Time's Chariot

Marje absently took one of the smaller, more innocuous glasses, and Hoon and Asaldra served themselves. The ‘tal wandered off into the crowd.

‘Francis is on his toes, I see,’ Hoon said. She took a sip and pulled a face. ‘Unlike whoever poured the drinks in the first place.’

‘Francis?’ Marje said. Hoon nodded in the direction taken by the ‘tal.

‘We loaned him out,’ she said. ‘There’s a lot of them around tonight.’

Ekat Hoon was patrician: Marje suddenly remembered Asaldra telling her so. He had also said something about getting his own rewards.

‘One of my first jobs in the College,’ she said casually, ‘was working on the ‘tal psyche. Fieldwork had just brought back the first tribe. I found them a fascinating challenge.’

‘Yes, I remember the reports,’ Hoon said with a smile. ‘Their languages, their religions, their cultures — just as diverse as we are. They could be just like us.’

‘They are just like us,’ Marje said. Another ‘tal moved close, saw that they already had glasses, and moved off again. Marje took a closer look at the clothes he was wearing and tried to believe she was only imagining their resemblance to a kind of household livery. ‘With all the rights that we have,’ she couldn’t resist adding. ‘I think that was when I realized just how much bygoners need protecting. We have far too much power for our own good.’ She wasn’t being particularly civil, but she knew full well that ‘tals were barred from paid labour in the ecopoloi, and she needed to know if Francis and the others were being used essentially as slaves. Bygoners were bygoners, whether they were human or Neanderthal, and they had rights.

‘They also serve, who only stand and wait,’ Hoon said. ‘A pun,’ she added, seeing Marje’s questioning look. ‘Wait, stand around, wait, serve drinks… we fully believe in making recompense for labour, Commissioner. Of course Francis isn’t able to have a bank account but we pay him in kind.’

Marje realized how tense she had become and made herself relax. Perhaps she was too used to standing on formality, obeying Morbern’s Code and all that. If you weren’t careful you could get to the point where everything was ideologically suspect.

‘What do you look like?’

At last! Rico Garron thought. He had been craning his neck, studying the crowd for ten minutes now. He deliberately put on an air of innocent enquiry and turned round, eyebrows raised. Su was coming towards him on the arm of her husband, Tong. Rico recognized Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

‘Cinderella and Buttons, how nice,’ he said. ‘Hello, Tong.’

‘Hi, Rico,’ Tong said cheerfully.

Rico looked back at Su. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘What do I look like?’

‘Like…’ Su looked closely at the thick jacket and baggy trousers. ‘Like…’

‘A man sculpted out of hairy orange peel?’ Tong said. Su burst out laughing and Rico gave a polite ‘a-ha- ha’.

‘English shooting party, 1910,’ he said. ‘The material’s called tweed.’

‘Interesting.’ Tong looked more closely at the alternating diagonal stripes of the weave. ‘Is it modelled on fish skeletons deliberately?’

‘Oh yes, they were heavily into that sort of thing in the twentieth century,’ said Rico. ‘Fish-bone suits, kipper ties, they just couldn’t get enough sea life.’

‘Drinks first, talk later,’ Su said, with a glance at Tong.

‘Bar’s that way, but let me,’ Rico said. He hogged Su during working hours: it was only right to let the two of them have some time together. He took their orders and pushed off into the crowd.

‘Garron!’

He paused as he was shouldering his way between a gorilla and a Roman centurion. Had someone…

‘Still interested in that computer?’ The words were symbed into his mind: anonymous, impersonal, impossible to say who was speaking.

Rico’s eyebrows shot up. Of course there was a symb node here, purely for emergencies, but using it for covert activities was another matter.

‘Yes…?’ he symbed. Nothing had been further from his mind at the party, but if he was going to be approached in this highly intriguing manner…

Directions appeared in his mind. ‘This way.’

Acutely conscious that nothing looks more suspicious in a crowd than someone sidling cautiously, Rico stepped out boldly. The symbed directions led him away from the crowd, and the music dwindled to a gentle background melody. Out of the circle of lights, the plateau suddenly became very dark.

Through some bushes, then onto the edge of a small ravine. A stream ran through it, gurgling over boulders with its rippled waters reflecting silver in the moonlight. Idyllic, Rico mused: better watch out for snogging couples.

A bush rustled behind him and Rico turned.

A powerful fist smashed into his stomach, and he whooped and doubled over. Patterns of light flashed in his eyes as a pair of strong hands picked him up and set him on his feet, pinning him upright in a powerful grasp.

The sturdy form of his attacker stood before him, wrist pulled back for another blow, and Rico lashed out with his feet, catching the man on his jaw. Rico yelped as shock ran up his leg — it had been like kicking a wall and the man barely flinched. Someone standing in Rico’s peripheral vision stepped forward and caught hold of Rico’s leg at the knee. Another equally powerful hand seized his upper leg. Still dazed, Rico vaguely recognized what was about to happen, and rather than struggle he went limp. The hands twisted and Rico bellowed as agony exploded in his thigh. If he had tried to resist it might have snapped. As it was, he felt the wrench in his socket and knew he wouldn’t be able to walk on it without attention.

But he had other worries right now. The hands still held him, his chief aggressor still stood in front of him. Rico braced his muscles, clenched his teeth and tried to put his mind into neutral for what was about to come.

Blow after blow sank into Rico’s solar plexus. First they knocked the breath back out of him all over again, then even the pain seemed to recede into the darkness and it was just shock, shock, shock.

‘Look up,’ said a harsh voice. Rico tried, but couldn’t. Strong fingers twined in his hair and pulled his head up to look at the beater, and his eyes widened as he got his first clear look at the man’s face in a sudden burst of moonlight. The man carefully put his hands together as if praying, then folded the fingers together, and Rico just had time to think, But it does make sense, before the man swatted the side of Rico’s head with his bunched hands as if with a club.

The supporting hands let go and Rico collapsed in a heap, a man-shaped mass of bruises and pain. His breath sobbed as he drew in vast gulps of air and fireworks exploded in his head.

Someone grabbed his hair again and yanked his head up. He looked into the large, dark eyes of the ‘tal who had led the attackers.

‘Forget ‘ompu’er,’ it said. ‘Forget.’

It let go and Rico let his head drop back to the ground. He watched as the ‘tal walked over to a tree, reached up, snapped off a branch and walked purposefully back to Rico.

Oh, great, Rico thought. But the ‘tal just dropped it on him.

‘’Ou need it,’ he said. He turned round and walked away without any further comment, followed by his two companions. Rico watched them go, then with the last of his strength tried to push himself up.

He couldn’t do it. He fell back, buried his face in the grass and the smells of the earth and let himself succumb to the roaring dark inside his head.

‘Of course, Hossein was in Fieldwork but it wasn’t really for him,’ Ekat Hoon said. They had wandered to the edge of the plateau, where the gentle shimmer of a forcefield kept them from plunging down to what would be the floor of the Mediterranean, and the waterfall’s roar was oddly muted into a pleasant background thunder. The drinks served by Francis had been judged unpalatable and Hossein Asaldra had been dispatched to find replacements. Marje was amused at the fairly apparent overtones in their relationship: as far as she could see, formal, stand-offish Hossein Asaldra was — what was the Fossil Age term she had heard once? — chicken-bitten, or something like that. Hoon was happy to do the talking for both of them. ‘So, have you ever been upstream, Commissioner?’ Hoon said. ‘Apart from occasions like this?’

‘Not me,’ said Marje. ‘And do call me Marje, Ekat.’

Hoon acknowledged the permission with a gracious nod. ‘I’d be there like a shot, given the chance,’ she said.