When Molly plowed straight through the pack of gaping newsies, not one of whom had understood a single word in five, given their round eyes and stunned silence, Skeeter burst into laughter. "I think Molly can fend for herself," he chuckled, patting Bergitta's hand. "I'll wager she's the stroppiest bit they've seen in a while. Come on, let's go find that lunch stand."
Bergitta waved at Molly as the other woman sailed past, trailing uncertain reporters after her, then she turned a smile up at Skeeter. "Yes, I feel sorry now for the newsies!"
Skeeter bought yakitori skewers for both of them and brimming cups of hot green tea, which they carried with them, sipping and munching as they strolled Commons, just taking in the sights. Frontier Town was quiet, but Camelot was gearing up for an impending invasion by re-enactors of the Society for Creative Anachronism, since the Anachronism Gate was scheduled to cycle in a few days. Floods of tournament-bound pseudo-medievalists would pour through the station, complete with horses, hooded hunting falcons, and all the attendant chaos of two separate month-long tournaments trying to flood through one gate, moving in opposite directions.
"I heard BATF plans to start watching the Mongolian Gate more closely," Skeeter said as they passed a shop where a Camelot vendor was putting up advertisements for falconry equipment. "Word is, that pair who went through last time are bird smugglers. Mongolian falcons are worth a fortune up time, especially to Arab princes. Some of the species have gone extinct, up time. Monty Wilkes wants to make sure those two don't try to smuggle out a suitcase load of rare falcons or viable eggs."
"Skeeter," Bergitta frowned, dabbing at her mouth with a paper napkin to wipe sauce off her lips, "why do they worry so about it? If there are no such birds on the other side of Primary, would it not be good to bring them through?"
Skeeter snorted. "You'd think so. Actually, if you get the special permits, you can bring extinct birds and animals back through a gate. What's illegal is smuggling them through to sell them to rich collectors, without paying taxes on them. First law of time travel: Though Shalt Not Profit from the Gates."
Bergitta shook her head, clearly baffled by the up-time world. "My brother is a trader," she said, eyes dark with sorrow. Bergitta would never again be able to see her family. "He would say such a law is not sane. If no one is to profit, how can the world do business?"
"My dear Bergitta," Skeeter chuckled, "you just asked the sixty-four-million-dollar question. Me, I think it's crazy. But I'm just an ex-thief, so who's going to listen to me?"
"I would," Bergitta said softly.
A sudden lump blocked Skeeter's throat. He gulped tea just to hide the burning in his eyes, and nearly strangled, because his throat was still too constricted to swallow. He ended up coughing while Bergitta thumped his shoulder blades. "Sorry about that," he finally wheezed. "Thanks."
Their wandering had brought them down into Little Agora, where Skeeter and Bergitta ran into total chaos. The news-hungry reporters up in Victoria Station were small potatoes compared with Little Agora's cult lunatics and militant groups like—God help them all—the Angels of Grace Militia, which had so recently arrived amid a flurry of violence. The Angels were determined to protect the station's down-timers and Lady of Heaven Templars, whether they wanted protection or not.
Everywhere Skeeter glanced, Templars were picketing and shouting, many of them reading from scriptural compilations of Ianira's recorded "words of wisdom." Angels of Grace strutted in black uniforms, their red emblems resembling a running Mirror of Venus which had mated with a swastika, prowling like rabid wolves, moving in packs. Some of them resembled female linebackers or maybe animated refrigerators in jackboots; others were lithe and deadly as ferrets. The psychological effect of all those black uniforms was undeniable. Even Skeeter shivered in their presence. Monty Wilkes had ordered his BATF agents to break out their "dress uniforms"—the red ones with black chevrons on the sleeves—to keep BATF agents from being mistaken for Angel Squads.
Nutcases in sympathy with the Ansar Majlis Brotherhood picketed the picketing Templars, chanting for the release of their oppressed Brothers. Other up-time protesters who didn't agree with terrorism in any form, but wanted the Temples shut down for reasons of their own, stalked through Little Agora with hand-lettered signs that read, "MY GOD'S A FATHER—YOURS IS A WHORE!" and "DRIVE OUT THE MONEYCHANGERS IN THE TEMPLE! THE LADY OF HEAVEN IS A FRAUD AND A FRONT FOR ORGANIZED CRIME!"
And seated on the floor by the dozens, locked in human protest chains around the shops and kiosks of Little Agora, blocking exits to Residential and public bathrooms, were shocking droves of keening, disconsolate acolytes. Everywhere Skeeter turned his glance, security was running ragged, trying to keep fights from exploding out of control every half hour or so.
"I wonder," Skeeter muttered, "how soon the violence on this station is going to close Shangri-La down for good?"
Bergitta's rosy cheeks lost color. "Would they really do this, Skeeter? Everyone says it could happen, but there are so many people here, so much business and money... and where could we go? They will not let us walk through Primary and it is not legal for us to go to live down another gate, either. And my gate will never open again. It was unstable."
"I know," Skeeter said quietly, trying to hide his own worry. The thought of living somewhere else—anywhere else—stirred panic deep in his soul. And the thought of what might become of his friends, his adopted family, left him scared spitless. He'd heard rumors that Senator Caddrick was talking internment camps, run like prisons...
Bergitta peered toward the ceiling, where immense chronometers hanging from the ceiling tracked date and time on station, down each of the station's multiple active gates, and up time through Primary. "Oh," she exclaimed in disappointment, "it is time for me to go to work!" She hugged Skeeter again, warm and vibrant against him for a brief moment. "Thank you, Skeeter, for the yakitori and the beautiful rose. I... I am still sorry about the job."
"Don't be." He smiled, hoping she couldn't sense his worry, wondering where he was going to line up another job, when his search for that job had broken world records for the shortest job interview category. "You'd better scoot. Don't want you to be late."
When she reached up and kissed his cheek, Skeeter reddened to his toes. But the warmth of the gesture left him blinking too rapidly as she hurried away through the crowds, still clutching her single rose. He shoved hands into pockets, so abruptly lonely, he could've stood there and cried from the sheer misery of it. He was turning over possibilities for job applications when a seething whirlwind of shrieking up-timer kids engulfed him. Clearly dumped by touring parents, the ankle-biters, as Molly called them, were once again playing hooky from the station school. Screaming eight- through eleven-year-olds swirled and foamed around Skeeter like pounding surf, yelling and zooming around, maddened hornets swarming out of a dropped hive. Skeeter found himself tangled up in the coils of a lasso made from thin nylon twine. He nearly fell, the coils wound so tightly around his body and upper legs. Skeeter muttered under his breath and yanked himself free.
"Hey! Gimme that back!" A snot-mouthed nine-year-old boy glared up at him as Skeeter wound the lasso into a tight coil and stuffed it into his pocket. Skeeter just grabbed the kid by the collar and dragged him toward the nearest Security officer in sight, Wally Klontz, whose claim to fame was a schnoz the size of Cyrano de Bergerac's. "Hey! Lemme go!" The kid wriggled and twisted, but Skeeter had hung onto far slipperier quarries than this brat.
"Got a delinquent here," Skeeter said through clenched teeth, hauling the kid over to Wally, whose eyes widened at the sight of a screeching nine-year-old dangling from Skeeter's grasp. "Something tells me this one is supposed to be in school."
Wally's lips twitched just once, then he schooled his expression into a stern scowl. "What did you catch him doing, Skeeter?"
"Lassoing tourists."
Wally's eyes glinted. "Assault with a deadly weapon, huh? Okay, short stuff. Let's go. Maybe you'd prefer a night in jail, if
you don't want to sit through your classes."
"Jail? You can't put me in jail! Do you have any idea who my daddy is? When he finds out—"
"Oh, shut up, kid," Wally said shortly. "I've hauled crown princes off to the brig, so you might as well give it up. Thanks, Skeeter."
Skeeter handed the wailing brat over with satisfaction and watched as Wally dragged the kid away, trailing protests at the top of his young lungs. Then Skeeter shoved hands into pockets once again, feeling more isolated and lonely than ever. For just a moment, he'd felt a connection, as though Wally Klontz had recognized him as an equal. Now, he was just Skeeter the unemployed mop man again, Skeeter the ex-thief, the man no one trusted. Unhappiness and bitter loneliness returned, in a surge of bilious dissatisfaction with his life, his circumstances, and his complete lack of power to do the one thing he needed to do most: find Ianira Cassondra and her little family.
So he started walking again, heading up through Urbs Romae into Valhalla, past the big dragon-prowed longship that housed the Langskip Cafe. Skeeter tightened his fingers through the coils of the plastic lasso in his pocket and blinked rapidly against a burning behind his eyelids. Where is she? God, what could have happened, to snatch them all away without so much as a trace? And if they slipped out through a gate opening, how'd they do it? Skeeter had worked or attended every single opening of every single gate on station since Ianira and Marcus' disappearance, yet he'd seen and heard nothing. If they'd gone out in disguise, then that disguise had been good enough to fool even him.
He cut crosswise down the edge of Valhalla and shouldered past the crowd thronging around Sue Fritchey's prize Pteranodon sternbergi. Its enormous cage could be hoisted up from the basement level—where it spent most of its noisy life—to the Commons "feeding station" which had been built to Sue's specifications. The flying reptile's wing span equaled that of a small aircraft, which meant the cage was a big one. Expensive, too. And that enormous pteranodon had literally been eating Pest Control's entire operations budget. So the creative head of Pest Control had devised a method whereby the tourists paid to feed the enormous animal. Every few hours, tourists lined up to plunk down their money and climb a high ramp to dump bucketloads of fish into the giant flying reptile's beak. The sound of the sternbergi's beak clacking shut over a bucketload of fish echoed like a monstrous gunshot above the muted roar on Commons, two-by-fours cracking together under force.
Ianira had brought the girls to watch the first time the ingenious platform cage had been hoisted up hydraulically through the new hole in the Commons floor. Skeeter had personally paid for a couple of bucketloads of fish and had hoisted the girls by turns, helping them dump the smelly contents into the huge pteranodon's maw. They'd giggled and clapped gleefully, pointing at the baleful scarlet eye that rolled to glare at them as the gigantic reptile tried to extend its wings and shrieked at them in tones capable of bending steel girders. Skeeter, juggling Artemisia and a bucketful of fish, had sloshed fish slime down his shirt, much to his chagrin. Ianira had laughed like a little girl at his dismayed outburst...
Throat tight, Skeeter clenched his fists inside his jeans pockets, the plastic lasso digging into his palm, and stared emptily at the crowd thronging into Valhalla from El Dorado's nearby gold-tinted paving stones. And that was when he saw it happen. A well-timed stumble against a modestly dressed, middle-aged woman... a deft move of nimble fingers into her handbag... apologies given and accepted...
You rat-faced little—
Something inside Skeeter Jackson snapped. He found himself striding furiously forward, approached close enough to hear, "—apologize again, ma'am."
"It is nothing," she was saying as Skeeter closed in. Spanish, Skeeter pegged the woman, who was doubtless here for the next Conquistadores Gate tour. Doesn't look rich enough to afford losing whatever's in that wallet, either. Probably spent the last five or six years saving enough money for this tour and that fumble-fingered little amateur thinks he's going to get away with every centavo she's scraped up! Skeeter closed his fingers around the loops of plastic lasso in his pocket and came to an abrupt decision.
"Hello there," Skeeter said with a friendly smile dredged up from his days as a deceitful confidence artist. This screaming little neophyte didn't know the first thing about the business—and Skeeter intended to impart a harsh lesson. He offered his hand to the pickpocket. Startled eyes met his own as the guy shook Skeeter's hand automatically.
"Do I know you?"
"Nah," Skeeter said, still smiling, looping the plastic lasso deftly through the pickpocket's nearest belt loop with his other hand, "but you will in a minute. Care to explain what you're doing with the lady's wallet in your back pocket?"
He bolted, of course.
Then jerked to a halt with a startled "Oof!" as the lasso snapped taut at his waist. Skeeter grabbed him and trussed him up, wrists behind his back, in less time than it took the man to regain his balance. The pickpocket stood there sputtering in shock, completely inarticulate for long seconds; then a flood of invective broke loose, crude and predictable.
Skeeter cut him off with a ruthless jerk on his bound wrists. "That's about enough, buddy. We're going to go find the nearest Security officer and explain to him why you've got this lady's property in your pocket. Your technique stinks, by the way. Am-a-teur. Oh, and by the way? You're gonna love the isolation cells in this place. Give you plenty of time to consider a career change." Skeeter turned toward the astonished tourist. "Ma'am, if you'd be good enough to come with us? Your testimony will see this rat behind bars and, of course, you'll have your property returned. I'm real sorry this happened, ma'am."
Her mouth worked for a moment, then tears sprang to her eyes and a torrent of Spanish flooded loose, the gist being that Skeeter was the kindest soul in the world and how could she ever repay him and it had taken her ten years to save the money for this trip, gracias, muchas, muchas gracias, señor...
The stunned disbelief in Mike Benson's eyes when Skeeter handed over his prisoner and eyewitness at the Security office was worth almost as much as the woman's flood of gratitude. Skeeter swore out his deposition and made certain the lady's property was safely returned, then turned down the reward she tried to give him. Broke he might be, but he hadn't done it for the money and did not want to start accepting cash rewards for one of the few decent things he'd ever done in his life. Mike Benson's eyes nearly popped out of his skull when Skeeter simply smiled, kissed the lady's hand gallantly, leaving the proffered money in her fingers, and strode out of Security HQ feeling nine feet tall. For the first time since Ianira's disappearance, he didn't feel helpless. He might never be able to find Ianira Cassondra or Marcus and their children; but there was something he could do, something he knew she'd have been proud of him for doing.
His throat tightened again. It was probably the least likely occupation he could have stumbled across. And the station wasn't likely to give him a salary for it. But Skeeter Jackson had just discovered a new purpose and a whole new calling. Who better to spot and trip up pickpockets, thieves, and con artists than a guy who knew the business inside out? Okay, Ianira, he promised silently, I won't give up hope. And if there's the slightest chance I can find you, I'll jump down an unstable gate to do it. Meanwhile, maybe I can do some good around here for a change. Make this a better place for the Found Ones to raise their kids...
Skeeter Jackson found himself smiling. La-La Land's population of petty crooks had no idea what was about to hit them. For the first time in days, he felt good, really and truly good. Old skills twitching at his senses, Skeeter headed off to start the unlikeliest hunt of his life.
* * *
Margo Smith had spent her share of rough weeks down temporal gates. Lost in Rome with a concussion, that had been a bad one. Lost in sixteenth-century Portuguese Africa had been far worse, stranded on the flood-swollen Limpopo with a man dying of fever hundreds of miles from the gate, followed by capture and rape at the hands of Portuguese traders... At seventeen, Margo ha
d certainly lived through her fair share of rough weeks down a gate.
But the first week after their arrival in London was right up there with the best of them. The Ripper Watch team's second foray into the East End, the morning after Polly Nichols' brutal murder, put Margo in charge of security and guide services for the up-time reporters Guy Pendergast and Dominica Nosette, as well as Ripper scholars Shahdi Feroz and Pavel Kostenka. Doug Tanglewood was going along, as well, but Malcolm, swamped with the search for Benny Catlin, not to mention demands from the rest of the Ripper Watch team, couldn't come with them.
So Malcolm, eyes glinting, told Margo, "They're all yours, Imp. Handle them, you can handle anything."
Margo rolled her eyes. "Oh, thanks. I'll remember to send you invitations to the funeral."
"Huh. Theirs or yours?"
Margo laughed. "With your shield or on it, isn't that what the Roman matron told her son? You know, as he went off to die gloriously in battle? The way I figure it, any run-in with that crew is gonna be one heck of a battle."
"My dear girl, you just said a bloody mouthful. Give ‘em hell for me, too, would you? Just get them back in one piece. Even," he added with a telling grimace, "those reporters. Those two are a potential nightmare, snooping around for the story of the century, with the East End set up blow like a powder keg on a burning ship of the line. Doug's good in a routine tour and he's taken a lot of zipper jockeys into the East End, but frankly, he hasn't the martial arts training you do. Remember that, if it comes to a scrap."
"Right." It was both flattering and a little unsettling to realize she possessed skills that outranked a professional guide's. Doug Tanglewood, one of those nondescript sort of brown fellows nobody looks at twice, or even once, and who occasionally shock their neighbors by dismembering small dogs and children, was delighted that he wouldn't have to shepherd the Ripper Watch Team through the East End by himself.
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