Ripping Time

by Robert Asprin

  The Denver-bound tourists, headed for some sort of action cowboy shoot down time, cast envious glances at the lucky ones who’d managed to beg, borrow, buy, or steal Ripper Watch tickets. Those were Margo’s new charges, although they didn’t know it yet. The mere tourists heading for London, Margo ignored. Her attention was focused on the three individuals with whom she would be spending the next three solid months, as their time guide.

  Dominica Nosette, whose name, face, and body seemed quintessentially French, yet who was as staidly British as kippers and jellied eels, was chattering away with her partner Guy Pendergast. And Shahdi Feroz . . . Margo gulped, just approaching Dr. Feroz where she stood locked in conversation with a Ripper Watch tourist at the next lane over. Dr. Feroz had spent the past four months studying the rise of cults and cult violence in Imperial Rome, through the Porta Romae. At previous training classes like this one, Margo had met all the other team members now in London, before they’d left the station with Malcolm. But none of the others possessed the credentials or the fieldwork record Shahdi Feroz did. Not even the team’s nominal leader, Conroy Melvyn, a seedy-looking Englishman who bore the impressive title of Scotland Yard Chief Inspector.

  Looking as Persian as her name and voice sounded, Dr. Feroz awed Margo. Not only was she exotic and beautiful in a way that made Margo feel her own youth and inexperience as keenly as a Minnesota winter wind, Shahdi Feroz was absolutely brilliant. Reading Dr. Feroz’ work, virtually all of it based on first-hand study of down-time populations, reminded Margo of what she’d seen in New York during her agonizing, mercifully short stay there, and of things she’d seen during her few, catastrophic trips through TT-86’s time gates. Not to mention—and she winced from the memory—her own childhood.

  Margo’s lack of education—a high-school GED and one semester of college which Kit had arranged for up time, augmented with months of intensive study on the station—caused her to stammer like a stupid schoolgirl with stagefright. “Dr. Feroz. Your, uh, safety goggles and muffs, earmuffs, I mean, for your ears, to protect them . . .” Oh, for God’s sake, stop shaking, Margo!

  “Thank you, my dear.” The inflection of dismissal in her voice reduced Margo to the status of red-faced child. She fled back down the line of shooting benches, toward Ann Vinh Mulhaney, resident projectile weapons instructor, and the reassuring familiarity of a routine she knew well: preparing for a shooting lesson. Ann, at least, greeted her with a warm smile.

  “So, are you all set for London?”

  “Oh, boy, am I just! I’ve been packed for two whole days! I still can’t believe Kit managed to swing it with Bax to let me go!” She had no idea what it had taken to convince Granville Baxter, CEO of Time Tours, Inc. on station, to give Margo that gate pass. And not just a one-cycle pass, either, but a gate pass that would let her stay the entire three months of East End Ripper murders.

  Ann chuckled. “Grandpa wants you to get some field experience, kid.”

  Margo flushed. “I know.” She glanced at the journalists, at the woman whose scholarly work was breaking new ground in the understanding of the criminal mind in historical cultures. “I know I haven’t really got enough experience to guide the Ripper Watch Team through the East End. Not yet, even though I’ve been to the East End once.” That trip, and her own greenhorn mistakes, she preferred not to remember too closely. “But I’ll get the experience, Ann, and I’ll do a good job. I know I can do this.”

  Ann ruffled Margo’s short hair affectionately. “Of course you can, Margo. Any girl who could talk Kit Carson into training her to become the world’s first woman time scout can handle mere journalists and eggheads. Bet Malcolm will be happy to see you, too,” Ann added with a wink.

  Margo grinned. “He sure will! He’ll finally have somebody else to send on all the lousy errands!”

  Ann laughed. “Let’s get this class started, shall we?”

  “Right!”

  Margo needed to prove to Ann, to Kit, and to Malcolm that she was capable of time scouting. And—perhaps most importantly—Margo needed to prove it to herself. So she dredged up a bright smile to hide her nervousness, hoped she didn’t look as young as she felt in such illustrious, enormously educated company, and wondered if the team members could possibly take seriously a hot-headed, Irish alley-cat of a time guide who’d just turned seventeen-and-a-half last week . . .

  Her smile, which had been known to cause cardiac arrest, was one of the few weapons currently available in her self-defense arsenal, so she dredged up a heart-stopping one and got to work. “Hi! Is everybody ready to get in some weapons practice?”

  Heads swivelled and Margo was the abrupt focus of multiple, astonished stares.

  Oh, Lordy, here we go. . . . “I’m Margo Smith, I’ll be one of your time guides to London—“

  “You?” The sound was incredulous, just short of scathing. Another voice from further down the line of shooting benches said, “What high school is that kid playing hooky from?”

  Margo’s face flamed. So did her temper. She bit down on it, though, and forced a brittle smile. Ann Mulhaney, the rat, just stood off to one side, waiting to see how she handled herself. Oh, God, another test. . . . One she’d better pass, too, drat it. So Margo ignored the incredulous looks and scathing remarks and simply got on with the job. “Most of the other guides are already in London,” she said firmly. “I’ve been assigned the job of shepherding you through weapons training, so let’s get organized, shall we? We’ve got a lot to do. Everyone’s signed in, been assigned a lane and a shooting partner? Yes? Good. We’ll get started, then.”

  Dominica Nosette interrupted, in a voice acid enough to burn holes through solid steel. “Why d’you insist we learn to shoot? It isn’t proper, isn’t decent, handling such things. I’m a photojournalist, not some macho copper swaggering about and giving orders with a billycock, nor yet some IRA terrorist. I’m not about to pick up one of those nasty things.”

  Hoo boy, here we go . . .

  Margo said as patiently as possible—which wasn’t very—“You don’t have to carry one with you. But you will have to pass the mandatory safety class if you want to be a part of the Ripper Watch Team. Not my rules, sorry, but I will enforce them. London’s East End is a very dangerous neighborhood under the best of conditions. We’re going into areas that will be explosive as a powderkeg. Tempers will be running hot. In the East End, gangs of thieves and cutthroat muggers routinely knife prostitutes to death, just to steal the few pence in their pockets. Any stranger will be singled out by suspicious minds—“

  “Oh, sod off, I’ve never needed a gun, not on a single one of my photo shoots, and I’ve trailed mob hit men!”

  Oh, man, it’s gonna be a long three months . . .

  Margo steeled herself to keep smiling if it killed her, and vowed to cope. “Ms. Nosette, I am fully aware of your credentials. No one is questioning your status as a competent journalist. But you may not appreciate just how dangerous it’s going to be for us, even for the team members born in England, trying to blend in with Victorian East End Londoners. It’s your right to choose not to carry a personal weapon. But the rules of the Ripper Watch Team are clear. You must be familiar with their use, because many of us will be carrying them. And the more you know about the kind of gun some Nichol-based gang member pulls on you, the more likely you’ll be to survive the encounter—“

  “Miss Smith,” Dr. Shahdi Feroz interrupted gently, “I am sorry to disagree with you, but I have been to London’s East End, several years ago. Most of the Nichol gangs did not carry guns. Straight razors were the weapon of choice. So popular, laws against carrying them were suggested by London constables, even by Parliament.”

  Margo was left with her mouth hanging open and blood scalding her cheeks until her whole face hurt. She wanted desperately to dig a hole through the concrete floor with the toe of her shoe and crawl down through it, pulling the top in after herself. Before she could recover her shattered composure, never mind think of anything to say
that wouldn’t sound completely witless, the station’s alarm klaxons screamed out a warning that shook through the weapons range like thunder. Margo gasped, jerking her gaze around.

  “What’s going on?” Dominica Nosette demanded.

  “Station emergency!” Margo shouted above the strident skronkk! Ann had already bolted toward her office. Margo was right behind, literally saved by the bell. Oh, God, how’m I ever gonna face that bunch again? Ann flung open her office door, snatched up the telephone, dialed a code that plugged her into the station’s security system. Margo crowded in, then barricaded the doorway so tourists and the Ripper Watch Team couldn’t barge in, as well. A moment later, Ann hung up, white-faced and shaken. “There’s been a shooting! Skeeter and Ianira! Security’s just put out a station-wide alarm. Ianira’s missing! And there’s a station riot underway!”

  Her voice carried out through the doorway to the milling throng of tourists and Ripperologists. For one agonizing second, indecision crucified Margo. Ianira was a friend, a good friend, but Margo had a job to do here. And no matter how desperately she wanted to run from her own embarrassing mistake, she had to finish that job.

  Dominica Nosette and Guy Pendergast, however, showed no such hesitation.

  They grabbed equipment bags and ran.

  “Margo! Go after those idiots!” Ann was already striding toward the exit, blocking the way with her body. “Nobody else leaves this range, is that clear? Nobody!” Diminuitive as she was, none of the others challenged her. They’d all seen her shoot. And nobody wanted to face down the Royal Irish Constabulary revolvers she abruptly clutched in either hand, rather than wearing benignly in twin holsters.

  Margo, however, broke and ran, pounding up the stairs after the fleeing British reporters. “Hey! Wait!” Yeah, like they’re really gonna stop just because I said so . . .

  They didn’t even slow down.

  Seconds later, Margo—hard on their heels and gaining ground—emerged straight into chaos. A seething mass of frightened, confused tourists tried to rush in fifty-eleven directions at once, kids crying, women shouting for husbands, fathers grimly dragging youngsters toward anything that promised shelter. The awesome noise smote Margo like a physical blow, a fist made up of alarm klaxons, medi-van sirens, and screaming, shouting voices. Security squads raced past. Officers were jamming riot helmets on, even as they ran.

  Margo’s AWOL reporters surged right into the thick of utter chaos, dragging out cameras and recorders on the fly and pounding along in the wake of security. Margo swore under her breath and darted after them. She was small enough to dodge and weave with all the skill of a trained acrobat. An instant later, however, total darkness crashed down, engulfing the whole Commons. Margo skidded to a halt—or tried to, anyway. She caromed into at least half-a-dozen shrieking people before she managed to stop her headlong rush. Sobs of terror rose on every side. The insane wail of the klaxons shook through the darkness.

  Margo stood panting in a film of sweat. The hair on her arms stood starkly erect. Unreasoning fear surged. Booted feet pounded past through the total blackness, startling Margo until she realized those odd helmets she’d seen security putting on were Mike Benson’s new night-vision helmets. What seemed hours, but couldn’t have been longer than a few minutes later, the lights started coming back up, moving gradually inward from the far edges of Commons. Margo blinked as the overhead lights flickered back to life in banks, illuminating Edo Castletown at one far end of the station and the Anachronism’s Camelot sector and Outer Mongolia at the other end, around several twists and turns where Commons snaked through the massive cave system into which TT-86 had been built.

  Tourists clung to one another, badly shaken. Margo searched the crowd for her charges and finally caught a glimpse of purposeful movement. The Ripper Watch reporters were on the move again. She swore in gutter Latin that would’ve shocked Cicero and pounded after them. “Are you crazy?” she demanded, catching up at last. “You can’t go in there!”

  Dominica Nosette flashed her a pitying smile. “Love, never tell a reporter what she can’t do—can’t is one word we don’t understand.”

  Then they reached the zone of destruction. They’d beat SLUR-TV, the in-station televison news crew, to the punch. Dominica and Guy started filming steadily on every side as more reporters arrived, trailing cameras and lights and microphones. Then Margo caught her first glimpse of the blood and the broken bones.

  Oh, my God . . .

  While the newsies interviewed shaken eyewitnesses, station security zipped up a body bag with an extremely deceased individual inside. It wasn’t the first time Margo had seen a dead person. Not even the second. And her mother’s murder had been far more brutal a shock. But blood had stained the golden “bricks” of El Dorado’s floor, leaking down between the paving stones in rivulets and runnels, where Margo had never expected to see it. And if that glimpse into the body bag had been accurate, the dead man had been shot in the face, point-blank.

  With a very large caliber firearm.

  What in God’s name happened up here?

  Margo began to tremble violently as the remembered smell of burnt toast and spreading, stinking puddles of blood smashed into her from her own childhood, from that long-ago morning when it had been her mother’s body zipped up and carted out, and her father led away in handcuffs. . . . She wrapped both arms around herself, biting her lips to keep them from shaking. Violence like this happened in places like New York or London or even Minnesota, where drunkards beat their wives to death. But murder wasn’t supposed to happen in a place like La-La Land, not where happy tourists gathered for vacations of a lifetime, where residents pursued dreams that came true every single day, where delightful amounts of money changed hands and everybody had fun in the process. Margo discovered she’d pressed the back of her hand against her mouth, unable to drag her gaze away from the macabre load as security carried away the grey zippered bag with the remains of a stranger inside.

  Who is he? she wondered grimly. Or, rather, who had he been? He hadn’t been dressed in a tourist costume, or as one of those construction workers building the new section of the station. More than a dozen of the Arabian Nights crewmen, bruised and bleeding, were being dragged off in handcuffs. Then station medical arrived, having to fight their way past newsies filming white-faced, bleeding, dazed survivors. Among the worst injured were the Lady of Heaven Templars, members of the cult which had singled out Ianira as their prophetess. And Ianira was missing, might be dead. . . . Ugly cuts, swollen bruises, and visibly broken bones had so badly injured more than a dozen Templars, medi-vans were required to rush them out of the riot zone.

  “Margo!”

  She stumbled around, dazed, and found her grandfather cutting through the crowd like an ice-breaking ship plowing through arctic seas. Margo ran to him, threw her arms around him. “Kit!”

  Her grandfather hugged her close for a long moment, then murmured, “Hey, it’s over, Imp, what’s wrong?” He peered worriedly into her eyes.

  “I know.” She gulped, feeling stupid from lingering shock. “It’s just . . . stuff like that isn’t supposed to happen. Not here.”

  Lines of grief etched deeper into Kit’s lean cheeks. “I know,” he said quietly. “It isn’t. I hate it, too. Which is why we’re going to do something about it.”

  “Do what? I mean, what can we possibly do? And what happened, exactly? I got here a little late.”

  Kit thinned his lips. “Ansar Majlis is what happened.”

  “Answer who?”

  The grim look in his eyes frightened Margo, worse than she was already. “Ansar Majlis,” he said it again. “The Ansar Majlis Brotherhood is one of the most dangerous cults to form up time in the past fifty years. Where’s Ann?”

  “On the weapons range. She stayed with Dr. Feroz and the tourists, to keep anybody else from leaving. I tried to catch up with the reporters. They went charging straight up here, but they outran me.” She ducked her head. “I’m sorry. I did try to st
op them.”

  Kit muttered under his breath. “I’m sure you did. Listen, Imp, we’ve got big trouble on this station, with Ianira Cassondra missing. I don’t have to tell you the repercussions of that, both on station and up time. And with the Ansar Majlis involved, this riot may be the first of a whole lot of station riots. When word of this gets out . . .” He thinned his lips. “Next time Primary cycles, we are going to be neck deep in more trouble than you can shake an entire tree at. I want you to find Marcus. Try the Down Time Bar & Grill. Tell him we need search parties organized, Found Ones as well as up-time residents. And see if you can find out how Skeeter is.”

  “Skeeter’s hurt? Ann said there’d been a shooting . . .” She swallowed hard, abruptly queasy to her toes. Margo and Skeeter Jackson might have a mutually uncivil history, but the idea of someone having shot the admittedly charming, one-time con artist left Margo sicker and colder than before. She’d gradually been changing her opinion of Skeeter Jackson, particularly since he’d become Marcus and Ianira’s latest rescue project. An apparently successful one.

  But Kit was shaking his head. “No, not shot, just banged up. Security said he had a lump on his temple the size of a goose egg. Should’ve had medical look at it, but he bolted into this mess, trying to find Ianira. Get Marcus busy organizing the Found Ones, okay? And find out if Marcus needs help looking after the girls.”

  Margo drew a shaky breath. “Kit . . .”

  If we can’t find Ianira, ever . . .

  “Yes, I know. When you’ve got all that set up, meet me at the aerie.”

  “Bull’s office? Won’t Bull be busy conducting the official investigation?”

  “Yes. Which is why you and I are going to be there.” When Margo gave him her best look of blank befuddlement, Kit explained. “In a major station emergency, every single time scout in residence becomes a de facto member of station security. Same with the independent guides, the ones not on a company payroll, or with specific tour commitments to meet. And I’d say a riot, a murder, and a kidnapping qualify as a major station emergency in anybody’s book. We’re going to be busy, Margo, busier than you’ve been since you arrived on station.”