Ripping Time

by Robert Asprin

  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 uniform
s, 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 . . .