Of course, Skeeter grunted sharply and dropped another case onto the stack, by that same logic, he'd still be working off his own karma when he was four-hundred ninety. Yeah, well, at least I was never obnoxious to anybody I ripped off... . A polite thief, that's what he'd been, by God. But no longer a thief, thanks to Marcus and Ianira.
Skeeter blinked sweat out of his eyes, fighting a sudden tightness in his chest as he emptied yet another baggage cart. Surely Marcus realized he could trust Skeeter? After what Skeeter'd gone through in Rome, damn near dying in that gladiatorial combat in the Circus Maximus before wrenching Marcus out of slavery again, surely Marcus could've trusted him enough to let him know they were alive, at least? Whoever was trying to kill them, he had to realize that Skeeter, of all people, wouldn't betray him and his daughters?
He ground his teeth in silent misery. If somebody had tried to shoot his wife, if he'd walked into his daughters' daycare center to find two armed thugs trying to drag off his kids, would he have risked contacting anybody? Just on the remote chance they might be followed, trying to bring help? Skeeter knew he wouldn't have. Wouldn't have dared risk his loved ones, no matter what risks he, himself, might have been willing to run. The realization hurt, even as he was forced to admit he understood the silence. But the girls were just babies, Artemisia not yet four, Gelasia barely turned one. Marcus couldn't stay in hiding with them, not for long. Which was doubtless what the faceless bastards trying to kill them were counting on. If Skeeter were Marcus, he'd seriously consider trying to jump station. Through any gate that opened.
Skeeter closed his hands around the stout handles of yet another steamer trunk and heaved it into place, wishing bitterly he could get his hands on whoever had dragged Ianira away through that riot. It must have been staged. Create a perfect diversion, shoot her down in the midst of the chaos... Only somebody had interrupted the attempt. Had the shooter dragged her off? To finish the job at his leisure? Or someone else? Skeeter couldn't bear to keep thinking in ragged circles like this, but he couldn't not think about her, either, not considering what he owed her.
Skeeter wiped sweat from his forehead. Just another few minutes, he told himself fiercely. Another few minutes and the gate would have cycled, all this ridiculous luggage would be on the other side of the Britannia, and he could get back to combing the station with the finest-toothed comb ever invented by humanity.
Meanwhile...
Watching the freakshow beyond the barricades helped keep his mind off it and watching the tourists inside the barricades occupied the rest of his mind, searching faces for clues, for any similarity to the face in his memory, that wild-eyed kid with the black-powder pistol. Gawkers formed an impenetrable barrier around the edges of the departures lounge, so thick, security had formed cordons to permit ticketed tourists, uniformed Time Tours employees, freelance guides, baggage handlers, and supply couriers to reach the roped-off lounge. The noise was appalling. Troops of howler monkeys had nothing on the mob of humanity packed into the confined spaces of Victoria Station. And every man-jack one of ‘em wanted to be able to tell his grandchildren some day, "I was there, kids, I was there when the first Ripper tour went through, let me tell you, it was something..."
It was something, all right.
There weren't words disgusting enough to describe it, that electric air of anticipation, of excitement that left the air supercharged with the feeling that a major event is happening right before your eyes, an excitement sensed in the nerve endings of skin and hair, completely independent of sight and sound and smell. Skeeter was the kind of soul who loved excitement, thrived on it, in fact. But this... this kind of excitement was a perversion, even Skeeter could sense that, and Skeeter Jackson's moral code, formed during his years with the Yakka Mongols, didn't exactly mesh with most of up-time humanity's. What was it going to be like when next week's gate opened? When all these people and probably a couple hundred more, besides, newly arrived through Primary, jammed in to learn who the ghoul really was?
Maybe after he dragged all this luggage through the Britannia and came back to look for Ianira some more, he'd volunteer to haul baggage to Denver for a couple of weeks, just to miss out on the whole sordid thing? The Wild West Gate opened tomorrow, after all, and Time Tours was perennially short of baggage handlers. If only they'd found Ianira by then, and Marcus, and little Artemisia and bright-eyed, laughing Gelasia.
If, if, IF!
It was the not knowing that was intolerable, the not knowing or being able to find out. He wanted this job over with, so he could get back to searching. Skeeter stared intently through the crowd, trying to spot anybody he might recognize from The Found Ones. Any news was better than none. But he couldn't see a single down-timer in that crowd who wasn't already busy to distraction hauling luggage. Which meant they wouldn't know spit about the search underway, either.
God, how much longer until this blasted gate cycled?
He peered up at the huge chronometer boards suspended from the distant ceiling, picking out the countdown for Gate Two: five minutes. At the rate time was creeping past, it might as well be five years.
"Jackson! Do you really like scrubbing toilets that much?"
He started so violently he nearly dropped the carpet bag dangling from his hands. Celosia Enyo was glaring at him, lips thinned to a murderous white line.
"Sorry, ma'am," he muttered. "I was hoping I might see someone who'd heard about Ianira—"
"We're all worried! But that gate doesn't give a damn who's missing or found. We get that—" she jabbed a finger toward the small mountain of luggage "—through the gate on time or some millionaire will have your head on his dinner platter for having to buy a new wardrobe in London. Worry about your friends on your own time. Or by God, your own time is all you'll have!"
She was absolutely right, in a cold-blooded, mercenary sense. The moment she turned away to snarl at someone else, Skeeter gave her a flying eagle salute and dragged another portmanteau off a groaning luggage cart. He scowled at the enormous stack of luggage on the conveyer already, mentally damning Time Tours for insane greed. No wonder the last four baggage managers had failed disastrously with gate logistics. Time Tours was sending through too many blistering tourists at once.
Never mind way too many trunks per tourist.
If he'd kept accurate count, the last five steamer trunks and three portmanteaus alone had belonged to the same guy. Benny Catlin, whoever the hell he was. Rich as sin, if he could cart that much luggage through in just one direction. The big conveyer rumbled to life with one jolting squeal and a grating of metal gears. Then the rubberized surface began moving upward, ready to carry all that luggage to the platform overhead. Skeeter glanced around to look for the boss. Enyo wasn't in sight, but the shift supervisor was busy sending handlers aloft. He caught Skeeter's eye and said, "Get up top, Jackson. Start hauling that stuff off the conveyer as it arrives."
"Yessir!"
The climb up to the Britannia platform was a long one, particularly after all the hauling he'd done in the past few minutes, but the view was spectacular. Commons spread out beneath his feet, a full five stories deep, riotous with color and sound. Costumed tourists scurried like rainbow-hued bugs whipped around in the currents and eddies of a slow-motion river. Great banners—bright holiday-colored ribbons curling and floating through a hundred-foot depth of open air from balconies and catwalks—proclaimed to the world that Ripper Season had begun, and advertised other not-to-be-missed down-time events. A cat's-cradle tangle of meshwork bridges stretched right across Commons from one side to the other, supported from below by steel struts or suspended from above by steel cables disappearing into the ceiling. The noise from hundreds of human throats lapped at the edges of the high platform like crashing surf against jagged rocks, leaping and splashing back again, indistinct and unintelligible from sheer distance.
And booming above it all came the voice of the public address system, echoing down the vast length of Commons: "Your attention, please
. Gate Two is due to open in two minutes..."
The first luggage on the conveyor belt arrived with a jolt and scrape against the gridwork platform. Skeeter joined a human-chain effort, hauling luggage clear of the moving conveyor and piling it on the platform. Railings ran all the way around, with a wide metal gate set into one side. Until the Britannia actually opened, that wide metal gate led to a sheer, hundred-foot drop to the cobblestones of Victoria Station. Despite the railing, Skeeter stayed well away from the edge as he hauled, piled, and stacked a steadily increasing jumble of trunks, cases, and soft-sided carpet bags across the broad stretch of platform.
At the far corner, a second conveyor system rumbled to life, moving downward rather than up. Celosia Enyo was testing the system, making sure everything was ready for the returning tour and all of its luggage. So engrossed was Skeeter in the monumental task of shifting the arriving baggage, the gate's opening took him by surprise. A skull-shaking backlash of subharmonics rattled his very bones. Skeeter jumped, wanting instinctively to cover his ears, although that wouldn't have done any good. The gate's frequency was too low for actual human hearing. He glanced around—and gasped.
A kaleidoscope of shimmering color, dopplering through the entire rainbow spectrum, had appeared in the middle of empty air right at the edge of the platform. The colors scintillated like a sheen of oil on water, sunlight on a raven's glossy feathers. The hair on Skeeter's arms stood starkly erect. He'd seen gates open hundreds of times, had stepped through a number of them, when he'd had the money for a tour or had conned someone else into paying for it. But he'd never been this close to the massive Britannia as it began its awe-striking cycle a hundred feet above the Commons floor.
From below, a wall of noise came surging up to the platform, gasps and cries of astonishment from hundreds of spectators. A point of absolute darkness appeared dead center in the wild flashes of color. The blackness expanded rapidly, a hole through time, through the very fabric of reality... Something hard banged into Skeeter's elbow. He yelped, jumped guiltily, then grabbed the steamer trunk thrust at him. It went awkwardly onto the top of the stack, canted at an angle, too unstable for anything else to go on top. The next portmanteau to arrive thudded against the steel gridwork, starting a new pile.
Skeeter rearranged wetness on his brow with a limp, soaked sleeve, then straightened his aching back and started piling up the next stack, all while keeping one eye on the massive gate rumbling open behind him. The blackness widened steadily until it stretched the full width of the platform. A Time Tours guide climbed up from the Commons floor and opened the broad metal gate at the edge of the platform to its full extent, as well.
A blur of motion caught his eye and the first returnee arrived, rushing at them with the speed of a runaway bullet train. Skeeter resisted the urge to jump out of the way. Then the apparent motion slowed and a gentleman in fancy evening clothes, protected by a wet India-rubber rain slicker, stepped calmly onto the platform and turned to assist the returning tourists through. Men and women in silks and expensively cut garb, most of them holding 1880's style umbrellas and brushing water off their heavy cloaks, jostled their way through, many chattering excitedly. Quite a few others had gone slightly greenish and stumbled every few steps. Guides in servants' uniforms and working men's rougher clothes helped those who seemed worst off to stagger through the open gate. Porters rushed through on their heels, tracking mud onto the platform, then a mad scramble ensued to get all the arriving luggage—every bit of it slick with what must be a drenching downpour on the other side of the gate—onto the downward-rumbling conveyer. Below, tourists raced up the five flights of stairs to hurry through in the other direction. Skeeter worked fiendishly. He hauled trunks which arrived from down time onto the downward-rumbling conveyer, in an effort to clear the jam at the gate. Then the Britannia was finally clear and outbound tourists rushed past, laughing excitedly and squealing as they stepped off the edge of the platform into what their hindbrains insisted was a hundred-foot sheer drop to the floor below.
"Get that outbound baggage moving!"
Skeeter lunged to the task, along with a dozen other porters. He staggered through the open gate and emerged into a rain-lashed garden. It was nearly dark. Worse, the ground was cut up from all the foot traffic across it, muddy and treacherous with slick leaves. There was a flagstone path, but that was crowded with tourists and guides and gatehouse staff holding umbrellas. The porters didn't have time to wait for them to clear out of the way. Following the lead of more experienced baggage handlers in front of him, Skeeter plunged into the muddy grass and slogged his way toward the gatehouse. The rain was icy, slashing against his clothing and soaking him to the skin. He dumped his first load at the back door of the three-story gatehouse and pelted back through the open gate to grab another load. The sensation was dizzying, disorienting.
Then he was through and staggering a little, himself, across the platform. His muddy shoes slipped on wet metal. Skeeter windmilled and lurched against a stack of luggage waiting to be ferried through. The topmost steamer trunk, a massive thing, slid sideways and started to topple toward the edge of the platform. The corner of the trunk was well out beyond the periphery of the open Britannia gate, teetering out where it would plunge the full hundred feet to the Commons floor. As Skeeter went to one bruised knee, furious shouts and blistering curses erupted. Then somebody lunged past him to grab the steamer trunk by the handle before it could fall.
"Don't just sit there, goddamn you!" A short, skinny tourist stood glaring murderously down at him, arms straining to keep the trunk from falling. The young man's whiskered face had gone ashen under the lights overhead. "Grab this trunk! I can't hold the weight!" The kid's voice was light, breathless, furious.
His whole knee ached where he'd landed on it, but Skeeter staggered back his feet and leaned over the piles of trunks and cases to secure a wet-handed grip on the corner that had already gone over the end of the platform. Hauling together, Skeeter and the tourist pulled the heavy trunk back onto the platform. The tourist was actually shaking, whether with fright or rage, Skeeter wasn't certain.
But he wasn't so shaken he didn't blow up in Skeeter's face. "What the hell did you think you were doing? Were you trying to shove that trunk over the edge? Goddammit, do you have any idea what would've happened if that trunk had gone over? If you've been drinking, I'll make sure you never work on this station again!" The young man's face was deathly pale, eyes blazing against the unnatural pallor of his skin and the dark, heavy whiskers of his mutton-chop sideburns and mustache, which he must've acquired from Paula Booker's cosmetology salon, because up-time men didn't grow facial hair in that quantity or shape any more. The furious tourist, fists balled up and white-knuckled, shrilled out, "My God, do you realize what you almost caused?"
"Well, it didn't fall, did it?" Skeeter snapped, halting the tirade mid-stream. "And if you stand there cursing much longer, you're gonna miss your stinking gate!" Skeeter shouldered the trunk himself, having to carry it across his back, the thing was so heavy. The short and brutish little tourist, white-lipped and silent now, stalked through the open gate on Skeeter's heels, evidently intent on following to make sure Skeeter didn't drop it again. So much for my new job. After this guy gets done complaining, I'll be lucky if I still have the job scrubbing toilets.
It was, of course, still raining furiously in the Spaldergate House garden. Skeeter did slip again, the muddy ground was so churned up beside the crowded flagstone walkway. The furious man on his heels grabbed at the trunk again as Skeeter lurched and slid sideways. "Listen, you drunken idiot!" he shouted above steady pouring of the rain. "Lay off the booze or the pills before you show up for work!"
"Stuff it," Skeeter said crudely. He regained his feet and finally gained the house, where he gratefully lowered his burden to the floor.
"Where are you going?" the irate young man demanded when Skeeter headed back into the downpour.
He flung the answer over one aching shoulder. "Back t
o the station!"
"But who's going to cart this out to the carriage? Take it to the hotel?"
"Carry it yourself!"
The skinny, whiskered little tourist was still sputtering at the back door when Skeeter re-entered the now-visibly shrunken Britannia Gate. He passed several other porters bent double under heavy loads, trying to get the last of the pile through, then was back on the metal gridwork platform. All that remained of the departing tour was a harried Time Tours guide who plunged through as Skeeter reappeared. Then he was alone with the mud and a single uniformed Time Tours employee who swung shut the big metal safety gate as the Britannia shrank rapidly back in on itself and vanished for another eight days.
Skeeter—wet, shivering, exhausted—slowly descended the stairs once again and slid his timecard through the reader at the bottom, "clocking out" so his brief stay in the London timestream would be recorded properly. The baggage manager was waiting, predictably irate. Skeeter listened in total, sodden silence, taking the upbraiding he'd expected. This evidently puzzled the furious Enyo, because she finally snapped, "Well? Aren't you going to protest your innocence?"
"Why bother?" Skeeter said tiredly. "You've already decided I'm guilty. So just fire me and get it over with so I can put on some dry clothes and start looking for my friends again."
Thirty seconds later, he was on his way, metaphoric pink slip in hand. Well, that was probably the shortest job on record. Sixty-nine minutes from hired to fired. He never had liked the idea of hauling luggage for a bunch of jackass tourists, anyway. Scrubbing toilets was dirtier, but at least more dignified than bowing and scraping and apologizing for being alive. And when the job was over, something, at least, was clean.
Which was more than he could say of himself at the moment. Mud covered his trousers, squelched from his wet shoes, and dripped with the trickling rainwater down one whole sleeve where he'd caught himself from a nasty fall, that last time through. Wonder what was in that lousy trunk, anyway? The way he acted, you'd've thought it was his heirloom china. God, tourists!
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