Time Scout

by Robert Asprin

  Kit finished up at the Neo Edo's office and checked his watch. Time for Margo's next firearms lesson. After the hair-raising conversation he'd shared with Malcolm, Kit intended to watch every single one of Margo's shooting lessons. He slipped on a pair of shoes at the door and headed out to the Commons, then stopped at a little "open-air" stand for a quick lunch.

  "Hi, Kit," Keiko smiled. "What'll it be?"

  He pored over the selection of soups, sniffed the yakitori appreciatively, and glanced over at the large fish tank where customers could make their sushi choices-live fish being the best way to ensure freshness in a setting like a time terminal. The tank was five feet deep and eight feet long, filled with salt water and swimming sushi delicacies.

  "That young yellowtail," Kit pointed to the fish he wanted, "looks good."

  "Hai!"

  Keiko turned to pick up the net-and shrieked

  A leather-winged shape zipped past, skimmed the top of the tank, then flapped off with Kit's lunch. Japanese didn't precisely have the same corrosive vocabulary available to English speakers, but Keiko had no shortage of colorful curses to heap on the heads of fish thieves and other assorted miscreants.

  "They eat all my profits!" she stormed, shaking a fist at the pterodactyl. It had perched in the girders high overhead, busily gulping the profit in question.

  "I, uh, think I'll try the yakitori," Kit hastily amended, trying to suppress a grin. "Talk to Bull Morgan about the problem."

  "I have," Keiko said sourly as he fixed Kit's lunch. "He says, let them eat my fish. He will pay me. This does not make my customers happy when they steal my fish and leave messes!"

  There was- no doubt about the messes. Paper parasols, particularly those with hideous monster faces painted on top-had become all the rage in La-La Land. Kit stole a glance over his shoulder at the pterodactyls and the primitive birds busy swooping and diving on La-La Land's ornamental fish ponds, sidewalk cafes, and open air food stands and grinned. Half the people in sight carried open parasols.

  Across the nearest pond a very elderly japanese man missing a couple of fingertips (and probably tattooed over his entire body) cursed at one of the Ichthyornises when it dove after a goldfish he'd been admiring, not only swallowing it in two gulps but splashing his suit in the process of flapping away again. Its feathers were so waterlogged, the primitive, short-tailed bird made it only as far as the top of a nearby shrub, where it spread wings to dry in the manner of cormorants or anhingas. The singular difference was a beak filled with extremely sharp teeth.

  That tooth-filled beak–and an angry hiss–changed the elderly gentleman's mind when he advanced, evidently intent on wringing its neck. His subsequent retreat was calculated to look thoughtful and planned. Kit managed not to laugh. He'd never seen a yakuza thug back down from a bird. Kit felt like cheering.

  "Thanks," he said when Keiko handed him a plate filled with rice and barbecued chicken chunks on little wooden skewers. "Mmm..."

  He strolled over to a seat and hurried through his lunch while tourists snapped photos of the Ichthyornis drying its wings. Sue Fritchey was sweating it out until Primary cycled again, waiting for a message from colleagues up time about La-La Land's newest residents. The giant pterosaur was supposedly recovering just fine from its adventure and was eating all the fish they could toss into its enormous beak. They'd urgently need a resupply of fish by the time Primary cycled, what with a thirty-foot fish eater and two separate flocks of smaller ones to keep happy.

  Bull had given standing orders that station personnel were to secure fish from any down-time gate that opened. What would happen if they couldn't get permission to ship the beasts to an up-time research facility? ...

  Kit had visions of shopkeepers like Keiko buying shotguns.

  Knowing Bull, he'd order an enormous fish tank constructed somewhere in the Commons and stock it with several thousand fish, then sell tickets to the feeding shows and lectures. Kit grinned. Sounded like a good subject for a quiet bet or two.

  He finished his lunch and headed downstairs to the weapons ranges. Margo was just getting started with Ann when she glanced up. She flushed when she saw him.

  "Hi," he smiled, trying to sound friendly.

  "Hi." Her closed expression said "I resent you checking up on me."

  Well, that was exactly what he was doing and he had no intention of backing down.

  "Hi, Kit," Ann said with a friendly nod. "Have a seat."

  "Thanks." He settled on one of the benches at the back of the range and slipped in foam hearing protectors.

  Ann started Margo off with a relatively "modern" topbreak revolver, double-action, very similar to the one Malcolm said she'd been unable to use in London. Margo donned eye and hearing-protection equipment. Ann did the same and ran out a target, then said, "Whenever you're ready."

  Margo took her time and placed five of the six on the paper-but nowhere near the center.

  "Front sight," Ann said patiently. "concentrate on the front sight."

  Margo opened the action and dumped out the spent brass. "I thought the whole sight picture was important."

  "It is, but the front sight is critical. As long as the front sight is placed properly, your rear sight can be slightly off and you'll still hit near what you're shooting at. But let that front sight drift off, and it won't matter how perfectly your rear sight is aligned, either with the target or with the front sight. You'll miss, clean."

  Margo tried again. She was still flinching, but the shots were a little closer together.

  "All right, unload the brass and hand me the pistol."

  "Why?" Margo asked curiously.

  Ann took the pistol-offered, Kit noticed approvingly, in the roper manner, action open, muzzle down. "You've developed a who ping flinch. So we'll do a ball-and-dummy drill. I'll load the pistol for you."

  Ann turned away, blocking the gun from Margo's immediate view, then handed it back. "All right. Let's see how bad that flinch is."

  Margo fired the first round with a solid bang. The second time, the pistol only went click-and the barrel jerked about an inch anyway.

  "Oh!" Margo gasped. "I did that, didn't I?"

  "Yes. You're anticipating the noise and the recoil. This drill will help you learn to pull through smoothly without flinching, because you'll never know which chamber might be loaded or empty"

  Ann put her through a solid twenty minutes of ball-and-dummy drills. By the end, Margo had developed a much smoother trigger pull and her group size shrank considerably.

  "Very good." Ann pulled in the target and ran out a new one. "Now, concentrate on that front sight."

  Another fifteen minutes, and the spread of Margo's shots was down to six inches at six yards. Not exactly impressive, but an improvement. Ann drilled her on front sight for another ten minutes, then let her take a short break. Margo pulled off the protective eyeglasses and earmuffs and ruffled her hair. Kit regretted the necessity to dye it. She looked like an abandoned waif with, pale skin and dark hair, but it was far safer for her.

  The discouragement in her eyes needed dispelling, though.

  "You're doing well," Kit said when she glanced his way.

  Margo flushed again, but from pleasure this time. "I'm working hard on it."

  Kit nodded. "You keep practicing, you'll get much better. Maybe Malcolm will even win that bet."

  Margo's whole face went scarlet. "You heard about that."

  Kit laughed. "Margo, everyone in La-La Land heard about it."

  "That'll teach me to make bets," she said ruefully.

  "All right," Ann said, coming back with another case, "back to work. Now we take a step backwards in time. Muzzle-loading black-powder firearms were more common far longer than metallic-cartridge, breechloading guns. Metallic cartridges didn't become common until the 1870's. The little, low-powered rimfire and pin-fire cartridges date from the decade before the American Civil War, but they were nowhere nearly as common as percussion-fired, muzzle-loading blackpowder guns. Flint
lock and matchlock guns in particular had a longer period of use than cartridge guns. You'll need to know how to handle these firearms and they're a bit more complicated to use."

  Margo gave Ann a brave smile. "All right. Show me."

  "We start with a little demonstration."

  Ann shook out a thin line of various types of powders: smokeless rifle powders, smokeless pistol powders, then black powder. "Modern, smokeless powders are not explosive. They burn. They don't explode. The priming compound in the base of the cartridge case is a chemical explosive, but it's a tiny, tiny amount of it. All the primer does is create the spark of flame needed to start the powder burning. This is modern pistol powder and this is modern rifle powder. Now this," Ann pointed, "is black powder. Unlike modern powders, it is explosive. It burns far, far faster and is much more dangerous, particularly under compression. Watch."

  She lit a long match and touched it to the end of the line of powders. The modern rifle powder flared and burned slowly, the pistol powder burned a good bit faster-then the black powder flashed wildly, gone in a split second.

  "Good God!"

  "Yes. That's to teach you to respect black powder. Be careful when handling it, especially when you're reloading black-powder weapons. A mistake can injure, potentially even kill you."

  "Great."

  Ann smiled. "Just keep your wits about you and practice. Now, let's start with the components of ammunition for black-powder weapons. In most historical arms, there was no cartridge case, just loose powder, a projectile called a `ball' and a bit of cloth called a patch, which is greased to help you push the ball down the barrel and to help prevent fouling. During the American Civil War era, a bullet called the minie ball did away with the need for a patch, but it never caught on well with hunters and sportsmen."

  Margo said, "Okay, ball and powder and patch. Show me."

  Ann demonstrated the whole loading process. "There are two important things to remember about blackpowder firearms. One, be sure the ball is seated all the way to the bottom. Check the length of the ramrod," she showed Margo how, "to be sure you haven't left a gap at the bottom between the back of the barrel and the ball."

  "Okay. But why's that important?"

  "Remember what I said about thousands of pounds per square inch of pressure inside the cartridge cases of modern guns when smokeless powder begins to burn? Well, black powder doesn't burn, it explodes. If you leave a gap here," she pointed to the bottom end of the barrel, "what you've done, essentially, is build a miniature bomb."

  Margo's eyes widened. "Oh."

  "Yes. The gun barrel can blow up in your face. The other thing to remember is that sparks can still be smoldering inside the barrel. There isn't any way to get into this end of it. It's all closed up and solid, no breech to open, so you can't just check it. If you try to dump more powder into a hot barrel without swabbing it out first with a wet swab, you could ignite the powder you're pouring in-which could, in turn, set off the powder from the container you're pouring from. That's why you should always load from a measurer that holds just enough powder for one shot. Of course, under battle conditions, you may not have time to swab out the barrel," Ann said with a grin.

  Margo had looked massively uncertain.

  Ann's "Not to worry. If you hope to use firearms through most of their historical existence, you'll need to master these next lessons, but black-power firearms aren't dangerous so long as you learn what you're doing and pay attention while you're doing it. Power tools in untrained hands are just as dangerous, if not more so. Any questions before we get started?"

  Margo glanced back toward Kit, chewed her lower lip, then shook her head. "No. Just show me what I'm supposed to do."

  Ann started her on a simple replica Colt 1860 Army black-powder revolver, showing her how to load, prime with percussion caps, and fire six shots. Reloading took another entire two minutes. After Margo mastered the concepts involved, she asked cheerfully, "What's next? I know about flintlocks."

  "Very good. And here is a beautiful Kentucky rifle to practice with."

  "Ooh! Daniel Boone and settlers on the Cumberland Gap trail and..."

  Kit grinned. His granddaughter's romantic notions had finally landed her with a gun she loved. She even did well with it. Malcolm just might win that bet, after all. After the flintlock, Ann took her on to more esoteric types like wheel-locks and even matchlocks.

  "How in the world did people keep these things burning?" Margo demanded with a half-hearted laugh the second time her slow-smoldering match went out. "Am I doing something wrong? Or is it really that hard?"

  Ann chuckled. "During battles, they'd keep the matches swinging in circles between shots just to be sure. Looked weird as hell during night fighting."

  Margo grinned. "I'll bet. Rain must've been a bummer."

  "Yes, it did wreak a bit of havoc on a few plans. But then, rain wasn't kind to bow strings, either, or to paper cartridges. Modern guns are nicely weatherproof compared to most projectile weapons. And speaking of other projectile weapons, we need to train you in crossbows and stickbows, recurves ..."

  Margo's eyes widened. Then she grinned wickedly. "What, no blowguns? Or atl-atls?"

  "Oh, goodie! One of my students finally wants to learn flint-knapping and spear throwing!" '

  Kit couldn't help it. He started to chuckle.

  Margo turned on him with a hot glare. " "What's so funny?"

  "I'm sorry, Margo," he said, still laughing. -But you're so transparent. Learning flint-knapping wouldn't exactly be a waste of time. You literally could end up someplace where stone weapons are the only ones available. Remember that scout who just came back from the Wurm glaciation, did the work on CroMagnon lifestyles?"

  "Yeah, I remember reading that. In the Shangri-la Gazette."

  "Right And you did see what fell through the ceiling the other day, didn't you?"

  Margo rubbed the back of her neck. "Yeah, well, I was thinking about that. What do you do if you come face to face with a wooly rhinoceros or something?"

  "Look for the nearest tree," Kit advised. "They're mean-tempered brutes. It took a cooperative effort from multiple hunters to bring them down. As for the `or something,' it depends on what it is. I have a feeling we should add biology and big-game hunting to your curriculum."

  She went a little green around the edges.

  "Well, there's nothing intrinsically horrible about it," Kit pointed out. "It's useful to know how to kill various species if you're either starving to death or in danger of immediate dismemberment. And I've seen you eat meat, so I know you're not a vegetarian. What do they teach in high school these days?"

  "Uh, respect for other living creatures?"

  Ann just rolled her eyes.

  "Well," Margo thrust her hands into her pockets, "I'm not a vegan or anything, and I like steaks and chicken and stuff and a neighbor gave us some venison once. I've just never had to hunt anything to get a meal. I know I grew up in Minnesota and all, but I've never even been fishing," she admitted with a slow flush that made Kit wonder again what her upbringing had really been.

  Kit nodded, pleased that she was finally able to admit she lacked knowledge or skills she needed. "That's all right. Lots of city kids don't. As for respecting animals, there isn't a hunter alive that doesn't respect hell out of major predators. And most hunters respect game animals, too. It's a different mindset, maybe, from what you're used to, but the respect is genuine. Now ... if you plan on stepping through unexplored gates, you'd better know how to forage off the land. Not to mention knowing how to keep local four-footed critters from having you as a light snack between meals. So we'll start you on hunting techniques to get you ready for your first attempt at catching your own food."

  "Okay."

  "Just remember one thing: try to avoid putting fourfooted creatures on some moral pedestal that bears no resemblance whatsoever to reality. Misjudging animal behavior and motives does the animal no favors and can be fatal to you. I think," he stood up, "I'll head
back upstairs now. You're making good progress," he allowed, "but you still have a lot of work ahead of you. Ann, thanks. I'll see you at dinner, Margo. Meet me at the Delight."

  "Really?" Margo's face lit up.

  "Yes, really," he grinned. "See you this evening."

  As he left the range, he heard Ann saying, "Now, this is a very early type of firearm called a pole gun ... ."

  Chapter Twelve

  MARGO WAS ON her way to the Delight when the bones behind her ears began to ache. She frowned and peered toward the nearest chronometer for the scheduled gate postings. "London ... Primary ... Rome ... Denver..." She ran down the whole list, but nothing was due to open. The sensation worsened.

  "Oh, no, not again ..."

  'Eighty-sixers began to converge. Margo decided she'd better skedaddle, post-haste. She put on a burst of speed-and propelled herself straight through a black rent in the air that appeared smack in front of her. She screamed and plunged through the gate before she could halt her forward momentum. She had a brief, tunnel-vision view of a broad, silver river in flood stage, long low banks that sloped gently up to what appeared to be a vast flat plain, and a walled city. A two-part fortified bridge with a tower spanned the river. Standing at the crest of a low, open hill, the city clearly commanded a strategic position overlooking the river. Twin spires of a white stone cathedral were visible above the city walls. Between Margo and the walls ...

  It looked like a battle.

  Then she was through the gate. Margo stumbled right into the thick of it. Men in medieval-looking armor hacked at one another with swords. Horsemen on heavy chargers rode down men on foot. Volleys of arrows fell like black rain, pinioning anything unfortunate enough to be under them. A man right in front of her screamed and clutched at a steel crossbow shaft that appeared from nowhere and embedded itself in his chest armor. He went down with a terrible cry and was trampled by a screaming warhorse. Blood and mud and screams of dying men and wounded horses spattered her from all sides.

  Her gaze focused abruptly on a man who'd skidded to a halt right in front of her. Wide, shocked eyes took her measure. He's younger than I am ... . He carried several sheaves of arrows like firewood under his left arm, a bow slung across his back, and a wicked knife in his other hand. He said something and lunged, knife held loosely in an overconfident grip. She whipped around, right side to him, then seized his wrist and yanked forward on it while turning into him. His elbow straightened across her hip. He yelled in pain. Margo kept the elbow forcibly straight and kicked his near ankle with a sweeping blow. She jerked him forward at the same instant. His face slammed into the ground. The knife popped loose.