Wagers of Sin: Time Scout II (21 page)

Ianira reached out and covered Margo's shocked hand. "You have begun to understand that you have limits, Margo, even as all humanity has limits. What I find even more astonishing-and delightful-for a girl your age, you have already discovered what many of them," she nodded toward the window, "will never discover." Then once more, the offer came, causing even Malcolm to stare.

"It would be my great joy to train you, Margo, for there is such a fire in your soul as I have not seen since my childhood, when my own dear instructor, the sister of my mother, was chosen as High Priestess. Light would dance from her hair, her fingertips, there was so much fire inside her. She did many great things and was everywhere honored as a great and shrewd leader during times when leadership was desperately needed.

"You look nothing like her, Margo, yet you could be her. And, youthful as you are, you have already taken the first steps on your own journey to wisdom." Then, letting go Margo's hand, which tingled as though live electricity had poured through it, Ianira fished under the table and slid the brown-paper packet over toward Margo, When Margo gave her a puzzled look, Ianira said softly, "Your Malcolm is a man with a beautiful soul. He is dear to us, to the Council of Seven, to the whole community of downtimers, The Found Ones. Consider the contents of the package a wedding gift from all of us, so that you might please Malcolm even more than you do now, and so that Malcolm will not just love you, but worship you, for that is what you both need and deserve. Nothing less will do. I can only hope this offering of silly trinkets will help."

"Uhm," Margo cleared her throat. "Do I open it now? Or save it for the wedding night?"

Ianira laughed. "That is your decision. But the way Malcolm is staring from you to that package and back, with such speculation in his eyes, I would suggest you open it now."

Margo glanced over and saw the intense hunger in Malcolm's face, which turned bright red when he realized he'd been caught out. Hastily he cleared his throat and said, "I was only curious, after all."

Both women laughed. Margo dipped into an across-the-shoulder purse no bigger than a diskette box and pulled out a small but useful Swiss Army knife. She made quick work of the string, then turned the carefully tucked package onto its back, took a deep breath, and opened it.

Inside lay the most exquisite gown from Ianira's rack and jewelry nestled in its fold: not the cheap stuff, but the stuff that had the look and feel of genuine antiquity.

"Oh!-My God! Oh, my God! Ianira, you shouldn't have-I can't possibly accept--"

Ianira stopped her attempted refusal by leaning forward and placing soft fingertips across Margo's lips. "Just accept. As a friend."

Margo's eyes filled. "Why are you doing this? I just met you-"

"Oh, no, child. We have known each other through many lifetimes. Wear it and please each other, that you also may be together for many lifetimes."

Margo didn't hear much through the next few seconds. She kept staring at the lines of sparkling embroidery, the heavy silver necklace, bracelets, earrings, with all the stones in them prepared in the ancient way: simple, round-topped cabochons, even the diamonds. It was beyond beautiful. Margo could find no words to say how beautiful it was.

Ianira and Malcolm were speaking again, forcibly yanking Margo out of uncustomarily deep thoughts. "-firearms practice schedule on her own, same with the martial arts. And she studies, my God, the girl studies!"

Ianira laughed softly. "Would you have her any other way?

Malcolm said without hesitation, "No."

Ianira glanced over to Margo. "I will ask the Lady's blessing on your practice."

"Hear, hear," Malcolm agreed. "After lunch, you go play with guns. I'll come down later and see how you're doing, get in a little practice, myself. Then well get clean, eat in, and try on that," he nudged the half-opened package, "before bedtime. Well before bedtime."

Margo smiled her best, heart-stopping smile. One elderly gentleman well, he was hardly a gentleman at finding himself the focus of that smile, had literally collapse on the street, leaving strangers to hunt his pockets for the nitroglycerin and to call the ambulance. After that experience, Margo was careful just how far she turned on that particular smile-and then realized with a jolt that she and Ianira weren't so different, after all. It startled her into meeting the other woman's gaze.

Ianira knew. Somehow, she knew exactly what Margo had just discovered. Moreover, she approved, eyes twinkling merrily. Margo swallowed hard as the silent invitation passed over Malcolm's bent head. Someday, Margo attempted to convey with eyes and tiny gestures. Someday I will seek you out for training. I have the funniest feeling I'm supposed to study with you, that I am going to need to learn what you teach me.

Iamra merely nodded and smiled again, a mysterious little smile full of knowledge and agreement. Margo smiled back her acceptance.

Malcolm the Ever-Vigilant (missing the exchange entirely) glanced up from his menu and smiled at them both. "Well, then, what shall we order for lunch?"

One look at the firing line and Margo's gut muscles tightened in dismay.

Please, anyone but that bunch!

Maybe they were just finishing up their session?

Margo's nostrils pinched tight, causing her upper lip to curl in a completely unconscious expression of disgust. The group of five intent paleontologists she'd met at the uptime station in New York, where Shangri-La's Primary opened, were just beginning to unpack a luggage cart, laying out their sundry gun cases for a private lesson.

Aw, rats. Some of Ann's lessons took hours to complete.

She didn't dislike the paleontologists, exactly. Well, not the woman, anyway. But three of the four men had spent their entire time in Primary's uptime waiting lounge all but drooling while they stared directly at her. Or, rather, at her chest. It was a reaction she was more than accustomed to, but she still didn't like it.

Chalk up another change, Margo. You don't like being stared at anymore.

Already, the group had noticed her and the renewed stares made her feel like a sleazy 42nd Street hooker. Margo began to consider-seriously-buying some of the uglier but more fully concealing peasant clothing in Connie Logan's Clothes & Stuff.

Paleontologists, hah!

The only truly interesting thing Margo had discovered about them was where and when, exactly, they were heading. Cope and Marsh had fought over a huge chunk of territory. She shook her head slightly.

The damned fools were deliberately walking right into the middle of the fight, hoping to rescue one of the new-species fossil skeletons that one side or the other had smashed up into tiny, useless fragments, so that it had been lost to science forever. The girl, one of three graduate students selected for this trip, had explained; at least, she'd mentioned somethin about a diary one of their professors had stumble on in a used bookstore, written by one of the actual field agents charged with bringing back as many intact new specimens as possible.

Using that diary as a guide, they'd plotted out this madcap adventure and actually expected not only to find and rescue one or more of the smashed skeletons, but to get the bones back through the Wild West Gate and uptime to the museum affiliated with their university.

Margo was glad they'd had enough sense to take her advice an get some good instruction on how to use whatever they'd brought along, but that did not mean she wanted to practice with them.

Come on, Margo, bear up l Maybe if I take that farthest lane? If it's not reserved already, it ought to do. The lanes were sometimes reserved in advance for a scout who was planning to push an unexplored gate and wanted to learn to use a nice, little hideout gun. It was a practice Kit disapproved of-and a habit he had very carefully made certain she never picked up, but scouts were independent agents, so to speak, so each made his own decisions on what to take downtime. Kit had warned her there were a few really marginal scouts who routinely broke what he considered to be the sacred rules of scouting.

Carrying a gun downtime into an unknown time and place, where any gun might be an anachronism, wasn't stupid. It was suicidal.

She didn't spot anyone else on the range, though, which bolstered her hopes. The paleontologists were talking excitedly while dumping gun cases onto Ann's benches. Lots of gun cases. Margo winced at the way they just casually bounced the stuff around, allowing them to slide to the floor, banging them together, using the muzzle end of a thin leather case to shove a larger, much heavier case farther down the bench to make room for the rifle with its now-possibly-ruined front sight. They'd be learning about sighting in and zeroing rifles, or Margo didn't know Ann Vinh Mulhaney.

When Ann noticed that only one of her five students was opening the gun cases for inspection, while four of the group had their attention directed elsewhere, she glanced around. Then smiled so brightly Margo's eyes misted a little.

"Oh, it's you," Ann laughed. "I thought maybe Marilyn Monro's ghost had jiggled in or something."

That statement caused several reddened faces and sudden diligence with as-yet-unloaded gear. Margo's face had gone terribly hot. Marilyn Monroe, the twentieth-century sex goddess? That, Margo would never be, but she enjoyed the compliment just the same. Ann nodded her over. Margo would have loved a long heart-to-heart with Ann-but now was not the time.

Oh, well, she thought as she headed resolutely toward them, at least I'll finally get to see what firearms these `learned' idiots brought along. Making the best of it, Margo covered the intervening space with a cheery, "Hi, Ann! Hope things have been fantastic."

Ann laughed and gave her a swift-hard-hug, then stepped back. She had to look up a fair ways to find Margo's eyes-and Margo was not even remotely tall. Ann was just tiny.

"Yes, they have been. Utterly and completely fantastic. I'm going to have another kid in about seven months." She patted her belly gently. "So no wrestling," she chuckled. "Anyway, that's Sven's forte, not mine." Her eyes crinkled in a fond smile as she studied Margo. "Just look at you, girl. You're still growing! I thought so, earlier, but the way Malcolm was mauling you, it was hard to tell."

Margo's cheeks flushed again, hotter than before. The ring on her finger tugged downward, it was so heavy. She knew Ann had noticed it the moment she'd walked into the range.

"Good!" Ann decided, hands planted on hips in her usual stance. "You look better with some meat on those bones and some color in your cheeks, you scrawny little Irish alley cat. One thing's for sure, that baleful green glare hasn't changed. Not a bit."

Margo grinned. "How're the wagers going"

Ann blinked. "Wagers?"

"About how soon I'll be in your condition."

"Oh, that wager." Ann's eyes crinkled again. "Hot and heavy betting, both for and against. Everyone knows how determined you are about your profession, but everyone also knows that Malcolm Moore is a very, um, how to put it intense individual when it comes to getting what he wants."

They grinned at one another. Then Margo noticed the paleontologists, who stood listening in silence, several of them round-eyed with shock. Aw, rats. Here I am doing just what I said I wouldn't do.

Ann, perhaps guessing some of what was happening inside her head, just touched the back of Margo's hand with her fingertips, bringing her back to the reality outside Margo's thoughts. Margo blinked. Ann asked gently, "Have you come to brush up with a lesson? If you did, you'll have to wait a while. Or do you just want to brush up with a stack of targets and whatever you care to shoot?"

Margo nodded. "Thought You'd try a Winchester model 73 first. Malcolms taking us to Denver, so I thought I might as well tackle period rifles. I'll try a model 76 Centennial later."

"just those two?"

Margo let go a genuine, healthy laugh. "And who taught me to carry only the right weapon for the job? This is just this morning's practice session. Tomorrow morning I have a date with handguns of every imaginable design and manufacture, just so long as they were invented before 1885; then Sven gets a crack at me before lunch."

Anne's eyes brightened. ,Oooh, can I come watch? I don't have a class scheduled..."

Margo just rolled her eyes. "I can't stop you. Besides, I might need help crawling out of the gym."

Ann laughed heartily. "Okay, imp. It's a deal." Ann's eyes sparkled with anticipation. "You're head's on straight, kid, even if you were stuck in an uptime college for six months. A college I'm certain does not have a shooting range."

"Are you kidding?" It came out sour as early Minnesota apples, still green and hard as walnuts on the tree. "A shooting range? No way real." That new bit of uptime slang hadn't filtered down to La-La Land yet, given the startlement in Ann's eyes.

"They just outlawed metallic emery boards, for God's sake."

Ann shook her head, eyes dark with sorrow. "It's been lousy uptime for a long time. Why do you think we moved our family to Shangri-La Station?" She shivered at some memory she was unwilling to share, then sighed. "Well, you might as well get started. Use lane four, if you don't mind. I'm going to start the class on basic safety before we move to pistol and rifle types. You know where the keys are, right?"

Five sets of jaws dropped-again.

Margo grinned back. "Yep. I even"-she dropped a wicked wink--know where you hide the pole guns and laser-guided dart guns, never mind the really cool stuff. Hey, is that Browning Automatic Rifle working again? I really liked shooting it before it malfunctioned." She considered pride versus humility in front of this bunch of geeks, and decided on humility-hoping it would be a lesson to them. "And I'm still utterly mortified that I, uh, caused it to malfunction last time I used it, then couldn't figure out how to machine a new part. Is it fixed yet? I did send the money to repair it." She batted pretty lashes and sounded wistful as a half-drowned kitten.

Ann just laughed. "Oh, you're impossible as ever, imp Weepy one second, hell-bound-for-leather the next. Go on and get whatever you need and let me get back to paying customers." Her smile took any possible sting out of the words. But she had not answered Margo's question about the B.A.R. Rats!

Before she left, Margo glanced at the rifles and pistols that had been quietly laid out on the benches while they spoke. Uh-oh. Thought so. Smart-but stupid. Typical academicians. You'd think they'd eventually change.

Margo found the keys right off, then unlocked a largish room built inside the range itself. Made entirely of steel four inches thick in every dimension, with a heavy door whose hingepins were on the inside, it contained firearms of literally every time period from their invention in the 1300s onward. Door still open, she half heard Ann say lightly to her new students, "Why did I ... Margo ... keys? Oh, that's only because ... time scout. Still in ... already very good at her job. Her first scouting adventure ... very dangerous... unstable gate. But she got everybody out but one ... malaria."

Margo squirmed--all 'eighty-sixers knew who'd pulled her bacon out of the fire (literally) on that trip; but she was still young and vain enough to wish she could've seen the expressions on those stuffy academic faces as it registered: a woman time scout. She grinned-then suddenly sucked in air as a horrifying thought sent her belly plummeting groundward.

Oh, damn! She figured she had about three months before those five idiots out there blabbed to every uptime newsie in the business that a woman time scout by the name of Margo Smith was working out of TT-86. She'd be swarmed over by reporters, particularly the tabloid kind. And they were nearly impossible to shake off once they got interested in you.

Now she'd never get any studying done. She abruptly understood her grandfather's uncompromising, lifelong hatred of news reporters. Well, Margo, my girl, just make the best of at and maybe you'll build up a reputation big enough to satisfy even your ego.

She grinned at herself, having learned quite a few things about Margo Smith this day she'd never even guessed existed, and plucked a beautiful Winchester Model 73 .44-40 from the rifle rack, automatically checking to be certain it wasn't loaded. She laid it carefully aside, muzzle pointed away from the open door. She found ammo for a Model 76 Centennial in .45-75 Winchester, remembering vaguely that Ann carried a couple of the rifles in stock. She discovered a beauty of a lever-action Winchester Model 76 Centennial-clearly original-which was very similar to the 73, but beefier and in a more powerful caliber. It, too, was safely unloaded. The Centennial was for serious shooting. She'd have to remember to ask Ann to reserve them for the Denver trip.

The size of the 76 caused Margo to remember Koot van Beek's rifle and that great, horrid Cape Buffalo. That was a barely scabbed over memory, too. She hastily snagged the Centennial, along with a modern cleaning kit with brushes for both rifles. Never, ever again would Margo travel down a gate without the right weapons close at hand.

Putting aside the memory, Margo carted all the items to an empty shooting bench on lane four. Ann glanced up and nodded approvingly, her goggles in one hand, her ear muffs slid down around her neck, in "lecture mode."

"Let me know when you're ready to go `hot,' Margo," she called down the line.

Margo nodded and curiously studied the beginning of the lesson as she prepared to practice. It look from here like the paleontologists were giving Ann a very difficult time.

One of them-Margo's electronic earmuffs picked up conversations from an astonishing distance demanded in a voice that would have frozen lava, "We are not renting and wearing this crap! Why would we possibly need eye and hearing protection? This is supposed"-the word dripped venom-"to be a trial run for our field work. We'll have none of this junk downtime! Will we?"

Margo continued shamelessly eavesdropping-how else did one survive in a cruel world, particularly when one was studying to become a real scout whose job was to overhear and remember just such conversations? Ann was clearly working hard not to shout obscenities in Vietnamese and Gaelic at her recalcitrant pupils.

As Margo's first, lamentable lessons had shown, while Ann could instruct willing students to a high degree of skill, she couldn't instill intelligence. Result?

Some customers refused to listen, went downtime improperly armed and/or trained, and usually came back needing a hospital-or staying downtime in a long pine box.

Time Tours, Inc., of course, liked to keep that kind of publicity to a strict minimum, but the company executives-looking for ever more gate profit-did nothing about requiring weapons or self-defense training before allowing a tourist to go downtime. Lessons with the terminal's pro's were strictly on a voluntary basis.

Maybe she ought to suggest required classes to Bull Morgan. She snorted. He'd no doubt tell her it was a tourist's business to get training, not his, and if they were stupid enough to go downtime without it, they deserved whatever they got. Besides, Bull Morgan would never have such a rule, because La-La Land was a place were folks fought, ignored, and thumbed noses at rules, rather than making new ones.