Time Scout

by Robert Asprin

  "Oh, my God.. ."

  Kit couldn't help it. He started laughing. Sven was already wiping tears.

  "C'mon, Margo," Kit teased, "what happened to your brave challenge? I thought you'd try anything I was game to try."

  "But ...but..."

  "Let me guess," Kit said dryly, "they didn't serve octopus in whatever little town you grew up in?"

  Margo was still transfixed by the sight in front of her. The eels, which had been gutted and de-boned, still had their heads, producing the indelible impression that the plateful of slippery food was staring back. She swallowed convulsively. "I, uh ..." She picked up her fork with an air of m determination. "All right. How does one eat them

  "That's the spirit," Sven laughed. "The eels, you cut into pieces. The octopi, you eat whole."

  She shut her eyes and swallowed again, then tried a bite. She widened her eyes. "Hey, that's good!"

  Kit chuckled. "Of course it is. Arley Eisenstein wouldn't serve it, otherwise. Bon appetit."

  He dug in with gusto.

  True to her word, Margo matched him bite for bite and enjoyed every last morsel.

  The best thing Margo could say abort her first lesson with Sven Bailey was that she didn't have to pay for it. The worst thing was, Malcolm Moore showed up to watch. After the first five minutes, she seriously regretted the previous day's sparring session. He enjoyed her utter trouncing far too thoroughly to outlast the brief satisfaction it had given her to show him up. After the first seven minutes, she had more bruises than she'd given Malcolm-and Sven Bailey was just getting warmed up.

  She gritted her teeth and stood it.

  After fifteen minutes of hell, which proved beyond any doubt that Margo was in over her head, Sven Bailey stepped back and said, "Okay. What've you learned?"

  Margo rubbed the freshest set of bruises and said, "That I have a lot to learn. I knew that last night."

  "That's it? That's all you've figured out?" His tone relegated her to the realm of idiots, worms, and cockroaches.

  Margo bit her tongue with difficulty.

  Sven rested hands on hips and studied her. "I was under the impression you were here to learn something."

  "So show me something to learn! All you've done so far is throw me around like a sack of flour!"

  "Sit down."

  "What?"

  He jabbed an emphatic middle finger toward the mat. "Sit!"

  She sat

  "Close your eyes."

  She did so.

  "Now, breathe."

  Margo felt like an idiot, sitting in the middle of the mat with people staring at her while she did nothing gut breathe..

  "Forget Malcolm, forget the other people. Concentrate on your center. Breathe. Down' to the bottom. Hold it. Hold it.... Exhale. Again."

  Grudgingly, her body began to relax. Tension made itself known in burning muscles from neck to hips. She shifted slightly for a more comfortable position.

  "What are you feeling?"

  "My neck is tight. My shoulders, too. My back hurts."

  "Good, that's where you're fighting yourself. That's what I'm talking about when I ask what you've learned. You're fighting yourself as hard as you were fighting me. Keep breathing."

  For half an hour, all Sven Bailey let her do was breathe and listen to her body's multiple complaints. When he finally allowed her to stand up again she felt looser, but restless.

  "Now," Sven said, circling her slowly, "let's practice wrist exercises. The strength in your wrists is pathetic. To study Akido, that has to change. Like this ..."

  For another half hour, Margo exercised her wrists until her arms trembled and her wrist-bones ached.

  "Very good. Now, let's practice standing."

  "Standing?"

  Sven crossed his arms. "Are you going to question everything I tell you or do you want to learn something?"

  "Yes! I'd just like to learn it before I'm eighty!"

  Sven's appraising stare was about as warm as last winter's icicles. "You can't even crawl yet and you want to run the marathon?"

  Margo clamped her lips shut. If she antagonized her teacher, Kit would yank her right out of training. Her mother's voice came back to her: Margo, you're too inpatient for your own good. Slow down. You'll get it all done. Yes, she would-but would she get it done in time? She was still fighting a relentless deadline, but if she hoped to succeed, she had to do things their way. If only you hadn't gotten sick, you bastard ...But he had. And like Sven Bailey's relentless personality, there was nothing she could do to change that. She could only adapt and incorporate the fact into her plans.

  Margo drew several deep breaths. "Okay. All right. I'm sorry. Mom always told me I was in a tearing rush to do everything, even when I was learning to crawl. I'll do better. I promise." She tried a sweet smile and knew she'd succeeded when a little of the darkness left his scowl. "Okay, Mr. Bailey, how am I supposed to stand? Show me."

  Sven put her in position, then began to talk -surprisingly enough, about something besides breathing and strengthening her wrists.

  "The idea we have in mind is to give you a broad foundation in unarmed combat before we move to armed combat. No, Margo, sink down a little further, that's right, hold it. If you rely on the weapon alone, without backup layers of self-defense, you risk being caught helpless if you lose use of the weapon. Whether you're carrying a firearm, a knife, some kind of chemical, or a club, you need to have other layers of protection in your defenses. One layer is alertness. If you don't notice an attacker, he'll take you by surprise. And once that happens, you're in trouble. For the next twenty-four hours, I want you to practice a little game. Tomorrow, tell me how well you do. See how many times you notice someone before they're aware of you and how many times they notice you first. Keep a record and we'll talk more about alertness tomorrow"

  For once, Margo could see the immediate usefulness of the lesson. She vowed to score a hundred percent on this particular test. Nobody would catch her napping.

  "All right, shift your stance like this. Good. Now...one reason to stay alert. Suppose you have a gun."

  Margo nodded. "Okay."

  Sven backed up at least twenty feet. "I've got a knife." He brandished a closed hand as though holding a knife in a fencing grip. "Lady, I'm gonna cut your throat Draw from your holster and shoot me."

  He rushed at her. Margo grabbed for her hip, pretending to go for a gun

  And landed hard on her back. Sven's hand slashed her throat.

  She widened her eyes. "Hey! No fair!"

  "There's no such thing as fair, girl." He let her up. "Get back into your stance. Remember, a man armed with a knife can cover twenty feet faster than you can draw a gun. Keep your distance from potential threats and stay alert."

  Quite suddenly, the game wasn't so funny.

  Margo reassumed her stance. "What else?"

  "Forget everything you've ever seen in movies. I'm talking martial arts, knives, fistfights, or guns. Movies are crap. They'll get you killed. A knife fight is likelier to leave you dead than a gunfight-dead or crippled if you don't know exactly what you're doing. Know how to use your weapon. Ann will teach you projectile weapons: firearms, archery, even blowguns. I'll teach you the rest. Getting tired? Good. Next, you fall."

  And she did, too. Repeatedly Sven taught her a better way to fall than her karate instructors had ever shown her. By the time Sven was satisfied that Margo had at least learned how to fall down, she was shaking with exhaustion and covered with sweat.

  "Okay," Sven finally told her, "shower and change into fresh clothes. Ann's waiting for you on the range."

  Margo held back a groan and scraped herself off the mat. Malcolm Moore abandoned a kata of his own and intercepted her halfway across the gym.

  "Please," Margo said, holding out both hands to ward him off, "don't rub it in."

  "No hard feelings." He smiled, surprising her with the friendliness in eyes, and held out one hand. She shook it warily. "Really, Margo," he said with a self-con
scious laugh, "you pointed out how badly I need to practice. I've been lax lately. Thanks for reminding me to get back in shape."

  "Oh. Well, you're welcome."

  "Sven gave you a hard time." It wasn't a question.

  His friendly smile prompted a heartfelt response. "All he let me do was breathe, stand in one place, and fall down!"

  Malcolm grinned. "I can think of worse things he might have made you do."

  Much to her surprise, Margo found herself laughing. "Well, yeah, I guess that's true." She nodded toward the shower. "I, uh, have to get cleaned up. I'm supposed to learn how to shoot."

  Her lack of enthusiasm must have communicated itself to Malcolm Moore, because he chuckled. "I'll make a wager with you. An hour from now, you'll be singing a different tune. In fact, I'll bet you enjoy it so much by the end of the week, you'll be sneaking in to practice when you're supposed to be studying math."

  Margo rose to the challenge with glee. "That's a bet! What'll you wager?"

  Malcolm grinned again. "Me? Hell, Margo, I'm broke."

  She laughed. "Me, too."

  "Okay, how about something besides money?"

  "Like what?" She was abruptly wary.

  Malcolm blinked, clearly taken aback for a moment by her tone. Margo gave herself a mental kick. Malcolm wasn't Billy Pandropolous or even Skeeter Jackson. Kit Carson wouldn't trust him if he were, for one thing, and he wasn't like any guy Margo had ever met, for another.

  "Well," he said slowly, "about the only thing I have to offer is guide services. I could take you down time to London-if Kit agreed to pay for the tickets," he added hastily.

  Margo's pulse . started to pound. Down time to London? Oh, please ...But what to wager in return? And would Kit Carson say yes even if she won the bet?

  "All right, one down-time trip with all the trimmings against..." She swallowed and risked it. "What do you want?"

  Malcolm eyed her thoughtfully. Margo braced herself for the worst. But Malcolm Moore didn't say "An hour in my bedroom" or anything even remotely close to that. "How about your life story?"

  "Huh?"

  "Well..." That nice smile of his made her feel warm and funny inside. "How else do people get to be friends, if they don't know anything about one another?"

  But...

  Her life story? She turned away. "There's not much to tell." To her horror, her voice wobbled.

  He touched her arm gently "Margo, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to pry. I just thought it might be nice to get to know you."

  She wrapped both arms around herself and wondered about that. Was she a person worth getting to know? Her father had certainly never thought so. Billy Pandropolous had-for reasons of his own, involving sex and cold, hard cash and a booming market for pretty young things fresh from Minnesota. But Malcolm wasn't like that. Was he? Billy had seemed nice at first, too. Or maybe Malcolm was just looking for a chink in the armor, to get even? It was silly of her, perhaps, but she didn't think so.

  But tell Malcolm about her father's drunken rages? Or finding her mother and a stranger she'd never seen beaten to death on the kitchen and living room floors? Or running for New York the second she turned sixteen to try and earn the cash to find her grandfather, only to land in Billy Pandropolous' loving hands?

  She blinked back tears. Well, she could always lie.

  "Okay," she said reluctantly. "I guess it wouldn't be much of a bet if I didn't have an incentive to win?"

  He smiled. "True enough. Do we have a deal?"

  She shook his hand. "Deal. And now I really do have to go. I don't want to keep a teacher waiting."

  "Mind if I watch? Or would I make you nervous?"

  Margo thought about it and decided she really didn't mind. "No, I think maybe I'd feel a little less nervous if I had a friendly face around."

  "Scared of guns?" he asked sympathetically.

  "Well, wouldn't you be?"

  Malcolm chuckled. "You've been watching the evening news too much. Get showered. I'll tell Ann it's my fault you're late."

  "Thanks."

  "Don't mention it."

  Irrationally, Margo felt better as she headed for the showers. Maybe-just maybe she'd found her first real friend.

  Hearing protectors and range glasses were mandatory on TT-86's firing line. The range was indoors, of necessity. One lane was a hundred yards long, designed for high-power rifles as well as rimfire rifles, shotguns, and pistols, but most of the lanes were ten yards long, about the right distance for most personal defense training. La-La Land's weapons trainers dreamed of a three-hundred-yard lane, but the cost for that much space was just too high. There were no clay pigeons to shoot at, no cute little metal animals or numbered bull's-eyes. All targets were either blank sheets of paper, human silhouettes, or plain, circular steel plates. Other time terminals which boasted safari tours included animal-shaped targets marked with kill zones.

  Ann Vinh Mulhaney's 's targets were marked with kill zones, too: centered around the human torso and braincase.

  Margo looked a little green already. Malcolm, lounging comfortably on a bench nearby, felt sorry for her.

  "Get used to it," Ann told her. "Time scouting is not a picnic."

  So everybody keeps telling me," Margo said with a shaky little laugh that didn't fool anyone.

  "Did anyone talk about the dangers of tangling with people who can't be killed down time?"

  Margo nodded. "Last night, yes."

  "Good. People who are critical to history can often be ...dissuaded ...even if they can't be killed. Self-defense is a dangerous proposition at best, but self-defense down time is really tricky, because you never know if what you try will actually work. So it's good to have a variety of options-fast legs, the ability to ride horses or drive a harnessed team, a good grounding in martial arts. Remember, the first lesson of self-defense..."

  "Avoid the situation in the first place," Margo sighed. "That's what Sven said."

  "Then you'd better remember it. All right. A gun is only one layer of your defense. But if you're going down time, it's useful to know how to use one. You won't carry one with you, because you'll never know whether or not a firearm will be an anachronism there. But once you get where you're going, you may need to pick one up in a hurry, if they exist. Firearms have changed a lot since their invention in the 1300's. So we're going to start with something simple and fairly modern, something easy to shoot, just to get you used to marksmanship principles. Once I'm convinced you can hit what you're shooting at, I'll start teaching you historical firearms all the way back to the early pole guns. You're going to have homework, too."

  Margo groaned and looked to Malcolm for support.

  He grinned and shrugged. "Can't learn without studying. Remember, I already have my Ph.D. and I spend my spare time studying everything I can get my hands on."

  Margo managed a smile that looked a little strained. "All right. What will I be studying?"

  "Principles of safety. Types of mechanical actions. Types of ammunition. How to load and unload. How various specific firearms function and differ from one another."

  "Yuck."

  "You could always find another career," Ann said sweetly.

  "So show me!"

  To Margo's horror, her "shooting lesson" began with a three-hour NRA course on basic safety. Granted, her teacher covered several basic types of modern guns, too, but she was required to pay attention while Ann Mulhaney just stood there and talked, showed her photographs and models, and repeated "Keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction; keep your finger off the trigger until you're ready to shoot; and keep the action open and the gun unloaded until it's ready for use" so many times Margo thought she'd go mad

  "All right, what's the first safety principle?"

  "Keep the damned thing pointed in a safe direction!"

  "That being?"

  "Away from what I don't want to shoot. My foot. The neighbor's window. Not up, if there's a second floor to the building I'm in, or down if I'm upstairs somewhere."
Margo crossed her arms. "When do I get to shoot?"

  "Later. Let me see you de-cock that single-action revolver again."

  Margo fumbled the job three times before she got it right. She grinned in proud relief when she finally managed it correctly.

  "Remember, a lot of these older-style guns and some of the modern ones have no mechanical hammer blocks, Margo. Screw this up with a loaded single-action that doesn't have a way to block the hammer from striking the firing pin, and you'll have an accidental discharge. If it's pointed at your stomach-" Ann forcibly moved the muzzle away from Margo's middle " you'll end up gutshot."

  Margo's sense of accomplishment dissolved. She felt like crying. First Kit had roughed her up, then Sven had hurt her, and now Ann Mulhaney was making her look like a dangerous fool. "I'm sorry! I'm tired and hungry ...."

  Ann said shortly, "Get used to it, Margo. You won't have the luxury of choosing the time and place for a gunfight to save your life."

  She wanted to scream. Instead she tried to reason with her tormentor. "Yes, but I could choose the time and place for the lessons! How am I supposed to learn this stuff when I'm beat on my feet? Don't you people ever eat?"

  Her tummy rumbled in echo. Malcolm Moore must've heard it, too, because he chuckled.

  Ann sighed and smiled ruefully, then retrieved the Colt Army single-action pistol. "All right, Margo, point taken. Eight o'clock tomorrow morning and don't be late this time. I have other lessons tomorrow besides yours."

  Margo wanted to collapse right where she was. "I'll be here."

  Where she'd find food, Margo had no idea. She didn't have enough money even for a hotdog.

  "Well," Malcolm said on their way out of the gym, what do you think?"

  "You haven't won your bet yet," Margo said sourly.

  He laughed easily. "I have until the end of the week, remember? That gives me a couple of days. How about lunch?"

  "I'm broke. I mean really, truly broke. I think I have ten cents to my name."

  "Where are you staying?"

  "On a couch in Kit's living room."

  The chagrin in her voice caused Malcolm to chuckle. "How come you never call him `Grandpa' or `Grandfather'?" He watched curiously for her reaction. She looked uncomfortable. It took her a moment to answer.