The Cutting Room: A Time Travel Thriller

by Edward W. Robertson

  "I'm Mr. Lewis," I said, keeping my place on her wooden porch. "If you've got a minute, I'd love to ask you a few questions."

  She smiled unreadably. "So you want to know about the mysterious Rohin."

  "To be quite honest, I'm not sure this has anything to do with them."

  Mrs. Littlewind hung in the doorway, considering. "No matter. Given how much grief I've had to eat for my chosen course, I'll risk taking a bite out of one more fool."

  I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be insulted, but I didn't care either way. She allowed me inside and pulled the curtains on the sitting room, showering daylight over the stuffed chairs. I accepted her offer of coffee, then explained my story.

  "'Ottoway'?" Her face pinched in thought. "Yes, it's a Rohin word."

  I leaned forward. "Do you know what it means?"

  "Birth. Beginning. The start of a cycle. One of those handy little words that can mean anything from a chick hatching from an egg to the founding of the world at the hands of the gods." She sipped her mug and gave me a small smile. "They've got more than a few, you know. Are you a Christian?"

  "When I'm in Christian lands."

  She laughed, bringing warmth to her mocking smile. "Are you from somewhere that isn't? Your skin looks plenty pale to me."

  "Maybe that's because I expected to be traveling among pale people." I smiled back, but I didn't want to linger on the subject. "Is there anywhere around here called Ottoway? If I can find it, I may be able to find my wife's brother."

  "Sure there is," she said. My heart lifted. She saw my expression and laughed. "I told you, it's a word of multitudes. The Rohin will call the year's first blueberry patch 'Ottoway.' Or the house where their wife gave birth. Sometimes they use it for any place they're seeing for the first time."

  "Oh."

  "I'm not much help, am I?"

  I shrugged. "At least you're not shooting at me."

  She laughed again. Despite the death of her Rohin husband, as well as whatever the two of them had had to put up with together, she'd hung tight to her sense of humor. I still had a few hours until the train would depart, so I stuck around, listening to her tell stories about the Rohin, how she'd met her husband on a trip north and talked him into leaving his people to be with her in Brownville. Finally, I excused myself to return to the hotel. She told me to come back around whenever I liked.

  I would have, if not for the facts that a) I had to invent a constant stream of lies about my past and b) I was only there to hunt down a suspected and massive illegal time-traveling operation. Without technology to function as my eyes, ears, and voice, I was forced to do far more direct social interaction than I was used to. To my surprise, I was enjoying myself.

  Back at Darrow's, Vette hadn't even started to pack. I expressed my dismay.

  She rolled her eyes. "It'll take me ten whole minutes. You've been gone for three hours."

  "Running down a lead." I told her what Mrs. Littlewind had said.

  "It took her three hours to define a word?"

  "I wasn't in a hurry," I said. "And she's smart. Knows some things most people don't. She could be useful."

  "Sounds like she was pretty."

  I shook my head. "Pack. We've got a train to catch."

  The train station wasn't much. A short platform in front of a wooden shack. We got there half an hour early and had to stand around; there weren't any benches, let alone shade from the constant sun. Two men in thick woolen suits waited with us. Within a minute of schedule, the train poured in from the north, a roaring, wheezing, rumbling beast trailing a great black cloud behind it. It came to a stop with a long, metallic screech. We climbed in and took our seats.

  The passengers were generally of a higher class than the mangy men who populated Brownville, dressed in clean, sturdy clothes, the men's mustaches and beards carefully trimmed. I hadn't shaved since arriving and my own face was in the disreputable, amorphous state between stubble and beard. Vette had bathed recently. Braided her hair. I generally don't care much about appearances—when you know the people around you will never see you again, and have in fact been dead for decades, it's pretty easy to shrug off their judgment—but I felt suddenly shabby, out of place.

  The train rocked, groaned, and started off. Vette laughed and pressed her nose to the window. "This is great. What does it run on, gasoline?"

  "Coal, I think."

  "Quaint!"

  The vehicle literally gathered steam, clattering and roaring past the shacks of Brownville, blasting a deafening, mournful whistle to sound its departure from town. I couldn't help smiling, too. No one's immune to the romance of an antique train.

  We rolled past the hilly peninsula where yesterday's little ambush had taken place. The event felt isolated, unreal. A person had shot at me; life went on. Scrubland flashed past the windows. For a long time there was nothing but open land, desolate and barren, yet a womb of possibility. The tracks curved south along the coast, the ocean glimmering endlessly.

  The train stopped here and there to pick up and release passengers, sometimes at towns so tiny they made the nascent Brownville look like Imperial Rome. The sun set shortly before we reached San Claredo. Lanterns burned in the darkness. Compared to Brownville, it was big enough, with church spires and a clock tower standing over the sprawl, but as the tracks carried us through the rows of shotgun shacks, I guessed the place couldn't be bigger than forty or fifty thousand people. The world used to be so small.

  We disembarked and hired a hackney to take us to a hotel. Vette wanted to go out and see the big city, but I reminded her that our ideal mission involved interaction with nothing and no one. I got up with the sun, ate, and located the courthouse, a tidy stone structure with a small brass dome on its four-story tower. It was closed, but by the time I doubled back to the hotel, collected Vette, and returned, its wooden double doors stood open.

  Inside, the brusque clerk collected my fee and went to copy the requested records. By hand, of course, meaning I spent the better part of an hour sitting on a bench watching bewigged judges and lawyers stride through the airy halls. The clerk returned with a list of titles, plots, and coordinates.

  "Can I see these on a map?" I said.

  He gave me a tight frown. "What you have is all that's required to be released to the public."

  "Why is this an issue? You've given me the coordinates. Easy enough to compare them to a map of my own."

  "Then I suggest you do that."

  I argued more, but he was having none of it. I sighed. "Can you tell me where the library is?"

  The man rolled his eyes but provided directions. We walked through the bustling, muddy streets to another stone building, this one with faux-Classical pillars out front guarded by a couple of limestone lions. A severe-looking woman commanded the stacks, but contrary to appearances, she was generous with her time and aid in finding surveyors' maps of the Brownville basin. I sent Vette out for tracing paper, protractor, and compass, then spread out the courthouse records.

  A note fluttered from the copied pages.

  I snatched it from the floor. Unsigned. Different handwriting from the copies of the real estate transactions. And requesting a meeting for that night here in San Claredo.

  I asked the librarian for directions. I twiddled my thumbs until Vette returned with my amateur cartographer's supplies, then showed her the note.

  "No way," she said. "A meet in a graveyard? What are the odds this isn't another ambush?"

  "Unknowable."

  "Really? Because I would pin the number somewhere around a nine, followed by another nine, then a period, then a whole lot more nines."

  I stared at the handwriting, willing an identity to emerge from it. "This was written by a different person than whoever lured us into Vance Canyon."

  Vette snorted. "All that proves is Hockery has more than one goon."

  "I'm going," I said. "If you want to cover me again, I'd appreciate it."

  She pressed her lips into a pale line. We burne
d several hours tracing the county map and then doing our best to locate Hockery's manifold properties. These were scattered to the west of the city seemingly at random, with holdings dotting the northern hills all the way south across the plain to the sea. If there was a pattern, I couldn't see it.

  The note-writer had requested we meet at 2 AM. We went back to the courthouse to sit around and watch for familiar faces, but if anyone had followed us from Brownville, I didn't recognize them. When the courthouse closed, we left for our hotel. I grabbed a nap and woke around 11:30 that night. Vette looked grumpier than usual, but whatever her qualms about heading off into another potential trap, she kept them to herself.

  Most of the streets were lit by nothing more than the moon. At larger intersections, or outside more prominent hotels and saloons, lanterns provided light in yellow circles. Drunken piano-playing and even drunker singing trickled across the quiet. Vette had her rifle on her back. I had my pistol on my hip.

  The graveyard rested on the fringes of town. Like most worlds, this one had Christians, but some quirk of history had altered its symbology: instead of crosses, the gravemarkers leaning from the earth were shaped like T's.

  A church complete with spire commanded the dark grounds. Its front door was unlocked. We made sure it was clear, then Vette climbed the spire's staircase. Outside, I waited until she waved before continuing toward the meet.

  The mystery man had told me to meet him under the cemetery's Carson Tunnel. The librarian hadn't known exactly where that was, but the path through the T-shaped gravestones led straight toward it, a simple stone-arched passage cut through the side of a hill. I cleared my coat away from my right hip, zooming my eyes' built-in lenses in on the black tunnel. Much too dark to make out. I reached the entry to the underpass and stared inside. It smelled like stale water.

  Light burst from the tunnel. I shielded my face, but no roar of gunfire accompanied the flare; instead, a match hissed to life and was dimmed by a cupped hand. Halfway down the passage, a dark figure touched the match to a cigarillo.

  "Hello?" I said.

  The man inhaled, shedding scant orange light over his shadowed face. "You are the one they call Mr. Lewis?"

  "Yes," I said. "And you are?"

  "Not here to kill you." He exhaled earthy-smelling smoke. "So please remove your hand from your shooting iron."

  I let my coat fall over my pistol and stepped into the tunnel. "What's this about?"

  "That's close enough."

  I stopped cold. "If you're here to help me, I'm not about to sell you out."

  "Perhaps not. Until they cut out your testicles and gouge out your eyes." He shuffled his feet, the scrape echoing down the tunnel. I could just make out the trees and graves on the far end. "Why are you investigating Mr. Hockery's real estate ventures?"

  "I don't know yet."

  "Are you sure about that?" With his free hand, he gestured to the ground, index finger pointing down, thumb stuck out to the side.

  My spine went hard, tingles racing down my limbs. I spoke the words numbly. "Strangers in a strange land."

  The man drew on his cigarillo and smiled crookedly. "Yes. But I'm not from Primetime. And neither is Silas Hockery."

  "Then where?"

  "I should do your job for you?" He laughed, scornful, and reached into his pocket. I tensed. He withdrew a flat object and placed it on the damp cobblestones. "I am about to walk away. You will stand perfectly still for ten minutes. Then you may retrieve my gift."

  "What's this about? Why are you doing this?"

  "Because Mr. Hockery is a psychotic with delusions of empire. An empire I no longer wish to be part of. And so this will be my last act before I vanish from the world."

  I swallowed against my dry throat. "How did you find me?"

  "The Brownville postmaster is in Mr. Hockery's pocket." He smiled mockingly, reading my face. "Indeed—if he doesn't know who you represent, he suspects it. You are not safe."

  "Why is he here in the first place?"

  "I expect he and his superiors are the only ones who know that." He tapped ash. "Goodbye, Mr. Lewis. And good luck."

  He turned and strode out the other end of the tunnel. Feeling foolish, I counted down a full ten minutes, then edged toward the flat object he'd left on the ground.

  It was a map of the greater Brownville region. A few terse directions referenced landmarks unknown to me. The last step led to Ottoway.

  In a daze, I returned to the church and waved Vette down from the spire.

  "Did he show?" she said.

  "And brought us to Ottoway," I said. "Tomorrow, we take the train back to Brownville, hire Mabry to take us into the hills, and find out what this is all about."

  "What, this friendly ghost just left you a map, then poofed into the ether?"

  "Not quite." I grimaced and grinned at the same time. "Hockery's from the future—but not Primetime."

  "That's not possible," Vette said slowly. "Primetime is the only world with time travel."

  "So they say."

  "Because it's true. If other worlds had it, the Pod alarms would be going off nonstop."

  "It doesn't make sense to me either," I said. "Two more days, and we should have our answers. Until then, be careful. They're on to us."

  "Which makes almost as little sense as another world having time travel," she muttered. "The Cutting Room must be the worst-kept secret in the history of secret agencies."

  The man's claims seemed dicey to me, too, but after so long adrift at sea, it felt great to be on the solid footing of a real lead. We walked back to our lodging, where I had us sleep in shifts. When we left in the morning, I pulled my hat low and my collar high and hired a closed-top carriage. I had the driver stop just short of the station. We waited inside the cab until the smoke of the train streamed across the sky.

  We boarded and settled in. The train clicked away from San Claredo, gathering speed. I watched the other passengers. No one paid us any special mind. Vette napped. I thought about shaking her awake, but I wanted her rested, ready to tackle whatever awaited us in Brownville.

  After a stop in a one-horse town, I got up to stretch my legs and see if the train had a bathroom, which I feared would be nothing more than a plank over a hole straight through the bottom of the car. Tragically, I was correct. I finished up and exited the tiny, frightening, foul-smelling room.

  A woman screamed behind me.

  Down the car, men masked by bandanas piled through the door opposite the one I'd come through, leveling pistols at the passengers. One of the bandits grabbed a man by the face and pulled him close. I backed toward the door and exited onto the thunderous, swaying platform. Safely inside the next car, where the passengers remained oblivious to the invasion behind them—the noise of the train drowned out any screams or commands—I sprinted up the train, found our seat, and jostled Vette awake.

  "They're here," I said.

  Her eyes were sleep-fogged, crusted at the corners. "Huh?"

  "Hockery's people. They're here for us."

  Vette bolted upright. "Oh shit. What do we do?"

  I pressed my face to the window. The train had been slowed by a long ascent to a distant ridge, but it was still making thirty miles per hour or more. The ground beside it was broken and rocky. Jumping for it risked spilling our brains across the prairie. Judging by the way the bandit had examined that man's face, they knew what we looked like. No hope of hiding among the passengers.

  "The roof," I said. "We hide there. If we have to, that's where we make our stand."

  I checked my inner pockets to make sure I still had my maps and real estate records, then got up and headed for the door to the next car. Outside, the train jounced and rattled, jarring the platform. There were no ladders or handholds up the side of the car. I jerked my thumb toward the next one. Vette nodded. We moved inside it. When we were halfway down the aisle, three masked men burst through the door ahead.

  "Get your asses down and your hands up!" one of them shouted
, sweeping a rifle across the passengers. Men and women flinched. I took an empty seat, pulling Vette beside me. Up front, the bandits ordered people to stand. The gunmen examined their captives' scared faces one by one.

  "Just the three of them," I murmured. "We deal with them and move forward with the plan."

  Vette nodded, expression taut. Row by row, the men moved closer. I eased my revolver from its holster. The weapon was heavy and cool. Vette jerked her gaze to the window, stared, then touched my shoulder.

  "No time," I said. The bandits advanced, now three rows away. I found Vette's eye and glanced at my gun. She gritted her teeth and nodded.

  I rolled from my seat, fanning the hammer of the revolver just like I'd done in the AVI sims. Vette popped up and did the same. The crash of gunfire drowned out the rumble of the train. The bandits shouted, knocked backward in a hail of lead, spraying upholstery with impossibly red blood. Passengers screamed, turning their faces from the hot mist.

  All three men dropped, limbs a-tangle. I grabbed Vette's wrist and sprinted toward the door the bandits had entered from. Its dusty glass window showed the car ahead was filled with frightened citizens, but there was no sign of more gunmen.

  I stepped out onto the platform; rather than being a plank-like walkway between cars like the others, this one resembled a wrap-around porch, complete with a carved wooden railing. Smoke sifted past, irritating my throat. I saw no ladders or steps up to the roof. I swore.

  Vette pointed to the window in the door we'd just exited. "They're coming."

  "Hang on." I moved around the platform to the side of the car. Nothing. I hammered my fist against the impassive wall. And there it was, as if waiting for me: a set of ladder-like steps embedded in the side of the car and climbing to its roof. I grinned and ran back to the front of the porch.

  Vette was gone. Smoke curled overhead. A hawk banked on the wind. Through the dust-smeared window, a terrified passenger gestured my direction. A bandit shoved the man into his seat and loped forward.

  I darted around the porch to the ladder and hauled myself up hand over hand, tossed by every pitch of the train. I rolled onto the roof and sat up, getting my bearings as I reloaded my pistol. Hot smoke gushed from the engines, stinging my eyes. The train was still climbing the long, shallow ascent. Yellow grass and green-gray shrubs whisked past. Miles to the west, the ocean slopped around in the sunlight.