Time's Chariot (20 page)

Leibnitz burst out laughing, followed a moment
later by his friends, taking their cue from his reaction.

'Tell your master that I'm flattered by the
invitation.' He studied the sphere a moment
longer, then passed it back. 'It's a pretty toy, but
given that two or three of these could fit inside
the human head, it hardly seems likely that the
contents of a human head could fit into one of
these. Good day, sir.'

He bowed slightly and the Correspondent
returned the gesture, letting a look of polite regret
flit over his face. Then the Correspondent turned
back to Herbert, proud smile on his face.

'Yours, I think,' he said, passing the now red
sphere back to its owner.

'Let's get out of here,' Herbert muttered.

And all that was left was the walk back to
Schmargendorf. The Correspondent was aware of a
feeling he rarely had and he spent some time
analyzing it. Yes, he was in a supremely good mood.
Supremely
good, yet tinged with regret.

A shrieking, laughing crowd of children burst
out of a gate as they walked along the dusty track,
squabbling or playing or both but generally making
a loud noise and having a good time. He gazed
benevolently at them. Children, the future of the
human race; long dead by whatever age Herbert
came from, but here so full of potential, life,
future
.
He cared about them. He wanted them to have only
the best.

All these people. He looked around him. Passers
by. Men and women; on foot, in carts, on horseback.
He cared for them all, bygoners though they
might be. Each one unique, each one with their
own story to tell; historically of no consequence but
each one of infinite value.

He would miss them.

There was that question again:
when did you start
caring?
The first thing he had done when he arrived
at Isfahan was save the life of his then young, now
also long-dead friend Ali, but even that hadn't been
motivated by care. He had only got involved
because Ali's attackers had turned their attention
on him, and after that he had kept Ali's friendship
for exactly as long as was needed.

If he assumed that his condition upon arriving in
Isfahan, prior to any contact with Herbert and subsequent
reordering of his mind, was the Home
Time's intended factory setting, then he had
changed a great deal. All for the better.

'How will they react when I come back from my
mission three hundred years too soon?' he said.
Recall Day wasn't officially for another three
centuries.

'It won't be three hundred years, just twenty-seven.'
Herbert really was worn out and was getting
more and more irritable with every step.

'Even so,' the Correspondent said. He had
meant it as a joke.

'They'll get used to it.'

'How will you explain it?'

Herbert sighed. 'I'll smuggle you in, somehow.
Your details will be on file; it shouldn't be hard to
reintegrate you.'

'This way,' the Correspondent said, gesturing
towards a familiar alleyway.

'Thank God.'

Perhaps Herbert was getting used to this time; he
didn't make any expressions of disgust as they
picked their way back to the shambles at the end of
the passage.

'Good timing,' Herbert said. 'A couple more
minutes.'

The Correspondent studied him. 'You always
know these things, but I don't see you carrying any
kind of watch.'

Herbert plucked at his coat. 'You're not the only
one with hidden technology on you. Believe me,
this isn't wool. One minute.'

They stood and waited. The Correspondent's
heart pounded and his mouth was dry.
Almost there
. . . He picked the tag out of his pocket and held it
up. 'You're sure I don't have to do anything?'

'Of course not. Thirty seconds.'

A pause.

'Sure?'

'Sure.'

The Correspondent grasped the tag tightly, like
a believer with a crucifix.

'Ten seconds,' Herbert said. 'There's something
you should know.'

'What?'

'You didn't volunteer as a correspondent.'
Herbert looked him in the eyes and smiled that
mirthless smile. 'No one does. You're a criminal, a
reject, a psychotic failure, and there's no way you'd
be welcome back.' And he vanished.

The Correspondent stared at the spot where he
had been. He took slow, shuffling steps forward so
that he stood in Herbert's footprints. He stared at
the ground beneath him.

'No,' he breathed. He stared at the tag in his
hand, willing it to carry him back to the Home
Time. Its glow faded before his eyes and it
crumbled into dust.

He drew in a breath.

'No!' He hurled the handful of grit at the wall
and swung a kick at a nearby crate, shattering it.
'
No!
' He seized a length of wood from the fragments
and swung it at the other nearby boxes.
Smash!
'You bastard!' he howled.
Smash!
'I'll . . .
I'll . . .'

Herbert's face seemed to swim in the scraps of
wood and he brought his makeshift club down on
them again and again. 'I'll . . . I'll . . .' he sobbed.

He didn't know what he would do, and he had
never cried in seven centuries, but his breath
heaved and adrenaline poured through his body.
Laying waste to the alleyway was the only safe way
he could disperse that strength, that emotion.

'Oi!' The shout brought him round. The
butcher who owned the place had come out of his
shop's back door. His apron was bloodstained and
he held a large cleaver in his hand. Nervous
customers peered over his shoulder. 'What the hell
do you think you're doing?' The man took a step
forward, cleaver raised. 'Get out of here!'

The Correspondent glared at him, picturing and
in his mind enacting a good twenty ways to get past
that cleaver, with the butcher never knowing what
had hit him.

But no.
Self control. Discipline.
Something correspondents
had in abundance. With a deliberate
effort the Correspondent willed his boiling,
seething rage away and it was as if ice, hard and
cold as iron, flowed into his veins to replace it.

'I'm sorry, sir,' he said calmly. 'I'll pay for the
damage.' He took a bag of coins from his pocket
and tossed it over. 'Will that cover it?'

It certainly should have; the coins were gold,
saved up and amassed for centuries. The butcher's
eyes widened when he opened the bag and saw
them.

'Why, yes,' he said.

'Then that will be all,' the Correspondent said,
and set off on the walk back to the Grunewald.

'Herr Wittgenstein?' Frau Hug heard her lodger's
footsteps as the front door opened and closed, and
she bustled out of the front room to greet him.
Hope bubbled in her heart. Had he popped the
question? Had the young lady said yes? She would
be so happy for them, and she had a lovely double
room, south-facing, that was perfect for a new
young couple.

But Herr Wittgenstein was alone, his shoulders
sagged, and he just looked at her silently out of
deep, dark, hollow eyes with such an intensity that
it was like running into a solid wall. Frau Hug saw
the story immediately.

'Oh, Herr Wittgenstein, I am sorry . . .'

But he was already walking up the stairs. She
watched his receding back, saw him take the corner,
listened to the remaining steps and finally heard his
door shut behind him.

She walked back to the front room where her
best friend was waiting with the tea, poised
expectantly.

Frau Hug shook her head. 'She must have said
no, poor thing,' she said. 'Silly little girl. Herr
Wittgenstein was so in love with her, you should
have seen his face. And now the poor man doesn't
know what to do.'

She sank into a chair and took a bite of her cake.

'Still,' she said brightly, 'he'll get over it.'

The whine of powerful turbines starting up. A
vibration that ran through him and stabbed
into his brain. An unbelievable thirst.

And a whining human voice.

'This wasn't in the agreement. This wasn't how it
should have been. This wasn't—'

'Please be quiet, Phenuel,' said another voice
wearily. Rico forced his eyes open.

The first speaker was a bearded man whom Rico
assumed was the Phenuel Scott that the biotech boy
had told him about. The two were sitting opposite
each other in a metal cabin of some kind, and next
to Scott sat the very well and un-late looking
Commissioner Daiho. Rico was feeling better and
stronger by the second as his fieldsuit pumped
medication into his system to clear his mind and
soothe his jangled nervous system.

Scott was the first to notice Rico's wakefulness.
'You did this!' he said. 'You're a Field Op, aren't
you? And obviously not a particularly good one.
What did you do to upset the bygoners, hey? And
now we're all suffering—'

'Your . . . your friend told you to shut up,' Rico
gasped. Something was nagging at the back of his
mind, something forgotten, but for now he
swallowed and worked his mouth to get a bit more
saliva flowing. The next words came more easily. 'I
wouldn't be here at all if your pal Asaldra hadn't
left a trail a mile wide behind him.'

'And you are?' Daiho said. The man sounded
amused and not at all upset.

'Field Op Rico Garron.'

'I suppose you've come to arrest us?'

'Just Asaldra, originally,' Rico said. Now he felt as
if he could move his head without it falling off and
he looked cautiously round. It was the passenger
cabin of a flying machine, probably a helicopter.
Though it was dark outside he could see it was still
on the ground, but the noise of the engines
was getting louder and louder and the cabin was
vibrating. There were two rows of three seats, facing
each other. He and Scott were at the end of their
rows, facing each other. At the other end of each,
next to the door, was a bygoner guard. There was
an empty seat between Rico and the guard on his
side. Daiho sat opposite it next to Scott. The kid he
had met earlier – what was his name, Jonjo, something
like that, it wouldn't quite come through the
mists at the back of his brain – and his girlfriend
were nowhere to be seen. Behind Daiho and Scott,
Rico could see the backs of the helicopter pilots.

Rico realized two more things. His Field Op's
equipment had passed the camo test – he was still
in the fieldsuit and he still had his agrav – and his
hands and feet were cuffed.

He jerked at the links experimentally. '
Can you
get me out of these?
' he symbed at the suit.

'
Negative. The locks are non-magnetic and mechanical
in operation
.'

'
Can you just break them for me?
' Rico symbed
impatiently.

'
Affirmative
. . .'

Excellent!

'. . .
with an 87.6% probability of operative sustaining
fractures to the carpal bones
.'

Less excellent. And he was still sure he
had forgotten something: the stun charges had
pummelled it out of his brain. It would come to
him.

'We were doing fine until you came along,
Garron,' Scott said, warming to his theme, 'and
you—'

'Of course, it could just be that the stupid,
primitive bygoners outsmarted you,' Rico said.

'And all your fancy equip—' Scott said.

Rico jack-knifed his body and lashed out with his
feet. The cuffs helped keep his heels together as
they pounded into Scott's jaw. This ass, this idiot
had been about to mention out loud the fact that
Rico had special equipment. Rico didn't know if
the helicopter was bugged, or if the guards had
been briefed on the Home Time language – the
boy had told him some of the bygoners could speak
it – but he intended to take no risks.

Scott's head thumped back and blood poured
from a split lip.

'Stop that!' the guard next to Daiho shouted,
bringing his stunner up. Rico flashed his brightest
smile.

'He was annoying me,' he said in English. Scott
looked at him through slitted eyes with pure
hatred, but kept quiet.

'You know,' Daiho said, 'my colleague did have a
point in that we aren't the ones who let themselves
be detected by a bygoner.'

I'm working on that
, Rico thought: how had that
man on the stairs known who or what he was? But
out loud he said: 'And I had a point that I wouldn't
be here if you'd done it properly. You people are
amazing. You have such power, such privilege, and
what happens? You –' he nodded at Daiho – 'had
the authority to bend the rules, to send your
assistant on field trips in complete contravention of
every rule the College has. And, I suspect, grew and
murdered a sentient clone just to cover your tracks.
You –' he nodded at Scott – 'lured those two kids
back into the past and broke even more rules. But
the one thing none of you can be bothered with is
being good at what you do.'

Scott was almost purple. 'How dare you speak to
us like that—'

'Mr Scott,' Rico said mildly, 'I know ten ways of
killing you, many more of disabling you and causing
you a lot of pain, and I'm a long way away from
the Home Time and social preparation and I don't
like you very much. Why not join the dots and shut
up?'

He turned to Daiho. 'You seem to speak the most
sense. How long was I unconscious?'

'You were laid out in the hall when they got us
from our rooms,' Daiho said. 'They bundled us out
here, strapped us in, then brought you along. You
woke up about a minute later. So, not long.' He
paused. 'Rico Garron. Is that
Ricardo
Garron?'

'Why?' Rico said, suddenly cautious.

'Author of
George Washington and the Crusades
?'

'Of what?' Scott exclaimed, and Rico felt his toes
curling. No one was meant to have read that!

'It was, um, a private project, just a hobby . . .' he
said.

'I take it it's meant to be satirical?'

'What are you talking about?' Scott demanded to
know.

'Op Garron is an aspiring novelist and he left an
extract from his latest opus on the computer I
appropriated,' Daiho said. 'I imagine you wrote
that passage while you were on assignment somewhere?
Yes, a rather naïve voice, I felt. Quite a
pleasant if undemanding read but rather an overstated
use of imagery . . .'

'You do remember I wanted that computer
back,' Rico muttered.

'You mean,' Scott said, incredulous, 'this man
became involved in this whole business because he
wanted his novel back?'

But Rico wasn't listening. With a flood of relief,
he remembered what had been bothering him.

Orders! Wait for orders!

Su Zo sat on her rock and wrapped her arms
round herself. The fieldsuit was keeping her
perfectly warm but she felt cold. The rocks were
jagged and sharp around her. The solid bulk of the
cliff rose straight up behind her into the night and
freezing cold waves were breaking just below her –
solid masses of water breaking down into seething
foam that sucked and gurgled as it ran in fractal
shapes back into the sea.

Why does everything involving Garron have to be complicated?
she thought. A simple investigation turns
into a major crime that needs uncovering. A simple
withdrawal turns into sitting at the foot of a cliff and
feeling bored. And Rico wasn't talking to her: she
had sent several symbs over the last couple of
minutes and got nothing but silence. She could
take the hint.

With her suit's night vision she looked
sardonically at a seagull perched a safe distance
away from her.

'What are you looking at?' she said.

'
Su! Get up here now!
' The symb was such a relief
she wasn't even bothered by the lack of a 'please'.

'
At last!
' she symbed back. '
I'm on my way
.'

The agrav carried her straight up, the rock of the
cliff-face blurring as it scrolled rapidly before her
eyes. She came to the top of the rock wall, and a
black mass of machinery and howling turbines and
lethal whirling blades came straight at her out of
the night.

Su cut the climb just in time and yelled as she
thumped painfully into the ground.

'
Garron!
' she symbed furiously. '
I just almost got
cut in half by a helicopter
. . .'

'
And I'm on it! Follow it before it gets up to full speed
.'

'
Do what?
' But she had already pushed off the
cliff top after the flying machine. Rico's point was
valid: the agrav's full speed could never match a
helicopter going at much more than a crawl. The
two were designed for different things.

'
And when you get here, hang on
,' Rico added.

'
I would be so lost without you to explain things
,' Su
symbed back, but she was already reaching out for
one of the helicopter's struts, a few feet away. The
agrav harness around her was growing warm as it
fought to keep up and match the buffeting of the
helicopter's rotor, and the noise was deafening.
Her fingers brushed the metal just as the helicopter
tilted slightly further forward and increased speed.
Su lurched forward with the last reserves of her
agrav's power and her outstretched hand caught
hold of the strut. She grabbed it with her other
hand and ordered the fieldsuit to lock both gloves,
and there she was, being towed by a helicopter at
five hundred feet over the open sea.

Did the helicopter swerve slightly? Rico kept an eye
on the two pilots. They glanced at each other and
said something, but he couldn't hear what.
Through the seat of his pants he felt the machine
give a couple of experimental wiggles as they tested
the controls. Yes, they had felt something, but
hopefully a mid-air interception by a flying woman
from the future wouldn't have occurred to them
and they would put it down to mechanical causes,
to be looked into the next time they landed.

'
I'm here, Garron, and it's bloody uncomfortable
,' Su
symbed.

'
Hang on
,' he symbed back, and was taken aback
by the sheer, livid fury in her reply.

'
What do you think I'm doing? I'm
—'

'The first thing,' Rico said out loud, 'is to take
out these goons. Mr Scott, you sit tight for the time
being. Mr Daiho, when I give the word, you take
the one next to you. I'll be responsible for the other
one – I can get these cuffs off in no time. Count of
three: one, two . . .'

The Home Timers were staring at him without
even thinking of moving: the guards were looking
unconcerned out of the window.

'Take out?' Daiho said, as if Rico had suggested
he fly to the moon. Rico smiled.

'Forget it,' he said. 'Just testing.' So, the guards
didn't speak their language. That was a start.

'Do you have a plan?' Scott said scornfully,
apparently dismissing Rico's earlier advice about
silence. Rico just looked at him coolly, silently, just
long enough to get Scott thinking that maybe it had
been good advice after all.

'
Rico
. . .'

'
I hear you, Su. It would be lovely if you could join us
.'

Su Zo had swung her legs up and wrapped them
around the helicopter's skid, locking the suit there
for good measure. Now she pulled herself upright,
hand over hand, through the freezing gale of black
air. Release glove. Move hand, take new grip. Lock
glove. Release other glove, take new grip . . . It was
slow and uncomfortable but it was sure. She had set
her agrav to support only, cancelling forward
motion: it would save her if she fell but it could
never catch up with the helicopter again. So, don't
fall.

'
I'm standing
,' she symbed. '
With you in a moment
.'

Her feet were planted on the skid and she was
leaning against the helicopter's sleek fuselage. Up
here there were fewer things to hold on to, which
made things more problematic. At least she could
see and breathe: the suit had grown a transparent
mask across her face to protect her from the rush of
air and the burning blast of the engine's exhausts.
She inched her way forward until her hand was on
the door and peeked through the window. The two
bygoner guards Rico had told her about were the
nearest passengers to her.

'
Playback
,' she ordered her suit, and in a corner
of her vision it displayed the movements she had
just programmed in.

'
Instructions confirmed
,' she said. '
Rico, I'm coming
in . . . now
.'

With one yank she had the door open and the
gale blasted into the interior of the helicopter. Su
let her whole body go limp as the fieldsuit took
over. She felt her wrists lock on the edge of the
door, the suit tightened around her, and her whole
body swung round and into the cabin. Her feet
together caught the rear-facing guard on the side of
the head and knocked him back.

Rico sprang forward between Scott and Daiho
and brought his arms over the head of the right hand
pilot, pulling back so that the chain of the
cuffs pressed against the man's throat. Momentum
had carried Su into the cabin and the other guard
was fumbling for his stunner. The suit returned
control of her own body and she raised a hand
towards him. A stun charge from her fingertips
struck him in the chest and he crumpled, sagging
in his seat.

Su reached out and pulled the door shut, then
turned back. Rico winked at her.

'Great! Now get these cuffs off me.'

First, Su picked up one of the stunners and gave
it to the nearest Home Timer. Who, she saw with a
sudden shock, was Daiho.

'Long story,' Rico said.