The Mammoth Book of Futuristic Romance

Written in Ink Susan Sizemore

“I wasn’t in a post-apocalyptic mood when I got up this morning.”

“Too bad, cause that’s where you’re going today.”

“I knew that when I was issued this charming outfit of jeans and hoodie as my ensemble.” Frannie settled into the TC and got comfortable before she looked back at her controller. “Why the Ruin Times?”

“You’re supposed to ask ‘where’, which often gives a clue to ‘why’. Even better, you’re supposed to sink into the mission file.”

“If I do the homework all by myself there’ll be no reason for you to have a job.”

“You are not as amusing as you think you are, Lady of the Elite.”

Frannie frowned at the use of the title, as the controller knew she would. She might be an Elite, but she worked for a living. She could see her reflection in one of the TC’s blank screens and knew she certainly didn’t look like an Elite. Physical perfection attracted too much attention in the places where she spent most of her time. She had brown hair and brown eyes and skin tone, and features that were altered slightly depending on where and when she went. Today she just looked like herself.

She didn’t need physical disguises for a visit to the grungy, grubby, post-apocalyptic past where nobody wanted to live, let alone go.

Frannie sighed. She punched the file into her wrist implant, closed her eyes and got on with finding out the specs of the mission.

Oh, Lordy, it looked like the Starshine Group was at it again. Someone was supposed to get killed. It had to happen. She needed to stop an attempt to stop the death while at the same time observing – the records didn’t really say much more than that this death ended the beginnings of a proscribed movement.

Proscribed meant that the scholars had decided that this was one of the points in time that absolutely couldn’t be fiddled with.

So, she was off to save the future of the present.

She liked the jobs where she just went back into the past and observed. Bringing back accurate data was a proper job for a historian such as herself. She liked keeping her scholar happy enough to keep getting her choice assignments. She didn’t think of herself as an actionwoman sort of special agent to the ages. But the Starshine hippie idiots had infiltrated the Historical Search Project a few years back, stolen highly classified technology and were now making sporadic and totally stupid idealistic efforts to change the past in order to make the present into the world they wanted to live in.

Frannie was of the opinion that attempting to save the world was a fine ambition, but – it was all so much more complicated than that. And ethically and morally really weird. She herself had actually saved Hitler’s life on one of her assignments to stop the Starshiners, and she still felt like a traitor to all humanity for making that necessary choice. Saving the world was a dirty job. She hated it when her bosses picked her out of the time-travelers pool to do it.

“It’s not right to try to change history,” she said after she’d finished absorbing the assignment. Unless history was coming at you with a big ole sword.

“That’s easy for an Elite to believe,” her controller answered.

Frannie glared at the cyborg she’d worked with for years. “Are you developing Starshiner sympathies?”

“Going to turn me in if I am?”

“Turn you in to who?” she asked. “We live in a perfect world, where all opinions are respected, if not sanctioned.”

The controller snorted, which was an odd sound coming from a voice synthesizer. “Ready to go?”

“Yes.”

“Comfortable?”

“Yes.”

“You won’t be for long.”

How well she knew that. “Make it a go,” she said.

Riding time was not a pleasant way to spend the morning. Or any other increment of one’s lifespan. But if you wanted to go from now to then you learned to put up with the suffering. No one said you had to suffer in silence, though.

Frannie screamed the whole ride down the timestream. She was still screaming when the bright blinding lights faded back down to normal. She began swearing as soon as she was finished screaming.

She didn’t open her eyes until the flow of words ran out. She wondered if her reaction to the wrench of the change was as professional as her HRP colleagues’ as she looked around. She suspected she was more ladylike.

She was not surprised to find she was sitting on a filthy mattress in a filthy room where a filthy rat sat in a corner boldly looking back at her. Then again, perhaps the rat wasn’t filthy. Its dark fur looked rather shiny and healthy. That couldn’t be said for the watery gray light outside the dirty window. At least there was glass in the window to be dirty. Bullets, rocks, bodies, all sorts of things destroyed the most fragile signs of civilization in this corner of time. She could hear gunfire in the distance. And close by. Firefights were a fact of life back here.

She got up to see how far her grungy arrival point was above the city street, careful not to stand directly in front of the window as she looked out upon the blasted world her ancestors roamed in well-armed bands. Well, not her ancestors. Hers had managed to save themselves from all the dystopic anarchy going on below. At least eight floors below, where she had a bird’s-eye view of two groups of ragged people firing guns at each other from the flimsy cover of rusted cars and piles of garbage. There was no mistaking the rattling fire or banana-shaped bullet clips of the Kalashnikovs most of the fighters were using. Typical for the time.

She didn’t give the skirmish below much thought, because after a moment a metal structure in the distance caught her attention. The sight caught her like a blow to the gut.

“Oh, no. This is not good.”

She knew when she was, but this wasn’t the right where.

The Eiffel Tower was so not in New York. It had been in Las Vegas at one point in the past, but that had been a much smaller replica of the one she could see outside the unbroken window. Her internal sensors hadn’t completely adjusted yet, or alarms would be going off. She clicked all her orientation implants but the chrono to neutral to avoid the coming hysterical buzzing in her head. She could manage to be hysterical all on her own, but she only allowed herself a few seconds to pound through that reaction.

Her clock told her she’d arrived four days ahead of schedule. The time differential was within the mission window and perfectly normal. Precise downtime landings were something that happened in ficvids. Reality was so much messier and harder to predict; a little wiggle room was actually a good thing.

She immediately had suspicions about what had gone wrong, but the important thing wasn’t to place blame but to correct the huge mistake that had left her in the wrong town.

“I’m under a bit of a time constraint here, so how do I get out of here without getting shot?”

The rat tilted its head, as if it were actually considering her question, then it jumped up on the windowsill. Frannie took a cautious look outside, and as she did the rattling firing of the AK-47s abruptly halted.

It took her a moment to spot the lone man standing in the no-man’s-land between the warring groups. He was dressed in a long black leather drovers’ coat, and thick hair as black as the leather hung in a braid down his back. He was imposingly tall and broad-shouldered, but didn’t appear to be armed. She couldn’t understand why no one was trying to kill him, or why both armed groups dispersed at his gesture, but Frannie was delighted that she seemed suddenly to have a chance at safe passage. At least out of this Paris neighborhood.

“Paris,” she grumbled as she moved to check the contents of the pack of equipment that had arrived down the timestream a few seconds after her.

The silence in the street continued, so Frannie took the time to make a thorough check of her supplies.

She had a long way to go and wasn’t sure how she was going to get there. She considered activating the recall implant, but that would be wimpy. Time agents who ran home to hide in under three days on a tough assignment were mercilessly teased by their peers, and could look forward to a future of being given the most boring trips into the past. She might be in dangerous territory, but she was giving herself the traditional seventy-two hours to make things right.

She was more interested in the defense cache she found than the packets of food and survival gear. She had her own implants for any computer assistance she might need. Her weapons consisted of the standard-

issue stun gun with extra charges, and other small, non-lethal defenses she was glad to find. She was downright delighted to discover that her controller had thoughtfully added her own non-standard-issue, completely contraband and potentially lethal 9mm Glock handgun, ammo and knife to her supplies. These were ever so much more helpful accessories in the sorts of situations her journeys threw her into.

The first rule of time-traveling was that YOU DON’T KILL ANYONE down the timestream. You were allowed to defend yourself, but had to be willing to die to preserve the past. It was a fine, idealistic rule, and every time-agent obeyed it for at least the first few years on the job. After watching a colleague get torn to shreds in a Roman arena or being the only member of a team to escape a medieval mob, or appearing in the middle of a battle instead of an observable distance away, your attitude changed. You tried hard not to do any harm, but when it came down to killing your potential grandpa or letting the smelly barbarian that might be important to history take your head off with his axe, you made sure to be the one to shoot or stab first – to do whatever you had to do to stay alive. Travelers and controllers didn’t discuss unauthorized additions to packs, but the travelers’ “personal property” tended mysteriously to come along for the ride. And most of the scholars just wanted the data, no questions asked.

Frannie repacked her supplies, and made sure to conceal all of her weapons. Just as she finished, a deep voice spoke behind her.

“How did you get in here?”

As she whirled around to face him her translator told her that the man spoke almost unaccented French, but was not a native speaker, and suggested she reply in the English of the era.

She opened her mouth to answer as she faced him, but ended up staring for a moment. “You’re the one who stopped the battle!” At least the words that burst out of her were the suggested language.

He looked past her shoulder out the window. “Hardly a battle.”

She noted that he had remarkably blue eyes. A long scar marked his left cheek, but it didn’t mar his striking good looks.

“But how’d you do it? Why didn’t they kill you?”

“If they kill me who will they have to read for them? Who’d write their letters for them, and make sure they get delivered?”

“You’re a mailman?”

He nodded. “Archivist. Librarian. Living memory. Who the hell are you?” he added.

But before she could answer he was across the room. This reminded her that the mailmen had started their lives as a military genetic-engineering experiment. They’d been enhanced super-soldiers who had rebelled against their creators. And won. They were too damn smart to sacrifice their super-bodies and intellects in the endless conflicts of this time. As civilization and communication broke down they found a peaceful and profitable purpose for their exceptional skills.

He grabbed her right arm and pushed up the sleeve of her sweatshirt to examine the inside of her wrist.

“Elect,” he said. His tone was scornful, but his touch was surprisingly stimulating as he ran his thumb across the skin surrounding the small implant plug.

“Elite,” she blurted out. “That old Elect term is so—”

“Evil? Selfish? Morally repugnant?” His blue eyes glittered with anger.

She didn’t scare easily, no matter how big and hostile he was.

“I was going to say old-fashioned. We saved civilization,” she added.

“It’s taking you long enough.”

At least he hadn’t picked up on her use of the wrong tense. Even as she justified her ancestors’ actions a sane part of her that was not viscerally reacting to this stranger’s touch was swearing at her for completely forgetting years of training and behavior. Speaking the truth to a downtimer could be more dangerous than killing one.

But this wasn’t any ordinary local, was it?

Frannie calculated her options and came to a decision that wasn’t going to be easy to explain on her report, justifiable though she judged it to be. “I need to get to New York,” she told the mailman. “I want to hire you to get me there.”

“I don’t deliver people,” he answered.

She sensed that this wasn’t an outright refusal, but the opening of a negotiation.

“I’m not interested in working for anyone who broke into my place to get my help,” he went on. “What are you doing out of your hole, anyway?”

“Observing,” she answered.

“You people have your own routes and roads.”

“I don’t. I’m lost.”

She wondered if her controller had dumped her here for that exact reason. Maybe there hadn’t been a glitch in the machinery, but roundabout was the only way to get her to her assignment. Another possibility was that this was somehow part of another Starshiner plot. And maybe she was being paranoid, because why would anyone get her involved in an operation that it would be her duty to stop?

She showed him her implant plug. “You deal in information exchange. I have lots of information to trade.”

His expression remained stony. “Why do you need help to travel?”

She laughed and gestured toward the window. “It’s not like there’s any public transportation available.

There are no scheduled flights, no trains running, not a lot of gas for cars.”

“And there are scavengers and wolfsheads every step of the way,” he added. Even a sneer didn’t look bad on his handsome face. “There are guides you can hire. Armed guards are available for rent.”

She laughed again. “You know the safe routes. You’re left alone.” She knew the history of this period as well as anyone could. “Most mercs sell out their clients the second things get dicey on the road.

Coyotes treat the refugees they move through borders like animals. Those who try to travel on their own get killed or trafficked. I have no intention of getting killed, squashed into a cargo container without food or water with a thousand other people, or dead. I’m going with you.”

“We’re not dating,” he answered. He sat down cross-legged on the floor and pretended she wasn’t there.

“Oh, yes we are.” She sat down in front of him and thrust her wrist under his nose. “You know you want it.”

He looked at her with deep, dark hunger in his eyes. They held each other’s gaze for a long time. He finally shrugged. “You have a name?”

She was hopeful at the sign of softening. “Francine. You?”

“Rakesh.” He stroked the skin around her implant. “I’m on my way to New York anyway. You can plug in and download when we get there.”

Yes, she could. The jacks from this era were the prototype that every generation of data-transfer tech had been built on.

“And until then?” she asked, because she wasn’t silly enough to think there wouldn’t have to be a down payment on his help.

He pulled a worn brown leather bag to him, flipped it open and took out a painted wooden box. He took out a shallow bowl, a container of dark liquid and a short stick with what looked like a row of viciously sharp teeth attached to one end.

“Are those needles?” Frannie asked, trying to hide any sign of dread.

“Yes.”

Just what sort of payment did this mailman have in mind?

Rakesh peeled off his leather coat, then rolled up his left sleeve. Rows of numbers and letters in various colors marched up the skin of his arm. Tattoos.

She gestured toward the markings. “What’s that all about?”

“Mnemonic,” he said. “It’s how I remember and retrieve data.” He dipped the tattoo needles into the ink, and poised the device over a bare space on his skin. “You’ve got a head full of information, Elect.

Give me some of it.”

He was certainly correct about the vast amount of info stored on microscopic chips connected to her brain. Some of that information was fictional. Fiction from this time from the vast library her ancestors had saved and hidden away in underground lifeboats along with themselves. There was no harm to the future in sharing a story that was already part of this time. Maybe it even existed somewhere out there in a library that had escaped burning.

She called up a book from her cache, and started to read it out loud. “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times . . .”

She kept her eyes averted from the mailman’s gruesome aid to memorization while she continued to talk.

The first part of the journey turned out to be in the back of a coyote’s truck after all. They boarded the truck in an alley behind the shell of an abandoned cafe. Who had time for a baguette and cup of coffee anyway?

“He’s a friend,” Rakesh said when she protested about dealing with a human trafficker. Which meant Rakesh got to sit up in the cab with the driver.

Of course it wasn’t pleasant in the back. She hated being packed in body to body with more people and their raggedy belongings than the back of the trunk could hold. It wasn’t so much that she minded the stench of fear, desperation and outright dirt of the gaunt refugees piled in closely around her. She’d spent time in a walled city besieged by Mongols. She hated the sense of futility and frustration that memory called up. Not to mention guilt. Guilt because that had been the first time she’d broken the rules of observation. Guilt because her nursing and feeding those people hadn’t stopped them all from being massacred when the Mongols had broken through the city walls.

She’d gone uptime, safe and sound, and that was that. Frannie hadn’t even gotten much satisfaction out of killing a half dozen of the invaders to get safely to her up point. It was when she was offered self-

editing software by her controller to keep certain details out of her reports – for a price – that she began to understand that the system wasn’t perfect, it certainly wasn’t pure, and those who didn’t bend rules became broken and washed up. She liked her job too much to leave, but she still lived by the rules ninety-

nine per cent of the time.

She couldn’t do anything to help the people squashed in around her now, and she hated the reminder so much it made her stomach roil and her head hurt like hell.

She didn’t bother observing her fellow passengers. She kept her head raised toward the tarpaulin roof and didn’t listen to anything that was said. Not that the refugees did much more than try to hide their fear and conceal what little hope they had to cling to. Never admitting to having anything that could be exploited or snatched away was the best way to survive this time and place.

Frannie could only thank the All-Seeing that the descendants of these people would have an easier life.

Not that it would come for free. And not at all if the Starshine fanatics’ attempts at good deeds got in the way of how the future needed to roll.

At least the trip in the back of the truck didn’t last more than a few hours.

It was very dark outside when the truck stopped its slow, swaying, bumping gear-grinding progress. A shiver of worry went through the occupants, replaced by indifference when Rakesh lifted the tarpaulin over the back and called, “Francine.”

She squeezed her way through the crowd to the exit, and got no help from Rakesh jumping to the ground. She landed in a puddle and stumbled. Without night-vision implants she wouldn’t have been able to see the figure of Rakesh already walking briskly off into the darkness. She hurried to catch up with him, and then got her bearings. She checked GPS to find out where they were. The answer came as no surprise.

“Please tell me we aren’t heading for Sangatte,” she said when they were striding side by side.

Sangatte had started as a refugee camp a century earlier. It was so much worse than a wretched place for displaced people in this time; it was more like the first circle of hell. Over the decades it had been closed, closed again, burned, and there had been at least one massacre trying to drive everyone out. The place simply wouldn’t go away. It couldn’t go away. It was a final resting place just one step out of the grave for thousands with nowhere else to go.

“We’re not going in,” he answered. “We’ll stay at the supply station two kilometers out.”

“You have deliveries,” she guessed. “To and from?”

“That’s right.”

She could also guess what he was carrying. “Forged visa chips for countries that still let people in?”

He gave her a hostile look. “You going to report me, Elect?”

“Elite,” she reminded. “Hell, no. There’s few enough spots on this planet that are safe. I don’t begrudge anyone getting to them who can.”

“Good to know your opinion,” he said. “Because I was going to kill you if you went all righteous on me.”

She was fully aware that he’d started life as a super-soldier. She gave him a smile without a hint of bravado in it. “I would so love to see you try,” she told him.

As far as she could tell, Rakesh took no part in the buying and selling of false IDs; he was a courier. He delivered a package to a tent on the outskirts of the camp outside Sangatte, then settled down at a table in what could best be described as a den of iniquity and waited with a glass of dark liquid by his hand while word went out that the mailman had arrived.

Frannie received an annoyed look when she sat down beside him. “My presence will keep the hookers off you,” she told him.

“Who says I want to keep them away?” He gestured. “Not that the stable roams around freely in here.”

She glanced under her lashes at a row of skinny girls and boys lined up along a side wall, waiting.

They each stood beneath a crudely painted number. Every now and then one of the pimps conducting business at a nearby table would call out a number, and one of the sex-workers would leave with a buyer.

Everyone involved seemed more bored with the transaction than anything else, even the customers.

Of course there was no prostitution in her time. Not that people didn’t pay for sex, they just didn’t have it with each other. It was all very virtual and virtuous and nobody died from STDs. People still made a profit on it, of course.

What was the matter with her? She shook her head, trying to clear out at least a little of the cynical mood that had descended on her since her arrival downtime. She lived in a Utopia. Almost a Utopia. As close as humans could get to a Utopia. The population was stable, everyone had food, clothing, shelter, employment, education, leisure time, medical care. Not everybody was equal, but everybody was fine.

The planet wasn’t completely healed from the dark times yet, but it was being made greener every year.

All right, there was a stratified social order in place, but from her spot at the top she couldn’t see all the way down to where the dissatisfaction with things as they were bubbled and brewed.

“There’s no way the world can be perfect,” she murmured. “But it’s sure as hell better than this.”

“What the hell are you doing out here, then? Slumming outside the CERN hole when the whole world’s a slum?”

She wished she hadn’t spoken. For a man who didn’t invite conversation Rakesh was fired up for one now. Confrontation, more like. “I’m not from the CERN Enclave.”

In fact, she was a Hillbilly. Her ancestors resided underground at the Appalachian Enclave. CERN was where her profession originated, as the place had been home to scientists who fiddled around with physics while waiting for the apocalypse to calm down.

“Why are you here? Why do you need to get to New York?”

“I was under the impression you didn’t ask questions about your delivery jobs. Why do you roam the world?”

“Because I can.”

“See, that’s the kind of bullshit answer I’d expect from a macho war-fighter type. I thought mailmen were trying to save the world, doing what they could to keep civilization going.”

Apparently she was up for a confrontation too.

He said, “I do what I can. Don’t lay that macho military shit on me. I walked away from war, but I didn’t leave the world. What do the Elect do to help anyone but themselves?”

“Elite.We saved the knowledge.”

“Let it free. That’s what we need.”

She leaned in close to him to keep the conversation private. Not that anybody in this place would pay attention to anything less than a gun battle breaking out, and then only to duck, or to scavenge the bodies.

He smelled of dust, sweat and ink, and she found the combination rather intriguing. Their gazes met and held, and she saw how deeply he cared about everything burning deeply in his eyes. And his gaze burned deep into her soul. She was goddamned stripped naked all the way through, with no interest in trying to hide anything from this man. He knew her insatiable curiosity, her doubts, her regrets and hopes.

Well, she learned about him, too. But before either of them could pounce on the other’s vulnerabilities a couple of clients showed up with business for the mailman.

Frannie settled back in her chair. She finished drinking Rakesh’s whisky. Alcohol wouldn’t affect her, but she appreciated the burn of the stuff going down her throat. She watched the way he dealt with people, and was surprised to discover he had a ready smile and a charming manner toward someone who needed him. Interesting fellow, this Rakesh.

For the shy, arthritic elderly woman who was his last client he wrote a paper letter, and coaxed specific directions on where in London to deliver it. Frannie observed his behavior with all her sensors.

She didn’t know if the scholar who had commissioned her research would be interested in the routine of a mailman, but she wanted a record of this. She wanted a memory of Rakesh, she supposed.

When the old woman was gone he put away the letter then set out his tattoo equipment and rolled up his sleeve. His attitude had returned to grudging neutrality. “Continue,” he said when he was ready.

She returned to Charles Dickens.

It didn’t take long for a group of English speakers to gather around to listen to the story. Frannie felt the pressure of their attention on her. She felt hunger deeper than any physical hunger trying to eat her up.

The pimps and the bartender were the only ones who didn’t look completely enthralled with the storytelling. Why should they when it interfered with the entertainment they provided? She was certain the only thing that kept them from pulling weapons was fear of crossing a mailman, but it was coming soon.

Restraint was not a common virtue of this era. An itch between her shoulder blades warned her that this could get bad.

“I’m done.” She stood. “Let’s go.”

There was a collective disappointed sigh from the crowd, but they instantly turned away. Rakesh looked up in irritation, but he took her hint when she gestured her head slightly toward the pimps’ table.

He put away his gear and they went on their way. Their path led along a torn-up railroad track.

Frannie looked toward the refugee camp when a wisp of smoke drifted around them. A portion of the night sky was flame-lit and the roar of angry, frightened voices came across several miles’ distance.

Frannie just shook her head and kept on. Something as common as a riot wasn’t worth observing.

Frannie had hoped they’d be meeting a boat when they reached the coast at Pas-de-Calais, but of course it wasn’t going to be that easy. Oddly enough she recognized the ruins of the town because they reminded her of similar destruction she’d seen wrought on the French coast during a trip back to June 1944. She’d enjoyed that trip, even if it had been into the middle of a combat zone during a world war. At least it had been a war where right and wrong had had some real meaning. Good guys and bad guys were much harder to define most of the time.

Never mind nostalgia for the Allies storming the Normandy beaches, she guessed why Rakesh had brought her here and she didn’t like it. “You are not seriously going under the English Channel?”

“We are,” he answered. “Pirates have been busy in the Channel lately. So many boats have been captured or sunk, the Chunnel is the safest route at the moment.”

She knew very well that the partially flooded remains of the Channel Tunnel, while a gaping abandoned hole on the French side, were cordoned off and tightly guarded where the tunnel ended in Folkestone on the English side.

“It’s a two-hundred-and-fifty-foot-deep, thirty-mile-long dead end. A leaking one, at that. How can you possibly— ?”

“Are you coming?” He turned his back and walked toward a screaming mouth of a hole in the ground.

Frannie settled her pack more comfortably on her shoulders. “Yeah. Sure,” she grumbled, and followed Rakesh into the Chunnel entrance.

Frannie gazed into the heart of the tiny campfire, feeling wonder at the place she and Rakesh had ended up to get some rest. They were dry and warm, surrounded by other groups and other small fires. Several of the travelers seemed to be Rakesh’s friends. There had been smiles and nods and a few invites to join groups. Rakesh returned the greetings, but settled down at an empty firepit with her.

They’d traveled for many miles in the main tunnel. Frannie had been grateful that they both had genetically enhanced night vision. The way was dark and wet, vermin-infested, and crazies and cut-

throats lurked in the shadows. They’d had to swim in freezing, filthy salt water a couple of times. They’d fought off a trio of robbers, leaving bodies floating face down in streaming water and their own blood.

She’d appreciated Rakesh’s deadly speed and skill, and had considered it a compliment when he’d conceded she was damned good with a knife. Neither of them had commented on how good it had felt to be standing body to body, back to back. But the awareness had continued to sing through her long after they had continued on their way.

After a long, hard slog they had come to a blank spot in the wall that had seemed like every other blank spot in the wall. “This is the entrance to the Dry Way,” he had told her, and clicked the latch to a hidden door. After another long walk, feeling their way in darkness that was nearly complete even with enhanced vision, faint light had appeared ahead of them. Rakesh had led her into the side tunnel that held this encampment. There were working air vents near the roof, taking out smoke, bringing in salty air. She’d love to see a schematic of just how those worked.

“I guess there’s a lot about this world I don’t know,” she said now, still not quite over the surprise of the secret path and this protected place.

“Well, if you came out of your hole more often . . .”

She glanced up across the fire at Rakesh. He was toasting chunks of bread on skewers for them. “Give it a rest,” she advised.

“Am I just supposed to appreciate that you’re trying to find out about the world? Are you going to take the knowledge and use it against us, Elect?”

“Elite. And who exactly is us?” she asked. “I’m one of us. Besides, neutrality is one of the things that keeps the enclaves safe from warlords and crusaders. And their mercenaries,” she added, giving him a significant look. She reached out a hand. “Stop throwing stones and give me some food.”

He accepted her point and passed over some toast. “Ex-mercenary,” he said as their fingers briefly touched. A smile didn’t touch his lips, but she saw it in his eyes.

Frannie was considering moving closer to Rakesh when one of the other mailmen, a woman, actually, came over and took a seat in the area between them. The woman slapped Rakesh on the shoulder, so hard that he almost dropped his bread into the fire. He gave the newcomer a glare.

Which she ignored. “You’re on your way to the meet, aren’t you?” the woman asked. “I know you said you weren’t interested when the general’s call went out, but I knew you’d change your mind.”

And so it was that Frannie found out who she was going to New York to watch die. “General Dehn, the man who led the super-soldier mutiny. I thought he was dead.” Frannie just barely caught herself from saying already dead.

“He led our fight for freedom,” Rakesh said.

“Now he’s asking more from us,” the woman said.

“I already know his speech by heart, Salome,” Rakesh said.

Frannie wanted to say, “I don’t,” and find out more, but she had to keep out of this. Just observe and hope some useful data was forthcoming.

Salome grinned widely and clapped him on the shoulder again. “But you’ve decided to listen to him in person this time. A lot of us have. We’re beginning to believe. That’s a good sign.”

“I’ve got deliveries in New York,” Rakesh said. “But I’m thinking about being there. Don’t.” He jerked aside before the woman could hit him once more.

Salome laughed. “You’ll be there. Knowledge is power,” she added, then moved back to her own campsite.

Frannie was hoping to get an explanation, but instead Rakesh said, “It’s been a long day. Let’s get some rest.”

She couldn’t hide her surprise. “Don’t you want me to read?”

He put a finger to his lips, looked around at his fellow mailmen, then whispered. “Knowledge may be power, but you’re not something I’m ready to share.”

Frannie decided to take that as a compliment, and broke out her sleeping roll. She also took it as a good sign when he settled beside her and they ended up sleeping together spoon fashion.

“How are we getting to New York?” Frannie asked once they were safely out of the secret Chunnel that let out at the bottom of a tall white chalk cliff. They moved quickly to a narrow path that led up from the seashore. Smugglers had been using this coast for hundreds of years.

“Flying,” Rakesh answered when they reached the top of the cliff.

Rolling green, empty countryside spread out before them.

“Thank goodness you have access to a plane. I feared we’d be snorkeling across the Atlantic.”

“There are still a few flights from Gatwick. If you have the right contacts. And the price,” he added.

She frowned. “How much is this going to cost me?”

“More data.”

She tapped her forehead. “I’ve got some Laura Ingalls Wilder in here I’d be happy to share with the pilot.”

He touched the same spot her finger had. “Save the story for me. I’ll take care of your ticket.”

“When do we leave?” she asked. She had a time constraint to consider.

“We have to deliver Mrs Bledsoe’s letter first.”

Frannie had figured that was coming. She wondered if he noticed he’d said we. Oh, yeah, he had.

“Bad neighborhood?” she asked.

“Worse than most.”

“Where you go I go,” she said. A true statement wasn’t a promise of help if his delivery turned dicey.

But of course she’d have to help, because she needed him to get to her assignment. And she’d hate to see anything happen to his handsome ass.

“The mailing address is Paddington Station.”

Frannie took a shocked step back. Rakesh caught her before she could take a fatal fall backwards. He kept his arm firmly around her waist as they talked.

“Paddington’s a quarantine zone,” she said.

“I already know that. I’m immune,” he added. “I’m betting you are too.”

“Yes. But that’s not the point. Brit security strictly enforces the zone around the area. Maybe you can sneak in, but getting out isn’t so easy. And the conditions inside . . .”

“Gangs, gunfights, the usual stuff. Only a bit more concentrated.”

“Zombies,” Frannie added.

That was the common, if incorrect, name for those few who survived the engineered biological weapon that terrorists had set loose in London. Not that the scarred, brain-damaged ones who lived through the original sickness survived more than a year or so after the so-called recovery. They were crazy mean while they lived. Frannie knew she couldn’t catch anything from them, but the thought of being scratched and bitten by a stinking husk of human did not appeal in the least. And they were bound to be attacked if they went into Paddington Park, as the place had come to be called.

“Hardly anybody inside the cordon is sick anymore. Most people packed in there are healthy, but they won’t be let out. Mrs Bledsoe wants her daughter to know that the kids she got out before the quarantine are safer than their mom will ever be.”

Frannie cringed. “You’re trying to make me feel sorry for people,” she complained.

“Is it working?”

She relaxed against him. “Yes.” She sighed. “Let’s get this delivery over with.”

Rakesh hugged her before he let her go. “You’re not so bad, for one of the Elect.”

“I’m considered a rebel at home,” she told him. Which was sort of true. Rebel without a cause, or a clue, she guessed.

They traveled to London on bicycles retrieved from a hidden smuggler’s cache, much of the way along a forgotten Roman track. And then along another ruined railway line that once led directly into Paddington Station. They had to abandon this route within a few miles of their destination, leave the bikes in another cache and move cautiously toward the security cordon on foot.

As things went in this time, London was a fairly civilized place. At least the gangs that ran the various areas of the city mostly kept to an agreement that kept them from killing the people they exploited. The government spent its time either chasing the gangs or leaving them alone, depending on the current policy on bribes and corruption. The one thing the official security forces were good at was enforcing the quarantine. It kept the streets safe for the official gangs to go about their business, and the threat of ending up exiled to Paddington Park was a great incentive to keep the populace docile and tax-paying.

Of course Frannie and Rakesh sneaked toward the quarantined area at night through a city under curfew. But it wasn’t like sneaking was that hard for either of them. Frannie just wished that Rakesh didn’t have an affinity for traveling in the sewers. It got them dirtier than they already were, and it kept them safe a while longer, but it still didn’t get them all the way to their destination.

They emerged on the edge of Hyde Park and ducked into the entrance of the abandoned Lancaster Gate tube station. They paused long enough to clean off as much as they could in a lavatory that had a trickling water faucet.

“I don’t suppose you have an invisibility cloak?” he asked when they headed back out into the dark street.

“They’d still smell us coming.”

“Okay. I guess we’ll just have to do this the old-fashioned way. Cover me,” he said, and walked boldly up to the nearest checkpoint gate.

Frannie stayed in the shadows with her gun out. She felt terribly exposed, even if her implants made sure she at least couldn’t be picked up by infrared security cameras. She waited and watched in her hiding spot—

While a bribe passed from Rakesh’s hand to a guard’s.

Hey! That wasn’t fair.

She was furious when Rakesh waved her forward. “Why didn’t you just ask her to deliver the letter?”

Frannie asked after they were clear of the checkpoint.

He was affronted. “My job is to deliver the mail, and I do exactly that.”

She was unwillingly impressed, and mollified, by Rakesh’s professional integrity. Or possibly it was willful, stubborn insanity. She still kind of liked it.

“Now that we’re in, how do we get out?”

“We’ll think of something.”

She’d suspected he’d say that. He took her by the hand as they walked into the abyss. She made sure her Glock was in the other.

There was no curfew inside the crowded tangle of streets cordoned off with the ruined train station at its center. Most of the multistoried, close-set buildings around the station had been small hotels and pubs in the days when there were tourists in the world. Now it was an overcrowded tenement neighborhood that reminded Frannie of Whitechapel in the days of Jack the Ripper. Only not quite as safe.

There weren’t many moving on the dark street. Greedy-eyed people were gathered on steps and seated on curbs, looking up as they passed, gazes following. Some were sharks, most of them were scavengers who could easily form into packs. Walking in a place like this was an art form that took total spacial awareness and cold confidence. Rakesh was as adept at the do-not-fuck-with-me dance as she was. They made good partners.

The street had a way of clearing of people as they walked along. Which didn’t mean Frannie and Rakesh weren’t followed, or word of outsiders’ presence didn’t spread along the streets and alleys. It was only a matter of time.

There was no electricity in this part of the city: only the occasional flicker of a candle or oil lamp behind a window throwing out faint puddles of light. It came as no surprise when a tall man with a large gun stepped into one of those puddles ahead of them.

“Welcome to my territory. Why should I let you live?”

Frannie sighed, not because of this threat, but over the fact that the people trapped in this slum had access to high-tech weapons but no way to make light bulbs work. Rakesh dropped her hand and stepped forward to confront the gunman. Frannie stayed in the shadows and watched his back. Further into the dark, others watched her.

Rakesh showed the gunman his leather courier bag. “I have a delivery to make. Can I take anything out for you?” he added.

Rakesh sounded so polite and helpful Frannie had to hide a smile. But it worked.

“The mail has to get through, eh?” the gunman asked. He thoughtfully scratched his bearded jaw.

“Heard about you lot.” All the bravado had left his voice.

“Just shoot him and take what he’s got,” a watcher in the dark called.

Frannie turned enough to make sure her gun was visible to the watchers. She caught the glitter of eyes.

“Kindly keep out of this,” she suggested softly.

“He’s a mailman,” the gunman called to the others. “Remember what happens when the mail doesn’t get through.”

The troublemaker took a step out of concealment. “Who’ll know, if he’s dead?”

“They’ll know,” Rakesh said. There wasn’t a hint of doubt in his voice. He didn’t bother to look at anyone but the gunman. “I’m on my way to Paddington. I’ll come back this way. Be waiting here if you have anything for me to deliver. Francine.” He gestured her forward.

“What the—!” The troublemaker lunged.

The gunman shot him before Frannie could. The man’s angry shout turned into a scream that nobody paid any attention to. The blood that flowed onto the ground was just one stain among many.

“I’ll be here,” the gunman said. “Watch out for the Zs,” he called out as Frannie walked away with Rakesh.

“So, you peace-loving ex-mercs retaliate when something happens to one of your own,” she said once they were away from the gang.

“I’ve heard that rumor,” was his cool answer.

When they reached the main entrance of the ruined rail station she asked, “How are we finding Mrs Bledsoe’s daughter?”

He took out a handheld puter and used the keypad. “Easy. Mrs Bledsoe had her daughter chipped when she was a kid.”

“Ah. Of course.” She kept her attention on the dark street and the shadows by the surrounding buildings while Rakesh used the primitive tracking function of his puter.

She supposed the old lady’s daughter would be in the age range for that particular endtimes app.

Identity/tracking chip implants had been all the rage for children back when civilization began seriously to fall apart. Even members of the Elect communities had used them. Frannie supposed the IT chips had been the first tech enhancements her ancestors had used.

After a minute or two he lifted his head and looked to the left. “This way.”

She accompanied him around a corner, into an area of tents and shacks set up on the street. They stopped in front of a tent, where they found a very surprised middle-aged woman who burst out crying when Rakesh gave her the letter. She said no when Rakesh asked her if she wanted him to bring an answer to her mother.

Duty over, Rakesh and Frannie headed back the way they had come. They exchanged a glance to acknowledge they knew they were being followed as they approached the spot where the gunman had said he’d meet him.

The gunman was there all right, a piece of mauled meat, with a pair of zombies kneeling on either side of him, munching away. The gangbanger had warned them to look out for the Zs, but had ended up a victim of the hunt himself.

“Because he was alone,” Rakesh said. “Waiting for me.”

The Zs sprang away from their kill, toward them.

“Two more coming up behind us,” Frannie answered.

“Aim for the head,” he said as she span around.

“I know!”

Her irritated shout was drowned by the roar of the Glock as she fired. The bullet went into the Z’s forehead with a horrible thud, blowing a much bigger hole in the attacker’s head than it should have.

Stinking brain fragments flew away into the dark.

Her next shot went through the second zombie’s shoulder. He slammed into Frannie without slowing at all. This one had enough intelligence left to grab her arms and wrench them so hard the Glock was forced from her grasp. She held the Z away from her while he snapped at her face. She brought up her knees from beneath him.

But a knife sank to the hilt into the zombie’s head before she could lever him off.

Rakesh flung the body away before it collapsed onto her. He pulled her to her feet. A quick glance told her Rakesh had taken out the other pair of zombies. No one else was around.

“I owe you one,” she informed the mailman.

He gave a curt nod. “I’ll hold you to it. Keeping promises and returning favors is the right way to live,” he added. He sounded like he expected her to argue.

“Well, yeah,” she answered.

They made their way back to the sentry post. Frannie had wondered if getting out would be as easy as getting in, but the guard was waiting there for them. She let them through and pressed a tiny bag into Rakesh’s hands. Mailmen had the run of the world, Frannie decided. What they did was just too useful to keep them from making their rounds.

She and Rakesh spent some more time in the sewer, but were met by a smuggler’s van at the spot where they came out. It was just after dawn. The van took them deep into the hangars beyond the collapsed terminal buildings of Gatwick Airport. A well-maintained private jet was parked inside the hangar. They were taken past it, up a flight of metal stairs to an office/living area. A tall, thin man came from behind his desk to greet Rakesh, arms held out for a hug.

He stopped inches away from the mailman and made a gagging noise. “Oh, God, you stink.” He went to a door in the back of the office and gestured them through. “Get cleaned up. There’ll be food waiting for you when you’re done.”

Not only was there running water in the bathroom shower, but it was hot! Frannie stripped off her clothes and plunged into the steaming stream of water with her face turned up and her eyes closed.

Heavenly!

It wasn’t long before her rapture was interrupted as a naked Rakesh squeezed in beside her. “To save time and energy,” was his comment. He began to rub her skin, leaving a trail of lather and tingling pleasure. “I brought soap.”

She gathered up soap bubbles and returned the favor, her hands gliding over his chest and hips and down his thighs.

“We both know how this is going to end,” he said.

“Uh-huh.” Frannie leaned her head against his shoulder, put a hand on his hip to steady herself and wrapped her leg around him, welcoming him inside.

“What is it you want from me?” Frannie asked Rakesh. She didn’t turn away from watching the clouds below the airplane window, but she was acutely aware of him in the seat beside her. They’d both slept on the flight. When she woke up she found his head resting on her shoulder. She watched him for a while, then turned toward the window when he woke up.

She held her wrist up, showing her implant. “I can’t offer you every bit of data I can access at the retrieval point. I certainly can’t download everything there is in the database into my one little brain. I’m letting you name what your help’s been worth. And it has to be something accessible at my security level.

I ain’t no hacker, hon.”

He looked skeptical. “You’re just a simple little expendable scout roaming the outside world? Is that it?”

“I wouldn’t say expendable.”

He patted her shoulder. “Of course you wouldn’t. Everyone is, for the right reasons.”

She thought about the man she was about to observe die. What really disturbed her was knowing that Rakesh would also see the man who’d been his leader, the one who’d led the mailmen to freedom, fall before an assassin. Then again, maybe it wasn’t a murder, Maybe General Dehn was about to have a fatal heart attack or stroke. There was no definitive proof of how the man had died. She was here to find out and bring back historical fact.

Frannie showed her wrist again. “What can I get for you?”

“Medicine,” he said promptly. “I want the formulas for cures, vaccines that I can get to chemists.”

“There aren’t any chemists outside the enclaves.”

“Who do you think does the processing for the drug cartels?”

She shrugged in acknowledgment. “There’s no cure for the zombie plague,” she said. Not in this time, and anything she gave him would have to be from this era.

“Give me the AIDS vaccine, aspirin. Anything to keep people alive.”

She appreciated his desperate need to help, and kept silent about everything she’d been taught about overpopulation being the cause of civilization’s downfall. The Elect even called what was going on in the world right now the “hinning of the herd”. But the Elect didn’t come out of their enclaves to witness the horrible process in action. She believed her ancestors would have had more compassion if they had.

“Medicines,” she said with a decisive nod. “I’ll get you what I can.”

Would giving away a few formulas be breaking the rules? She suspected Rakesh’s compassionate request would only lead to an intensification of the drug wars that raged along with all the other wars infecting the planet. Rakesh believed he could do some good, and her admiration for him was such a strong, burning emotion that she suspected it was more than admiration.

The plane landed in Newark. It had been a very bumpy landing, but not much rougher than one into Newark she’d experienced on a 1990 observing trip. The difference now was that the airport wasn’t officially operating anymore. The jagged ruins of the New York City skyline were visible in the distance.

None of the bridges linking New Jersey to New York still stood.

“Almost there,” Rakesh said after they climbed down the ladder that got them to the ground.

“Almost,” she told Rakesh. They paused long enough to smile at each other. She was going to miss him when she was gone. They held hands. It was becoming a habit. “Let’s head to the ferry dock.”

The boat was approaching the Battery Dock when Frannie’s mission log kicked on. “Your GPS indicates you have reached physical objective. Stand by.”

She blinked and sat up straight. She’d been leaning against Rakesh, warm and relaxed, enjoying the ride. All of a sudden she was back in her real world.

“Francine,” her scholar’s voice spoke inside her head. “If your controller has done his job correctly you have traveled from Paris to New York in the company of one of General Dehn’s commando force. As you are already aware but do not acknowledge, your controller is a member of the Starshine Group. What you do not know is that I am also a Starshiner.”

Frannie gasped.

Rakesh asked, “What’s wrong?”

Her scholar went on speaking. “I arranged your assignment, not because I want you to observe a murder, but because I want you to prevent one. The Starshiners want to save General Dehn from the assassin sent by the Elect to kill him. You have a sense of justice that you try to hide. Use that sense of justice. Stop a murder. Help the people. You have spent the last several days traveling through a blighted world that your own ancestors did a great deal to create. You have witnessed first-hand the damage the Elect fostered to achieve the world you and I and your controller live in. You have been taught all your life that the residents of the enclaves were neutral, that they hid themselves away and did no harm to anyone, other than to fend off attacks from the outside. Lies.”

Did her scholar think he was surprising her with that revelation? They’d had the right to defend themselves from attacks. Did the Starshiners – her own scholar – really believe the Elect had been murderers as well?

She was surprised at his political sympathies – which could get her in a lot of trouble. “You’re one of the Elite, too,” she said.

“What?” Rakesh asked.

He turned her to face him. She looked through him, her attention on what she was being told by her mission log.

“The history you know states that General Dehn died while he was giving a speech. This fact is a tiny footnote in what we call the Ruin Times. We claim to have very little information about the time you are in. Because, after all, the Elite were closed up in the enclaves while the world burned around them. Have you noticed how few missions have been sent back to this era? Because the Elite would love to place the whole era under interdiction, but that would rouse suspicions.”

She’d assumed scholars just weren’t that interested.

“I have evidence that Dehn will be killed to keep him from organizing a movement that could become dangerous to the Elects’ policy of letting the world go to hell until it is time to come out of the enclaves and take complete power themselves. I want you to save Dehn. His movement might not be able to save the world, but I think anyone who tries to help in the Ruin Times deserves a chance to try. You have to make a choice now, Francine. Let Dehn die or save him. That is all,” the mission log ended.

“Oh, fuck.”

“Francine?”

She found herself looking into Rakesh’s worried face.

Anyone who tries to help in the Ruin Times deserves a chance.

She put her hand on his cheek. It was warm, faintly rough with new stubble. Alive. Real. He was so alive and real and – good.

Damn it! She hated using that word. She was cynical, jaded, just a little corrupt. She was an observer, not a doer.

She hated having witnessed how this one mailman’s acts of kindness had added to what passed for civilization back here. She hated that she remembered these acts with fondness, and pride. She tried telling herself that he wasn’t doing any good, really.

But he wasn’t the only mailman out there, was he? They hadn’t started out as peaceful couriers, had they? What was Dehn planning for them? Would they follow?

Could he change the world? Save it?

“Do you want to save the world?” she asked Rakesh. “Do you really think you could?”

“I am saving the world,” he answered. “One delivery at a time.”

“You’re saving your soul,” she spat back at him. “You’re trying to make up for your mercenary past.”

“That too,” he agreed. “What are you doing to save your soul?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

Her own words took Frannie completely by surprise. She’d been so set up, and she knew it. It hurt.

Instead of making her angry, it hurt. Pain stabbed all the way through her, from her head to her heart and all the way down to her toes. And why didn’t she doubt for a moment what her scholar told her? She’d always had a nagging belief that her ancestors were callous about the chaos outside the enclaves. Their writings had claimed there was nothing they could do to save the world but what they did. She’d believed their sins were of omission not commission. Now she’d had her nose rubbed in that lie.

What was she going to do?

Why was she even asking herself that? She should go home and turn the Starshine traitors in. She should cover her ass. She should—

Rakesh brushed his lips across hers, a gentle angel’s kiss. Her head swirled with confusion and she began to cry. She never cried! He held her close and she cried on Rakesh’s shoulder while the ferry’s hull ground up against the side of the dock. She was vaguely aware of the other passengers moving around them to get off the boat.

“It’s time to go,” Rakesh said.

She reluctantly moved away from him. She nodded. “It is.”

This is a con, she told herself as she accompanied Rakesh into the wreck of Lower Manhattan.

“When’s your meeting?” she asked after her mind ran around in circles too long for her to take it anymore.

“I’m not sure I’m going. I can guess what the general wants. I don’t want to be talked into it.”

Right. He’d really only come to New York to make deliveries. He wanted to believe he was doing as much as he could.

“You’ll be there,” she told him. “You won’t be able to stay away.”

“Yeah. Probably.”

“I’m coming with you,” she said. That wasn’t a surprise. Her scholar had authorized her to be at the meeting no matter what he really wanted her to do. What surprised her was when she added, “It’s a far, far better thing I do . . .”

“What?”

Frannie drew Rakesh into a deep doorway and held his shoulders. She took a deep breath and spoke very fast. “The truth is, I am not from one of the Elect enclaves – not from this time period. I was sent from the future to save the world. It wasn’t my idea, but there it is. Actually, your general and you mailmen are supposed to save the world. My job is to save your general. I can’t do it by myself. Are you in?”

Of course he looked at her like she was crazy. Then he looked thoughtful. He reached up and took her wrist to turn it and look at her implant. “I thought this looked odd,” he said. “And I’ve never heard one of the Elect calling herself Elite. And how did you get into my place without getting through my security?

And what Elect would have sex with one of the riff-raff?”

“Very enjoyable sex,” she said.

“Good. We’ll do it again.” He kissed her palm. “What are we going to do to save the general?”

“God, you’re easy,” she told him.

“I’m also good at taking orders I believe in.Tell me what we’re doing?”

“We’re running,” she said. “I’ll think of something along the way.”

The meeting place was in the lobby of the Chrysler Building. It was the only skyscraper still standing in the city. Not in very good shape, but it was still standing.

There was a group of mailmen already in the lobby when they got there. Frannie recognized Salome.

Several more came in while Rakesh and Frannie caught their breath.

“What’s up, bro?” Salome asked, coming up to them, along with several others who were happy to see Rakesh.

“Hey, Colonel,” somebody said. “I lost a bet over your showing. Glad I did.”

“The general will be glad to see you.”

Frannie wasn’t surprised when Salome clapped Rakesh on the shoulder, but she didn’t like Salome touching him. Any more than she had in the Chunnel, she admitted.

Frannie left Rakesh to explain to his comrades. “The Elect are going to kill the general. Here and now.”

This was all the information the mailmen needed. They believed Rakesh instantly, and waited for him to give them orders.

“Riff-raff, eh?” Frannie asked him.

He gave her a crooked smile. “Your turn,” he told her.

She couldn’t demand that the general not give his speech. History said he was killed giving it. Some bits of history had to go the way they were supposed to, even if the details got changed.

She turned slowly, taking in a growing crowd of black-haired, blue-eyed people in the lobby. People were still coming in. Most of them were in duster coats, carrying mailbags. They were a homogeneous genetically engineered lot. On the periphery of this group some of the former soldiers had already turned to form a perimeter. To protect her? Keen glances were surreptitiously scanning the rest of the crowd. A pair had peeled off and were casually making their way toward the elevator alcove. Frannie supposed the general was waiting there. Damn, these guys were good.

“The assassin will look like you,” she told them. “There’s probably more than one. Rakesh, is your puter battery still charged?”

“Of course.”

“Do all of you carry handhelds?”

Puters appeared from beneath duster coats with the speed of fast-draw pistols.

“Search for ID chips,” Frannie told the mailmen. “The Elect of the right age for this mission will be the right age to have been chipped as kids.”

Rakesh was scanning for the IDs before she finished her explanation. Yep, the mailmen were good.

Especially Rakesh.

“Got one,” he whispered within moments.

“Got him,” Salome added. She started to move away.

Rakesh grabbed her by the elbow. “Wait for it.” He looked back at the puter screen. “There’s a second one moving toward the alcove.” He looked around at the watching mailmen. He made hand signals they understood and Frannie could guess at.

Several mailmen moved to block the alcove. They started shouting at each other and a knife fight broke out. This blocked the Elect heading toward the general.

It also drew the attention of the assassin closer to the entrance.

Rakesh headed that way while the Elect was momentarily diverted. Rakesh’s knife was drawn. Frannie went with him. But the mailman was just a little bit faster than she was.

The assassin’s throat was slit before she had the chance to suggest he be taken prisoner. At least there was still one more they could interroga—

“Go!” Rakesh spun away from the falling body, just barely avoiding a spray of blood.

The mailmen moved on the man near the alcove. And there was no one left to interrogate.

Oh, well, it had been a thought. Frannie didn’t really mind the lost chance at gaining intel. General Dehn’s movement had all of her considerable knowledge at their disposal. Because she sure as hell couldn’t go home now. When Rakesh put his arm around her waist, she knew she didn’t want to.

General Dehn stepped out of the alcove as soon as the bodies were hauled into a corner. He moved onto a low platform and gestured. The mailmen gathered around. Rakesh drew her forward with him into the group. He held her tightly pressed to his side, and she put her arm around him as well.

She knew that her retrieval point and its data outlet hidden at the United Nations ruin would have to be secured fairly quickly, before the disruption in the timestream caused it to disappear. They needed the info dump before this successful Starshiner operation was detected back home. But for now she stood solidly with Rakesh and the others, and waited to hear what the general had to say.