A Girl in Time

by John Birmingham

  Smith took the black rectangle she passed over to him. The window on the front lit up, displaying a picture of the stars at night and what he assumed was the time.

  6:07 PM.

  Nonplussed at what she expected him to do with a piece of machinery he did not know how to work, Smith put the thing away in his coat pocket. Miss Cady had bought three of the things. Hers was a slightly different shade of black. Shinier. The third remained in a white box.

  Most of her attention was focused on the typing machine she had also purchased. He could not see the glowing window, only the grey sheet of metal into which it was embedded. That was emblazoned with the shape of an apple with a bite taken out of it. The significance of the totem was lost on Smith.

  “Keep an eye out for Miller's buddy, just in case he does come looking for us,” Cady said, “but we gotta assume the worst. They're probably gonna get rid of the watch and pretend it was lost, or we're lying, or something.”

  Smith considered that. Cady was right. It seemed the most likely course that events would take. Those varmints would not care to explain to their superiors what they had been up to, and time was getting short.

  “I called Calvino,” said Cady. “Told him what happened. He wasn't surprised and said he'd do what he could to get the watch back, but he didn't sound very confident. I told him it was a family heirloom. Something from your wife, I'm sorry. Still didn't make any difference.”

  “No need to apologize,” said Smith. “Martha would likely approve of your scheme. She would want me to get back to Elspeth.”

  Cady looked up from the typing board at which she had been so furiously tapping away.

  “Yeah,” she said without further elucidation.

  “So what's the plan?” Smith asked.

  Cady kept at her typewriting.

  “I could explain, but even with the watch, you might have trouble following.”

  She did not seem to intend offense. The look of deep concentration on her face spoke of someone invested so fully in their work that they could not spare their attention for the niceties of conversation.

  “Long story short, Smith,” she went on, “I'm shaking the trees here. We know enough about this guy to find him ourselves. His name is Miller, he works for Homeland Security, and he lives in Seattle. There are people who could serve up his severed fucking head on a platter in about two f …” She caught herself in the obscenity, glancing up at him and actually looking abashed. “Sorry. My bad. Anyway, they'd be able to tag him and bag him in just a few minutes with those data points. Might take me ten or fifteen. You think you could order up some more food or something? I'm guessing you don't have mad gift wrapping skills, or I'd get you to do that last phone for me.”

  “I'll see to the vittles,” Smith said. He had no idea what she was doing with that machine or the wrapping paper, but she did appear to have every confidence it would lead them to Miller. And when it did, Titanic Smith would have a chance to employ his particular expertise in settling up with him.

  Cady had estimated it might take her a quarter of an hour to locate Miller. As it transpired, she got her man before she got her vittles.

  24

  Cady McCall, it seemed, had some mastery of the criminal arts, too. Having obtained an address for the crooked receiving clerk, she arranged transport for them, but not to his front door. Instead, the posse of two made their way to Miller's neighborhood by way of an Uber carriage, but they did not directly alight at the thief's domicile. Smith was both impressed and a little taken aback by this nefarious cunning. Furthermore, she did not have the driver terminate their journey at some random place. Rather he was instructed to drop them at another hash house selling strange Italian pies, collectively known as pizza.

  They tarried at the Italian pie shop for a few moments while Cady negotiated with the manager to deliver a surprise birthday present to her “bestie.” Some culinary atrocity she referred to as “a pepperoni and pineapple meal deal.” And a phone, the third of the magical little telegraph machines she had purchased while Smith waited in the saloon.

  “End to end encryption,” she said, by way of explanation. “We'll see whether the NSA has cracked that bitch yet. My money's on Apple.”

  It wasn't much of an explanation, thought Smith.

  “If they're watching her, they'll be watching for us,” she went on, “not a pizza guy who could be delivering to anyone in that block.”

  The third phone, now hidden in gift wrap, she gave to the manager with precise instructions and two banknotes, each of one hundred dollars in value. One for him, and one for his best delivery boy to make the surprise delivery with a sealed birthday note from Cady.

  “You know,” said Smith, “that manager is almost certain to pocket the two hundred himself.”

  “As long as he makes the delivery, I don't care,” said Cady. “Let's keep going. We're on the clock. Or the watch, you know.”

  She slung the little go-bag over her shoulder and walked briskly out into the night. It was colder this evening than it had been when they arrived, possibly because there was no cloud cover to trap any warm air over the city. Smith craned his head up at the stars as they proceeded on foot, although there weren't many stars to see.

  “Light pollution,” Cady explained. “It's like trying to look from light into dark. In the middle of a city, it's almost never dark enough to see the sky now.”

  “I consider that a grave loss,” Smith said, and he meant it. “Oftentimes the stars have been my only companion.”

  “Out in the wilderness, maybe,” said Cady. “But in a city, you're surrounded by people.”

  “You can be surrounded by people and still be alone,” said Smith.

  She was a moment in replying.

  “Guess so,” she said in the end.

  The streets they walked to reach Miller were the meanest he had yet seen in this place. Unfamiliar with how a town should present itself in this epoch, Smith nevertheless thought this neighborhood suffered poorly in comparison with Miss Georgia's and even with Cady's, which was not looking to be judged on its residential amenity. Here he could see overgrown gardens, windows covered with paper and black sheeting which crackled in the light breeze. Some of the cars at the side of the road rested on deflated rubber wheels. Some were clearly rusted out, while others simply looked beaten down and unloved.

  There was no pride here. No love, he thought.

  That was good. Smith understood people like this. He had been dealing with them ever since he took up a lawman's badge and gun.

  They made a left turn and then a right, fetching up in a dead-end street, half of its length given over to small manufactory and warehouse operations, and the rest to vacant, weed-choked lots or even meaner little houses than the increasingly poor and tumbledown cottages they had passed on the way here.

  A dog started barking, and then another, and another.

  “If we are to do this, best we be done quick,” Smith said.

  “Suppose you're right,” Cady said, but her voice was nervous.

  Having brought them to the line, she was no longer certain of what waited for them on the other side.

  Smith was.

  He shucked the big pink valise off his shoulder and removed the Winchester.

  “If I might offer some advice,” he said. “You might be better situated a safe distance away from what I'm about to do. Do you think it likely they will be armed?”

  “What do you mean 'they?'”

  “Cady, I assume the worst and dare the fates to disappoint me,” he said. “This Miller might not be our choice of a companion, but in my experience, low company has no trouble seeking out its own kind. There will likely be others inside. Do you expect they will be armed? I would say yes, but this is not my time.”

  The dogs' barking grew louder, and somewhere nearby he heard a woman's voice cursing at them to shut up.

  “I don't think so,” Cady said, but without conviction. “There's probably guns in the house. They seem t
o be everywhere now. But they're probably not wearing them, like in holsters or anything. They're probably watching pornos or playing Xbox.”

  “I see,” Smith said. “This pornos and Xbox, is it dangerous?”

  The question delighted her, which he had not expected. They were standing under a scraggly evergreen tree of some sort. The branches were mostly bare, allowing the meagre street lamps to light up her face.

  She smiled.

  “No. Not dangerous. Not to you,” Cady said.

  If Smith were not mistaken, she said so with a trace of real affection.

  “Fair enough, then,” he said, somewhat more brusquely than he had intended. “You wait here. If this goes wrong… well, let's hope it don't. But if it does, get yourself away and lay low.”

  “It won't,” she said. And then she surprised him by standing on tip-a-toe and kissing him lightly on the cheek.

  He wished she hadn't done that. Helluva thing, distracting a man in such a fashion just a’fore he has to face off with some varmints. Smith tried to set it aside, with a measure of success, but his short walk to Miller's front path was yet a struggle.

  He wasn't much concerned about kicking down this door, but his conscience gave him a terrible time about the memory of his good lady wife and, twisting the knife, his continued separation from Elspeth.

  Titanic Smith had not journeyed here to dally with some pretty girl. He had but one purpose: to return safe home to his daughter.

  He was so angry with himself for losing sight of that—for thrilling to the brief and probably meaningless peck on the cheek from Cady, for not telling that barmaid that they were not together—that by the time he pushed through the creaking, rusted gate which did nothing to guard the entrance to the Miller homestead, his blood was up and he was fit to be tied.

  The path through the untended front garden was strewn with rubbish and even broken glass, which crunched under his boot heels. He hammered at the door rather than knocking on it, forgetting to stand to one side as was his custom, less'n he be greeted with a bellyful of buckshot. When the door opened, a shirtless young man covered in tattoos greeted him with an obscene question.

  “What the fuck do you want?”

  The marshal was in no mood to shilly-shally. He smashed the butt of his rifle directly into the nose of Miller's companion, knocking him out cold.

  The man collapsed with a gurgling moan before unconsciousness claimed him. His body hit the floor with a mighty thud and Smith cursed his own ineptitude and impulsive foolishness. Miller would now be alerted and waiting on him in ambush.

  He brought the rifle up to a firing position, forcibly reminding himself that he could not shoot to kill. They needed to secure the watch from this man, or at the very least, to learn its whereabouts.

  Miller's shack was even more miserable on the inside than it had seemed from the street. It smelled of stewed farts and hung meat gone bad. The entry corridor was strewn with more refuse than the front path, almost as though they had brought in their garbage, rather than taking it out. The residence was poorly lit; a single light source flickering around the corner up ahead.

  He heard a laugh, then a curse, followed by another laugh, a full-throated almost maniacal cackling it were. It fair raised every hackle that Smith had to raise. He could not think of any reason other than congenital lunacy why a man would laugh and curse like that. He advanced with even greater caution, reminding himself with every step, Do not kill him, do not kill him.

  He found Miller, and Miller alone, in what he took to be the sitting parlor. He was certainly sitting. The receiving clerk was stretched out in a giant armchair, his stockinged feet resting on a low table full of even more rubbish. Miller was reclined in front of a gigantic sort of moving picture window, similar in effect to Cady's phone and typing machine, but much, much bigger. Smith could not tell what was happening inside the window, but it looked very colorful.

  Miller's settee had been furnished with an ice cooler, which hung in a sort of basket on one side. It was full of ice and beer bottles. Or at least Smith assumed they were beer bottles. Drops of cold water ran down the side of the bucket and dropped to the floor.

  Miller was holding a beer in his left hand while he juggled some other unfamiliar device in his right. For a wonder, on his head he wore earmuffs.

  It was not a warm evening by any stretch of the imagination, but not cold enough inside for earmuffs, Smith thought. Still, he did not complain. The uncomfortable-looking things had obviously prevented Miller from hearing his bunkmate cry out or his carcass dropping heavily to the floorboards.

  Smith grinned without warmth.

  He ghosted up behind his quarry, being careful to lower the hammer on the Winchester. No sense in blowing this idiot's head off now. Not when he had made it so easy for them.

  When he was close enough, Smith swiped the earmuffs off of Miller's head and dug the muzzle of his rifle in behind the man's ear, breaking the skin and drawing a little blood. Tinny noises came out of the earmuffs, possibly explaining Miller's temporary deafness.

  The look on his face when he espied Smith standing there would have puckered a hog's butt.

  “I believe you have something of mine,” said Titanic Smith.

  Miller squealed and flinched away. Smith whacked him in the face with the barrel of the Winchester, doing no real damage, but earning an agreeably girlish scream for the effort. He moved around where he could keep an eye on the hallway where the other occupant of the house still lay unconscious.

  “I'll be having my watch back now, thank you, Mr. Miller.”

  They both heard the front door close, and Smith dug the gun muzzle into Miller's neck, ready to use him as a hostage if needs be.

  It did not prove necessary.

  “Smith, we cool?”

  It was Cady's voice.

  “You were supposed to wait outside,” he called back to her.

  Her head appeared around the corner.

  “Sorry,” she said. “It was starting to feel more dangerous out there than in here. Just hold on a second would you?”

  Smith heard her fussing about with something heavy in the hallway, before she reappeared about a minute later with their bags.

  “Thought I'd better tie up that other guy. I used his belt. He's out of it. But, you know, in the movie he'd totally wake up and get the drop on you or something.”

  “Thanks … I think,” said Smith. “But I'm pretty sure I knocked him out colder than Montana in January.”

  “Oh my God,” cried Miller, “you two are going down so hard for this. And your friend too, McCall. You can't do this.”

  “We just did,” Smith reminded him. “Now, give us the watch and we'll be gone.”

  “I don't have it,” Miller whined.

  Smith whacked him in the face again. This time he aimed to break the man's nose, and he did not miss. Miller screamed and the claret flowed.

  “The watch,” Smith said calmly. “Now.”

  Miller was holding his face in his hands, blood running through his fingers. He started to cry.

  “Hey, Miller,” Cady said over the noise of his blubbering. “Look at me.”

  Before he complied, she had to repeat the instruction, walking over and giving him a little kick in the shins for emphasis.

  “Look at me. I need you to know something. You're going to give us the watch back.”

  She cleared a space on the low table by simply sweeping all the rubbish aside with her boot. Then she sat down and took one of his beers, twisting the top off with her bare hand. Smith had no idea she was so strong, or that her hands were so uncommonly leathery.

  “I tell you why you'll give us the watch back,” she said. “Because if you don't, we're going to torture you.”

  Smith almost reared up to protest that. He had no intention of doing any such thing, but a warning look from Cady stayed his objection. Miller saw nothing of the exchange. He was still hiding behind his fingers like a frightened child. Cady took a sip of t
he beer she had stolen and gently pried one of Miller's hands away from his face. She grimaced a little, but not at the blood. The long strands of snot that came away stuck to his fingers were much worse.

  “Look at me, Miller,” she said quietly, and he did for the first time. She winked at him, tipping the beer in his direction in an utterly innocent gesture. Hail fellow well met, she seemed to be saying with her sparkling eyes. “Thing is, you can trust that we'll torture you. Do you know why?”

  He shook his head. “But I don't have the watch,” he protested weakly.

  She shushed him like a small boy caught out in a little white lie.

  “Miller, please. I'm trying to explain the torture. See, you're in a bad way here. My friend, Smith? The guy who broke your nose? He's a time traveler.”

  It was all Smith could do to maintain his poker face. Where in tarnation was she going with this? Did she truly intend to torture this feller? He was suddenly worried that he had no idea.

  “And me,” she continued, “I'm not so much from another time as I am from another reality.”

  Well, she certainly had Miller's attention now. His eyes were wide, with disbelief, with fear, with denial. Cady McCall seemed pleased with that. Her eyes sparkled.

  “I'm afraid I can't explain how it all works, but I can assure you that I'm not lying. Smith here, he looks like a cowboy because that's what he is. An honest-to-goddamn cowboy. And me, I came from another world where Trump isn't president, Hillary isn't in jail, and you're probably still sitting here playing Titanfall, but without the broken nose or the looming prospect of being tortured because you're too stupid to give up the watch that you stole.”

  “But I haven't …”

  Cady smashed the beer bottle on the edge of the little table, causing both Miller and Smith to jump. Beer frothed everywhere. She held up the jagged tooth of glass she had made of the bottle, inviting him to consider it. In spite of the sudden violence, her voice did not change. She still sounded the very acme of moderation and restraint.