In any case, it was a happy coincidence that he and Kez had pushed the Slider out of orbit last time—or was it next time? Time had a way of being confusing when you dipped in and out of it. That had drawn the attention of Time Corp Control—would draw their attention—which had in turn called attention to a little drug runner ship that would soon be sheltering under cover of the Slider. Or, thinking about it from the point of view of Mikkel’s Time Stream, would draw the attention of Time Corp, and would lead to the capture of the drug runners.
Marx narrowed his eyes at the now-blank screen of the console as if he could force it to give up the name he’d seen in the Core that day. Who was responsible for using the Slider as a glorified drug carrier?
“Oi,” said a sharp voice behind him. “Wot you mean by leavin’ me behind?”
Marx didn’t turn around, but he was aware that one side of his mouth had crooked up just slightly. He’d have to be careful: he was starting to make a habit of that. “I hope you didn’t skip through time as well as space?”
“Ain’t nuffink goin’ off,” pointed out Kez. “Ain’t an idiot—Golden Boy’s sensors would’ve caught me.”
“You said you didn’t want to come into the fuel cells.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t understand,” said Kez, her voice deepening with gleeful appreciation. “They’ve turned off the cells, ain’t they? ’Cos of the waste.”
“Got it in one, kid.”
“So wot you doin’ in ’ere? Fort you was just usin’ it as a way in.”
Marx looked at her briefly over his shoulder and went back to the console.
Kez, her black eyes very narrow and shiny, said, “Oo-er! Oo-er!”
“That’s right.”
“You rigged their weapons to the fuel cells!”
“Kid, if you spit in my ear one more time—”
Disregarding this, Kez chortled gleefully in his ear. “That’s flamin’ beautiful!”
“Thanks.”
“Wot, so we’re not goin’ in?”
“No, we’re going in,” said Marx, turning away from the console’s sleeping screen. “We’ve got a drug-smuggler to catch, remember? We need to find out who it is so that Time Corp finds out who it is.”
Kez trotted after him as he strode down the gangway between cells, her footsteps a loud metallic clatter behind him that was far too loud for how small she was. He was climbing the ladder to the first deck level when those footsteps slowed, then stopped.
Something struck the base of the ladder, sending a small reverberation through it. “Oi,” said Kez. “Won’t the Slider blow up if—”
“That’s the idea,” said Marx, without stopping. “Mikkel already told us he was ordered to fire on us.”
“But we already done this!” protested Kez. “He ain’t gonna kill us!”
“How sure of that are you?”
“Sorta eighty percent sure.”
“What’s the other twenty percent?”
“That’s the amount of me wot needs the loo,” said Kez, and started to climb after him.
“Exactly,” Marx said. He lifted the grating above him and subjected the passageway it disclosed to a sharp look up and down. “That’s why we’re rigging his fuel cells. Clear. Up we go.”
“Yeah, but then if he does fire—”
“—we won’t be dead.”
“Oh yeah,” said Kez, and let herself be yanked up through the floor by her collar without doing more than snarling at him. “Didn’t think about that.”
“Exactly.”
“Ain’t no need to be smug. Been thinkin’ ’bout summink else.”
Marx stuffed the aerator back into Kez’s hand and kicked the grating shut. “Not taking notes this time?”
“Well, if you been so clever about keepin’ us hidden, ’ow come Golden Boy sees us enough to aim at us, ay?”
“I’ll let you know when I figure it out,” said Marx. “C’mmon, kid.”
“Ain’t this handy!” marvelled Kez, some time later. “Maps in the passageways an’ everythin’!”
“I don’t think they expect to be boarded.”
“Ain’t nobody ever expects to be boarded,” Kez said. “That’s the point, ain’t it?”
“I’ll remember that if I’m ever tempted to put reference points in the passageways of the Upsydaisy,” said Marx. “E-1, that’s the one we want. No, this way, kid.”
“You sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure!”
“Gettin’ sensitive in yer old age, ain’t you?” said Kez, but Marx could see her grin in the reflection from the map cover. “’Ow’d you know which console we want, anyway?”
“It’s an educated guess.”
“You mean you dunno.”
“I mean it’s an educated guess, you flamin’ suspicious little mucker!” said Marx. “The changes to the Slider’s orbit were all made from that console. Different names, but the same console.”
“Someone’s tryin’ to be clever,” Kez said disapprovingly. “Why d’you reckon he keeps using one console, though? That ain’t so clever.”
“Probably,” said Marx slowly, backtracking slightly, “because it’s a console where he can’t be seen by random swabbers.”
Kez bumped into him and fell back, scowling. “Wot you doin’, Marx?”
Marx pointed wordlessly down the passageway that intersected with theirs. At first glance it looked like a long, empty passageway with nothing interesting about it. Then it seemed that there was something not quite right about the lighting. When that fact had sunk in, it was possible to see that there was nothing wrong with the lighting; it was simply glancing off the edges of a shallow, round-edged alcove, from within that alcove. From the position of it, Marx would have been willing to bet that it came from one of the lighted signs that were above every console they’d seen in the Slider thus far. Further, he was willing to bet that the sign would read E-1.
Kez crowed. “We found it!”
“I found it.”
“Oo-er, ain’t this been an easy one!”
“Don’t say things like that!” groaned Marx. “Move it, kid.”
“I’m goin’, I’m goin’.” Kez trotted ahead of him and disappeared into the alcove.
There was a thump that made Marx speed up his own walk, but it was nothing serious; Kez had simply kicked the console cover by way of greeting.
“Don’t break other people’s sloops,” he said, cuffing her around the ear.
“That’s flamin’ rich,” said Kez, but she stuffed her hands in her pockets and stepped back anyway. “You’re always goin’ around messin’ with other people’s ships. Oi.”
Marx swiped at the maxi-plex screen and tapped out the convenient six zeros once again. “What?”
“I know why he used this one. Ain’t just nice and hidden.”
Marx’s gaze flicked up to follow Kez’s. “Good grief,” he said. The coating used on the wall of the passageway hadn’t properly set into its usual dull matte; still slightly luminous and reflective, it gave a very clear mirror of what was happening in the passageway it met with. Anyone using this particular console would be able not only to hide from potential passers-by, but to see them coming and evacuate if necessary.
“All right,” he said. “Keep an eye out, kid.”
He went rapidly through the system, backtracking when he tapped a wrong page, and finally found the course log. There was more of it that he would have expected for a sloop in Control orbit, a regular pattern of notes that cropped up when the Slider reached the zenith of its orbit around Control. Marx grinned and tapped on the first of those notes, then went through each of them in order, flicking each one sideways to dismiss it and bring on the next.
As he went through them his grin slowly faded; every time the Slider had been rerouted by just a few clicks, it had been entered by a different employee code. Marx studied the screen, frowning. That didn’t make sense. There was no way that more than five people on the Slider had authorisation to change the c
ourse, small though that change may be. Instinctively, he flipped through the whole series again, this time looking for the Authorised By note that must be on at least a few of them.
Authorised by Commander Tucker, said the first.
He flicked it away and opened the next.
Authorised by Commander Tucker.
“Hah!” said Marx in satisfaction. Now that was a slightly familiar name. Not a bad way to do things; if it was noticed, Commander Tucker could always try to protest that his Command password had been compromised without his knowledge.
“You done yet?”
“Nope.” Marx rapidly scrolled back and made a thorough search of every time Commander Tucker had been absent from the bridge in duty hours and cross-referenced it with every time this console had been used to alter the Slider’s course. The spreadsheet that flashed up on the screen was pleasingly familiar: he had seen it a week or two ago—or, in chronological time, would see it tomorrow. There was only one thing missing…
“Oi!” hissed Kez. “It’s Golden Boy! Wot’s he doin’ here!”
“I’m not finished yet. Is he coming down this way?”
“Yep. Want me to stop him?”
That, Marx was very well aware, was a dangerously loaded question. He closed his eyes for a pained moment before he said, “Yeah.”
Kez’s voice was troublingly anticipatory. “Orright.”
“Try not to be too obnoxious. Don’t forget he’ll be levelling his guns at us later on.”
“Thought you fixed that?”
“You shouldn’t think so much,” said Marx. “It’s bad for growing brains. Go on, scat! Be a pain in Mikkel’s neck for a while.”
“I got it!” said Kez sulkily, and trotted further down the hall. Around the edge of the alcove, Marx could see her standing just a few steps into the passageway; he saw Mikkel again the next minute, rounding the corner.
“Can’t go through there, Golden Boy,” said Kez, grinning.
Mikkel came to a stunned halt in the middle of the passageway. “You! How did you get on my sloop?”
“Rude!” Kez said. “Ain’t you glad to see us?”
“Us? You’re both here?”
“’Course!”
Marx saluted lazily with his free hand.
“What—is he meddling with one of my Core consoles?”
“Can’t go through there, Golden Boy,” Kez warned again.
“If you don’t get out of the way on your own, I’ll pick you up by the scruff and move you,” said Mikkel.
He had already started to push past her, firmly but kindly—in much the same kind of way that Marx himself would have done—and Marx looked up in anticipation.
“Warned ya,” said Kez, and punched a small screwdriver into the fleshy part of Mikkel’s thigh.
Marx’s warning yell came at the same time as Mikkel’s pained one.
“Where did you get that screwdriver? I told you, you’re not allowed to have weapons.”
“Ain’t a weapon,” said Kez, dripping blood on the passageway.
“I beg to differ,” Mikkel said, gasping a little. He was gripping the injured part tightly enough to set the blood oozing through his fingers.
Marx shot Kez a hard look. “Anything’s a weapon if it’s in your grubby little hands. Am I going to have to start going through your pockets every time we leave the Upsydaisy?”
“I’ll be good!” Kez said crossly. “Ain’t gonna kill yer, Golden Boy! Wot you breathin’ hard for?”
“Funnily enough,” said Mikkel, though his teeth, “being stabbed in the leg by a screwdriver tends to hurt a bit.”
“Oh. Beg parden, I’m sure. We goin’, Marx?”
“We’re going,” agreed Marx. To Mikkel, he said: “Don’t come near this Core console for a while. You’ll thank me later.”
“If you get back to that time-skipping rust bucket of yours, you’d better make sure you slip first thing,” said Mikkel warningly, ignoring Marx’s suggestion. “Because I’ve got Time Corp Central on an open channel at the moment, and you can bet they’ll order me to fire on you.”
“That ain’t polite,” said Kez, and grabbed Marx’s hand. She shifted them back into the Upsydaisy before Mikkel had a chance to respond, but said to Marx, “We ain’t goin’ yet, are we?”
“Nope,” Marx said grimly. “There’s a slip craft full of drugs ready to dock with the Slider in a couple of clicks. We’ve taken care of that Commander, but by the time we’re done with Mikkel and Time Corp catches the Commander, the slip craft’ll be gone. I don’t like drugs wafting around the worlds. I want to make sure they get the craft, too.”
A few minutes later—or half a RHU later, depending upon your outlook on time—Marx and Kez were back on the Slider.
“I don’t get it,” said Kez. “We just shifted orf the Slider. Why’d we come back in ’ere?”
“We came back because the Slider’s far aft fuel cells have as much waste buildup on them as the inner port ones have.”
“Ay?” Kez’s eyes lit up. “’Oo’s the mucker wot did that?”
“That’s us,” said Marx. “Well, the inner port ones were us.”
“Some other mucker copied your plan!” said Kez. “Flamin’ rude, that! ’S’that why we’re in the far aft fuel cells?”
“Reckon we’re in just the right place,” Marx said, by way of reply. “A nice little store room just below the security line—it’s the room I’d choose if I was a drug runner. Any minute now…”
It was closer to five RMUs before they heard voices. Kez, sitting on a pile of upturned boxes that were emblazoned with Time Corp’s logo, turned her head to hear better and said, “Oi!”
“I heard it,” said Marx. “Stay over there.”
“Don’t feel like gettin’ up anyway.”
“Good. You still have that screwdriver?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.”
Six men. Marx watched them approach through the open door with cold eyes. He could fight off maybe three or four; but not all six, if it came to a fight. He tried not to think about that too much and kicked open the door as wide as it would go to admit each man and his double load of boxes. They could have passed for Time Corp personnel at a glance; only a closer inspection showed the crests on their berets to be empty of any detail, and their tidy air-filter masks arranged more for concealment than any other practical purpose. Between beret and mask were six pairs of eyes that ranged between almond and slanted—not unusual to see with Time Corp’s multiracial, multiworld employees, but it was unusual to see so many Seventh World men working together.
“You’re not the usual,” said one of the men.
Marx shrugged. “Not my problem, mate.”
The one who had first spoken looked back at his colleagues and said something in Seventh World dialect that Marx hazily interpreted to mean, “Who’s this idiot? Should we kill it?”
One of the ones further back pointed at Kez and asked, “What’s that?”
“Venomous, probably,” said the first, eyeing the bright, feral gleam of teeth that was Kez’s grin. Marx couldn’t blame him.
“I bite, too,” Kez said, in Seventh World dialect.
Marx tried and succeeded in hiding his surprise. The drug runners weren’t so successful; two of them gave vent to a startled burst of laughter, and the leader grinned up at Kez.
“Should we leave something so valuable with a monkey like this?”
“No bother to me,” said Kez, without breaking dialect. “Leave it or don’t. I’m just sitting here.”
“Drop it,” said the leader, beckoning them all forward with a lazy gesture. Each of the six men dropped his double load on the floor in front of Kez’s stack while she dangled her feet in their faces. “We’ll see you next time, monkey.”
Kez only grunted at him, which made all of them grin once again.
“Be seeing you,” the leader said, and the men left as silently as they had arrived, their eyes watchful over their masks.
“Wot now, then?” she demanded, her grin wide and just a little bit feral.
With a feral grin of his own, Marx asked, “Reckon you can get us on their ship while they’re here?”
“Now you’re talkin’! What we gonna do to ’em?”
“We’re going to access the Core from their ship’s console.”
“Ay?”
“Time Corp doesn’t like it when non-Time Corp craft access the Core. Shouldn’t take ’em more than a day to find that lot.”
Kez rubbed her hands together. “Oo-er! Ain’t that handy! ’Ang on, though—”
“Think about it,” advised Marx.
“Am thinkin’ about it. Ain’t no way I can see for us to be gettin’ into the Core if Time Corp would be breathin’ over our neck every time we did.”
“Unless Time Corp recognises the Upsydaisy as part of the fleet.”
“Ay?”
“Don’t ask me! Either we haven’t done it yet, or someone else did it before I stole her. Time Corp doesn’t ping us because we’re sailing under their colours. If I had a guess, I’d say we’re marked as one of their undercover craft.”
“Oo-er!”
“Yeah.”
“But the smugglers ain’t,” said Kez, grinning even more widely.
“Nope.”
“Time Corp ain’t gonna be too ’appy ’bout a drug smuggling craft usin’ their Core.”
“Nope. Oi, kid; grab one of those boxes and bring it along with you.”
“Just one?”
“It’ll only take one of these to make things pretty uncomfortable for ’em with WAOF. We’ll come back for the rest after we’re done; I don’t trust Time Corp with ’em.”
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