The Cutting Room: A Time Travel Thriller

by Edward W. Robertson

  "This is getting paranoid, Blake. Why would someone else pretend to be Jeni?"

  "I don't know," I said. "Did she have a partner?"

  "Marital? No way. With CR, she teamed with Donald Ruth. He retired a few years back."

  "I remember him. Manned logistics." I pulled my gaze away from the sky. "I'm going to pay him a visit."

  Mara sighed. "You're supposed to be on vacation."

  Fortunately for my cover story, Donald Ruth lived on the opposite coast. State of Sonoma—the sunny south part. In another world, his home was just down the shore from Brownville.

  I decided to show up unannounced. I didn't know how he felt about Sept, the Cutting Room, or Central. And it would be rude to arrive on his doorstep after being refused permission.

  I took the cross-country zipline. Except where it dipped under the major urban areas, the tube ran above-ground, and I was treated to views of humid forests, sprawling plains, proud mountains, and silent deserts. After the claustrophobia of Skald, it was a welcome sight. Four hours later, I de-zipped in Los Dedos and took the local line south, got off in Ruth's hometown of swaying palms and soft Catholic breezes, and walked the remaining two miles to his charming throwback bungalow.

  He answered my knock, face stamped with annoyance. He pointed to a "NO SOLICITORS" sign glued to the front door. "Trouble with your vision?"

  "I'm sorry to bother you, Mr. Ruth, but it's Blake Din. Cutting Room."

  The creases on his face deepened. "Get tired of your old face?"

  "It's a long story," I said. "Relates to why I'm here. It's about Jeni Sept."

  The annoyance left his features, replaced by careful blankness. "What about her?"

  "I'm trying to track her down. But I've run into certain difficulties. Do you know her present location?"

  "Oh, everyone knows that. They retired her to an island. All expenses paid."

  "This isn't a joke," I said.

  "Sure it is." He laughed bitterly. "And you need to laugh it off and be on your way."

  "It's critical I find her."

  "You're just like her, aren't you? Gonna get you in trouble."

  "Do you know where she is, Mr. Ruth?"

  "I know where she isn't. That Skald place." He eyed me, mouth working, then shook his head once. "Can't say more. There's a reason you can't find her and I'm still here in sunny Sonoma."

  I clasped my hands. I didn't want to threaten him. He was an old horse. He'd served his time with CR well. "I have reason to believe my current investigation relates to the troubles she ran into herself."

  "You want to know more about it? Why don't you go take a look at the Mercer case. That's the one she couldn't look away from."

  "What's the Mercer case?"

  Donald Ruth shook his head. "Say hello to Jeni for me, Mr. Din."

  He closed the door. I stood on his stoop with its couch and its empty bottles and I felt very foolish. 2500 miles for a gnomic hint. Worth it, though. He wouldn't have given it to me over the link. I walked back to the tube, rode to the main station, and headed back across the continent, climbing out of the city tunnel just after midnight.

  I was supposed to be keeping away from the main facility, but Vette was still technically active CR roster, so I had her check for the Mercer case. It took a couple days before she came back with the results. There were dozens of CR files involving the name "Mercer," but just four that had taken place during Jeni Sept's tenure.

  And only one she'd worked on directly.

  She transferred the file to my link. I retired to my apartment to read. The Mercer in question was Siri Mercer, age eight, resident of a PT2-class world (two deviations removed from Primetime—quite close to our own history). Her future had been altered early in the 21st century, when a Primetime trespasser had murdered her and deposited her body in a nearby desert canyon.

  Until Jeni Sept had been assigned the case. According to her report, it had been a devil of a mission. Early Digital Era, which meant most of her potential suspects' net footprint was too thin to easily rule them out—or condemn them. That meant a lot of shoe leather.

  Worst of all, Siri Mercer lived in New Charles—AKA New York, New Amsterdam, etc. The largest city in the country. And each day, she walked nine blocks home from school. Sept's list of potentials was hundreds long. There was no way for her to observe the entire route at once even if she wanted to. That meant sticking close to Mercer. In turn, that meant risking spooking the attacker.

  Predictably, the Zero Day arrived and found Sept without a confirmed identity of the trespasser. And she knew Siri Mercer was a dawdler, prone to stopping for a pizza slice or a pack of gum. It was one thing for Sept to follow her down the street. It was quite another to follow the Mercer girl inside a cramped bodega. That would give herself away for sure. The trespasser would back off, strike again once Agent Sept had been returned to Primetime.

  But Agent Sept had hit on a brilliant solution: pay one of Mercer's classmates to follow her in and out of the shops while Sept observed from a safe distance. Brilliant. What I should have done in the Jaso case.

  When Siri Mercer wandered into a bodega, and one of the employees lured her to the back, her classmate stepped outside and dramatically stretched her arms above her head. Sept moved in. Intercepted the trespasser and Mercer just a block away. Sept hit a snag when the trespasser started shouting about how they were from the future and she was about to be killed, but being the cool customer she was, Sept simply punched the woman out, caught her before she fell to the street, and carried her into Central Park, where she hid out until the Pods returned them to Primetime.

  It was a great case. Mounting dread and desperation culminating in a fiendishly clever solution and last-second victory. And I had no idea why Donald Ruth had pointed me toward it.

  I asked Vette to pull more files for me, but she'd just gotten big news: Central had accepted her transfer from CR. Awfully fast turnaround. Maybe they wanted to make sure our little team was broken up. Or to keep Vette as close as they could get her. In any event, I'd have to minimize contact with her from here on out. That wasn't such a bad thing. I still felt pangs around her. Manageable ones, for the most part, but now and then I entertained delusions of trying to revive things with her in Primetime.

  But the timing was off. Exposing Davies' crimes was just a bit higher on the to-do list than my personal life. Anyway, she had lost the memory of our time together. I had nothing to appeal to.

  I threw myself into the work instead. I headed down to the main facility and pulled every one of Jeni Sept's cases, as well as every report linked to the Mercer file. I came home with hundreds of reports and thousands of pages.

  Several days later, I was starting to think we should just Pod back to the moon facility, kidnap the entire G&A management, and force them to testify straight to the news.

  But our evidence had to be perfect. Damning. And delivered with the precision of a pulsar's rotation.

  Even so, it was hard not to be discouraged by my lack of progress. For a while there, the lead on Jeni Sept had looked like a rocket ready to launch. But there was no fuel in the files. I reread the Mercer case obsessively, hoping to turn up something I'd overlooked, but the more I read it, the further away it felt. It was a case. A good one. But there was nothing fishy about it. Nothing to tie it to Central.

  Stuck in this mire, I was doubly excited when Mara summoned me to the hill in the park. I got there first and waited in the shade of the towering tree with bark the color of a pastel rainbow. Leaves shuffled in the breeze. The laughter of children drifted on the wind.

  Mara arrived ten minutes later, brown hair blowing in her eyes, a strange smile on her face. "Good news!"

  "Did you catch a break?"

  "Even better. Central is throwing us a party."

  "A party? What does that mean?"

  "That Davies likes champagne?" She swept hair from her face. "You checked yourself for bugs lately?"

  I nodded. "Did a sweep right after
I got here."

  "Then here's the deal. Davies knew we were starting to sniff around his operations. That's why he pulled us from the case and said Central would handle it from there. Now we're being feted for our outstanding contributions to chrono-security. Naturally, the specifics of that contribution are too sensitive to be made public, but I'm thinking this is Davies' way of sweeping it under the rug. Everyone in the community will know why we're being honored—he'll leak a cleaned-up version of the story—and the honoring will imply that it's over."

  "So what do we do?"

  "Attend. Smile. And have fun!"

  I got my official invitation the next day. The ceremony was to be held at the Moonlight Room one week hence. Ultra-classy. Approved guests only.

  I continued to comb through Sept's files. Through the grapevine, I heard Vette had been moved to Central. Figuring it would be more suspicious if I stayed silent, I sent her a bland congratulations. A few days later, Mara let me know that Vette was playing it safe, passively observing, but had noticed multiple power surges with no accompanying mention of Pod usage in the logs. In other words, Central was taking trips off-world—undocumented ones.

  Great intel. Circumstantial, for the moment, but a serious lead. Much better than anything I had to work with. If I still hadn't cracked the Mercer case by the celebration, I was going to pay Donald Ruth another visit.

  I went to the Pod and reverted to my normal face. The day arrived. We don't have a uniform—CR isn't that kind of police—but I dressed for the occasion. The Moonlight Room was a tower built onto the ancient observatory on the mountains west of town. I took the lone zipcar route to the mountain, climbing up the staircase alongside a trickle of men in suits and women sheathed in clingy, asymmetrical dresses. The tube stairs exited us into a field circled by a scale model of Stonehenge. Beyond, an escalator patterned like natural stone carried the guests to the observatory, an Olde Modern design with decorative parabolic fins and brushed steel. It looked like the 21st century's ironic take on the early 20th century's vision of the Space Age.

  The tower housing the Moonlight Room was rather less stylized: a two-hundred-foot carbon frame supporting a plate-like top that vaguely resembled a UFO. I gathered into the elevator with ten others. I only knew two of them by sight, Central admin mucky-mucks. None showed any sign they recognized me.

  My ears popped. The elevator breathed to a stop. I exited into the ballroom, where individual tables were arranged in concentric half-circles around an open floor and raised stage. The furnishings were glass supported by spindly metal legs. The circular room was enclosed by tinted glass, providing a spectacular vista of dusk settling over the city to our east. Even the floor was glassy, black like obsidian.

  Someone grabbed my elbow. Vette grinned at me. "You made it!"

  "I'm going to miss my own party?"

  "I don't take you for a big party guy."

  "That's because you're smart." I gazed around the proceedings. We had several minutes before the festivities began and it looked more or less like every upscale celebration since humankind started drinking alcohol and wearing clothes: elegantly dressed power-elite accepting chilled glasses from servants. Who were probably androids under synth-skin. Either that or they'd pulled off some serious bribery. Primetime doesn't have much in the way of a servant class.

  We kept our conversation entirely trivial. After a bit, Mara joined us. It was the first time I'd seen her in a dress in years.

  "Don't start," she told me.

  I blinked. "Are those your knees?"

  "You're fired."

  People wandered up to offer congratulations, mostly to Mara. A lot of the talk was comprised of fishing expeditions: they knew we'd done something big, but they only knew the outline, not the details. Some of the guests were even pleasant to me.

  I didn't see him appear; one second, I was talking to a young woman who'd wrangled an invite from a friend, and the next, Kellendor Davies stood in front of me, his iron-colored widow's peak highlighted by the pale glow suffusing the ballroom.

  He extended his hand. "Agent Din."

  I shook. "Commander."

  "Shame we can't cheer you proper."

  "We all know the score. Nobody signs up for this for the glory."

  His copper-flecked gaze bore into me. "The best mission is the one that no one sees. Unjust. But it isn't about that."

  I nodded. "It's what you carry in your head."

  "All that matters." He clapped me on the shoulder and moved on to Mara.

  I made at least four security guards slipping between the celebrants. Paranoid, but if one of Primetime's syndicates was looking to move off-world undisturbed, hitting this event could wipe out half of Central and the Cutting Room in one go.

  We were served dinner. It tasted grown, not printed. Night took over. To the east, the city lights glittered and sparked. The moon swung into the sky, silver and full. As its light reached us, the tower faded away: first the roof, then the tinted glass, then the floor, too, until we were left suspended two hundred feet in midair with our tables and forks. The room hushed; a collective "Ooh" sighed through the crowd. One man held tight to his chair, back as stiff and hard as the unseen floor. An observatory employee appeared beside him and offered him a pair of glasses, which he refused, then helped him insert tiny lenses into his eyes. The man blinked and smiled.

  "I hope no one's down there," Vette said, leaning over and tapping the transparent floor with her toe. Moonlight bathed the ground two hundred feet below. "They'll see right up my skirt."

  Memories flashed back to me. I shifted in my chair and remembered to laugh. Across the room, a guard stared at me, features shadowed by the moonlight streaming behind him.

  Cold prickled across my skin. We'd been playing our little game as if Central were blind and oblivious. But what if they'd been watching us back all along?

  Servants took the plates away, replaced them with more drinks. I'd meant to keep my wits, but between the illusion of hanging in mid-air and the feeling of being surrounded by hostile forces, I gulped down my glass.

  Davies took the stage.

  The acoustics projected his voice without the need for a microphone. "Know me? Then you know I'm not much for speeches. But those we're honoring tonight deserve one. If you can't do, delegate."

  He stepped aside, smiling tightly. I recognized the next speaker. Petra Bahar took the stage. The public facade of Central. Sculpted, strong, and timeless as a Greek statue. A face that ached to be seen. She grinned down at us, teeth white in the moonlight.

  "I'd like to tell you why we're all here tonight," she said, "but then I'd have to kill you."

  She paused for laughter, which was heavier than you might think. Industry types. As they finished, she sobered her face, tipping it back so the pale light caught the planes of her cheeks and jaw.

  "But you know. You know. Because you do the same every day: they took the future in their hands and they made it better. Day in and day out, this is what we do. Without hope of awards or expectation of recognition. Because this is a calling. It's the right thing to do.

  "We all do good every single day. It's commonplace. Appreciated, but expected." She smiled with August's warmth. "Within that environment of expectation, that these three have been singled out should tell you a little about the magnitude of the good they've done. We're a lucky world, aren't we? And we're lucky to have them. So let's show our gratitude. For them. For us. And for all we've built together."

  The applause was heavy as a wave. But when it bounced from walls we couldn't see, it felt wrong. Petra introduced us by name. We took the stage. We'd agreed ahead of time that Mara would do the talking. Vette and I were just there to look pretty.

  "Thank you," Mara said. "This is more humbling than tripping on a first date. Me, I sit behind a desk. These two are the ones stretching out their necks for people who never knew they were there." She jerked her thumb at Vette and me, then grinned. "They're too shy to talk. So yet again, I'm the one w
ho gets the attention. Management." Some laughter. "But whatever you feel, feel it for them."

  She went on. Faces gazed up at us, a swath of complexions, each one made unreal by the moonlight. Elfin. Silver light winked as people sipped from tall glasses. A green light blinked from a window at the back of the room. It was the one wall of the ballroom that wasn't transparent. Instead, it was matte black. Technical station or something. The light I'd seen could have been connected with the acoustics, the lighting. But it was also a perfect match for an infrared sight.

  As Mara continued her speech, I amplified the range of my eyes. A greenish tinge fell over the room. The elfin faces turned ghastly. Across the room, a figure crouched behind the shaded window of the tech room. I zoomed in. They had something in their hands, but between the distance, the tinted window, and the odd light, I couldn't make out its shape.

  My smile became a dead and frozen thing. Onstage, I felt utterly exposed, helpless. Shooting us in front of all these people would be insane—but there would be a monstrous logic to it. Something so public would have the feel of a terrorist act. Was that why they'd summoned us here? Not to sweep us under the rug, but to bury us under the ground?

  The green light winked again. My heart jolted. A series of bangs exploded in the heightened acoustics, but it was just the thunder of the audience's applause. Vette sneakily poked my ribs. I grinned, bowed my head.

  As we left the stage, Mara grabbed my elbow, murmuring through her smile. "You okay?"

  "I'm fine."

  "You look like you swallowed a live rat."

  I shook my head. There were a few more speeches, generic things about CR and Central, the grand importance of it all. Aided by a full tray of drinks, I made it through them and the individual congratulations that came after. I kept one eye on the tech station at all times, but the green light didn't reappear. As soon as I was able, I took the elevator down to ground level. Above, bluish lights glowed from the ballroom like wayward fairies. Tiny silhouettes mingled like lost souls.

  I walked past the model Stonehenge. As I reached the stairs down to the zipcar tube, heels clicked behind me.