Ripping Time

by Robert Asprin

Shahdi Feroz moved sharply at the mention of the Brotherhood, as though wanting to deny what he’d just said. Then she sighed, tiredly. “Ansar Majlis . . . This is very bad, very dangerous. The Ansar Majlis Brotherhood began when Islamic fundamentalist soldiers began recruiting down-time Islamic warriors for jihad through the gates where TT-66 used to be. The station is destroyed, but the gates still function, of course.”

  She spoke with a bitterness Skeeter understood only too well. He hadn’t known anyone personally on the station, but hundreds of innocents had died when the station had been blown sky-high. The elevator’s soft ping! sent Skeeter two inches straight up the wall. But it was only Kit Carson, face haggard, eyes bleak. He moved quietly into the office as Dr. Feroz continued her explanation.

  “Since the station was destroyed, thousands of down-time recruits have been brought through to fight jihad. Some of these soldiers have banded together to form a brotherhood. They have styled themselves after the nineteeth-century Ansar, fanatical religious soldiers of the Mahdi, an Islamic messiah who drove the British out of the Sudan and killed General Gordon at Khartoum. It operates very much like the social structure of a nomadic tribe. Those in the brotherhood are fully human; those outside are not. And the lowest, least human of all are the women of the Lady of Heaven Temples. Such women are considered evil and heretical by these soldiers. A female priesthood, a female deity . . .” She shook her head. “They have sworn the destruction of the Artemis Temple and all Templars. There has been trouble with them in the Middle East, but they were for many years contained there. It seems they are contained no longer. If they have managed to establish cells in major cities like New York, there will be terrible violence against the Temple and its members. The whole purpose of this cult is to destroy the Lady of Heaven Temples as completely as if they had never existed. It is jihad, Mr. Morgan, a particularly virulent, fundamentalist form of hatred.”

  Skeeter wanted to close his hands around someone’s throat, wanted to center the bastards responsible for these attacks on Ianira and her family in the sights of any weapon he could lay hands on. Instead, he forced himself to wait. He had learned patience from Yesukai, had learned that to destroy an enemy, one must first know and understand him.

  Bull Morgan clenched his teeth over the stub of his cigar, which he’d retrieved from his desk top and was now shredding between molars once again. “All of which explains the attack on Ianira. And her kids, goddamn it. But those construction workers have been on station for weeks. Why wait until now to attack? Why today?”

  Margo spoke up hesitantly. “Maybe someone came through Primary today with orders? I mean, the whole thing blew up within minutes of Primary cycling.”

  Bull pinned her with a sharp stare. Kit nodded silently, clearly agreeing with that assessment. It made sense to Skeeter, as well. Too much sense. And there was that terrifying vision of Ianira’s, right before the violence had erupted. Right after Primary had cycled.

  Bull picked up his security phone again. “Ronisha, I want a dossier on every man, woman, and child who came through Primary today. Complete history. Anybody who might have ties to the Middle East or the Ansar Majlis Brotherhood, I want questioned.”

  Skeeter wanted to question two other individuals, too: the wild-eyed young kid who’d shot whoever it was behind Ianira and Skeeter in that riot, and the person who’d knocked both Ianira and Skeeter to the floor in time for that kid to do the shooting. Skeeter wondered which one of that pair had done the killing in the day care center. Whoever they were, they clearly knew about the threat to Ianira and her family. But why were they trying to protect her? Were they Templars? Someone else? Skeeter intended to find out, if he had to take them apart joint by joint to learn the truth.

  Only to do that, he had to find them first.

  He edged toward the elevator, impatient to do something besides stand here and listen. Bull hung up the phone again and started spitting orders. “All right, I want the biggest manhunt in the history of this station and I want it yesterday. Hotels, restaurants, shops, residential, library, gym, weapons ranges, physical plant and maintenance areas, waste management, storage, everything. Organize search teams according to the station’s emergency management plan. Presume these bastards are armed and dangerous. Personal weapons are not only permitted, but encouraged. Questions?”

  Nobody had any.

  Least of all Skeeter.

  “Let’s move it, then, people. I want Ianira and her family found.”

  Skeeter got to the elevator before anybody else and found himself sharing a downward ride with Kit Carson, of all people. The retired time scout glanced at him as others crowded into the elevator. “You’ll organize the Found Ones?”

  The question surprised Skeeter. He and Kit Carson were hardly on civil terms, not after his ill-conceived attempt to get Margo into bed with that ruse about being a time scout, himself. Of course, he hadn’t known Margo was Kit’s granddaughter at the time. In point of fact, not even Kit had known, then. But when the scout had discovered the truth, his visit to Skeeter had been anything but grandfatherly—and nothing even remotely resembling cordial. Kit’s concern now surprised Skeeter, until he realized that it had nothing to do with Skeeter and everything to do with how Kit felt about Ianira Cassondra.

  So he nodded with a short jerk of his head. “They’ll be organized already, but I’ll join them.”

  “Let me know if you need anything.”

  Again, Skeeter stared. He said slowly, grudgingly, “Thanks. We’re pretty organized, but I’ll let you know if something comes up we can’t handle.” Not that he could think of anything. The Found Ones’ Council of Seven had made certain the resident down-timers on station were as prepared as possible for any station crisis that threatened them. The down-timers were, in fact, as prepared as Sue Fritchey’s Pest Control officers were for an invasion of anything from hordes of locusts to prehistoric flying reptiles—which, in point of fact, TT-86 had been forced to deal with, just a few months previously.

  Kit’s next question startled the hell out of Skeeter.

  “Would you mind if Margo and I joined you and the Found Ones to search?”

  Skeeter’s brows dove down as suspicion flared. “Why?”

  Kit held his gaze steadily. “Because if anyone on this station has a chance of finding them, it’s the down-timers. I’m aware of those meetings held in the subbasements. And I know how underground organizations operate. I also want rather badly to be there if and when we do find whoever is responsible for this.”

  Skeeter had known for a long time that Kenneth “Kit” Carson was a thoroughly dangerous old man, the sort you didn’t want as an enemy, ever. It came as a slight shock, however, to realize that the retired time scout would relish taking apart whoever had done this as thoroughly as Skeeter, himself, would. He hadn’t expected to share anything in common with the world’s most famous recluse.

  “All right,” he found himself saying tightly. “You’re on. But when we do find them . . .”

  “Yes?”

  He looked the man he was mortally afraid of straight in the eye. “They’re mine.”

  Kit Carson’s sudden grin was as lethal as the look in his eyes. “Deal.”

  Skeeter was left with the terrifying feeling that he’d just made a deal with a very formidable devil, indeed. A deal that was likely to lead him places he truly didn’t want to go. Before he could worry too intensely about it, however, the elevator bumped to a halt and the doors opened with a swoosh. Five minutes later, he was leading the way through Commons, an unlikely team leader for a search team consisting of himself, Kit Carson, the fiery tempered Margo, and—surprisingly—Dr. Shahdi Feroz.

  “The Britannia opens in less than six hours,” Margo said pointedly when she insisted on joining them.

  “Yes, it does. And I am as ready as I will ever be. I may not know how to shoot a gun yet, but I am certain you can remedy that for me once we reach London, Miss Smith.”

  The look Margo shot the breathta
kingly beautiful older woman wavered somewhere between pleased surprise and wary assessment. Skeeter wondered why, but he didn’t have the time to pursue it. Then he spotted Bergitta, a young down-timer who’d fallen through an unstable gate from medieval Sweden. She’d been crying, to judge from her reddened, swollen eyes. She’d hooked up with young Hashim ibn Fahd, a down-time teenager who’d fallen through the Arabian Nights gate, and with Kynan Rhys Gower, whose face was a lethal mask of fury.

  Bergitta gave a glad cry when she spotted him. “Oh, Skeeter! We have looked and looked . . .”

  Kit was already speaking rapidly in Welsh with the bowman, who had sworn an oath of fealty to Kit down that unstable gate into sixteenth-century Portuguese southern Africa. Skeeter gave Bergitta’s hands a swift and reassuring squeeze. “The search teams are organized and out?”

  “Yes, Skeeter, and I am told to say to you, please search the escape routes from Little Agora to Frontier Town. You will need a team . . .”

  “They’re with me,” Skeeter said roughly, nodding at the others. “Not my choice, but they’re good.”

  It was a monumental understatement, one of his all-time best, in fact.

  Bergitta, who knew their reputations perfectly well, for all that she’d been on station only three months, widened pretty blue eyes; then nodded. “Kynan and Hashim and I go to search also, then.” She hugged him, very briefly, but it didn’t take more than a fleeting contact to feel the tremors shaking through her.

  “We’ll find them, Bergitta.” Skeeter forced the conviction in his voice. We have to find them. Dear God, please let us find them soon . . . and safe.

  She nodded and tried to smile, then departed with Kynan Rhys Gower and Hashim, whose glance looked ready to kill anyone who hurt Ianira, despite his youth. Skeeter found Margo’s speculative gaze on Bergitta as she moved away into the crowd. What he read in her eyes defied translation for several moments. At first, he thought it was simply distaste for sharing company with a girl who’d been forced by circumstances to sell the only commodity she possessed to make a living on the station: herself. Then he looked again, struck forcibly by the memories lurking in Margo’s shadowed green eyes, which had filled with pain, shame, remorse. But for what? He knew how other kids Margo’s age had been forced to make a living in New York. He rather doubted Margo had been there long enough to get into serious trouble, given her determination to get onto TT-86 and begin her career as a trainee time scout. But with the kind of pain and the depth of shame he could see in Margo’s eyes, Skeeter found himself wondering how she’d raised the money for a ticket through Shangri-La Station’s expensive Primary gate.

  If Kit’s granddaughter had resorted to . . . that . . . Skeeter wasn’t sure how Grandpa would take the news. Or—Christ, talk about complications—Malcolm, who planned to marry her. Noneya, Skeeter told himself severely. Whatever the reason for that look in Margo’s eyes, it was very much none of Skeeter’s business.

  “We’ll start in Little Agora,” he said gruffly. “It’s closer. Let’s go, I’ve waited too long as it is.”

  Wordlessly, his little search party followed.

  * * *

  Jenna Nicole Caddrick didn’t take Ianira to the hotel room she’d reserved nearly a year previously in Carl’s married sister’s name. She hadn’t dared try to check into the luxury hotel, not with Ianira Cassondra draped, unconscious, across her back and shoulders in a fireman’s carry where Noah Armstrong had put her. “Get her to the hotel!” the detective had ordered. “Take the stairways to the basement—I’ve got to find her husband and kids!”

  So, staggering with every step, because Jenna was not that much larger than Ianira, herself, she carried the sacred prophetess through the station’s Commons during security’s riot-control blackout, bumping into people and stumbling into walls until she finally found a staircase, its emergency “Exit” sign glowing in the stygian darkness. The lights down here, at least, hadn’t been shut off. Shangri-La Station’s basement was a twisting montage of pipes and conduits and crowded storage rooms where, with any luck—and the Lady alone knew they deserved a little of that—the Ansar Majlis wouldn’t think to look. Or anyone else, for that matter, not right away, at least. Jenna, legs and arms trembling with the effort, joints all but cracking, finally spotted a thick pile of hotel towels, in a big packing crate that someone had pried open to remove part of its contents. Moving gingerly, she lowered Ianira onto the piled towels. The prophetess was still as death, with a nasty bruise along her brow where Noah had slammed her to the floor, saving her life.

  Jenna didn’t know much about medicine or first aid, but she knew how to test a pulse, anyway, and remembered that a shock victim had to be kept warm. So she covered Ianira with a whole pile of the crated towels and tested her pulse and wondered if slow and regular might be good or bad news. She bit one lip, then wondered how to let Noah Armstrong know where to find them. We’ll meet at the Neo Edo, kid, that’s where you’ve got reservations and they’ll expect you to show up.

  Yeah, she thought glumly. But not with an unconscious prophetess across her shoulder. Showing up with Ianira, Cassondra of Ephesus, in a state of coma was a great way to get the attention of all the wrong people, fast. When Jenna heard the footfalls and the distant murmur of voices, she spun on her heel, gripping Carl’s reproduction pistol in both hands, terrifying herself with that blurred, instinctive reaction. I don’t want to get used to people trying to kill me . . . or having to kill them. The thundering shock of shooting down a living human being up on Commons would have left Jenna on hands and knees, vomiting, if Ianira Cassondra’s life hadn’t been in mortal jeopardy with every passing second. She wanted to go into shock now, needed to be sick, was shaking violently with the need, but there was someone coming and she couldn’t let them kill Ianira.

  The voices drew closer, voices she didn’t recognize. Jenna scowled, fist tight on the reproduction antique weapon in her hand, trying to make sense of what they were saying. She realized abruptly that the words weren’t going to fall into any recognizable patterns because they weren’t in English. Whatever it was, it sounded like . . . Classical Latin, maybe? Would the Ansar Majlis speak Latin? She couldn’t imagine it, not a pack of medieval terrorists imported from the war-wracked Middle East for the express purpose of destroying the Temple which formed the bedrock of Jenna’s faith.

  Then the speakers rounded an abrupt corner and Jenna gasped, giddy with relief. “Noah!”

  Armstrong swung around sharply, recognized her, relaxed a death grip on the trigger. “Kid,” Noah muttered, “you are gonna get yourself shot one of these days, doing that. Where is she?”

  Jenna pointed, eyeing the people who accompanied Noah. The ashen-faced young man in jeans and an ordinary short-sleeved work shirt, she recognized as the Cassondra’s husband—the Roman slave—and the two little girls with him looked so much like their mother it closed Jenna’s throat. Another young man with them was a kid, really, younger than Jenna. A lot younger. At the moment, Jenna Nicole Caddrick felt about a thousand years old and aging rapidly.

  “Ianira!” Marcus cried, running toward his wife.

  “She’s unconscious,” Jenna said, voice low and unsteady. “She hit her head on the floor . . .”

  Marcus and the teenager broke into a voluble spate of Latin, Marcus nodding his head vehemently up and down, the kid looking stubborn. A fragment of historical research for a film class came back to her, that Romans bobbed their heads up and down to indicate disagreement, not wagging them from side to side the way moderns did. At length, the younger kid muttered something that sounded foul and trotted away into the dim-lit basement.

  “Where’s he going?” Jenna asked. What if they brought the station authorities in? If that happened, Ianira and Marcus and those beautiful little girls would die. Nobody could protect them, not as long as they remained on this station.

  Marcus didn’t even glance up. He was stroking his wife’s hair back from her bruised forehead, holding her cold hand.
Their little girls whimpered and clung to his leg, too young to know or comprehend what was happening around them, but old enough to know terror. “He goes to bring medicine. Food, water, blankets. We will hide her in the Sanctuary.”

  Jenna didn’t know exactly what or where Ianira’s Sanctuary might be, although she suspected it was hidden deep under the station. But she knew enough to blurt out, “You can’t! It won’t be safe there. These bastards will hunt through every inch of this station, looking for her. For you, too, and the children.”

  Frightened brown eyes lifted, met hers. “What can we do, then? We have friends here, powerful friends. Kit Carson and Bull Morgan—“

  Armstrong cut him off. “Not even Kit Carson can stop the Ansar Majlis,” Noah bit out, bitterness darkening the detective’s voice, leaving it harsh and raw. “You have to get completely off this station. The faster, the better. We sure as hell are,” Noah nodded toward Jenna. “The only place that’s gonna be safe is someplace down time. There’s a whole lot of history to hide in, through this station’s gates. We hide long enough, stay alive long enough, I can slip back through the station in disguise—and I’m damned good at disguises—and get the proof of what we know to the up-time authorities. If we’re going to stop the bastards responsible for this,” Noah jerked a glance toward Ianira, curled up on her side, fragile as rare porcelain, “the only way is to destroy them, make sure they’re jailed for life or executed. And we can’t do that if we’re dead.”

  “Who is it?” Marcus grated out. “I will kill them, whoever they are!”

  Jenna believed him. Profoundly. Imagination failed her, trying to comprehend what this ordinary-seeming young man in blue jeans and a checkered shirt had already lived through. Noah told Marcus what they were up against. All of it. In thorough and revolting detail. The suspicion that flared in Marcus’ eyes when he looked at Jenna wounded her.

  “I’m not my father!” she snapped, fists aching at her sides. “If that son-of-a-bitch were in front of me right now, I’d blow his head off. He always was a lousy, rotten, stinking bastard of a father. I just never knew how much. ‘Til now.”