The Cutting Room: A Time Travel Thriller

by Edward W. Robertson

  Vette sat by the window's waning light flipping through her book. "How's the booze today?"

  "Informative." I gave her the rundown on Silas Hockery. "Could be buying up cheap land in the past to leverage in the future. Makes sense."

  "No it doesn't. Why would someone from Primetime care about being rich in Brownville? That's like trying to get out of the rain by jumping in a lake."

  "I don't know."

  "You don't know? How can you track a crime if you don't have a motive?"

  "I find it's best to leave motives till later," I said. "Look at what's happening, not why. Following the why can mislead you. Much safer to assess a thing has happened than to try to guess why someone might have made it happen."

  She stared at me. "But you're following his motive right now. You think Hockery's involved in a centuries-long land speculation deal. Otherwise you wouldn't care about him at all."

  I scowled. "We're not exactly drowning in leads. I'm just following the best ones we've got. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a letter to write."

  I ensconced myself at the desk. The drawer held pen, paper, ink, a proper Bible, and two dead silverfish. It took me a minute to figure out how to get the antique pen to start spitting ink, and I had to write slowly to match my handwriting to this world's—Primetime's lower case a's are rounder, and we use a tiny little hook on our lower case l's to differentiate them from the number 1—but within a few minutes, I composed a missive to Mrs. Littlewind. I took Darrow's letter of introduction, stopped downstairs for directions to her house and the courthouse, and entered the grubby streets, which were starting to come alive with prospectors returning from the fields to blow their gold dust on liquor, games, and sex.

  Mrs. Littlewind lived across town on a prim hill elevated above the smoke and the smell. Her fence was raw pinewood, but the house walls were whitewashed. I knocked, just in case Darrow was mistaken about her temporary absence, then slid both letters through the brass slot in her door.

  Back toward the middle of town, the courthouse was just a couple blocks away from Darrow's joint. It too was wood, cut so fresh I could still smell the sap. It was closed. No hours posted. I headed back to the hotel.

  We dressed for evening and returned to the bar to buy the locals drinks and ply them for information. I dropped a few hints that I was interested in Brownville real estate, both to sell and to buy; most of these fishing expeditions led nowhere, but one patch-bearded young man smirked and noted I wasn't the only one looking to buy up lots. Hockery had come by his claim just last week. According to the kid, Hockery had made offers on a third of the holdings in the hills. Clearly the businessman from San Claredo expected a strike, but the kid was too smart to sell his future short.

  That was the best I did on the night. Vette's intel matched mine: one of the men she'd spoken to—a man whose pinstriped suit was all at odds with his brambly beard, and who'd bought her drinks instead—had sold to Hockery the month before. She'd even gotten a rough location. Back in our room, we marked it on Mabry's map of the hills.

  I woke late. Even my Primetime-enhanced liver wasn't capable of wrestling with Old West whiskey without suffering a few punches. I was stiff from sleeping on the floor. Vette looked a little puffy around the eyes, too. I went downstairs for coffee and to jaw with Darrow for a minute, then returned upstairs to dress proper, tying off drawstrings and laces. These people were going to rejoice once they invented elastic. Would probably drop dead if they saw conformus.

  Ready at last to meet the day, we exited into a not-quite-warm spring morning. A buffeting breeze stirred Vette's curls, which were notably less splendid than when we'd arrived. We had a week and a half until the Pods yanked us back to Primetime. It felt like plenty of time, but before engine-powered travel and electronic communication, days can get chewed up in a hurry.

  It was nearing midday, and with most of the town's surplus men off in the wilds chasing their fortune, women took the opportunity to walk their children through the quiet streets. It felt like a different world.

  But we weren't here to study the demographics of ancient Brownville. I led the way to the courthouse. Inside, a clerk greeted us, but more than his teeth were crooked; it took two bits to convince him to search the property records, and another two after that to search them well. When he brought back his results, I was ready to demand my money back, and a cut of his hide to boot: he had a single transaction, executed four months ago by Silas Hockery, for the acquisition of a plot known as Green Valley Ranch.

  "This can't be right," I said. "That man's bought land from one end of the basin to the other."

  The clerk took his gaze away from Vette for long enough to give me a concerned look. "Are you sure you have the correct name?"

  "Is he incorporated? Can you check under that?"

  The man shook his head. "I have no record of Mr. Hockery being associated with any other group or interest."

  "Who would have those records?" Vette said.

  "The county seat in Scovus," the man smiled. "Failing that, the capital office in San Claredo ought to do the trick."

  I got him to earn his keep by pointing out the Green Valley Ranch on the map, then headed back to the hotel. As the staff readied our horses, I composed two records requests, one to Scovus, one to San Claredo. Darrow told me he'd post them in time to make the southbound 4:09. With those wheels set in motion, Vette and I rode northwest into the dry, open land.

  It looked more or less the same as our passage to see Mabry's friend in the northern hills: weeds, pale green grass, wind-swept dirt. After several miles, we crossed a hogback ridge, but the other side was just as blank. Another half mile into the ride, I feared we'd gone too far, wandered off track. I stopped to consult the map, which wasn't exactly heavy on detail.

  A moan drifted on the wind. I scanned the poky shrubs. Moments later, it repeated. A couple hundred yards away, a brown cow gazed back at us from the weeds. A dozen more speckled the patchy fields.

  "Must be the place," I said.

  Vette rolled her eyes. "I can see why a fiendish time traveler would be so eager to get his hands on this prime slice of turf."

  It was about as green as it was a valley, which was to say just barely. According to records, the plot continued north all the way to the foothills, but the land that way looked no richer. As I glanced around for buildings or a homestead, a rifle crackled through the bleak skies.

  "Was that for us?" Vette said.

  "Close enough to be a warning shot." I raised both hands, then waved back and forth. The unseen shooter fired again, the bullet traveling close enough that my horse twitched, stirring the dust. I swore. "I get the impression we're not wanted."

  By the time we got back to Brownville, dusk was stretching its arms and ambling out of bed, cooling the dust and tempting the prospectors back to the streets. Darrow let me know my letters had gone out on schedule. I thanked him and took up my usual spot at the bar. We bought drinks and swapped stories with the locals for hours, but the scattered chatter offered nothing new: a few tales of offers made by Hockery, rarely accepted by suspicious miners who figured they must be on to a pretty good thing if a man like Hockery wanted their plots.

  By the time we called it a night, we were too tired from riding, drinking, and wagging our tongues to rehash the day. Not that there was much to discuss. It was potentially interesting that Hockery had the single purchase in the public record (had he left it public on purpose, or had he been unable to scrub it from record?), but it wouldn't mean much until word came back from San Claredo about what else was on file.

  I figured that could take as long as a week. Three days later, with our time in Brownville halfway spent, I still had no reply from the courthouses, but another letter waited downstairs instead.

  Its author had heard about my interest in a number of land transactions. He had information detailing their purpose. Due to the particulars of the situation, he had to be vague—he couldn't even give his name—but if I cared to meet
him at Vance Canyon that afternoon, he would provide everything he knew.

  "Man, this sounds like a classic trap," Vette said.

  "Could be."

  "One that's so old the Romans would have laughed."

  "I don't think so," I said. "If he's local and fears we're getting into the real estate game for ourselves, he hasn't even had time to check us out yet. And if he's a Primetime trespasser who suspects we're CR, the last thing he'd want to do is confirm the agency's suspicions by killing us. Worst case, he'd look to waste our time, throw us off. Anyway, what else do you have on our plate right now?"

  That convinced her, although she insisted on bringing the rifles, which we did any time we left town. I checked in with Darrow for directions and a description of the man, but the letter had been delivered by one of the town couriers.

  Vance Canyon lay in the hills of the peninsula to the southeast. We made good time on the trail, a path that was centuries old, dating back to the first continental explorers, possibly the native tribes. It carried us up through a crease in the cliffs. Above, trees grew tall and thick, watered by coastal wind and rain. After so much time in the drylands, the smell of chlorophyll was damp and cloying.

  The old trail went right past Vance Canyon. Darrow had told me I'd know the entrance by looking for the Grove, a copse of palm trees some bygone explorer must have planted years and years before. He claimed they'd be impossible to miss, and he was right: among the arboreal mixture of pines, oaks, and towering magnolias, the palms stuck out exactly like the unnatural flora they were. I guided my horse between them. Shallow cliffs rose to either side.

  "Awfully remote," Vette said.

  Fallen palm fronds littered the ground, brown and brittle. "Perfect place to ensure he isn't seen meeting with us."

  "Or burying our dead bodies."

  I slowed my horse. "How are you with a rifle?"

  She gave me a sneaky smile. "Specialized in antique firearms at the Academy."

  "Why the hell would you do that? We're almost never sent to periods that use them."

  "I thought it would make them more likely to assign those periods to me," she said, stung. "And because I like them. A gun should kick back."

  "Huh," I said. "Why don't you head up that ridge and cover me?"

  I tried to make it sound patronizing, as if I were humoring her. The truth was I was starting to get spooked. We were out in the middle of nowhere. But I didn't want that nervous energy splashing over onto her, especially if she was about to have her eye behind the sights and her finger on the trigger.

  She frowned, gauging my tone, then nodded. "Sure. Better safe than sorry, right?"

  We backtracked past the canyon's mouth, then tied up her horse. She slung her rifle over her shoulder, gave me a little wave, and started up the embankment, rocks clacking under her feet. I gave her a minute to ascend before I continued into the canyon.

  The walls rose, throwing the canyon floor into shadows. The trees stopped, replaced by grass that climbed to my horse's knees. A hummingbird elevated from a patch of bell-shaped red flowers, hung thirty feet in the air, and swooped away with an eerie buzz.

  The canyon dog-legged to the left. I rode around the bend, glancing up at the left treeline to try to spot Vette. I saw no sign of her. Given the nature of her mission, I supposed that was a good thing.

  Another hundred yards and the canyon terminated in a wall of blank gray stone. The grassy floor was empty. The letter had asked to meet at three that afternoon. I checked my pocketwatch. Nearly half an hour early. The afternoon air had gone still and damp. I dismounted, hung my rifle over my shoulder, and walked around the face of the cliffs to scope it out and make sure I hadn't missed a passage through the rock.

  I still couldn't see any sign of Vette up above. Except where I'd come in, the grass looked undisturbed. I sighed and prepared to wait.

  A shot crackled across the canyon. Flakes of rock spat from the wall behind me. The ricochet droned away, thudding into the ground to my right. I flung myself flat and buried myself in the thigh-high grass.

  A second shot echoed from the trees rimming the canyon's upper edges, the crack bouncing back and forth between the close cliffs. I played it out in my head. If the attacker couldn't see me in the grass, he'd shoot my horse next. I could try to wait in hiding until nightfall, then crawl out the canyon mouth, but he wasn't going to sit on his ass all that time. Not after it was clear I wasn't moving. Not when a change in perspective or a sudden gust of wind could expose me to his shot.

  A third round went off, followed quickly by a fourth. A man cried out. I poked my head up for a look at the cliffs. Trees waited in the sunlight, shadowing the canyon floor. I weaved toward my horse, took cover behind it for another look at the heights, then climbed up and spurred it toward the mouth of the canyon.

  There, I hopped down to untether Vette's horse. It snorted, shifting its hooves. Rifle in hand, I scanned the slopes. Birds cheeped from the branches. A hesitant wind picked up, chilling the muggy stillness. A branch snapped. I darted behind Vette's mount and pointed my gun upslope.

  She slunk forward, carrying her gun in front. She saw my figure and swerved behind a trunk. Recognizing me, she emerged and hurried to join me. We mounted up and rode back toward the trail, swinging north through the forested hills.

  "Who was it?" I said once we'd put a mile behind us with no sign of pursuit.

  "Bob Gorgonzola," she said. "How the hell should I know? Guy with a rifle. A beard."

  "Did he look local? Primetime?"

  "I was paying more attention to where he was pointing his gun than his fashion sense or gestures, but if my life depended on it—which it actually might, huh?—I'd say local."

  "Though if Hockery were Primetime, it would make sense to use as many locals as possible to cover his trail." I glanced back. The coastal wind followed us down the trail, shuffling the layer of leaves. "At least we learned something. Someone's noticed we're here, and they want us dead."

  "That's a good thing?"

  "Better than not knowing."

  We dropped down from the woody hills into the scrubby plains. I didn't have a good read on what to do next. If none of our pending leads ran out, maybe the best course would be to bide our time until the Pods pulled us back, then return to Brownville a few months or years further down the timeline to see if the situation had clarified.

  Then again, if we went back to Mara empty-handed, I wasn't sure we'd get a second shot. Each trip consumes massive energy. On top of that, unless we're faced with clear and compelling damage to the timeline, our policy is always one of nonintervention. Even if Hockery's actions were flagged as suspicious, the Pods wouldn't be likely to send us around for another look until and unless they turned up fresh evidence of their own.

  Darrow had a letter for me at the hotel. It was from San Claredo. They had records of Hockery's transactions, but in order to view them, we'd have to visit the courthouse in person.

  "They can't spare ten minutes to copy this stuff out?" I groused to Vette. "I would have paid."

  She sat at the table cleaning her rifle. "Someone just tried to shoot you. Maybe it's not such a bad idea to leave town for a couple days."

  I didn't like the idea of taking my eyes away from Brownville for even that long, but it wasn't like I had a lot of other options. Would do us good to go underground for the moment, too. Part of the job is to get shot at, to put yourself between the victim and their victimizer, but when the target you've painted on yourself glows too bright, it's best to give it time to fade.

  I made preparations, heading to the train station to confirm schedules and purchase tickets for the following afternoon. After asking around, I located Mabry playing cards at one of the casinos down the street, and he agreed to keep his eyes open while I was out of town. At the general store, I picked up travel food—cheese, salami, bread.

  "What's that?" Vette said when I showed her our spread.

  "Victuals."

  "We're only headin
g to San Claredo, capital of the territory. Not likely to have a little luxury like food."

  I gave her a look. "Bringing our own food means we don't have to interrupt ourselves to find it. And that if we go on the run, we've got a few days before we have to worry about anything more than our safety."

  She picked at a burr in her boot lace. "You're such a boy scout. No wonder Mara loves you."

  I didn't feel like arguing, or like pushing this toward what some might call a teachable moment. I might have been training her, but Vette's career in the CR was ultimately none of my business. Only she could decide to learn, advance, stick with it. If she didn't want to do that, better for her to wash out now than to stick around long enough to get someone—or someone's whole world—into trouble.

  That night at the bar, there was talk one of the prospectors had gone missing. Hadn't been seen in a week. Wasn't at his camp. When someone asked who had last seen him, the whole room got quiet. Darrow and I met eyes. If anyone knew the answer or had a theory, they kept it to themselves. Considering how much everyone was drinking, and how happy men are to declare themselves the authority, their silence said more than words.

  I went to bed earlier than normal, meaning to be rested for the trip to San Claredo. There was another letter waiting for me in the morning. After yesterday's misadventure in the canyon, I was trepidatious toward its contents, but the handwriting on the envelope exterior was elegantly feminine. It was from Mrs. Littlewind. She would be happy to see me any time I wished to learn more about the Rohin.

  I had a good seven hours until the train was scheduled to arrive. Vette was still asleep, so I headed across town to the widow Littlewind's hilltop home, letting myself through the pinewood fence and knocking on the front door with hat in hand.

  A middle-aged woman answered the door. Her features were small and delicate, but there was an outsized curiosity in her eyes. A hint of defiance, too.