A Girl in Time

by John Birmingham

  Something twisted inside Smith.

  “The hell I did,” he said.

  “Then I hope you can repeat your trick of killing a man without laying a hand upon him,” said Gannicus. He looked suspiciously around him, as though fearing eavesdroppers. Then he leaned forward and whispered fiercely.

  “Do this, Smith, and we will stand with you and all of your band.”

  “What do you mean?” Smith asked, but before the gladiator could answer, he turned away, muttering out the side of his mouth, “Beware, the pig itself approaches.”

  29

  Smith heard them before he could see them. Sounded like four or five men, crunching through a gravel pit. They appeared through an arch in the cloisters three cells down from Gannicus.

  “Look sharp ladies, I think this is el jefe,” Smith warned.

  He expected Cady and Georgia to inconspicuously hide themselves away in the corner of their cell, but instead they pushed right up against the bars, seeking a vantage point from which they might better glimpse who was coming.

  A fat man in a bed sheet, attended by his thugs, that's who.

  You stripped away all the costuming and theatrical props, and that's what you got. Smith had seen their ilk many times before. He'd stretched the necks of men like this, and shot more than a few who proved unwilling to face a jury of their peers.

  There was no question which of the crew was Mr. Batiatus. He stood front and center, holding Smith's gun and Bowie knife. One his underlings carried a phone. Presumably Cady's.

  “Hey, that's my phone, asshole!” She protested.

  It did not appear she would be making herself as inconspicuous as possible.

  “Shut up,” Miss Georgia hissed at her. “Seriously, Cady, if you were ever, for once in your life, just going to shut the fuck up, now would be the time to do it.”

  Lentulus Batiatus regarded them with a sneer, but he directed his first question at Smith.

  “Where do you hail from?”

  “Purdue County,” he said, not feeling the need of bending the truth just yet. “But lately from all around.”

  “And your women? None of my household recognizes their tongue.”

  “They ain't my women. I don't own 'em, and they come from even further away than I did.”

  Batiatus walked a few steps beyond Smith's cell, to get a better look at Cady and Georgia.

  “Are you a sorceress?” he asked Cady.

  She looked to Smith for a translation.

  “I think he wants to know if you're a witch,” he said.

  She answered Batiatus directly.

  “If I was, you'd be a fucking blob fish by now. You're halfway there already.”

  None of it registered on the slave owner's face. Not a word of it made any sense to him.

  “She explains that she is a merchant, sir, just like myself. We are traveling salespeople, and I'm sorry if we lost our way and wandered onto your property, but …”

  “Take him and beat him,” Batiatus ordered.

  “Whoa! Ain't no call for that.”

  Two of the guards stood forward and handed off their weapons. They were not about to give him a chance to arm himself.

  “Smith? What are they doing?” Cady asked anxiously.

  “Get on your knees,” Gannicus hissed at him. “Take the beating. It will go easier.”

  “I think not,” Smith replied as the guards unlocked his cage door and came at him, fast.

  They were good fighters. He could see that from the way they carried themselves, the way they split up and came at him separately. The cell gate clanged shut behind them, too. Nope. You could not fault these fellers for their jailhouse technique.

  But Smith had survived on the frontier. He had not yet encountered the fighter to best him. He knew not to wait and get swarmed. He faked a dodge away from the closer man, before pivoting and driving his boot into the attacker's knee cap. It shattered with a wet crumblin' sound and he went down screaming. The other guard was on him in a blink, but there was a whole lotta of Titanic Smith to be getting on with. This one was a wrestler, and he snaked all of his limbs around the marshal, tied him up in human knots.

  Didn't matter none.

  Smith simply toppled to the flagstones liked a redwood felled by the axeman. His enormous bulk crashed down on top of the smaller man, crushing him, breaking any number of bones large and small, and cracking his head like an egg on the stone floor. Smith heard one or maybe both of the girls screaming, and what sounded like Gannicus roaring out encouragement.

  He dug an elbow into the broken man's sternum, using it to lever himself back to his feet where he waited for the next attackers to come charging in through the gate.

  Instead, he found that Batiatus stood directly in front of him, just on the other side of the bars, two of his goons to either shoulder, both of them holding spears long enough to find Smith even if he retreated into the furthest corner.

  “Coarse, but effective,” said the slave master, nodding his appreciation.

  He seemed not the least bit concerned about his men, one of whom, the one Smith had crushed under his own mass, was twitching and gagging like a spastic in a fit. The other cried and moaned, clutching at his broken knee, the leg bent impossibly back against itself.

  “You did not just wander into my holdings,” Batiatus said, as though the violent hiatus had not taken place. “You were found in the middle of my estate. You appeared through sorcery, and you killed one of my men and injured another through foul magic. And now you have put me to the inconvenient loss of two more of my bondsmen. You are no merchant.”

  Smith did not reply immediately. What was there to say? It had been a thin tissue of a lie behind which to hide, and it required no real effort from Batiatus to rip it asunder.

  “What's he saying, Marshal?” Georgia asked.

  “Well,” said Smith, stepping away from the fallen men, “I tried to tell him we were but traveling salesfolk. But he ain't buying that, I'm afraid, Miss Georgia.”

  Batiatus turned to the goon standing on his right.

  “Kill the woman who just spoke,” he said.

  “Whoa!” Smith cried out. “Hold on there!”

  Not knowing what was happening, but guessing that it weren't likely to finish sunny-side up for them, the girls beat a hasty retreat into the rear of the cell, adding their own protests to Smith's.

  The slave master let his head fall to one side, examining Smith the way a man might consider his next move in a game of checkers.

  He snapped his fingers and the goon returned to his side. The man's face did not change. Smith recognized him as one of those hirelings who would kill on command without so much as blinking. If he enjoyed it, he would not show it. He was the weapon, not the man carrying the weapon. Smith found himself grateful he'd not had to face that one in close combat.

  Batiatus held up the pistol as the man with the fractured skull stopped moving and making any noise at all.

  “My men tell me you pointed this at them and two of their number were struck down by thunder.”

  Feeling his uncomfortable proximity to those glistening spear tips, Smith got ready to dodge the points for as long as he might. Vowing that he would grab the first spear that came through the bars at him and take as many of these varmints as possible, he stood erect, his chin jutting out at Batiatus, his knees flexing ever so slightly, just in case he had to move with any haste.

  “Your men were fixing to do us in,” he said. “The first one I killed was just about to let loose with a spear. The second man I shot when he did not break off his attack. I'm sorry they're dead,” he lied, “but a man has a right to defend himself and his own.”

  All through this speech in his defense, Smith was aware of Gannicus listening in the next cell over. The gladiator had retreated a safe distance from the bars, but he did not pretend any lack of interest in the exchange.

  The moaning of the guard with the broken leg, meanwhile, was growing louder and more distracting
.

  “You will show me how to perform this sorcery,” said Batiatus. It was neither an invitation, nor a threat. It was an uncomplicated statement of fact. “Do this now, and your women will live. Lie to me, defy me, vex me in any fashion, and I will give them to my gladiators as practice dolls while you watch on. I will have your eyelids cut off to ensure you miss nothing.”

  “Smith?” Cady asked, intuiting that she and Georgia were the subject of this conversation, even though she could have no idea of what the men were saying to each other.

  “Just dickering' some, Miss Cady,” he said out the corner of his mouth. “Best you let me be.”

  To Batiatus he hurried on.

  “If'n you were good enough to give me the gun I'll be happy to show you how it works,” he said.

  The man smiled for the first time. His grin cracked open and rich, deep laughter spilled out of his corpulent frame, making his giant belly jiggle like a jellied dessert.

  Some of his strong-arm chumps braved a chuckle along with the bossman. They seemed no more concerned by the loss of their comrades than was their master.

  “That will not be necessary, merchant,” Batiatus informed him. “I am the principal of the finest gladiator school in the Republic. You will tell me how to use your magical weapon, and I am certain I will be able to follow your instructions.”

  Smith hesitated.

  It was bad enough that they had become so deeply and disastrously entangled in the affairs of this local potentate. That in itself was probably enough to attract the attention of the apprentices. But showing this man how to load and fire a pistol? He would not be surprised if Chumley or one of his comrades suddenly appeared striding down the cloisters a bare minute later.

  “Kill the women,” Batiatus said, to his nearest lieutenant.

  “No, that won't be necessary. I can tell you,” Smith said quickly. Without really intending to, he stepped sideways, moving a little closer to Cady and Georgia, as if to defend them. It was an empty gesture. If Batiatus wanted them dead, Smith did not see what he could do about it.

  “You need to load the gun,” he said. “I already done fired off the last of the ammunition in it.”

  “So it is like a bow, then?” Batiatus said. “And there are tiny arrows or darts perhaps that must be equipped somehow?”

  He turned the weapon over in his hands, occasionally looking straight down the barrel. Smith cursed silently. If only he'd not shot off the last bullet, this fat fool was a good chance of blowing his own dang head off.

  Maybe …

  He removed a bullet from his gun belt and carefully passed it through the bars. Still toying with the pistol, Batiatus did not take the slug. One of his men stepped forward and plucked it from Smith's fingers.

  “You need to make sure the hammer ain't cocked,” Smith said, and immediately he could see that this was not something Mr. Wu's chronometer could easily translate.

  “The hammer?” said Batiatus.

  “That crooked little dingus at the end there,” he said pointing at it. “Okay, look, it's where it should be anyway. So forget it. Now you have to hold the grip, the handle, without putting your finger inside that trigger guard there. No. I said don't put your finger in there. You cup the weapon with your other hand …”

  “Smith, is this really such a good idea?” Cady asked.

  “Oh, believe me, you'd think it was if it was you havin' this conversation,” he said before hastily returning to his instructions. “Yeah, that looks right, or close enough as makes no never mind. Now use your thumb, no your other thumb, to push on the cylinder latch, no, not that part …”

  It took a good deal longer than it should have, but eventually they did manage to seat a single bullet in the cylinder. Batiatus then proved himself to be less than a complete idiot by snapping his fingers again and demanding more bullets from Smith.

  “They go in these other holes, is that so?”

  The Marshal reluctantly plucked out five more rounds from his belt and handed them through the bars. He was aware of the intense attention focused on him; from the ladies, from the gladiator in the cell next to his, and from other men in other cells leading away around the odd circular jailhouse. Only the fighters training out in the hot sun seemed not to be following along. Oh, and that moaning feller with the broken leg a-laying there on the floor. Smith was beginning to think Batiatus had forgotten all about him.

  After another frustrating minute, the slave master was able to snap the cylinder back in place. He now had a loaded gun.

  What the hell have I done? Smith asked himself.

  “The thunder. Where does the thunder come from?”

  “It comes out of the hole at the end of the long tube there,” Smith explained, hoping that Batiatus would be enough of a dumb corn cracker to look down the barrel.

  He weren't.

  He waved the gun around, causing Smith to flinch away. He saw Cady and Georgia doing the same. None of the guards seemed to understand the hazard. Batiatus certainly didn't.

  And then the pistol went off.

  In the confined space of the cells, the roar of the single round sounded many times louder than the shots he'd fired out in the hills of the estate.

  Everyone jumped.

  The bullet ricocheted away.

  Maybe it hit someone, maybe not. There were so many cries of alarm and terror that no single cry of pain could possibly stand out. The guards around Batiatus looked thoroughly spooked, but the slave master recovered quickly.

  He laughed again. Louder this time. A long, peeling church bell of a laugh.

  “This is magnificent,” he crowed.

  Without preamble he pointed the pistol at the man who still lay on the floor next to Smith, clutching at his broken limb, and he shot him.

  Once. Twice. Three times.

  30

  The noise of the gunshots was enormous and terrible in Cady’s ears, but the effect was worse. The guard Smith had crippled died screaming as pieces of him sprayed everywhere. Cady was screaming. Georgia was screaming. Even Smith was shouting obscenities, or what passed for obscenities from him.

  Cady and Georgia held on to each other, cowering away in the corner of their cell. Georgia was shaking, her whole body wracked by tremors. Cady cradled her friend as best she could, rocking her back and forth, but she wasn't much better herself. Even the guards, who had earlier closed around their boss like a fist, now shied away. One ran out into the sun, babbling like a child.

  The fat guy in the toga just kept laughing. He was like a supersized Joker or something, getting off on his own lunatic bad-mofo act.

  It seemed to take forever, but eventually the situation calmed down. Toga bro ordered his minions to do something, presumably to get Smith out of his cell. The three who remained approached the task with extreme prejudice. They all entered leveling swords and spears at him, barking orders which even she could understand. The words were foreign, but the meaning was clear.

  Come with us or die.

  Smith backed himself up against the bars separating his cell from theirs.

  “Cady,” he said in a low voice, “take it.”

  Still paralyzed by shock, she remained frozen in place for a moment, until Smith spoke again with more urgency. “You'll need it. Take it.”

  She realized then that he held the watch in his massive hands. He had palmed it. She quickly stood up and ran over to the bars, reaching her arms through as though to hug him.

  “John, don't go, oh, please don't go,” she said, in a terrible attempt at role-playing. Smith looked at her as though she'd gone mad, but he nodded when she slipped the watch out of his hands and retreated away from the bars, back to Georgia.

  The guards led Smith away.

  And they were alone.

  Servants came to clean up Smith's jail cell, carrying away the bodies.

  No, not servants, Cady reminded herself. Slaves. Anybody who was not a master here was almost certainly a slave, one way or another. She and Georgi
a spoke quietly, both of them tense, as the slave crew worked.

  “Where are they taking him?” Georgia asked.

  “Why would I know?” Cady shot back.

  “Oh, I don't know, because you're the time travel girl, and I'm just the redshirt who got beamed down to the planet with you.”

  “Oh, you mean when I rescued you from the fucking Fourth Reich run by an angry Cheetos demon and its talking peehole?”

  They glared at each other, both ready to blow, but when they did the release came in the form of hysterical laughter. There was no lightening of the mood. It was simply a release of the unbearable tension. The manic laughter became hitching cries and then they were both bawling their eyes out, hugging each other fiercely.

  “Oh, my God, Georgia, I am so sorry I got you into this. I am so sorry. I just …”

  “It's okay, it'll be all right, it'll be fine. We just have to get out of this. We have to think our way out, Cady. We're smarter than these guys.”

  “And we're girls. So they totally won't see it coming.”

  Whether it was crazy talk or crazy brave, they needed it. They had to talk each other into believing they could survive.

  “You two. Hey. Can you hear me? Do you understand? It is said you are witches and that you speak an alien tongue.”

  “What's he saying?” Georgia asked. The watch was tucked away in the front pocket of Cady's jeans.

  The man Smith had been talking to, the gladiator, was still in his cell, and now he was trying to get their attention.

  Cady checked up and down the cloisters before she spoke. There was no sign of any guards. Out on the training field, in the center of the great circular court, gladiators or trainee gladiators or whatever the hell they were, hacked and pounded at each other with practice weapons.

  “Where did they take Smith?” Cady asked when she was confident they weren't being watched.

  “Your man?”

  “Not even close,” she said as Georgia appeared at her elbow.