Ripping Time

Chapter Eleven

Kit Carson was in the back room of the Down Time Bar & Grill, doing his best to beat Goldie Morran at pool—and losing his shirt, as usual—when Robert Li appeared, dark eyes dancing with an unholy glee.

"What's up?" Kit asked warily as Goldie sank another ball in the corner pocket with a rattle like doom.

The antiquarian grinned. "Oh, goodie! You haven't heard yet!"

"Heard what?" Goldie glanced up before pocketing another fifty bucks of Kit's money. "We didn't get a riot when Primary opened, did we?"

"No," Robert allowed, eyes twinkling. "But you're not gonna believe the news from up time!"

Kit scowled. "Oh? Don't tell me. Some up-time group of nuts sent an official protest delegation to the station?"

Li's eyes glinted briefly. "As a matter of fact, they did, but not about Jack the Ripper or his victims."

Kit grunted. A vocal group calling themselves S.O.S.—Save Our Sisters—had been lobbying for the right to intervene and save the London prostitutes the Ripper would kill, despite the fact that it wasn't possible to alter important historical events. Their argument went that since these women were nobodies, the effort ought to at least be made, but Kit didn't see how, since Jack the Ripper was one of the most important murder cases in the past couple of centuries.

"Well," Kit said as Goldie lined up another shot, "if it's not the S.O.S. or some group like Jack is Lord, what is it?"

Robert grinned. "Those Ansar Majlis Brothers involved in the riot, the ones Mike Benson threw in the brig? Their up-time brothers have been raising holy hell. Attacks on the Lady of Heaven Temples and important Templars, riots in the streets, you name it. And a whole bunch of somebodies figured out trouble was likely to break out here, because of Ianira Cassondra. The first group through is already demanding the release of the creeps Mike Benson jailed. Seems it's a violation of their human rights to throw in jail a pack of down-time terrorists who left their home station illegally and came to another station to commit murder."

Kit just grimaced. "Why am I not surprised?" Behind him, another fifty bucks of his hard-earned cash dropped into a little round hole. He winced. "But," he added hopefully, "that's not what you came to tell us, is it?"

Li's glance was sympathetic as Goldie dropped yet another ball with a fateful clunk, into a side pocket this time. "Well, no, actually. That news is even better."

Goldie glanced up from lining up her next shot. "Oh, my. Something even better than a bunch of nuts who want to protect the non-existent rights of down-time terrorists?"

Li nodded. "Yep. Better, even, than the arrival of an Angels of Grace Militia Squadron. First thing they did was pick a fight with the idiots agitating for the release of the Brothers in jail. A big fight. Wrecked three kiosks, a lunch stand, and the costume Connie Logan was modeling. She's suing for damages. The costume was a custom order, worth eight grand."

Kit just groaned.

Goldie muttered, "Lovely, this is all we need. What could possibly be worse than a pack of militant feminists whose sole aim in life is to ram their religion down other people's throats at the point of a bayonet?"

Li let the bombshell drop just as Goldie lined up another shot. "You remember Senator John Caddrick, don't you? That nut who outlaws everything he doesn't agree with? The one who's been agitating about the dangers to modern society from time tourism? Well, it seems the Ansar Majlis have kidnapped his only kid. After killing his sister-in-law and about sixty other people in a New York restaurant. He's threatening to shut down every time terminal in the business unless his little girl's returned to him alive and well."

Goldie's shot went wild. So wild, in fact, the five ball jumped off the table and smacked into the floor with a thud. Goldie's curse peeled paint off the ceiling.

"Ooh, Goldie," Robert looked about as contrite as a well-fed cat, "sorry about that, Duchess."

The hated nickname which Skeeter Jackson had given La-La Land's most infamous money changer, combined with the ruin of her game, sent Goldie into a rage so profound, she couldn't even squeeze sound past the purple-hued knot of distended veins in her throat. She just stood there glaring at the antiquities dealer, cue in hand, sputtering like a dying sparkler.

Kit threw back his head and crowed. "Robert, you are a prince among men!" He snatched up his pool cue, replaced the five ball on the felt, and calmly ran the table while Goldie stood flexing the narrow end of her pool cue until Kit feared the wood would crack. When the final ball rattled into the far corner pocket, Kit bowed, sweeping his arm around in a courtly flourish. "Goldie, thank you for a lovely game."

He stuck out a hand to collect his winnings.

She paid up with a seething glare and stalked stiff-legged out of the pool room, a wounded battle destroyer running under the gun for home port. Her deflated reputation trailed after her like the tail of a broken kite. Kit pocketed Goldie's money with a broad grin, then danced a jig around the pool table, whooping for sheer joy. "I did it! Damn, I finally did it! I beat Goldie at pool!"

Robert chuckled. "Congratulations. How many decades have you been waiting to do that?"

Kit refused to be baited. "Noneya, pal. Buy you a drink?"

"Sure!"

They ambled out into the main room of the bar, where an astonishing amount of money was changing hands in the aftermath of Kit's unexpected victory. Excited laughter echoed through the Down Time Bar & Grill as ‘eighty-sixers celebrated, relishing the victory almost as much as Kit. La-La legend held that Goldie Morran had never lost a game of pool in the entire millennium or so she'd been on station.

As they fought their way through the crowd toward the bar, Kit had to raise his voice to be heard. "Listen, were you serious about Caddrick threatening to shut down the time terminals?"

Robert Li's smile vanished. "As a heart attack, unfortunately."

"Damn. That man is the most dangerous politician of this century. If he's declared war on us, we're all in trouble. Big trouble."

Li nodded. "Yeah, that's how I've got it figured. And the riots on station won't play in our favor, either. We're going to look like a war zone, with the whole station out of control. Every news crew on station sent video footage up time with couriers."

Kit scowled. "Once the newsies get done with us, Caddrick won't need to shut us down. The tourists will just stay home and do it for him."

Robert Li's worried gaze matched Kit's own. They both had too much to lose, to risk letting anyone shut down Shangri-La Station. Shangri-La was Robert's life as much as it was Kit's. For one thing, they both owned priceless objects which neither could take up time, not legally, anyway. And what was legal to take with them, would break them financially with the taxes BATF would impose. Never mind that Shangri-La was home, where they had built dreams and brought something good and beautiful to life, where Kit's only grandchild was building her own dreams and trying to build something good for herself.

"Molly," Kit muttered, sinking into a seat at the bar, "we need a drink. Make it a double. Two doubles. Apiece."

The down-timer barmaid, who had come into Shangri-La Station through the Britannia Gate, gave them a sympathetic smile and poured. Despite the impromptu party roaring all around them, somehow Molly knew they were no longer celebrating Kit's victory over Goldie Morran. Kit watched her pour the drinks with a sinking sensation inside his middle. If the station were closed, where Molly would go? Molly and the other down-timer residents? Kit didn't know. "Those idiots demanding human rights for the Ansar Majlis are defending the wrong down-timers. Doesn't anybody up time give a damn about folks like Molly and Kynan Rhys Gower?"

Robert Li muttered into his glass, "Not unless it makes for good press, no."

That was so depressingly true, Kit ordered another double.

And wondered when somebody would figure out that the down-timer problem facing every time terminal in the business would have to be solved one of these days. He just hoped Shangri-La Station was still open for business when it happened.

When Skeeter heard that Charlie Ryan had hired Bergitta to take his place on the station maintenance crew, his first thought was that maybe Ryan had a soul, after all. Then he wondered if maybe Kynan Rhys Gower hadn't paid him a little visit anyway? Whatever the case, Bergitta finally had a job that would give her enough income to pay for her closet-sized apartment and food and station taxes.

But when she learned that she'd been hired only because he'd been fired, she showed up on his doorstep in tears, vowing to quit.

"No," he insisted, "don't even think such a thing. It is not your fault I lost my job."

"But Skeeter..."

"Shh." He placed a fingertip across her lips. Her face was still bruised where that creep had hit her, but the swelling along her eye had gone down, at least. "No, I won't hear it. You need the job, Bergitta. I can get work doing anything. I only took the maintenance job because it was the first one they offered me."

Her stricken expression told Skeeter she knew full well it had been the only job anyone had offered him. What he was going to do to earn enough money to pay rent, buy food, keep the power turned on, and pay his own station taxes, Skeeter had no idea. But that wasn't important. Taking care of the few friends he had left was. So he locked up his dreary little apartment and placed Bergitta's hand through his arm. "Let's go someplace and celebrate your new job!"

Commons was still Skeeter's favorite place in the world, despite the loneliness of knowing that Marcus and Ianira weren't anywhere to be found on station. The bustle of excited tourists, the vibrant colors of costumes and bright lights and glittering merchandise from around the world and from Shangri-La's many down-time gates, the myriad, mouth-watering scents wafting out of restaurants and cafes and lunch stands, all washed across them like a tidal wave from heaven as soon as Bergitta and Skeeter emerged from Residential.

"How about sushi?" Skeeter asked teasingly, since Bergitta adored fish but could not comprehend the desire to eat it raw.

"Skeeter!"

"Okay," he laughed, "how about yakitori, instead?"

The little bamboo skewers of marinated chicken had become one of the Swedish girl's all-time favorite up-timer foods. "Yes! That would be a real celebration!"

So they headed up toward Edo Castletown, where the Japanese lunch stands were concentrated. Skeeter paused as they shouldered their way through Victoria Station and bought a single rose from a flower girl, another down-timer who had sewn her own street-vendor costume and grew her flowers in the station's lower levels. The Found Ones had set up hydroponics tanks to supplement their diets with fresh vegetables, and to grow flowers as a cash crop. They kept the crops healthy with special grow lights Ianira had purchased with money made at her kiosk.

Skeeter's throat tightened at the thought of Ianira and everything she'd done for these people, but he made himself smile and handed the rose to Bergitta. She dimpled brightly, then hugged him on impulse. Skeeter swallowed hard, then managed, "Hey, I'm starved. Let's go find that yakitori."

They were halfway through Victoria Station, with Bergitta sniffing at her flower's heady perfume every few moments—the down-time varieties of roses the Found Ones grew had been carefully chosen for scent, as well as beauty—when they came upon Molly, the London down-time barmaid, surrounded by an improbable hoard of reporters.

"I dunno ‘oo ‘e is," Molly was protesting, "an' I don't want ter know! G'wan, now, I got a job to get back to, don't want t'be late or they'll dock me wages..."

"But you're a down-timer from the East End!" a reporter shouted, shoving a microphone into Molly's face.

"And didn't you earn your living as a streetwalker?" another newsie demanded. "What's your opinion on prostitution in the East End?"

"How would you feel if you were back in London now?"

"Did any of your customers ever rough you up? Were you ever attacked?"

At Skeeter's side, Bergitta began to tremble. She clutched at Skeeter's arm, holding on so tight, blood stopped flowing down to his hand. "Do something, Skeeter! How can they ask her such things? Have they no heart?"

Molly, sack lunch in hand and clearly on break from her job at the Down Time Bar & Grill, glared at the reporters hemming her in. "Blimey, ‘ark at the lot of you! Arse about face, y'are, if you Adam I'll give it some chat! Don't give me none of your verbals, I'll clout you round the ear'ole, I will, you pack o' bloody wind-up merchants! Clear off, the rabbitin' lot of you!"

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 had 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.

"You handle the reporters," Margo told him as they left the gatehouse to climb into the carriage that would take them to the East End. "I'll tackle the eggheads."

Hitching up her long, tattered skirts, Margo clambered awkwardly up into the carriage in predawn darkness, just an hour after Polly Nichols' murder, then assisted Shahdi Feroz up into the seat. Pavel Kostenka and Conroy Melvyn climbed up and found seats, as well. As soon as everyone was aboard, the driver shook out his whip and they pulled away from the dark kerb and headed east.

Margo still couldn't quite believe that she was herding world-class scholars into the East End on such an important guiding job. She'd ordered the whole crew dressed in Petticoat Lane castoffs, once again. They looked as bedraggled as last year's mudhens. Margo, as disreputable as the rest in a streetwalker's multiple layers and fifth-hand rags, complete with strategic mud smears, carried a moth-eaten haversack which concealed her time scout's computerized log. A tiny camera disguised as one of several mismatched coat buttons transmitted data which her log converted to digitized and compressed video, allowing her to record every moment of their excursion. By popping out and replacing the google-byte disks, Margo could extend her recording capacity almost infinitely, limited only by the number of google disks she could carry.

And, of course, limited by the simple opportunity to switch them out without being caught at it. The Ripper scholars and newsies also carried scout's logs and a large supply of spare googles, as did Doug Tanglewood, who remained typically reserved and quiet during the ride. Dominica chatted endlessly as the carriage rattled eastward through London, navigating in the near darkness of predawn, asking questions that Doug answered in monosyllables whenever possible. Clearly, the Time Tours guide didn't think much of up-time newsies, either. Margo sighed inwardly. It's going to be a long day.

By the time they reached the dismal environs of Whitechapel and Wapping, the sun was just climbing above the slate and broken tar-paper rooftops, all but invisible through a haze compounded of fog, drizzle, and acrid, throat-biting coal smoke. As the carriage rattled to a halt in the stinking docklands, the black smoke they were all breathing had already dulled Margo's shapeless white bodice to a smudged and dirty grey. She apologized to her lungs, wriggled her toes inside her grubby boots to warm them, and said, "All right, first stop, Houndsditch and Aldgate. Everybody out, please."

Watching the Spaldergate carriage vanish back through the murk toward the west, leaving them bereft as orphans, Margo's pulse lurched slightly. Her long, entangling skirts hampered her as they started walking, but not as much as they might've had she chosen a more current fashion. She'd opted, instead, for a dress ten years out of style, one that gave her leg room. And if need be, running and fighting room.

The reporters were eager, eyes shining, manner alert. The scholars were no less eager, they were simply more restrained, or maybe just more conscious of their stature as dignitaries. Margo had long since lost any idea that dignity was anything important while down a gate. What mattered was getting the job done with the least amount of damage to her person, not what her person looked like. Dignity, like vanity, did not rank as a survival trait for a wannabe time scout.

As they set out through the early dawn murk, the clatter and groaning of heavy wagons rumbled down Commercial Road, only a couple of blocks farther east. Margo couldn't even guess at the raw tonnage of finished goods, coal, grain, brick, lumber, and God knew what else, transported from the docks through these streets on any given day. Shops were already throwing back their shutters and smoke belched from factory chimneys.

The roar of smelting furnaces could be heard and the scent of molten metal, rotting vegetables, and dung from thousands of horses hung thick on the air. Human voices drifted through the murk as well. Dim shapes resolved occasionally into workmen and flower girls and idle ruffians lurking in dark alleyways. The East End was getting itself busily up and at its business, right along with the chickens cackling and clucking and crowing mournfully on their way to the big poultry markets further west or scratching for whatever scraps might've been left from breakfast in many a lightless, barren kitchen yard.

Dogs slunk past, intent on canine business as muddy daylight slowly gathered strength. Cats' eyes gleamed from alleyways, their shivery whiskers atwitch in the cold air, paws flicking in distaste as they navigated foul puddles of filthy rainwater from the previous night's storm. Along those same alleyways, ragged children sat huddled in open doorways. Most of the children clustered together for warmth, faces dirty and pinched with hunger, eyes dull and suspicious. Their mothers could be heard inside the dilapidated cribhouses they called home, often as not shouting in ear-bending tones at someone too drunk to respond. "Get a finger out, y' lager lout, or there'll be no supper in this cat an' mouse, not tonight nor any other..."

Margo glanced at her charges and found a study in contrasts. The reporters were taking it all in stride, studying the streets and the people in them with a detached sort of eagerness. Conroy Melvyn looked like the police inspector he was: alert, intelligent, dangerous, eyes taking in minute details of the world unfolding around him. Pavel Kostenka was not so much oblivious as simply unmoved by the shocking poverty spreading out in every direction. He was clearly intent on objective observation without the filter of human emotion coloring his judgements.

Dr. Feroz, on the other hand, was as quietly alert as the chief inspector from Scotland Yard, her dark eyes drinking in the details as rapidly as her miniature, concealed camera, but there was a distinctive shadow of grief far back in her eyes as she recorded the same details: children toting coal in wheelbarrows, tinkers with their donkey carts crying their trade, knife grinders carrying their sharpening wheels on harnesses strapped to their shoulders, little boys with leashed terriers and caged ferrets heading west to the neatly kept squares and tree-lined streets of the wealthy to offer their services as rat catchers.

Margo said quietly, "We'll want to be outside the police mortuary when the news breaks. When the workhouse paupers clean her body, they'll tell half of London's reporters what they found. We'll have to walk fast to make it in time—"

"In time?" Dominica Nosette interrupted, eyes smouldering as she rounded on Margo like a prizefighter coming in for the kill. "If we're likely to be late, why didn't the carriage take us directly there? What if we miss this important event because you want us to walk?"

Margo had no intention of standing on a Whitechapel street corner locked in argument with Dominica Nosette, so she kept walking at a brisk clip, ushering the others ahead of her. Doug Tanglewood took Miss Nosette's arm to prevent her being separated from the group. The photographer took several startled, mincing steps, then jerked her arm loose with a snarled, "Take your hand off me!" She favored Margo with a cool stare. "Answer my question!"

"We did not take the carriage," Margo kept her voice low, "because the last thing we want to do is attract attention to ourselves. Nobody in this part of London arrives in a chauffeured carriage. So unless you enjoy being mugged the instant you set foot on the pavement, I'd suggest you resign yourself to hoofing it for the next three months."

As the poisonous glare died away to mere hellfire, Margo reminded herself that Dominica Nosette's work in clandestine photography had been done in the comfortable up-time world of air-conditioned automobiles and houses with central heating. Margo told herself to be charitable. Dominica Nosette's first daylight glimpse of London's East End was probably going to leave her in deep culture shock—she just didn't know it, yet.

When they reached the corner of Whitechapel and Commercial Roads, one of the busiest intersections in all London, they ran afoul of one of the East End's most famous hallmarks: the street meeting. Idle men thrown out of work by the previous night's dock fire had joined loafing gangs of the unemployed who roamed the streets in loose-knit packs, forming and breaking and reforming in random patterns to hash through whatever the day's hot topic might be, at a volume designed to deafen even the hardest of hearing at five hundred paces. From the sound of it, not one man—or woman—in the crowd had ever heard of Roberts' Rules of Order. Or of taking turns, for that matter.

"—why should I vote for ‘im, I wants t'know? Wot's ‘e goin' t'do for me an' mine—"

"—bloody radicals! Go an' do good to somebody wot might appreciate it, over to Africa or India, where them savages need civilizing, an' leave us decent folk alone—"

"—let the bloke ‘ave ‘is say, might be good for a laugh, eh, mate—"

"—give me a job wot'll put food in me Limehouse Cut, I'd vote for ‘im if ‘e were wearin' a devil's ‘orns—"

"—say, wot you radical Johnnies in this ‘ere London County Council goin' to do about them murders, eh? Way I ‘eard it, another lady got her throat cut last night, second one inside a month, third one since Easter Monday, an' me sister's that scared to walk out of a night—"

Near the edge of the crowd, which wasn't quite a mob, a thin girl of about fifteen, hair lank under her broken straw bonnet, leaned close against a man in his fifties. He'd wrapped his hand firmly around her left breast. As Margo brushed past, she heard the man whisper, "Right, luv, fourpence it is. Know of anyplace quiet?"

The girl whispered something in his ear and giggled, then gave the older man a sloppy kiss and another giggle. Margo glanced back and watched them head for a narrow gate that led, presumably, to one of the thousands of sunless yards huddled under brick walls and overlooked by windows with broken glass in their panes and bedsheets hung to keep the drafts out. As the girl and her customer vanished through the gate, a sudden, unexpected memory surged, broke, and spilled into her awareness. Her mother's voice... and ragged screams... a flash of bruised cheek and bleeding lips... the stink of burnt toast on the kitchen counter and the thump of her father's fists...

Margo forcibly thrust away the memory, concentrating on the raucous street corner with its shouting voices and rumbling wagons and the sharp clop of horses' hooves on the limerock and cobbled roads—and her charges in the Ripper Watch Team. Furious with herself, Margo gulped down air that reeked of fresh dung and last week's refuse and the tidal mud of the river and realized that no more than a split second had passed. Dominica Nosette was stalking down Whitechapel Road, oblivious to everything and Doug Tanglewood was hot on her trail so she wouldn't step straight in front of an express wagon loaded with casks from St. Katharine's Docks. Guy Pendergast was still talking to people at the edge of the crowd, asking questions he probably shouldn't have have been asking. Dr. Kostenka was intent on recording the political rally, a historic one, Margo knew. The speaker at the center of the crowd was supporting the first London County Council elections, a race hotly contested by the radicals for control of London's East End. Conroy Melvyn was staring, fascinated, at the man speaking.

Only Shahdi Feroz had noticed Margo's brief distress. Her dark-eyed gaze rested squarely on Margo. Her brows had drawn down in visible concern. "Are you all right?" she asked softly, moving closer to touch Margo's arm.

"Yes," Margo lied, "I'm fine. Just cold. Come on, we'd better get moving."

She genuinely didn't have time to deal with that; certainly not here and now. She had a job to do. Remembering her mother—anything at all about her mother—was worse than useless. It was old news, ancient history. She didn't have time to shed any more tears or even to hate her parents for being what they'd been or doing what they'd done. If she hoped to work as an independent time scout one day, she had to keep herself focused on tomorrow. Not to mention today...

"Come on," she said roughly, all but dragging Guy Pendergast and Conroy Melvyn down the street. "We got a schedule, mates, let's ‘ave it away on our buttons, eh? Got a job waitin', so we ‘ave, time an' tide don't wait for nobody."

They were amenable to being dragged off, at least, clearly eager to get the story they'd come here for, rather than intriguing side stories. They reached the police mortuary in time, thank God, and contrived to position themselves outside where a whole bevy of London's native down-time reporters had gathered. Several of them added foul black cigar smoke to the stench wafting out of the mortuary. Margo took up a watchful stance where she could record the events across the street, yet keep a cautious eye on her charges, not to mention everyone else who'd joined the macabre vigil, waiting for word about the third woman hideously hacked to death in these streets since spring.

The native reporters, every one of them male, of course, were speculating about the dead woman, her origins, potential witnesses they'd already tracked down and plied with gin—"talked to fifty women, I tell you, fifty, and they all described the same man, big foreign looking bastard in a leather apron." Everyone wondered whether or not the killer might be caught soon, based on those so-called witness accounts. The man known as "Leather Apron," Margo knew, had been one of the early top suspects. The unfortunate John Pizer, a Polish boot finisher who also happened to be Jewish, and a genuinely innocent target of East End hatred and prejudice, would find himself in jail shortly.

Of course, he would soon afterward collect damages from the newspapers who had libeled him, since he'd been seen by several witnesses including a police constable, at the Shadwell dock fire during the time Polly Nichols had been so brutally killed. But this morning, nobody knew that yet—

A male scream of horror erupted from the mortuary across the road. "Dear God, oh, dear God, constable, come quick!"

Reporters broke and ran for the door, which slammed abruptly back against the sooty bricks. A shaken man in a shabby workhouse uniform appeared, stumbling as he reached the street. His face had washed a sickly grey. He gulped down air, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand in a visible effort not to lose the meager contents of his stomach. Questions erupted from every side. The workhouse inmate shuddered, trying to find the words to describe what he'd just witnessed.

"Was ‘orrible," he said in a hoarse voice, "ripped ‘er open like a... a butchered side of beef... from ‘ere to ‘ere... dunno ‘ow many cuts, was ‘orrible, I tell you, couldn't stay an' look at ‘er poor belly all cut open..."

Word of the mutilations spread in a racing shockwave down the street. Women clutched at their throats, exclaiming in horror. Men stomped angrily across the pavement, cursing the news and demanding that something be done. A roar of angry voices surged from down the street. Then Margo and Doug Tanglewood and their mutual charges were buried alive by the mob which had, just minutes previously, been heckling the radical politicians running for council office. Angry teenage boys flung mud and rocks at the police mortuary. Older men shouted threats at the police officials inside. Margo was shoved and jostled by men taller and heavier than she was, all of them fighting for the best vantage points along the street. The sheer force of numbers thrust Margo and her charges apart.

"Hold onto one another!" Margo shouted at Shahdi Feroz. "Grab Dominica's arm—and I don't care what she says when you do it! Where's Doug?"

"Over there!" The wide-eyed scholar pointed.

Margo found the Time Tours guide trying to keep Guy Pendergast and Conroy Melvyn from being separated. Margo snagged the police inspector's coat sleeve, getting his shocked attention. "Hold onto Guy! Grab Doug Tanglewood's arm! We can't get separated in this mob! Follow me back!" She was already fighting her way back to the women and searching for Dr. Kostenka, who remained missing in the explosive crowd. She'd just reached Shahdi Feroz when new shouts erupted not four feet distant.

"Dirty little foreigner! It's one o' your kind done ‘er! That's wot they're sayin', a dirty little Jew wiv a leather apron!"

Margo thrust Shahdi Feroz at the Time Tours guide. "Get them out of here, Tanglewood! I've got a bad feeling that's Dr. Kostenka!"

She then shoved her way through the angry mob and found her final charge, just as she'd feared she would. Pavel Kostenka clutched at a bleeding lip and streaming nose, scholarly eyes wide and shocked. Angry men were shouting obscenities at him, most of them in Cockney the scholar clearly couldn't even comprehend.

Oh, God, here we go... . "Wot's this, then?" Margo shouted, facing down a thickset, ugly lout with blood on his knuckles. "You givin' me old man wot for, eh? I'll give you me Germans, I will, you touch ‘im again!" She lifted her own fist, threatening him as brazenly as she dared.

Laughter erupted, defusing the worst of the fury around them at the sight of a girl who barely topped five feet in her stockings squaring off with a man four times her size. Voices washed across her awareness, while she kept her wary attention on the man who'd punched Kostenka once already.

"Cheeky little begger, in't she?"

"Don't sound like no foreigner, neither."

"Let ‘er be, Ned, you might break ‘er back, just pokin' at ‘er!" This last to the giant who'd smashed his fist into Pavel Kostenka's face.

Ned, however, had his blood up, or maybe his gin, because he swung at Margo anyway. The blow didn't connect, of course. Which infuriated the burly Ned. He let out a roar like an enraged Kodiak grizzly and tried to close with her. Margo slid to one side in a swift Aikido move and assisted him on his way. Whereupon Ned was obliged to momentarily mimic the lowly fruit bat, flying airborne into the nearest belfry, that being the brick wall of the church across the street. Ned howled in outraged pain when he connected with a brutal thud. A roar of angry voices surged. So did the mob. A filthy lout in a ragged coat and battered cap took a swing at her. Margo ducked and sent him on his way. Then somebody else took offense at having his neighbor come careening head first into the crowd. Margo dodged and wove as fists swung like crazed axes in the hands of drunken lumberjacks. Then she grabbed Kostenka by the wrist and yelled, "Run, you bloody idiot!"

She had to drag him for two yards. Then he was running beside her, while Margo put to use every Aikido move Kit and Sven had ever drilled into her. Her wrists and arms ached, but she did clear a path out. The riot erupting behind them engulfed the entire street. Margo steered a course toward the spot where she'd last seen the other members of her little team. She found them, wide-eyed in naked shock, near the edge of the crowd. Doug Tanglewood had wisely dragged them clear as soon as she'd yelled at him to do so.

"Dr. Kostenka!" Shahdi Feroz cried. "You're injured!"

He was snuffling blood back into his sinuses. Margo hauled a handkerchief out of one pocket and thrust it into his hand. "Come on, let's clear out of here. We got what we came for. Pack this into your nostrils, hold it tight. Come on!" That, to Guy Pendergast, who was still intent on filming the riot with his hidden camera. "If we get to the Whitechapel Working Lads' Institute now, we can scramble for the best seats at the inquest."

That got the reporter's attention. He turned, belatedly, to help steer Dr. Pavel Kostenka down the street and away from the mortuary riot. Margo escorted her shaken charges several blocks away before pausing at a coffee stall to buy hot coffee for everyone. "Here, drink this," she said, handing Dr. Kostenka a chipped earthenware mug. "You're fighting shock. It'll warm you up."

Dominica Nosette too, was battling shock, although hers was emotional rather than from physical injuries sustained. Margo got a mugful of coffee down her, as well, and Doug bought crumpets for everyone. "Here you go. Carbs and hot coffee will set you to rights, mates." Pavel Kostenka had seated himself on the chilly stone kerb, elbows propped on knees, shabby boots in the gutter. He was trembling so violently, he had trouble holding Margo's now-stained handkerchief against his battered nose. Margo crouched beside him.

"You okay?" she asked quietly.

He shuddered once, then nodded, slowly. When he lowered the handkerchief to his lap, he left a smear of blood down his chin. "I do believe you saved my life, back there."

She shrugged, trying to make light of her own role in the near-disaster. "It's possible. That flared up a lot faster than I expected it to. Which means you got hurt and you shouldn't have. I knew people would be in a mean mood. And I knew about the anti-Semitism. But I didn't figure on a full-blown riot that fast."

He stared for a long moment into the cup Margo handed him, where dark and bitter coffee steamed in the cold morning air. "I have seen much anger in the world," he said quietly. "But nothing like this. Such murderous hatred, simply because I am different..."

"This isn't the twenty-first century," she said in a low voice. "Not that people are perfect in our time, they're not. But down a gate, you can't expect people to behave the way up-timers do. Socials norms do change over a century and a half, you know, more than you realize, just reading about it. Me? I'm just glad I was able to pull you out of there in one piece. Next time we come out here, we're gonna be a whole lot more careful about getting boxed into potential riots."

He finally met her gaze. "Yes. Thank you."

She managed a wan smile. "You're welcome. Ready to tackle that inquest?"

His effort to return the smile was genuine, even if the twist of his lips was a dismal failure in the smile department. "Yes. But this time, I think I shall not say anything at all, even if my foot is trod on hard enough to break the bones."

"Smart choice. Through with that coffee yet?"

The shaken scholar drained the bitter stuff—what did the British do to coffee, to produce such a ghastly flavor?—then climbed to his feet. "Thank you. From now on, whatever you suggest, I will do it without question."

"Okay. Let's find the Working Lads' Institute, shall we? I want us to keep a low profile." She glanced at the reporters. "No interviewing potential mobs, okay? You want this story, you get it by keeping your mouth shut and your cameras rolling."

This time, none of her charges argued with her. Even Guy Pendergast and Dominica Nosette, whose dress was torn, were momentarily subdued by the flash-point riot. For once, Margo actually felt in charge.

She wondered how long it would last.