Ripping Time

by Robert Asprin

  “Eight, I think.”

  “You think? You must be certain, Eddy. It’s very important.”

  Eddy’s brow creased. “Eight, it must be eight, John, I saw him eight weeks in a row, you see, and I sent him a letter each week, then I met you and didn’t need to see him any longer. Yes, it’s eight letters.”

  “Very good, Eddy. Now, tell me what’s happened to upset you so deeply about these eight letters.”

  “He wants money for them! A great deal of money! Thousands of pounds, John, or he’ll send the letters to the newspapers, to the Scotland Yard inspectors who arrest men for crimes of sodomy! John, I am ruined!” Eddy covered his eyes with his hands, hiding from him. “If I don’t pay him everything he wants . . .”

  “Yes, yes, Eddy, he’ll make the letters public and you will go to prison. I understand that part of the situation, Eddy, very thoroughly, indeed. Now then, how has he demanded payment? Where is the money to be delivered and who is to take it there?”

  “You know I enjoy little jaunts in to the East End, occasionally, dressed as a commoner? So no one suspects my identity?”

  Lachley refrained from making a tart rejoinder that Eddy was the only person in London fooled by those pitiful disguises. “Yes, what about your little trips?”

  “I’m to take the money to him there, tomorrow night, alone. We’re to meet at Petticoat Lane and Whitechapel Road, at midnight. And I must be there! I must! If I don’t go, with a thousand pounds, he’ll send the first letter to the newspapers! Do you realize what those newspapermen—what my Grandmother—will do to me?” He hid his face in his hands again. “And if I don’t pay him another thousand pounds a week later, the second letter will go to the police! His note said I must reply with a note to him today, I’m to send it to some wretched public house where he’ll call for it, to reassure him I mean to pay or he will post the first letter tomorrow.”

  “And when you pay him, Eddy, will he give you back the letters?”

  The ashen prince nodded, his thin, too-long neck bobbing like a bird’s behind the high collars he wore as disguise for the slight deformity, which had earned Eddy the nickname Collars and Cuffs. “Yes,” he whispered, moustache quivering with his distress, “he said he would bring the first letter tomorrow night if he receives my note today, will exchange it for the money. Please, John, you must advise me what to do, how to stop him! Someone must make him pay for this!”

  It took several additional minutes to bring Eddy back to some semblance of rationality again. “Calm yourself, Eddy, really, there is no need for such hysteria. Consider the matter taken care of. Send the note to him as instructed. Morgan will be satisfied that you’ll meet him tomorrow with your initial payment. Lull him into thinking he’s won. Before he can collect so much as a shilling of his blood money, the problem will no longer exist.”

  Prince Albert Victor leaned forward and gripped John’s hands tightly, fear lending his shaking fingers strength. Reddened eyes had gone wide. “What do you mean to do?” he whispered.

  “You know the energies I am capable of wielding, the powers I command.”

  The distraught prince was nodding. John Lachley was more than Eddy’s lover, he was the young man’s advisor on many a spiritual matter. Eddy relied heavily upon Dr. John Lachley, Physician and Occultist, touted as the most famous scholar of antiquities and occult mysteries ever to come up out of SoHo. And while most of his public performances—whether as Johnny Anubis, Whitechapel parlour medium or, subsequent to earning his medical degree, as Dr. John Lachley—were as fake as the infamous seances given by his greatest rival, Madame Blavatsky, not everything Dr. John Lachley did was trickery.

  Oh, no, not by any means everything.

  “Mesmerism, you must understand,” he told Prince Albert Victor gently, patting Eddy’s hands, “has been used quite successfully by reputable surgeons to amputate a man’s leg, without any need for anesthesia. And the French are working the most wondrous marvels of persuasion one could imagine, making grown men crow like chickens and persuading ladies they have said and done things they have never said or done in their lives.”

  And in the parlour down the hall from this study, a homicidal Liverpudlian cotton merchant had just been spilling his darkest secrets under Lachley’s considerable influence.

  “Oh, yes, Eddy,” he smiled, “the powers of mesmerism are quite remarkable. And I am, without modesty, quite an accomplished mesmerist. Don’t trouble yourself further about that miserable little sod, Morgan. Contact him, by all means, promise to pay the little bastard whatever he wants. Promise him the world, promise him the keys to your grandmother’s palace, for God’s sake, just so long as we keep him happy until I can act. We’ll find your letters, Eddy, and we’ll get back your letters, and I promise you faithfully, before tomorrow night ends, there will be no more threat.”

  His oh-so-gullible, most important client gulped, dull eyes slightly brighter, daring to hope. “You’ll save me, then? John, promise me, you will save me from prison?”

  “Of course I will, Eddy,” he smiled, bending down to plant a kiss on the prince’s trembling lips. “Trouble yourself no more, Eddy. Just leave it in my capable hands.”

  Albert Victor was nodding, childlike, trusting. “Yes, yes of course I shall. Forgive me, I should have realized all was not lost. You have advised me so admirably in the past . . .”

  Lachley patted Eddy’s hands again. “And I shall continue to do so in future. Now then . . .” He walked to his desk, from which he retrieved a vial of the same medication he had given James Maybrick. Many of his patients preferred to consult with him in a more masculine and private setting such as his study, rather than the more public and softly decorated parlour, so he kept a supply of his potent little mixture in both locations. “I want you to take a draught of medicine before you leave, Eddy. You’re in a shocking state, people will gossip.” He splashed wine into a deep tumbler from a cut-crystal, antique Waterford decanter, stirred in a substantial amount of the powder, and handed the glassful of oblivion to Eddy. “Sip this. It will help calm your frayed nerves.”

  And leave you wonderfully suggestible, my sweet and foolish prince, for you must never recall this conversation or Morgan or those thrice-damned letters ever again. Eddy was just sufficiently stupid, he could well blurt out the entire thing some night after a drinking spree in the East End. He smiled as Eddy swallowed the drugged wine. Lachley’s one-time public persona, Johnny Anubis, might have been little more than a parlour trickster who’d earned ready cash with the mumbo-jumbo his clients had expected—indeed, demanded. Just as his new clients did, of course.

  But Dr. John Lachley . . .

  Dr. Lachley was a most accomplished mesmerist. Oh, indeed he was.

  He would have to do something about that drugged cotton merchant down the hall, of course. It wouldn’t do to leave a homicidal maniac running about who could be associated with him, however innocently; but the man had mentioned an incriminating diary, so Lachley might well be able to rid himself of that problem fairly easily. A man could be hanged even for murdering a whore, if he were foolish enough to leave proof of the crime lying about. And James Maybrick was certainly a fool. John Lachley had no intention of being even half so careless when he rid the world of Eddy’s blackmailing little Morgan.

  His smile deepened as Prince Albert Victor Christian Edward leaned back in his chair, eyes closing as the drug that would leave him clay in Lachley’s hands took hold, allowing him to erase all memory of that frightened, desperate plea:

  Make him pay . . . !

  Oh, yes. He would most assuredly make young Morgan pay.

  No one threatened John Lachley’s future and lived to tell the tale.

  * * *

  Senator John Paul Caddrick was a man accustomed to power. When he gave an order, whether to a senatorial aide or to one of the many faceless, nameless denizens of the world he’d once inhabited, he expected that order to be executed with flawless efficiency. Incompetence, he simply did
not tolerate. So, when word that the hit he’d helped engineer at New York’s exclusive Luigi’s restaurant had failed to accomplish its primary objective, John Paul Caddrick backhanded the messenger hard enough to break cartilage in his nose.

  “Imbecile! What the hell do you mean, letting that little bastard Armstrong get away? And worse, with my daughter! Do you have any idea what Armstrong and that vindictive little bitch will do if they manage to get that evidence to the FBI? My God, it was bad enough, watching Cassie turn my own daughter into a crusading, stage-struck fool! And now you’ve let her escape with enough evidence to electrocute the lot of us?”

  The unfortunate lackey chosen to carry the bad news clutched at his nose. It bubbled unpleasantly as he whimpered, “I’m sorry, Senator, we sent six men to your daughter’s apartment, ten into that restaurant! Who’d have figured Armstrong was such a slippery snake? Or that your kid would leave the table just before the hit went down?”

  John Caddrick vented his rage with another backhand blow, then paced the dingy little hotel room, muttering curses under his breath and trying to figure out what that little bastard Armstrong would do next. High-tail it to the FBI? Maybe. But with Jenna Nicole in tow? Armstrong was good at disguises—as John Caddrick had discovered, much to his chagrin—but Jenna was instantly recognizable. If they tried to go anywhere near the New York FBI offices, the men he and Gideon Guthrie had hired would nail them. The trouble was, Armstrong was bound to realize that. No, that meddlesome bastard would attempt getting them both out of the city. But how? And where would the detective go? Armstrong was more than smart enough to know they’d be watching the bus stations, the airports, the car rental agencies, the ferry launches, anything and everything that offered a way out of the city.

  Caddrick swore explosively again. Dammit! After everything he’d worked to achieve, with the timetable counting down to the final few days, along comes that goddamned, nosy bastard Armstrong. . . . He paused in his pacing. Armstrong knew that timetable, knew enough of it, anyway, to calculate their next major move. And the rat-assed little detective was a Templar, too, same as the senator’s worthless daughter and now-deceased sister-in-law. If Armstrong and Jenna Nicole didn’t try to rescue the next target slated to die, John Caddrick didn’t know Templars.

  “They’ll go to TT-86,” Caddrick muttered under his breath. “Get your butt onto that station with a hand-picked team. I want Armstrong dead.”

  “And your daughter?” the lackey quavered.

  John Paul Caddrick shut his eyes, hating Cassie Tyrol for turning his daughter against him, for bringing her into this mess, for showing her the evidence. . . . And John Caddrick’s employers would demand blood. At this stage, security leaks had to be plugged. Fast. Regardless of whose family got in the way. So he snarled out, “I won’t by God let anybody screw this up. Not as close as we’ve come!”

  Speaking through a handful of blood, the messenger asked, “Same M.O. as Luigi’s?”

  “Hell, yes!” He ran a distracted hand through his hair. “We’ve already got Ansar Majlis on station, thank God. Infiltrated ‘em into that construction crew weeks ago. The second your team sets foot on that station, I want them activated. Major blowup. Whatever it takes to make it look good.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, don’t just stand there, goddammit! Move!”

  The lackey scrambled for the door.

  John Caddrick yanked open the hotel room’s wet bar and upended an entire, miniature bottle of scotch, then hurled the empty against the wall. The thing didn’t even have the decency to shatter. It just bounced off. His ragged temper left a considerable hole in the drywall above the television set, along with a broken lamp and three overturned chairs. Damn that meddling detective! And God damn that brainless bitch, Cassie Tyrol! His only child . . . who’d never quite forgiven him for all the missed birthday parties and recitals and graduation ceremonies, stranded on the campaign trail or conducting Congressional business . . .

  But there wasn’t a stinking, solitary thing he could do to save his little girl. And once Jenna knew the truth, Caddrick’s ungrateful wretch of a daughter would do whatever it took to see her own father behind bars. If he wanted to keep his butt out of the electric chair, he’d better make damned sure she died. And before this business was done, Noah Armstrong would bitterly regret having ever interfered in Caddrick’s business. The senator ripped out another savage oath, then stalked out of the hotel.

  Cassie had finally been paid in full for the trouble she’d caused.

  All that remained now was to finish the job.

  Chapter Two

  Of all the souls wandering the Commons of Time Terminal Eighty-Six, none felt as out of place Skeeter Jackson. He wasn’t lost, which was more than he could say of three-quarters of the people around him. But his status was so changed, he couldn’t help but reflect wryly on how odd it was to be trundling a heavy cart stencilled “Station Maintenance” through Edo Castletown, past crowds of kimono-clad tourists jostling elbows with Victorian gents and bustled ladies and a few forlorn, middle-aged men with paunches, bald knees, and Roman tunics.

  Confidence man to bathroom-cleaning man wasn’t quite the transition Skeeter had hoped for, when he’d decided to give up his life of petty crime. There wasn’t much glamor in a cart full of mops, detergent bottles, and vending-machine supplies. On the other hand, he did not miss having to dodge station security every ten minutes, or sweating bullets every time some chance acquaintance glanced his way. And while he didn’t eat high on anybody’s hog, at least he didn’t regularly miss meals, any more, thanks to the uncertainty of a pickpocket’s income.

  Skeeter was very glad he’d switched careers. But he wasn’t quite used to it yet.

  A wry smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. As confused as he sometimes felt, the other up-time residents were goggle-eyed with shock to find La-La Land’s most notorious confidence artist walking the straight and narrow, working the first honest job of his life. It had only taken an act of God and Ianira Cassondra to get him that job. But he couldn’t have continued in his old career, not after the pain his greed and stupidity had caused the only friends he possessed in the world. He frequently marveled that he still possessed any friends at all. Never mind ones close enough to help him start his life over again. After what Skeeter had done, he wouldn’t have blamed Marcus and Ianira if they’d never spoken to him again. Whatever their reasons, he wouldn’t let them down.

  As Skeeter maneuvered his cart through the bustling hoards of eminently lost humanity trying to find their way back to hotels, to restaurants that were impossible to find in the station’s sprawling maze, or simply standing still and screaming for junior at the top of panic-stricken lungs, the public address system came to life from speakers five stories overhead. “Your attention, please. Gate One is due to open in three minutes. All departures, be advised that if you have not cleared Station Medical, you will not be permitted to pass Primary. Please have your baggage ready for customs inspection by agents of the Bureau of Access Time Functions, who will assess your taxes due on downtime acquisitions . . .”

  A familiar voice, the sound of friendship in the middle of all the chaos, sounded at his ear. “Double gate day, yes?”

  Startled, Skeeter turned to find Ianira Cassondra smiling up at him.

  “Ianira! What are you doing up here in Edo Castletown?” The lovely cassondra of ancient Ephesus could usually be found at her kiosk down in Little Agora, surrounded by her adoring up-time acolytes. Ianira’s self-proclaimed worshipers flocked to TT-86 by the thousands each year, on pilgrimage to honor the woman they considered the Goddess incarnate on earth.

  Ianira, blithely ignoring the adoring worshippers who trailed her like pilot fish in the wake of an ancient schooner, swept long strands of glossy, raven’s-wing hair back from her forehead. “I have been to visit Kit Carson, at the Neo Edo. The Council of Seven asked him to participate in the Festival of Mars next week.”

  Kit Carson, the
planet’s most famous and successful individual ever to enter the business of scouting the gates through time, had retired to TT-86. Having pushed most of the famous tour gates now operating through the terminal, Kit Carson was one of the station’s major tourist draws, in his own right, despite his status as essentially a recluse who had vowed never to return to that up-time world again. Skeeter, however, steered clear of Kit whenever possible, on general principle. He tended to avoid the older male relatives of any girl he’d tried to finagle into bed with him. Kit, he avoided even more cautiously than others. Kit Carson could seriously cripple a man, just looking crosswise at him. The day Kit had hunted him down and read him the riot act about staying away from Kit’s granddaughter, Skeeter would’ve welcomed a double-gate day. He’d have crawled through an unstable gate, if one had been available, by the time Kit had finished with him.

  Skeeter smiled ruefully. “Double gate day, is right. And I’ve got this funny feeling we’ll be neck deep in lunatics before the day’s over. First Primary, then Britannia, and tomorrow, another double gate day.”

  “Yes,” Ianira nodded. “The Wild West Gate opens tomorrow.”

  “And that new tour gate they’re ripping half the station apart over, adding to the Commons.”

  “At least, there won’t be any tourists coming through for it, yet,” Ianira smiled.

  “No. For now, it’s the Britannia tours, packing in the loons. In record numbers.” He shook his head. “Between your acolytes and all those crazies coming in for the Ripper Season, this place is turning into the biggest nuthouse ever built under one roof. And those Scheherazade Gate construction workers . . . eergh!” He gave a mock shudder. “What slimy boulder did they turn over, hiring that bunch of thugs?”

  As Ianira fell into step alongside Skeeter’s push cart, she glanced up with a reproachful glint in her eyes. “You must not be so irritated by the construction workers, Skeeter. Most of them are very good men. And surely you, of all up-timers on station, must understand their beliefs and customs are different? As a down-timer, I understand this very well.”