The Cutting Room: A Time Travel Thriller

by Edward W. Robertson

  She sighed into her beer. "Two weeks won't be nearly enough, will it?"

  The light spilling through the bubbly glass of the windows was firm and yellow, but the earliness of the afternoon hour did nothing to dissuade men from ordering themselves a glass or four. The locals were grimy, hands callused, dirt worked deep in the folds of their necks and faces. They looked rough, but most were happy to accept a drink on someone else's coin, and to talk at length about where they'd been and the land they knew so well. No matter how long they'd lived here or how much they'd seen, none knew about Ottoway.

  After a couple fruitless hours, I made my way out back to the water closet. It was tight and smelled terrible. A bucket of corncobs sat in the corner. I didn't put together what they were for until I was on my way back to the saloon.

  Inside the splintery wooden door, I hardly recognized Vette. Her hair was curled, cunningly pinned in place, elegant against her simple doeskin jacket. My eyes made even less sense of the broad-shouldered man standing next to her in the act of reaching for her hip.

  She didn't say a word, just snapped her elbow into his chin. His teeth clacked; he staggered. A couple men at a nearby table looked as if they couldn't decide whether to laugh or stomp on their hats in outrage. The man steadied himself, wiped the blood from his mouth, and stalked back toward Vette. She bent her knees and raised her guard in the Kone Position. The man was about to die.

  He froze, as if reading the careful alignment of her Academy-honed muscles.

  I stepped up and murmured into his ear. "No matter how the next ten seconds play out, they make you less of a man."

  He swung his head toward me. His eyes were dark, suspicious as a stray dog's. As hungry, too. "Bitch hit me first."

  Vette twitched. I glared at her, then softened my look and raised my eyebrows at the man. "That 'bitch' is my wife. And I'm lucky if I can touch her without pulling back a stump."

  He snorted. "Don't envy you."

  "Laugh all you want. On the trail, there's nobody I'd rather have at my back."

  "Even so. Don't take kindly to being struck."

  "Let me soothe the ache with liquid anesthetic." I gestured to the bartender, who moved into action as if he'd been waiting for my signal, pouring a couple fingers of whiskey into two glasses. I found Vette's eyes and gestured upstairs. She shook her head, searched the ceiling, then headed for the wooden staircase to the second floor.

  The man, who'd decided to save face figuratively and literally, set his elbows on the bar next to me and accepted his drink. "Hell of an elbow she's got. For the record, I didn't know the lady was married."

  I didn't ask why that made a difference. "She's tough. Sometimes I like it. Sometimes I don't."

  "Suppose sharing the pants makes the laundry easier." He laughed but stuck out his hand, which was as scaly and worn as the bluffs of basalt ringing the basin. "Name's Mabry."

  We talked a spell, as they say, about Brownville, how it was growing, the potential of the plains and hills. I told him one day it would be big enough to rival anything back East.

  "Don't know about that," he said, itching his beard. "But one of these days we might get ourselves a school."

  Mabry was a prospector, lured here three years ago by the glint of gold. Brownville had been a quarter the size then, he said. A mean place where a woman couldn't walk down the street and a man had best run too. Much better these days, he allowed, although now and then a jagged rock of the frontier poked through the blanket of civilization that had arrived with the entrepreneurs selling boots and tools and women to the prospectors.

  He didn't know where or what Ottoway was, either, and he knew every worm under every rock in the territory (although at this point he was saturated enough to make the same claim about the moon). The sun cut through the uneven windows, turning the sawdust golden yellow. I checked my pocketwatch.

  "Better get back upstairs before my wife declares me dead and remarries." I stood, a little unsteady. "If I've got more questions, can I come to you?"

  "As long as you're buying, I'm talking."

  We shook hands again. I wavered up the stairs to the creaking boards of the second floor. Inside our room, Vette lay on the bed, boots dangling off the edge.

  "Have fun?" she said.

  "I was gathering intel."

  "You smell like whiskey."

  I shed my coat. "Hazard of the trade."

  "Is this how it's going to be? You stagger around some dirty bar while I wait upstairs like a caged bird?"

  I squinted at her. "Listen, you're the one throwing elbows. You don't want to get ushered backstage, then act like a proper wife."

  She snorted. "Then why don't you act like my husband?"

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "What kind of proper man lets his woman get felt up by some yokel whose beard looks grafted from the back of a bear? I'm supposed to stand there and take it?"

  "Of course not."

  "Then let me be me." She rolled off the bed and stalked to the window. "If I punch out some dirty old miner, it isn't going to suddenly convince these people women should have the vote."

  "Message received." I pressed the heels of my palms against my back and stretched. I hoped we didn't have to do any more riding soon. "I talked him around to our side, so we've got a local contact now. For whatever good it will do us. Nobody seems to know what Ottoway is."

  "Maybe we're in the wrong when."

  "We just got here. 'Ottoway' could be code or a reference to something that hasn't happened yet. But if the daisu came here, it's to change something. That's what we're looking for."

  "Let's hope it's a little more obvious than the ol' flap of a butterfly." She eyed a carriage clapping down the rutted street. "So what's our next step?"

  "Homework." I went to my saddlebag and pulled out my bible. "Then we'll hit the streets. Get a feel for town."

  The book was heavy and looked years old despite being printed by the Pods minutes before we left. It was filled with every primary source document of the period the Pod had been able to scrape together, which wasn't much; the machines had no physical presence here, and were reliant on tapping into the networks of the digital age to cull information. Even so, the book, with its smell of leather, paper, and must, contained several hundred pages of newspaper articles, longhand letters, and lists of names, places, and events. Nothing after the present date, of course. Couldn't risk contaminating them with the knowledge of their own future.

  In practice, this meant we were three-quarters blind. The book's records were as spotty as an uncertain rain. Unlikely to hold any answers. I paged through it anyway. Besides what I'd seen in movies and experienced during our pre-jump AVI training, I knew virtually nothing about the Frontier Era, let alone this world's particular path through it. Wouldn't hurt to brush up.

  I sat in the lumpy chair and plowed in. Vette reclined on the bed, leafing back and forth through her own book. According to the letters and articles, Brownville was bursting with gold. One clipping claimed you had to walk down the streets with a pan on your head lest a nugget fall from the sky and knock you out cold. The vim and excitement of the newspaper clippings were at stark odds with the personal letters, which detailed hard work and mounting disappointment punctuated by gold strikes that always turned out more shallow and short-lived than the writers' initial reports.

  Such violent swings of optimism and depression caught me off guard. Not that we don't have little things like emotions in Primetime. But reading these letters—some of which, relative to my current time, had been written just days earlier—I was struck with an ocean-deep sense of yearning for and belief in a future without limit. The lure and fear of the frontier, I supposed. The potential of the unknown. In Primetime, there's no corner of the map that hasn't been marked a thousand times. We don't know our future or anything like that, but wherever you're born, you're guaranteed a healthy life free of physical want.

  We have excitement, but it's different from what I felt in
the book. It's muted. More closely tethered to reality. I envied the Brownville beyond the window for its boundless hope, but I pitied them more for the inevitable crash.

  After a couple hours, I'd had enough. I clapped the book closed and began the laborious process of lacing up my boots. Vette grinned in sympathy and did the same. As we left the room, I offered my elbow. She snorted but took it.

  Sunset painted the streets in orange light and long shadows. Prospectors and farmers trudged in from the outskirts, bowed by their packs, leading equally tired mules. Other men smoked tobacco on stoops, poised like owls who aren't yet hungry, as if waiting for the night to begin. Main Street was lined with shops and two churches and another few inns, saloons, and brothels. It smelled like dung and smoke and dust.

  "Were there any women in the past?" Vette muttered.

  "If not, it would explain why everyone looks so grumpy."

  We weren't dressed fancy, but we drew looks anyway. More accurately, Vette drew them, and I got what attention was left over. Hadn't foreseen that. Was going to make things tougher.

  A smatter of tents and shacks marked the end of the city. Grass and wind lay beyond. The ribbon of the river wound to the north, banked by trees and green thickets. Camps and claims pocked the plains and hills, woodsmoke climbing in isolated columns. However hard these people hoped for the future, they'd never believe how it would look just ten generations later.

  We turned around. Servants lit torches outside the hotels and casinos. Back at our lodging, the same bartender I'd seen that afternoon gave me a nod. We trudged up the stairs.

  Inside our room, Vette tossed her hat on the bed. "Well, that was pointless."

  I shrugged. "This is how it always goes. The more squares we paint in, the clearer the picture gets."

  I set up my blankets on the floor. She was right, though. This felt different. We had no crime, no victims or perpetrators. We didn't even know for sure that someone from Primetime was trespassing here. All we had was a word, and for all I knew, it was gibberish.

  In the morning, I went downstairs for breakfast. A teen boy manned the bar and kitchen. I got eggs, cornmeal, biscuits, gravy, and coffee. After he brought it to the table, he drummed his fingers against his leg.

  "You Mr. Lewis?"

  I nodded; that was the name I'd left on the ledger. "That's me."

  He smiled and produced a scrap of paper. "For you. Enjoy your meal."

  I did, but not until I'd read the note. It was from Mabry, who could have used a few more years at school, but what he lacked in literacy he made up for in helpfulness. He had a friend in the hills who might be able to lend us a hand. Already sent a letter of introduction ahead. If we wanted to pay the old man a visit, Mabry had included directions.

  His map was crude, but looked simple enough for me to follow. Vette joined me mid-meal and was served a plate identical to mine.

  She stared at it. "I guess the menu is 'whatever's on the stove.'"

  She stopped complaining once she tasted it; the food here was simple and rough, but despite the fact I would surely be horrified by the hygiene standards of the kitchen, not to mention the butcher, it tasted cleaner than anything I'd ever eaten.

  I told Vette about Mabry's friend and she agreed we might as well check it out. I sent the boy to saddle up our horses. Just before we left, the whiskered bartender showed up and gave me a little wave.

  Outside, an offshore breeze carried the smell of the sea, which was a nice change from the plumbery stank of the town. We followed the trail dead north. A few farms clung to the banks of the river. Now and then a rut branched from the trail and led to a distant homestead. The sky was blue and vast. Birds chirped from the shrubs. The cool morning warmed quickly. Mountains fenced the basin, high and brown.

  It was a good fifteen miles until the land sloped into the foothills. There was no wind and behind us we could see all the way to the blue sea. A few pines found homes in the slopes alongside tall stalks and fat succulents. At a fork Mabry had marked as Three Boulders—impossible to miss; a triangle of shoulder-high stones marked it—we diverted to an even narrower trail. A modest pine forest sprouted from the soil. After a short ride, fresh-dug holes pocked the land. A cabin rested in the shade of the trees. As I made to holler, a white-bearded man emerged from out back and raised his hand.

  "Are you Mr. Babsen?" I called.

  "Call me Jude," he said. His voice was as thin and tough as scraped leather. He wore a corduroy jacket and patched-up denim pants. He moved a little stiffly across the pale green grass, but his back was straight enough. "You must be Lewis. Mabry said you'd be this way."

  "I'm searching for somewhere," I said. "A place my brother-in-law mentioned in a letter before he went missing. It's called Ottoway."

  Babsen squinted into the afternoon sun. "And you think it's 'round here?"

  "Sure do."

  "Well, I ain't heard of it, but to these weathered ears it sounds Rohinny."

  "Rohinny?"

  "As in, of the Rohin." The old man waved to the north. "Tribe from yonder hills. Looks bleak, but there's lakes up there. Its people don't venture down much. Makes a man think they know something we don't."

  Vette edged her horse forward. "But you've never heard the word itself?"

  "Can't recall it."

  "Are the Rohin friendly?" I said.

  Babsen chuckled, greatly pleased. "Among each other? Must be. You or me try to get near 'em, they'll likely be the last friends we ever try to make."

  I nodded. "I thank you for your time. If you remember more, or you need a favor of your own, we'll be in town a couple weeks longer."

  His shaggy white eyebrows climbed halfway to his scalp. "You rode all this way to ask about a bit of babble?"

  I gave him a half-smile. "And I'll keep riding until I find it."

  He shuffed with laughter and gave me a tip of his floppy cap. I turned my horse around and began the descent to the basin.

  "What about the tribe?" Vette said once we were beyond earshot.

  "They sound hostile."

  "Since when did that stop you?"

  I gazed across the sun-warmed grass. "Seems smarter to try to find someone who speaks Rohin in Brownville before we risk planting our graves in the mountains."

  She jutted her lower lip and nodded. "Okay, that is a much better idea."

  The return was entirely uneventful. Men ambled down the Brownville thoroughfare. We went back to the hotel to wash up before poking around to find someone who spoke Rohin. Behind the bar, fresh bruises reddened the skin beneath the barkeep's beard. I murmured to Vette, sending her upstairs.

  I cocked my head at the bartender. "Well, if there was another fight, my wife's got an alibi this time."

  He looked up, embarrassed, but chuckled through his beard. "Place like this, you know how it is. A man who sells liquor's as foolish as his clients."

  I wasn't convinced; he wouldn't meet my eyes. "Is that all that happened?"

  "Would it matter otherwise?"

  "Can't yet say."

  "You the law?"

  "Not at all."

  "Then what's your care?"

  I gave him a wry look. "A man's got to look out for the one who keeps a roof over his head."

  He laughed again, a burst of relief, then glanced around the common room. It was well into the afternoon but the day was quiet. He snagged a brown bottle from under the bar and poured a couple shots.

  "Guess it's time I told the stories for once." He pushed one of the glasses my way. We drank. The whiskey tore against my throat. He didn't seem to notice its sting himself. He took another look around before going on. "Not much of a story, though. Man wants to buy and I don't want to sell."

  I pointed at the ceiling. "This place is yours?"

  "Sure enough."

  "Explains why you never leave it."

  He chuckled again. "And why I'm no no hurry to be rid of it. But when the man's money didn't convince me, he tried his roughnecks' fists instead."


  "Why's he so hot to get hold of this place?" I held up one hand for peace. "Not that anyone wouldn't be, of course."

  "Beats me. Man's been buying up land all across the basin."

  "What's his name?"

  He gave me a look sharp enough to split a bison's skull. "This is where curiosity and a cat become short-lived acquaintances."

  I leaned closer and gave a careful glance down the bar. "I'm here to find my brother-in-law. He disappeared four weeks ago. May have been a dispute. Possibly over a piece of land."

  "Wife's brother?"

  "That's right."

  "Hell." He sighed expressionlessly. "I'm about to make some noise. A wise man won't listen. But I know when it comes to blood, wise takes a nap."

  I nodded. "Were it otherwise."

  "Silas Hockery."

  "He been in town long?"

  "In Brownville, who has?" He poured us another drink. "Year or so. He's from down south, San Claredo or the like. Imagine he wants to buy out the ranchland before the sharks swim in from back East."

  I tipped back my glass. "I appreciate it."

  The bartender didn't look happy with himself. "And you ought to forget it. The man rides with his own law."

  "If he did something to me and mine, he'll learn the law isn't all he has to answer to."

  The man gave me a careful look. "You in the war?"

  I paused a moment. This place's civil war—specifically, the one that wracked the nation known most often as America, Amerigo, or Columbia—wasn't due for another thirty-odd years. He might be referring to the southern border war, but he might also be talking about a conflict that was unique to this particular timestream.

  "I've been around," I said.

  "Well, I hope you stay that way." He winked. "And if not, forgive me when I ask your wife for a walk."

  I snorted. "Like as not, my wife's fool brother is off chasing a would-be bride of his own. But if Hockery's people come around, you let me know."

  We shook on it. I confessed I'd forgotten his name; he told me it was Darrow. As long as I was there, I asked if he knew anyone who spoke Rohin. He allowed that Mrs. Littlewind might—she'd married one of the "savages"—and while he believed she was out of town for another couple days, he offered to write me a letter of introduction, which I accepted and carried back to the room.