Ripping Time

by Robert Asprin

  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 poli
ce 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.

  Chapter Twelve

  The smell of tension was thick in Kit’s nostrils as he threaded his way through Edo Castletown, answering a call from Robert Li to meet him for the antics at Primary and to ask his expert opinion on a recent aquisition he’d made. So Kit abandoned several stacks of bills and government forms in his office at the Neo Edo Hotel and set out, curious about what the antiquities dealer might have stumbled across this time and wondering what new horror Primary’s cycle might bring onto the station.

  Kit had never seen a bigger crowd for a gate opening and that was saying a lot, after being caught in the jam-packed mass of humanity which had come to see the last cycling of the Britannia. Kiosks that hadn’t existed just a week previously cluttered the once-wide thoroughfares of Commons, overflowing into Edo Castletown from its border with Victoria Station. Their owners hawked crimson-spattered t-shirts and tote bags, Ripper-suspect profiles, biographies and recent photos of the victims, anything and everything enterprising vendors thought might sell.