She tried to pull her hand away, heart pounding frantically in her ears, but when she scooted back against the porridge-covered wall Damon followed, pinching her forefinger and chuckling delightedly when she snarled between her teeth at him.
“I’ll have this one,” he said. “And then the other, and maybe two toes to match.”
Kez stared at him with hard black eyes and then went consideringly, deliberately mad. She flailed wildly with her fists, wishing she’d kept her bowl and spoon and wondering desperately Where are the orderlies? Where are the flamin’ orderlies! Her pink booties bloodied Damon’s nose and made him snarl back at her, but in spite of madness and wriggling it was only a matter of moments before he had her pinned to the floor, her right arm painfully stretched above her head with its fingers splayed.
“Mine!” he panted, laughing.
Kez gave a little scream of rage and fear, feeling a coldness slice through her finger, and wrenched herself violently away. She didn’t know quite how it happened, because Damon was holding her down with the weight of his own body, but she hurtled away from him and flew right through the wall. She panted another scream, grabbing at misty reality with both hands, and found herself somewhere milky and warm.
“No!” she said. “Not this again! I wanna go home!”
She hurled herself furiously through the milky other zone, instinctively diving for the sense of home, and found herself tumbling into grass. Four walls rolled with the sky in a confusing melee, but when Kez sat up, she found that she was in Marcus’ walled garden at the Home. She had all her fingers, too, which was a pleasant surprise. Kez hugged them to her chest, shivering, and let the substitute-sun beam its fake warmth down on her, driving away the jitters.
Behind her, someone said: “Kez! How nice of you to drop in and see me.”
***
Mikkel was early. He liked to be early. Twelve relative year units as a Time Corp ship’s Captain had given him a healthy appreciation for time with all its nuances, hidden minutes, and its absolute implacability. It had also instilled in him a pedantry for choosing time and place that annoyed his Lieutenant almost to tears. Lieutenant Morgan had suppressed a sigh three times in the last five relative minute units, and had surreptitiously glanced at his Corp-issue timepiece nearly as many times. Mikkel smiled faintly. Let the young puppy fidget. Something big was going to happen in fifteen RMUs. Something big and illegal, with ramifications that spiderwebbed from this exact point to multiple points in time and space. Stopping that was worth a few moments’ boredom.
It was the biggest job he’d ever been assigned. Mikkel had pored over the information in the Core, tracing time-lines and consequences and incidents, and he’d even found the few, seemingly random reports that the Time Corp analysts had missed. It was a vast assignment. It was an amazingly intricate assignment. What it was not was an assignment for a single Time Corp Captain, and Mikkel couldn’t help but ask himself: Why me?
“Who are we looking for, sir?” asked Lieutenant Morgan.
“No idea, Lieutenant,” said Mikkel cheerfully. “Despite the vast amount of information Time Corp has and will amass on this particular pair of skippers, no one has managed to get an image of them. One male, forty to forty-two RYUs; one female, ten to twelve. Sometimes they travel together, sometimes separately.”
“Aliases?”
“Marx and Kez. No other known aliases or histories.”
“What will they do?”
“Time Corp doesn’t know. They know it starts today, here, and that it snowballs from there. We’re here to nip it in the bud—whatever it is—and bring them in.”
“Then how–”
“The crime logs, Lieutenant. Forty-nine crimes will take place on this flight deck today: thirty-odd are minor infractions of safety codes, twelve involve various instances of shoplifting, and seven range from moderate to serious crime. Of those seven, only two involve time.”
“Do we know that the crime includes time?”
“Not necessarily. But it’s a good chance, and two crimes-scenes are easier to stake out than seven.”
Mikkel scanned the crowd below, watching the swift to and fro of passengers. Two mechs were shoving each other with an angry vigor that suggested things would descend to outright fighting before long, the crowd flowing around them at a respectful distance. There was also a slightly rumpled man passed out on the see-through maxi-plex in a quiet corner, creating another distinct no-go zone. He could have been a drunk, but Mikkel, watching his methodical progression from sleep to watchful wakefulness, had the impression that he was something else entirely. Soldier?
Yes, thought Mikkel, watching the man’s eyes narrow as he assessed the flight deck. Definitely soldier. That didn’t mean he wasn’t a drunk, of course: he was looking distinctly green as he gazed through the levels of maxi-plex.
The stall-holders looked ordinary enough. Some of them were First World stock; all long limbs and surprisingly deft, narrow fingers that could sneak a coin out of your pocket before you knew where you were. Mikkel hoped the customers on this particular flight deck knew to stick to credcards.
There were a few displaced Second Worlders selling insects and nuts to likeminded patrons, but they weren’t likely to cause trouble: most of them were refugees. Beside the huddled Second World stalls was one of his crime-scenes, where a salesman stood by his merchandise: a rather battered craft. The crime-log listed it as a threat level 5 and indicated that the perpetrators were person or persons unknown. Grand larceny involving a time/space equipped vehicle and disregard for intergalactic flight codes, read Mikkel, his brows rising.
“Sir, this says kidnapping and threatened bodily harm aggravated by frivolous use of a time-capsule and–”
Mikkel cut him off. “Mine isn’t much better, Lieutenant. Just keep an eye out.”
The soldier was walking toward one of Mikkel’s crime-scenes, his stride loose and slightly hitched. If Mikkel had to guess, he would have said that the soldier had a projectile wound in the knee. He stopped in front of the soon-to-be stolen time-craft (did he know it was a time-craft? Mikkel wondered) and struck up a conversation with the salesman. Oddly enough, the salesman seemed more than happy to talk to a scruffy drunk.
Lieutenant Morgan suppressed another sigh. “Yes, sir. What am I looking for?”
Below them, the soldier threw a hard look around the flight deck and boarded behind the salesman. He was smiling grimly.
“That,” said Mikkel, gleefully. “That’s what you’re looking for. That’s him!”
***
The salesman’s name was Dulac. Fortunately enough he was waiting on a client, and it took little more than Marx’s terse: “Right, open her up, flyboy!” to convince him that Marx was his client.
To help good impressions along, Marx rubbed his hand across his day-old whiskers and said: “Take my advice, kid: never party on Sixth World when they’re bringing the Happy shots. You’ll wake up on a Third World orbiting flight-deck with no idea who’s taken your Slip-Craft.”
Dulac’s silvered eyes grew brighter with mixed avarice and relief. “Rough night, yeah. Slip-Craft, eh? Looking to upgrade?”
“Depends on the price and quality,” said Marx. “Look, kid; I’ve got a heck of a hangover. What’ve you got that’s good to eat?”
Dulac beamed, and barely restrained himself from rubbing his hands together. “I’ll message for a breakfast platter. Right this way.”
He had some difficulty in scrambling across the hull in his tight, shiny trousers, but he bore it manfully, scrabbling for purchase in pointy-toed shoes with soft soles. Marx grinned as he followed, the hull slightly curved and reassuringly familiar beneath his feet. It felt good to be climbing the hull of a personal craft again.
There was a hatch to the left of the reinforced front windows that sat surprisingly flush with the body and led directly to the cockpit. Marx dropped in first, finding the distance further than he expected, and threw a swift look around. The inside was neat an
d spare with a minimalist console and two pilot chairs: certainly it was not as old as the outside of it would lead a prospective buyer to believe. Two bracing straps hung from the ceiling, strong and un-frayed, and Marx flicked one in passing with the fleeting memory of rope-burn. He let Dulac patter through the craft, his endless stream of sales-babble floating back into the cockpit, and sat down in the first pilot’s chair to get a feel of the craft. He didn’t need to get a feel for the craft, of course: he was here for the food and that was it. But Marx did it for the pleasure of it, wishing for the first time in years that he was a flyboy again, and not a grease-stained mech on someone else’s monstrosity of a ship.
He was still gazing idly at the console when the extra keypad and screen in the left corner of the console caught his eye. It carried the familiar brand name of Markoff.
Air hissed between his teeth. Marx said softly: “Not a beater, then.”
The Upsydaisy was a time-craft.
No wonder Dulac thought he was looking for an upgrade! Slip-Craft were the rich man’s toy: small, nippy and just barely capable of decent time-travel. The other thing they were was expensive. The Upsydaisy, battered and old as it was, carried with it a price tag hefty enough to buy several small countries.
By the time the breakfast platter arrived, piled high and steaming, Dulac was back in the cockpit. Marx asked questions with his mouth full, nodding knowledgably at the boy’s answers without troubling himself too much with the content of them. He was reasonably sure that he knew more about any given time-craft than a boy whose voice had barely broken.
When Dulac went to dispose of the empty platter, Marx wiped his hands on his trousers and hunted for the Markoff chronomatrix engine. He found it beneath the console, hidden by an old-style hinged hatch. Someone had scratched a phrase on the inside of the hatch, faded around the edges and hard to read in the dim light beneath the console. Marx squinted at it, running a finger over the chipped paint, and finally made out the words.
It said: Marx wos here.
Marx’s head jerked up, catching a glancing blow on the protrusion of lighting cover above the console. He said something nasty in Third World dialect and rubbed his head, then leaned in for a closer look at the vandalism. The wos had been scratched out and above it was scribbled will be. Below that, in shallow, uneven script, read: Mind yer hed.
Marx looked at it long and hard. The Marx wos here was in his handwriting, he was sure of it. The addendums were not.
It was nonsense. And there were so many Marxes in the colonized Twelve Worlds, said his sensible front-brain. His soldier’s back-brain, inured to ridiculous coincidence and impossible odds, said: And how many of them just brained their skull on the lights in a time craft?
Dulac’s head poked through the hatch, offensively normal. “Start her up,” he said. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
The Upsydaisy started like a dream, quiet and immediate. The console rippled to life with a soft glow across the controls, and Marx’s fingers found the hailer without any conscious decision. By the time he’d requested a flight plan to leave the deck and the moorings had been released, he knew he was going to steal the Upsydaisy. He secured the hatch while the computer was voicing its pre-flight checks in smug female tones, and ran his eye over the toggles and keypad that made up the controls for the chronomatrix.
“Coordinate flight plan and chronomatrix,” said the computer.
“Settle down, pushy,” Marx said. Safe escape was the first priority, and if he didn’t input the correct vectors his escape would be messy, to say the least. His fingers hovered over the keypad, equations crawling back into his mind from those ancient days when he piloted time-craft regularly.
The computer said: “Pilots are reminded that the chronomatrix is locked out while in port. Please remember to dispose of all Time Corp agents before attempting to engage the chronomatrix.”
Marx’s finger paused on a key for a moment too long, sending a screed of identical characters across the screen. “Wait, what?”
“Port lockout will disengage in three…two…one.”
Marx stabbed furiously at the keypad. Who had disengaged the port lockout, he had no idea. But if Time Corp was involved, he needed every advantage he could get. He chose not to let himself wonder who had programmed the computer to warn him and concentrated on programming the chronomatrix instead. Goodness knew how long the lockout would be disengaged. He heard a distant shout—was that Dulac?—and hit the input button on the keypad.
***
Kez kicked her booties against the grass in reflexive fear, instinct urging escape. Her feet slipped instead of digging in, and she tumbled onto her backside.
“No need to run away, Kez,” said Marcus pleasantly. “I think it’s time we had a little chat.”
“D’ruther not,” said Kez, sitting very still. There was a feeling of constriction around her chest, and it occurred to her that she had been feeling the squeeze for some time now. How long had Marcus known she could slip through time and space?
He seemed to expand, a cat satisfied with its cream. “I knew one of you was doing it, but I couldn’t tell which one of you it was. It didn’t occur to me that it was a fear-based reaction until you disappeared from your room during the fire.”
“Broke me window an’ climbed out. Kept me head under the blanket.”
“Of course, I couldn’t prove anything,” said Marcus reflectively. “That was unfortunate, because I’d already notified my buyer to let him know I’d found what he was looking for.”
“Wot’s that, then?” Kez said tersely. She was afraid, a small crawling down her spine, but it wasn’t enough to jog her shifting instinct.
“Don’t be disingenuous, my dear. A human who can slip through space at will, of course. I thought he was mad when he put in the order, but he had a time and a place for me, and the money is really quite exceptionally good.”
Kez shoved her hands in her pockets to hide their shaking. “You can’t sell me off like a second-hand flyer.”
“Of course I can. Your father signed you over to the Institute. I am the Institute.”
“Won’t help you if I shift out, will it?”
“Oh, I don’t think you’ll do that,” Marcus said pleasantly. His slight smile made Kez shiver. “Dear child, one of the perks of my connections is the possession of a slip-craft. No matter where you go, I will find you. And if you put me to that trouble, I can assure you that you’ll find yourself without a living friend or relative in this World or any other.”
There! There was the electric buzz. For the first time Kez consciously grasped her fear and used it.
“Family’s already dead,” she told Marcus. “Ain’t anyone else. You can kill my old man if you like.”
Then she pulled herself up or out or away, and into the Other Zone.
Kez expended some thought on where to immerse herself in the time-line again. The first time she’d found herself here, in this milky other zone, she had panicked and slipped back out without quite knowing what had happened. Dad was having what he called a bad turn, which this time meant he was slashing at her bedroom door with his wickedly sharp razor and screaming ‘devil child!’ at her. Kez slipped in and out of the Other Zone so quickly that she wasn’t sure it wasn’t a dream, and found herself in a field of tall, plumy grass that she came later to recognise as Second World specific. She spent the night in someone’s comfortably smelly goat shelter, appreciating the warmth of the goat’s huffy side. The goat didn’t seem to mind. The next morning the goat’s owner pulled her out by the leg, looked impassively at her, and fed her breakfast. He also pulled a huge knit jumper over her head and left her to swim in it, pushing her skinny hands up and through sleeves that puddled in her eggs.
In those days her talent for time-and-space travel seemed to be somewhat elastic, and Kez found herself pulled irresistibly back home to her father half-way through breakfast. He hadn’t noticed she was gone, so Kez cleared away the used patches and needles from his
bed and made breakfast for when he got up. She folded up the jumper that smelled of goat and huge, bearded man, and hid it under her bed. When she slipped into the Other Zone the next time, Kez found herself back on Second World.
Kez was very familiar with Second World by the time Dad shut her up in the Institute. Boris and the goat were used to her popping in by then, and although Kez was certain Boris knew what she could do, they never discussed it. Boris didn’t discuss much, as a matter of fact. Mostly he just fed her, and made sure she was wearing a jumper when it snowed. He taught her to milk the goat, and he noticed when she was bruised even when it wasn’t just her face.
Once, he pointed his peeling knife at Kez’s black eye and said: “Not good. I teach you to fight.”
He began teaching her while dinner cooked, interspersing his physical demonstrations with more conversation than she’d heard from him in their entire friendship. The lessons lasted until Dad sold her to the Institute, and life became by-and-large less hazardous. Kez’s one regret was that her talent didn’t seem to work unless she was frightened.
And so Kez didn’t really choose, for all her careful thought. When she found herself in a familiar field of tall, plumy grass it seemed natural to pass the goat-shed and let herself into the house. She was home.
***
There was no warning. Mikkel was watching the soldier climb into the Upsydaisy, and then he was wondering why it was dark, why his head hurt, and why he could hear distant moaning.
He knocked me out first, he thought, and felt a vague kind of comfort in the thought. Evidently Marx thought Mikkel was more dangerous than Lieutenant Morgan. Mikkel tried to sit up, and quickly found that the soldier had been thorough enough to lash his wrists together. He couldn’t even wriggle his fingers enough to push the buttons on his Time-Corp quick-shift wrist strap. Sitting up was only slightly easier, and while it seemed to ease the pain in his head slightly, it didn’t help with the darkness.
A Time-Traveller's Best Friend: Volume One Page 3