Sue Fritchey was very good at her job.
A shimmering in the air opened ten feet above Time Tours' Porta Romae gate platform—and about four feet to one side of it. The air shimmered through a whole doppler range of colors and indescribable motion, then the dark, ever-shifting edges of an unstable gate slid open. Little yellow-brown things fell through it, all the way to the concrete floor below, where they smacked with a bone-cracking sound. A flood followed them, a tidal wave. Kit widened his eyes when he realized what it was. He laughed aloud. "Lemmings!"
Pest Control tried desperately to stem the flow at the gate, using nets to capture and toss back as many as possible while leaning dangerously far over the rail of Porta Romae's gate platform. For every batch of five or six they caught and hurled back, twelve or fifteen more got through, falling messily to their deaths on the now enormous pile of silent, brown-furred bodies. Tourists, aghast at the slaughter, were demanding that Pest Control do something, it was cruel, inhuman—
Kit interrupted a group of five women dressed in the latest Paris haute couture, all of them badgering Sue while she tried to direct one group at the gate, tried to get another squad into position from a different angle, and put a third squad to work shovelling the bodies into large bags.
" 'Scuse me, ladies," he smiled engagingly, "I couldn't help overhearing you."
They turned as one, then lost breath and color in the same moment as they recognized him. Kit hid a grin. Sometimes world-famous reputations weren't such a curse, after all.
"Mr.—Mr. Carson?"
He bowed. "As I said, I couldn't help but overhear your conversation." He drew them adroitly away from Sue Fritchey a few steps at a time and was rewarded with Sue's preoccupied smile. "Are you ladies by any chance acquainted with the behavior patterns of the ordinary lemming?"
They shook their heads in time, well-practiced marionettes.
"Ah . . . let me help you understand. Lemmings are rodents. Some live on the Arctic tundra, where predators generally keep their populations in check. But they also live in cold, alpine climates like you'd find in, say, the northern tip of Norway. Without sufficient predators our sweet little rodents breed out of control, until they've destroyed their environment, not to mention their food supply." Five sets of eyes went round. "When that happens—and it does to many a herd of lemmings, I assure you—then something in their genes or maybe in their brain structure kicks in and causes them to leave their environment, sometimes by the thousands. You see, that unknown signal is a warning that their population has become too large for the land to sustain it. It's as unstable as that gate up there."
He pointed, and waited for five sets of shocked eyes to return to him. "So they leave. Now, the herds that live in very rocky country, with lots of cliffs, have the perfect suicide mechanism built right into their habitat. Some of those cliffs drop into deep, jagged valleys. Some shadow a deep, narrow bay. One full of water," he added, not sure that their collective IQ's were above those of a live lemming. "And you know what those cute little buggers do? They run straight for those cliffs, almost as though they knew, wanted, to throw themselves and their pups over the edge. Those," he pointed to the avalanche of small rodents still falling through the gate, "have jumped off a cliff somewhere. They'd be dead already, even if the gate hadn't opened ten feet over the station floor. You can't change history—or the deep genetics of certain species. Fool about with their genetic structure, get rid of the signal—if you could—that triggers the suicidal migrations, and pretty soon you'd be hip deep in starving lemmings. And there wouldn't be anything green left for thousands of square miles."
Round eyes stared at him from pale, pinched faces. He tipped an imaginary hat and left, humming a delighted tune under his breath. He gave out a short, humorless bark of laughter, wondering what those five would say when they went back uptime?
He then joined the crew sweeping bodies into containers supplied by shopkeepers and other willing 'eighty-sixers. Kit found himself scooping warm, still little bodies into an ornate brass wastebasket that could only have come from the Epicurean Delight. Kit grinned, then got to business filling it. He sighed. It was a shame; lemmings were so darned . . . cute. But their biology and behaviors were as they were, which meant that on this particular day and time in La-La Land, Kit Carson was shovelling up hundreds of dead rodents, same as everybody else on volunteer duty. Really, anything was better than attending pointless meetings!
Of all people, Goldie Morran appeared in the crowd, sniffing disdainfully but eyeing all those lemmings with speculation. What in God's name was she up to now? Hadn't she been in the infirmary recently? Didn't take her long to recover. I sometimes think Goldie's too mean to die. She turned on a stilt heel and sought out Sue Fritchey, who listened intently for a moment, then nodded impatiently and shook Goldie's hand. The look on Goldie's face as she tried to figure out where to wipe her hand, covered now with blood and lemming hair, was priceless. Then, when she leaned over an intent newsie's vidcammer and cleaned her hand thoroughly while asking him sweet-voiced questions to distract him from the motions she was making against his back, it was almost too much to bear.
In fact, when one film crew caught it on camera, Kit did laugh—but softly enough Goldie couldn't possibly hear him.
Whatever she'd wanted, she'd clearly gotten, as she left with a contented smile on her face. Kit worked his way toward Sue.
"What'd Goldie want?"
"Hmm? Oh, hi, Kit. She wanted the skins. Said she'd pay a downtimer to skin 'em and tan the skins for her, then maybe the big sternbergi might take a fancy to lemming meat. God, I hope so. Have you got any idea what it's going to smell like, all through the station, if we have to incinerate these little beasts?"
Kit shuddered. "Yeah. I got a real good idea."
She glanced sharply at him. "Oh, damn, I'm sorry, Kit. I was distracted . . . forgot all about that witch's burning you were forced to watch. . . ."
He forced a shrug. "Thanks. I appreciate the apology, but that's one of 'em I sometimes still wake up screaming over. And it's the smell that lingers with you, like a spirit as malicious as the goddamned Inquisitors who ordered the burnings in the first place." He cleared his throat and pointed his gaze into the far distance. "Sue, one of those so-called witches was a little girl, curly red-blond hair, couldn't have been above two years old, screaming for her mommy—who was burning on the stake right next to her."
Sue had squeezed shut her eyes. "I will never, ever again complain about my job, Kit Carson."
Kit thumped her on the shoulder. "Go ahead and complain away. Makes me feel good to hear other people's problems. Not my own."
Sue swallowed hard, then managed a shaky smile. "Okay, Kit, one helluva big job complaint, comin' at you. Why the hell are you just standing there in that bloody three-piece suit? Pick up a goddamned shovel and start shovelin'!"
Kit laughed, hugged her, then swung his own shovel like a baton, whistling as he returned to work.
At last Pest Control hummers with attached sidecars for hauling whatever needed hauling, pulled up. The cleanup crew dumped their loads into the hoppers. Kit did the same, then turned back for more.
Fortunately, the unstable gate closed before the entire herd of several thousand fell into TT-86, but a final lemming, halfway through as the gate closed shut, was sucked back with an almost startled look in its button-black eyes, the inexorable shutting of the gate sending the animal back into its own time—and a probable fall with its fellows off whatever cliff they'd found. Judging from the size of the piled little bodies, at least a quarter of that herd had ended up on the floor. It took hours of back-breaking work to get them all into hoppers, never mind cleaning bloodstains from the floor. The newsies from uptime covered the whole event, not only for the on-station television network but for the hope of a potential scoop by getting the video through Primary first.
They tried, without success, to interview him where he knelt hip deep at one edge of the miniature mountain, blood
all over his expensive three-piece suit and previously immaculate white silk shirt. Despite his absolute, categorical refusals—"I'm busy, can't you see? Talk to someone else."—they hovered around him like hornets, vidcams whirring with the sound of hornets' wings.
Ignoring the newsies as best he could, he continued shoveling bodies into the Pest Control hoppers. While most of the lemmings had landed on concrete, several hundred had splattered against expensive, exquisite mosaics funded by the Urbs Romae merchants and built by a downtimer artisan who had designed and placed mosaics in his native time. Now the beautiful, tiled pictures of grapevines, gods and goddesses, even the portraits of Imperial family members done with astonishing accuracy from memory, had not only to be cleaned, but cleaned with painstaking care to get the blood out of the grout between colored tiles no larger than Kit's pinkie fingernail.
A voice he'd know anywhere growled, "Goddamn mess."
He glanced up into Bull Morgan's face. "Yes, it is."
"Those tiles under there cracked?"
Kit used his hated necktie to scrub away enough blood and intestines to see. " 'Fraid so. Some cracked, some shattered to bits. Damn."
Bull echoed him. Then he shouted, "Sue!"
Sue Fritchey slewed around, then began walking toward him. When she arrived, covered in even more blood than Kit, Bull said, "Show her, Kit."
He pointed out the damage done to the mosaic. Sue groaned. Already news was spreading to the Urbs Romae shopkeepers, hoteliers, and restaurateurs, mostly thanks to newsies who rushed at them to "get their reactions on record." Bull narrowed his eyes. "Sue, when the worst of this mess is gone, get your people to digitally map each damaged mosaic. Station Manager's office will foot the bill for any repairs. Spread the news to 'em and fast, before they start mobbing your people." Sue hurried off to spread the word and instruct her crews to spread it farther—the faster, the better.
Bull grinned abruptly, looking very much like a fire-plug riveted to living human arms, legs, and head. Kit, his shoulders aching almost worse than his knees, took in Bull's grin and muttered, "Want to share the joke? I could use a laugh. Goddamned newsies crawling across me like flies . . ." He shivered. Bull's laugh only deepened as he thumped the taller, slighter man's back. "Never heard of Kit Carson giving in to a newsie."
"And you won't, either," Kit muttered, "unless they doctor the tapes, in which case I can sue. And lose my fortune, my reputation, and my case, all in one fell swoop."
"Yeah," Bull said through narrowed eyes as he watched them pestering anyone they could for a story. "Can't win a case against a newsie, that's for goddamned sure. Gotta think up a reason to toss 'em all up Primary and keep any more from coming in."
Kit's full, blazing grin was seen so rarely, even the stolid Bull Morgan blinked. "And what, exactly, are you thinking, Kenneth Carson?"
"Oh, nothing too mischievous. I was just thinking you might want to plant a little bug in someone's ear, you know, just a hint about courageous newsies coming to the rescue in a Station Crisis. Get their flunkies to film 'em scooping up busted-open lemmings. Ought to be good for, what, fifteen points on the Nielsons just for the gore content alone?"
Bull Morgan slowly pulled a cigar from one pocket and lit it, sucking until it created clouds of obnoxious blue-grey smoke. His eyes crinkled. "Yeah," he said around the cigar, starting to smile. "Yeah, that's a good, solid idea you got there, Kit. Keep 'em out of our crews' hair, away from the shopowners, 'til they've had their fill and leave to shower someplace where the water's endless and hot enough to wash away the blood, the stink, and their own puke."
Kit chuckled. "You, Bull Morgan, are a wicked judge of human character."
"Hell, Kit, thought you'd figured it out by now: all human character is wicked. Just varies in degree is all."
Leaving Kit to ponder that odd, un-Bull-like bit of philosophy, Bull Morgan waded through the slop and bent to murmur into the ear of the nearest newsie. She looked startled, then delighted. Soon, every newsie in the place was down on hands and knees, scooping up dead rodents alongside the Pest Control crews and 'eighty-sixers who'd seen, done, and been through everything. Or at least enough to know that a mountain of dead lemmings wasn't exactly a dire crisis, just a massive pain in the butt.
True to Bull's prediction—Kit was glad he hadn't wagered—the newsies didn't last long. They retreated to their hotel rooms with their vidcams and flunkies and were not seen again until much later that evening, when La-La Land's very own in-house TV network ran various tapes and commentaries. Kit didn't bother to watch the broadcast. If it contained anything truly terrible, friends of his would let him know—and probably hand him a recorded copy or six.
Once the dead lemmings had all been carted away, and the blood scrubbed away with toothbrushes and ammonia, Pest Control filmed every cracked or shattered tile in every single mosaic affected. Bull's generous offer settled several upset merchants. Sly cuss, their station manager. He had to be, or he'd watch La-La Land's artificial world crumble apart like dry cake left outside too long in brittle, harsh sunlight, slowly turning to dust.
Yeah, Bull Morgan was just the right man for the job, a man who found the law useful in how far it could occasionally be bent to save a friend. He chuckled aloud, drawing startled stares from the Pest Control crews still filming damaged mosaics. He didn't care. This would make a great story, full of places for artistic embellishment—and Kit Carson knew he could spin a very good yarn. He laughed again, anticipating the reactions of his granddaughter and his closest friend, soon-to-be his grandson-in-law.
He grinned like a fool and didn't care about that, either. For the first time in years, Kit Carson realized he was genuinely happy. The last of the hummer-trains groaned into motion, then Kit glanced down at himself. His three-piece suit—from the same designer who'd fashioned clothes for that idiotic quintet of rich, empty-headed women—was soaked in blood and thick with yellow-brown fur. And the smell was even worse. No wonder Bull had smiled. He sighed. Maybe the suit and silk shirt could be salvaged.
Kit returned to the Neo Edo, managed to sneak past the still-in-progress hoteliers' meeting, and took the elevator to his office. He didn't feel like going home and he did feel like putting on the kimono left in the office for the sole purpose of comfort during work. There was a shower, too, hidden away behind a screen that had once been the pride of some ancient Edo nobleman's house.
He stripped, showered, towelled off, then found the kimono. Ahh . . . much better. He left the suit on the shower floor, unwilling to touch it; this kimono had cost him a small fortune. More, actually, than the suit. He telephoned the front desk for a runner and soon heard the breathless knock of one of his employees.
"C'mon in, it's not locked!"
"Sir?" the wide-eyed runner gasped, trying to appear that he was not staring, awestruck, at Kit's office.
Kit chuckled and said, "Come on in. Stare all you like. It is a bit different for an office."
The boy, a downtimer Kit had rescued and employed, stepped into the office.
The boy's gaze drank in Kit's eclectic office, with its wall of television screens, some of which played tapes of views uptime and some of which showed views of various parts of the Neo Edo and the Commons. The sand-and-stone garden, with its artificial skylight, drew his attention so powerfully, he actually bumped right into Kit, who had paused at the edge of the screen hiding his bathroom.
The boy reddened clear down into the neckline of his green-and-gold Neo Edo tunic. "Oh, sir, please forgive me—"
Before the apology could turn into an avalanche thick as those lemmings, Kit smiled and said, "It is rather impressive, isn't it? I remember the first time I saw it, after Homako Tani vanished and left this white elephant on my hands. I think I dropped my teeth clear onto the floor."
A hesitant smile passed over the boy's face, revealing as clearly as though his face were made of mountain-stream water, rather than flesh and blood, how unsure he was that he might be taking liberties.
&nbs
p; "Through here," Kit smiled. "I, er, rather made a mess of that suit scooping up dead lemmings."
The boy brightened. "I heard about that, sir. Were there really millions and millions of 'em?"
Kit laughed. "No, but sometimes it seemed like it. There were probably at least two or three thousand, though."
The boy had gone round-eyed with wonder. "That many? That's a big number, isn't it, sir?"
Kit reminded himself to be sure this youngster was included in orientation and education sessions he held at the Neo Edo for downtimer employees and their families. Many had profited enough from the lessons to leave the Neo Edo and drudgery work behind forever, finding or even making better jobs for themselves. Kit prided himself that none of his downtimer employees—current or former—had walked through a gate and shadowed him- or herself, vanishing forever the moment they crossed to the other side.
The boy took the ruined suit and promised he'd take it to the best drycleaner in the station—there were only two—then bowed and ran for the elevator.
Kit chuckled, then sighed and decided he might as well tackle the four stacks of triple-damned government paperwork every shop owner on TT-86 was required to file weekly. Sometimes, he pondered as he sat down and began on the first tedious document, Kit wondered if Bull Morgan was seen so rarely because he had locked himself into his office to cope with his mountains of paperwork.
Chapter Sixteen
The pain in Skeeter's head registered first. The next sensation to impinge on his awareness was his nakedness. Except for a cloth at his loins, he'd been stripped clean as a Mongolian sky. He blinked and stirred. That's when he discovered the chains. Skeeter moaned softly, head throbbing savagely, then blinked and focused once again on his wrists. Iron manacles and a short length of chain bound them together. A circlet of iron around his throat caught his adam's apple when he swallowed nausea and fear. Further exploration revealed chains and manacles around his ankles, hobbling him and locking him to an iron ring in a stone wall.
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