Ripping Time

by Robert Asprin

  Then a man in a red shirt and burnoose, eyes wild and distorted, came in from Skeeter’s off-side, and caught him while he still teetered off balance. Skeeter went down hard. He knew, at least, how to fall without doing himself injury, another legacy of scrapping fights with Yakka Mongol youngsters heavier and stronger than he was. Unfortunately, the man in red was heavy, too. A great deal heavier than Skeeter. And he landed right on top of Skeeter’s chest, fists pounding everything within reach. Which mainly constituted Skeeter. A blow caught his ribs. Skeeter grunted, half-stunned. His own jab at the man’s eyes narrowly missed the mark, but he raked the bastard’s nose with a fist and popped his Adam’s apple with the side of his arm. Blood welled from both nostrils. The man roared, even as Skeeter twisted under him, trying to wriggle free. Another smashing blow landed against Skeeter’s ribs. He gasped, trying to breathe against blossoming pain—

  And somebody snatched the bastard up by his red shirt and dragged him off. Skeeter heard a meaty blow and a howl of pain, a curse in Arabic . . . Skeeter rolled to his hands and knees, gasping and cursing a little, himself. His ribs ached, but nothing felt broken. He staggered to his feet, aware of his exposed vulnerability on the floor. Then he blinked. The roar of battle had died away, almost to a whimper. Security had arrived in force. Several dozen uniformed officers were tossing weighted nets and swinging honest-to-God lassos, bringing down combatants five and six at a time. And the Arabian Nights construction foreman was directing more of his crew to help Security, throwing nets across enraged construction workers and dragging them out none too gently, holding them for security to handcuff. In seconds, the fight was effectively over.

  Skeeter caught his breath as uniformed bodies waded in, yanking combatants off balance and cuffing them with rough efficiency. Weapons clattered to the cobblestones and lay where they’d fallen, abandoned by owners who found themselves abruptly under arrest. As Skeeter stood swaying, his shirt in shreds where he’d tried to wriggle away from the guy in the red shirt, he realized who’d helped him out. None other than Kit Carson was standing over the fallen Ansar Majlis sympathizer, breathing easily, gripping a cotton rag mop in both hands like a quarterstaff. An overturned mop bucket spread a puddle of dirty water behind the retired time scout, where someone on the maintenance crew had been caught up in the riot, as well. At least it wasn’t Bergitta—she wasn’t anywhere in sight. Judging from the trail of bruised, groaning figures behind Kit, leading from the jumbled pile of combatants Kit had already put down, the retired time scout knew how to use a quarterstaff effectively, too. The jerk in red on the floor was moaning and not moving much.

  Then Kit glanced up, caught Skeeter’s gaze, and relaxed fractionally. “You okay, Skeeter?”

  He nodded, then winced at the bruising along his ribs. “Yeah. Thanks.”

  “My pleasure.” He said it like he meant it. Literally. A feral grin had begun to stretch his lips. “Whoops, here comes Mike Benson. Him, you don’t need breathing down your neck. Scoot, Skeeter. I’ll catch you later.”

  Skeeter blinked, then made tracks. Kit was right about one thing. The last person Skeeter wanted to tangle with was Mike Benson cleaning up a riot. Skeeter disappeared into the stunned crowd as Rachel Eisenstein’s medical team arrived, setting broken bones and sewing up gashes. Fortunately, from the look of things, they wouldn’t be dealing with anything fatal. How, he wasn’t sure. Spears, swords, knives, construction tools of half-a-dozen shapes and lethal potentialities . . . He shook his head in amazement. One member of the Angels of Grace Militia sported gashes down her face from a fistful of bear claws, where she’d made the mistake of taking a swing at Eigil Bjarneson.

  And right at the edge of the riot zone, down at the border between Edo Castletown and Victoria Station, Skeeter found Ann Vinh Mulhaney, totally unscathed despite her tiny size. The petite firearms instructor was sitting calmly atop a wrought iron lamp post, with a small, lethal-looking revolver clutched in each hand. It was clear from the path of wreckage that no one had cared to challenge either her position or her person. Skeeter grinned and waved. Ann smiled and nodded, then holstered her pistols and slithered down the lamp post, lithe and agile as a sleek hunting cat. She landed lightly on the cobbles and headed Skeeter’s way.

  “Good God, Ann,” he said, eying the guns she’d used to defend her perch, “you could’ve held off an army from up there. Those pistols of yours are cute little things. What are they?”

  The petite instructor chuckled. “Webleys, of course. The Royal Irish Constabulary Webley, a different animal altogether from your later military Webley. Pack quite a punch for their size, too, in a delightfully concealable package. Lots of Britannia tourists have been renting them for the Ripper tours.”

  “No wonder nobody challenged you up there.”

  She laughed easily. “Occasionally, we get a tourist or two with brains. I don’t know about anybody else, but after all that excitement, I could use a drink to cool my throat. Come with us, why don’t you, Skeeter?”

  He flushed crimson, aware that what little money he had left wouldn’t even cover the cost of a beer. “Uh, thanks, but I’ve got work to do. I’ll, uh, take a raincheck, okay?” She probably knew he’d been fired, the whole station knew that, by now, but a guy had his pride, after all.

  “Well, all right,” she said slowly, studying him with her head tilted to one side. “See you around, then, Skeeter. Hey, Kit! Over here! I saw Robert headed toward Urbs Romae. What say we stop at the Down Time for a quick drink before Primary cycles? We’ll probably catch up to Robert there and I heard they had a cask of Falernian . . .”

  Skeeter edged his way deeper into the crowd as Kit exclaimed, “Falernian? When did they bring in a cask of heaven?”

  Even Skeeter knew that Falernian was the Dom Perignon of ancient Roman wines. And Kit Carson was a connoisseur of fine wines and other potent potables. Skeeter sighed, wondering how marvellous it really tasted, aware that he wouldn’t have been able to afford a glass of Falernian even if he had still been employed. But since he wasn’t . . .

  He cut around the damaged riot zone the long way, heading for Primary again. Skeeter dodged around one corner of the Shinto Shrine which had been built in the heart of Edo Castletown, and wheeled full-tilt into a short, stout woman. The collision rocked her back on her heels. Skeeter shot out a steadying hand to keep her from falling. Familiar blue eyes flashed indignantly up at him. “Cor, blimey, put a butcher’s out, won’t you, luv? Right near squashed me thrip’nny bits, you ‘ave!”

  That patter identified her faster than Skeeter could focus on her features. Molly, the down-timer Cockney barmaid who worked at the Down Time Bar & Grill, favorite haunt of station residents, was rubbing her substantial chest with one arm and grimacing. “Molly! What are you doing halfway to Primary Precinct?” Skeeter had to shout above the roar of voices as she tugged her dress to rights and glared sourly up at him. “I thought you were working late today? Did you get caught up in the Festival of Mars procession after all?”

  Molly’s expressive grimace encapsulated a wealth of disdain, loathing, and irritated anger into one twist of her mobile face. “Nah. Bleedin’ newsies invaded, bad as any whirlin’ dervishes, they are, wot broke a British square. Devil tyke ‘em! I’d like t’see ‘em done up like kippers, so I would. Got the manners of a gutter snipe, won’t let a lady put ‘er past be’ind ‘er, not for all the quid in the Owd Lady of Threadneedle Street.” When Skeeter drew a blank on that reference, as he often did with Molly’s colorful Cockney, she chuckled and patted his arm. “Bank of England, me owd china, that’s wot we called ‘er, Owd Lady of Threadneedle Street.”

  “Oh.” Skeeter grinned. “Me owd china, is it? I’m honored, Molly.” She didn’t admit friendship to many, not even among the down-timers. He wondered what he’d done to earn her good opinion. Her next words gave him the answer.

  “I come up ‘ere t’find Bergitta. Needs a place t’stay, is afraid o’ that blagger wot blacked ‘er face, livin’ alone a
n’ all, an’ I got room in me flat, so I ‘ave. It’d be cheaper, too, wiv two of us sharin’ the bills.”

  Skeeter didn’t know what to say. He found himself swallowing hard.

  “You ain’t seen ‘er, then?”

  He shook his head. “No. I was heading for Primary, when that riot broke out.”

  “Might come along, me own self,” Molly mused. “Got nuffink better to do, ‘til I finds Bergitta, anyway.”

  Skeeter grinned. “I’d be honored to escort you, Molly.”

  She fell into step beside him.

  “I’ve never seen this many people at an opening of Primary.” Skeeter had to shout above the roar of voices. Using elbows and a few underhanded moves, Skeeter shoved his way through the mob until he found a good vantage point where he and Molly could settle themselves to wait.

  Gaudy splashes of color marked long lines of departing tourists and the hundreds of spectators arriving just to watch the show. Montgomery Wilkes, ruling head of BATF on station, wasn’t in sight yet. Security officers were scarce, too, in the wake of the riot.

  BATF carels, manned by tax-collection agents of the Bureau of Access Time Functions, carefully clad in dress-uniform red, lined the route into and out of Primary Precinct. Once past the BATF carels, inbound tourists and visitors arriving at TT-86 had to run a gauntlet of medical stations, a whole double row of them, which formed the entryway into the time terminal.

  Tourists inbound had to scan their medical records into the station’s database files before entering Shangri-La. This gave station medical baseline data to compare the tourists’ health with, once they returned from their time tours. All departing tourists were required to undergo an intensive physical before leaving the station, as a quarantine procedure against exporting anything nasty up time. The system had stopped an outbreak of black death a couple of years back on TT-13, keeping the deadly plague from reaching the up-time world. The medical screening system wasn’t foolproof, of course—nothing in life was—but it kept time tourism operational, which was the lifeblood of a station like Shangri-La.

  Skeeter just hoped, with a superstitious shiver, that the irate up-time senator whose daughter had been kidnapped failed to swing enough votes to shut down the time terminals. If station violence on TT-86 continued much longer, he just might get those votes. If BATF was worried about it, however, that worry didn’t show in the attitudes of its agents. They were as rude as ever, from what Skeeter could see of the check-out procedures underway. BATF agents ignored the increasing crush of onlookers, busy valuing souvenirs brought back from down-time gates. The agents’ main job on station was to establish taxes due on whatever was brought up time from the gates and to levy fines for anyone caught smuggling out contraband. They searched luggage—and occasionally, the tourists and the couriers who ran supplies and mail back and forth through Primary—for anything undeclared that might be considered taxable. At one tax kiosk, a middle-aged lady with diamonds on every finger was protesting loudly that she hadn’t any idea how those granulated Etruscan gold earrings and necklaces had come to be sewn into her Victorian corset. She hadn’t put them in her suitcase, why, they must have been planted in her luggage by some ruffian . . .

  “Tell it to the judge,” the red-clad BATF agent said in a bored tone, “or pay the taxes.”

  “But I tell you—“

  “Lady, you can either pay the five-thousand-dollar tax fine due on this jewelry, or you can turn it over to a representative of the International Federation of Art Temporally Stolen, to see that it’s returned to its proper place of origin, or you can go to prison for violating the Prime Rule of time travel. You can’t profit illegally from a time gate. Robert Li is the designated IFARTS agent for Shangri-La Station. His studio is in Little Agora. You have exactly a quarter of an hour to dispose of it there or pay the taxes due here.”

  The woman sputtered indignantly for a long moment, then snapped, “Oh, all right! Will you take a check?”

  “Yes, ma’am, if you have three forms of identification with a permanent address that matches the information you gave in your records when you entered Shangri-La Station. Make it payable to the Bureau of Access Time Functions.”

  “Fine!” She was digging into a large, exquisitely wrought handbag. That bag had walked out of some designer’s studio in Paris, or Skeeter didn’t know high fashion. And since Skeeter had made it a lifelong practice to keep tabs on haute couture as well as cheap knock-offs, as a way of distinguishing rich, potential marks from wannabe pretenders, he was pretty sure it was the real McCoy. She dragged out a checkbook cover made from genuine ostrich leather with a diamond insignia in one corner and scribbled out a check. Five thousand was probably what she dropped on restaurant tables as tips in the course of an average month. Skeeter shook his head. The richer they were, the more they tried to pull, sneaking out contraband past customs.

  The BATF agent verified her identification and accepted the check.

  The lady stuffed her Etruscan gold back into her corset with wounded dignity and snapped shut the case, moving deeper into the departures area with an autocratic sniff.

  “Next!”

  Gate announcements sounded every ten minutes until the five-minute mark, after which the loudspeaker warnings began coming every minute, reminding stragglers they were running out of time. At the three-minute warning, a familiar voice from somewhere behind him startled Skeeter into glancing around.

  “Skeeter!”

  He caught a glimpse of Rachel Eisenstein pushing through the crowd. She was panting hard, clearly having run most of the way from the infirmary.

  “Rachel? What’s wrong?” He entertained momentary, panic-stricken visions of Bergitta having thrown a blood clot from that beating or something else equally life threatening. As Shangri-La’s Station’s chief of medicine pushed her way through to Skeeter and Molly, he grasped her hand. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  Rachel blinked in startled surprise. “Wrong? Oh, Skeeter, I’m sorry, of course you’d think something’s happened to Bergitta. Nothing’s wrong at all, other than I just finished triage from that riot and decided I’d better work Primary, too, just in case.” She patted a heavy hip pack. “Brought all the essentials. I was just trying to get here before the gate opened, hoping I might find someone I recognized who already had a good spot. Hi, Molly!”

  Skeeter drew a long, deep breath and slowly relaxed. “Well, we’ve got a decent spot. You’re welcome to share.”

  “Thanks, this is a great spot.” Rachel pushed back damp hair from her brow. “God, I hope we don’t have another riot on the heels of that mess.”

  “Me, either,” Skeeter muttered. “Because now I’ve got two ladies to look out for, if the fists start flying.”

  The slim surgeon smiled, dark eyes sparkling. “Skeeter, I’m touched, really. I didn’t know you cared. What brings you out here in all this madness?”

  “Me?” Skeeter shrugged, wondering if she’d believe the truth. “I, uh, was wondering how many pickpockets and con artists I might spot on their way in.”

  Rachel Eisenstein shot him a surprisingly intent stare. “I have been paying attention, you know, Skeeter. I’m not sure, exactly, what triggered it, although I suspect it had something to do with Ianira.”

  He flushed. “You could say that.” Skeeter shrugged. “I’m just trying to make things better around here. For the down-timers.” He glanced at Molly, whose eyes reflected a quiet pride that closed his throat. “Folks like Molly, here, they’ve got a rough enough time as it is, trying to survive, without some jerk stealing them blind.” Skeeter shrugged again and changed the subject. “I’ve been keeping count of outgoing departures. I was up to nearly a hundred before you got here. Want to bet we get more inbound than we send back outbound?”

  Rachel chuckled. “No bets!”

  Skeeter grinned. “Wise woman.”

  The klaxon sounded again, blasting away at Skeeter’s eardrums. “Your attention please. Gate One is due to open in one min
ute. 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 . . .”

  The departures in line hastily gathered up their luggage. Those still at the customs tables scrambled to pay the astromical taxes demanded as a condition of departure. Then the savage lash of subharmonics which heralded the opening of a major temporal gate struck Skeeter square in the skull bones. A fierce headache comprised of equal parts low blood sugar, stress, and gate subharmonics blossomed, causing him to wince. Skeeter resisted the urge to cover his ears, knowing it wouldn’t shut out the painful noise that wasn’t a noise, and simply waited.

  The sight was always impressive as Primary opened up out of thin air. A point of darkness appeared five feet above the Commons floor. It grew rapidly, amoeba-like, its black, widening center an oil stain spreading across the air. The outer edges of the dark hole in reality dopplered through the whole visible spectrum, with the spreading fringes shimmering like a runaway rainbow. A stir ran through the spectators. Every person in the station had seen temporal gates open before, of course, but the phenomenon never failed to raise chill bumps or the fine hairs along the back of the neck as the fabric of reality shifted and split itself wide open . . .

  A flurry of startled grunts and a rising flood of profanities sounded behind them. Skeeter turned to crane his head above the crowd. “Aw, nuts . . .”

  Literally.

  The Angels of Grace Militia, at least the portion that had escaped arrest during the riot, was on a crash-course drive for Primary, shoving their way through by brute force.