, you will have to fill out and sign the complaint form.”

  Smith was getting himself set to roar murder into this charlatan's face when Cady interceded in an altogether quieter and decidedly more intimidating manner.

  “The only thing we'll be signing is a check to my lawyers to fund their extravagantly punishing pursuit of you, personally, if you don't return his watch,” she said.

  “You got it, or your fat little friend downstairs got it,” said Smith. “I don't care who gives it up. But I will have satisfaction and have it now.”

  The hours they had left until the watch could travel again seemed suddenly much shorter.

  Cady began stabbing her finger at the little glass window of her phone.

  “I'm calling them,” she said. “I'm telling them to go after you. Not Homeland. You.”

  The clerk was undisputedly more dismayed by her threats than by Smith's. His eyes darted from side to side, flicking up at the tiny daguerreotype more than once.

  “I don't have it,” he said. “Miller took it. It's always him.”

  “That the fat little saphead downstairs?” Smith asked.

  The clerk's noggin bobbed up and down nervously.

  “Then best you go get him,” said Smith.

  “No, just get the watch,” Cady countered. “We don't care about Miller. Or you. Just bring us the watch. Now!”

  She raised her phone as if showing him the blade by which she would take off his manhood if he tested her.

  “I can't,” the man wheedled. His bravado had collapsed in on itself like an old tree stump eaten out by the termites. “He's finished for the day. He's gone. He worked the early shift.”

  Smith's head was spinning. Visions of this Miller riding away with Mr. Wu's chronometer left him sicker than a fevered hog. He wanted to reach across the counter, grab this scallawag by the scruff of the neck, and bounce him off a few walls until he gave up what they needed. But he stayed his hand with great forbearance. They were already caught up in exactly the flavor of local entanglement as was almost certain to bring the apprentices. And again, it was Cady who knew best how to play it out.

  She spoke clearly and quietly, without any of the imminent threat of violence. “I think you'd better get him on the phone and get him back in here with my friend's property. Don't you?”

  The nameless clerk, looking very nervous now, muttered that yes, of course, he would get right on it.

  “You do that,” said Cady. “I'm going to call my lawyer anyway. He was in here earlier today. Embarrassing your superio
rs. Making them and their superiors look like idiots. I'm sure they'll remember him fondly. I'm going to call him and tell him your friend Miller has given him a chance to double down on his fun. Whether he has that fun with Miller, with you, with your bosses, that's all down to you. There's a bar across the street. We'll wait over there.”

  She turned and walked for the glass door.

  Smith leaned over the counter.

  “We'll be back,” he growled.

  23

  Cady swore up a storm as they stomped out of the barracks, down the steps, and across the street into the saloon. She cursed with such extravagant vehemence that not only was Smith offended to the point of moral harm, but every passerby she horrified with her crude prolixity veered away as though fearing a physical assault would surely follow the verbal.

  Smith let her wear out the raging bull of her distemper. He knew from waiting out Martha's rare but scarifying tirades that this was for the best. And indeed, Cady did not stop cussing as she stormed into the saloon, but she did quieten down some. By the time she had reached the bar she was breathing heavily, but the air was no longer glowing a deep and profane shade of blue around her.

  “Troubles?” the barkeep, another lady, asked.

  “Two Bulleits's worth,” Cady said shortly, “and whatever he wants.”

  She jerked a thumb at Smith as he laid the pink valise on the floor and took a good look around. This quiet dram shop was the front parlor of heaven compared with the drinking establishments they'd visited in London. Were it not for the hundreds of bottles behind the lady barkeep, all of them different colors and shapes, and all artfully illuminated from below, he might not have realized it was a saloon. The barkeep was a vision of loveliness and Smith wondered if the clientele here were limited to one shot of liquor lest riot and tumult ensue. He would not reckon her good odds of going unmolested in even the swankiest saloon with which he was familiar.

  “You want some food?” she asked. “Kitchen just opened for dinner.”

  Cady ordered something called “buffalo wings,” which did not sound at all enticing. Although contemporary Americans were gifted in the arts and sciences, he did not imagine that even they had figured a method of growing edible wings on a buffalo.

  Turns out they had.

  For tiny little buffalo, anyways.

  Cady slammed the first bourbon down like a hardrock miner come out of the earth at the end of a long week, resolved to put a real hurtin' on the bottle. The second took only marginally longer. Smith nursed his drink. A bourbon, like hers, but only one. He needed his wits about him, and the loss of the watch and that encounter with Chumley inclined him to discretion.

  It was a fine libation, nonetheless, and he felt the better for having it inside him. Cady breathed out and laid her hands flat on the bar. They were shaking, but she looked as though her fit of profanity might be over.

  “We gotta get that fucking watch back, Smith, or we are righteously fucked in the ass.”

  Nope. Still going strong.

  “And we will,” he said, assuring her of something he was not at all sure of himself. “You put the fear of God into that bunko steerer back in the Homeland. He won't want to take the fall for his light-fingered compadre. No honor among the thieving classes, Miss Cady, I guarantee it.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “That'd be reassuring if we hadn't fetched up in a protofascist RPG with a giant rapey baboon in an orange fucking fright wig as the final boss.”

  Smith took another sip and stared at her.

  Finally, he said, “Nope. Didn't understand a dang word.”

  She laughed at that, the tiniest silver thimble of a laugh, but he felt the yoke lift from his shoulders, just a touch. Their pretty barkeep returned with a bowl of winged buffalo pieces. To Smith's back-country palate, they tasted remarkably like chicken.

  “Here you go, cowboy. You want a beer to wash them down?”

  “I surely do, ma'am,” said Smith, “but that pleasure will have to wait on my seeing to my responsibilities first.”

  She cooed and winked at Cady. “Ooh, this one's a keeper.”

  “I guess he is,” she conceded. “Especially if he's gonna leave all the froths for me.”

  “So you'd like a beer?”

  ”Yeah. Beer me good. And a glass of ice water for my responsible friend here.”

  The barkeep pulled a long glass of the amber for Cady, and Smith marveled at the small beads of condensation which quickly formed on the outside. It must have been a surpassingly cold brew to do that. That was almost cause enough for him to question his responsibilities.

  Almost, but not quite.

  “So, this Miller dude,” he said around licking Buffalo wing spices from his fingers, “how long do we give his accomplice to cough him up? Given that we are on the clock, so to speak.”

  Cady lips quirked in a small, fragile grin.

  “I'm guessing “dude” doesn't mean the same to you as it does to me.”

  “It does if you mean it to describe a small, pustulant boil on the derrière,” Smith explained. “Why? It mean something different now?”

  She thought it over.

  “No,” she concluded. “Not so much. And no, we don't trust that other shifty-eyed motherfucker to do the—”

  Smith dropped his shot glass to the bar harder than he'd intended. It sounded like a small gunshot when it struck the polished wood.

  He threw up his hands.

  “Whoa! That's enough. I been inclined to hold back my counsel, Miss Cady. One thing I have learned of late is that my ways are not the ways of others. But I got to tell you that I find it surpassing difficult to hear such language. That word you just spoke! That was a cuss too far.”

  She laughed again, and a scoffing hoot it was, too.

  “What? From a lady, you mean?”

  “From anyone,” he said forcefully. “It's wrong, is all, and I would be right grateful if you could just accept that I find it so.”

  She regarded him with such cool reserve that for a moment he thought he had said something more offensive than the grotesque obscenity she had just uttered. Was this one of those context things, he wondered.

  Then she shrugged and said, “You're sweet, for a killer who smells bad. And we have bigger problems. So, sure, I'll try not to drop so many F-bombs on you.”

  Then she pinned him with that level stare again.

  “Unless some motherfucker really fucking needs it,” she added.

  He closed his eyes and drew in a deep, calming breath. “Fair enough then.”

  Impatience got the better of Cady after a few minutes. She pushed away her beer and stood up from the bar.

  “Smith,” she said, “I don't think we can just sit here waiting for this guy to get back to us or not.”

  “I don't disagree,” he said, “but what do you have in mind?”

  She took out her wallet and gave him a couple of banknotes. Twenties.

  “I need you to sit here and wait, just in case he turns up. Especially if he turns up with this Miller douchebag. If he does that, get the watch, and come get me. I will be just down the street in that shop we went in earlier. You remember it?”

  Smith did. The place that sold the machines she had used to study up on her time travel theories.

  “I'm just gonna go get some equipment,” Cady explained. “Stuff we can use to find Miller and … well, just stuff we can use. I'll be gone at least half an hour, but not much more than that okay?”

  He had to trust her. They were in this together now.

  “I can set with that,” he said.

  “Thanks,” said Cady. She turned to go, and had even moved away a couple of steps before she halted and hurried back, giving him a quick hug and a promise.

  “We're going to be okay. We're going to get home.”

  She left for real then, almost jogging out of the bar.

  The lady barkeep returned presently to see if he wanted more food or something else to drink.

  �
�Perhaps a cup of coffee,” Smith suggested.

  “Filter or latte?” she asked.

  “Just a big old coffee with a dash of milk and maybe a spoonful of sugar, if'n you run to the little luxuries here,” he said.

  She poured him a mug from a glass jar that was brewing at the other end of the bar. The place was beginning to fill up with customers, probably in for their supper at the end of the day. The barkeep returned with Smith's coffee and a cookie.

  “On the house,” she said. “Your girlfriend is cute. Are you guys from around here? I'm pretty sure I've seen her somewhere.”

  “I'm from out of town,” said Smith. “Cady is a local girl, but we been away.”

  Not having immediately corrected the woman's mistake about Cady being his sweetheart, Smith found he was not inclined to do so at all.

  He sipped at his coffee, watching the street outside for Cady's return or for the appearance of the Homelanders with his property. As the minutes ticked away, becoming half an hour, and then three quarters of an hour, he became convinced that she was right, that they could not rely on that front office clerk to do the right thing. And then as even more time leaked away, he started to worry that something had happened to Cady. The bar was growing very busy and he was just about ready to abandon his post and search for her out on the street when she reappeared carrying two armfuls of shopping bags. And a long roll of gift wrapping paper.

  Consarn it!

  Were there no circumstances under which a woman would not go shopping?

  She headed toward the last empty booth with a clear view of the entrance, indicating to Smith that he should follow her. Whatever she had been up to, it had lifted her mood. She was no longer afflicted with the air of one who could not help themselves.

  “Take this,” she said. “It's a phone. I've loaded it with my new number. We'll be able to stay in contact. At least while we have self-service. I put a couple of other things on there which might help. I'll show you how it works later.”