Time's Chariot

here and Asaldra vanished into the great blue yonder. And two of the ones here are kids who’ve been virtually kidnapped, plus the bygoners want to milk them for their distinctly non-bygoner biotech skills. Does Marje know that?’

‘Um…’

‘Su, where are you?’

‘At the recall point.’

So, Rico thought, she had the fieldsuit, the agrav… But it still wasn’t enough to take the entire load of Home Timers back with them. The original plan would have to stand: get back to the Home Time, send a general recall field.

‘Wait there for me,’ he symbed. ‘We’ll go back together and raise hell.’

‘Rico, some of us don’t like dangling about in mid-air for open-ended periods.’

Rico grinned. Personally, he found flying in an agrav exhilarating. ‘Get to the foot of the cliffs and wait for orders,’ he said.

‘ORDERS?’

‘Instructions,’ Rico amended hastily. ‘I mean, suggestions. Requests! Polite, if-you-please requests from a junior to a Senior Field Op.’

‘Just get here, Garron.’

Rico grinned again as Su broke contact. He took the first flight of stairs at a quite un-stewardlike trot, and then adjusted pace and expression before he came out onto the landing and into the view of the sentries guarding the other three Home Timers.

When he got to the top of the stairs down to the hall, Rico saw that the scene below was suddenly less peaceful. It was like a disturbed ant’s nest. People hurried about and a small, slim man standing at the door into the lounge was talking urgently into his phone.

‘Mr Carradine says yes,’ the man said. ‘You three, come with me.’

He headed for the stairs and began to bound up them two at a time. Still in steward role, Rico stood aside to let them pass. He risked a quick glance at the leading man but it was no one famous, no one who had made it into the history books. The man met his eyes briefly and looked away.

The crowd passed and Rico started down the stairs.

‘Wait!’

Rico half paused; no, they couldn’t mean him…

‘You on the stairs!’

That narrowed it down too much for Rico’s liking. He stopped, turned, looked up. The slim man was at the top of the stairs, hands on his hips, arms askance. He had a ‘haven’t-we-met’ expression similar to Asaldra’s on his face.

‘You work here?’ he said.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Rico.

‘Your name?’

Rico gave the name he had found on his borrowed ID.

The man nodded slowly, not taking his eyes off Rico’s face. Then suddenly he snapped his fingers at the sentries down in the hall.

‘You two! Stun this man. Stun him now.’ The guards brought their guns up before Rico could react.

His last thought, as the stun charges lanced through his body and he felt his body arch and then start its slow, dreamlike tumble down the stairs, was: ‘what did I do wrong?’

NINETEEN

Berlin, 1700

You look very sprightly today, Herr Wittgenstein.’ Frau Hug noticed the spring in her lodger’s step the moment he came into the room. ‘Is it a special day?’

‘Today is a perfectly normal day, Frau Hug,’ the man said with a broad smile. ‘As normal as any other day in the considerable history of our planet. Please, carve me a slice of that delicious bread of yours for breakfast.’

Frau Hug, with only a very slight frown, turned back to the sideboard and started preparing her lodger’s morning meal. Herr Ludwig Wittgenstein had been in Berlin for a week and so far had resisted all attempts to be lured into conversation. Quiet, kept himself to himself, almost non-descript. But now…

She set the plate before him and sat down in her chair at the head of the table — the place that had been hers for most of her adult life, ever since the smallpox took Herr Hug away and left her with four small children — to watch Herr Wittgenstein eat. None of the other lodgers had come down yet; he was up bright and early. And he was still smiling, even as he ate and… she strained her ears to hear… was that humming? Why, she hadn’t seen or heard anything like this since her oldest boy, Elmar, had…

She gasped and her hands flew to her mouth. ‘Herr Wittgenstein,’ she said with a jocular scold, ‘you’re going to meet someone today, aren’t you?’

The bread stopped halfway to Herr Wittgenstein’s mouth and he looked at her over it with wide eyes.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘A young lady! Don’t deny it, Herr Wittgenstein, a woman can see the signs.’ Delighted, she rose and carved him another slice. ‘Here, take some more. You’ll need all your strength, believe me. Women like a man with a bit of meat on his bones.’

‘I really…’

But there was no stopping Frau Hug now. One by one the other guests came down for their own breakfast; one by one they were greeted with the good news. Even when Herr Wittgenstein made his escape half an hour later, his attire had to pass his landlady’s scrutiny and she tutted in despair; hat crumpled, boots not polished, cloak downright dowdy. Well, it would have to do, she said with a sigh. Finally she watched her lodger leave for the day, half her mind already taken up with passing the good news about that nice Herr Wittgenstein around her friends.

Having made his escape from the valkyrie Cupid of the Grunewald, the Correspondent made his way into town. It was summer in the Berlin of 1700, early in the morning. The day was already comfortably warm and dry and the light had a clean, liquid quality. Not many of the future Prussian capital’s thirty thousand-odd people were around yet, just those with whom the Correspondent had instinctively identified himself ever since arriving in Isfahan. Butchers. Milk sellers. Servants on their way to work. The tradesmen, the people who did the work that ran the electorate of Brandenburg.

Going to meet someone… For the first time in seven centuries, he had almost believed in telepathy. But Frau Hug was a kindly soul under the general bossiness and desire to run the lives of everyone she met, so he had gone along with the charade.

He wondered how disappointed she would be when he didn’t come back. Well, the month’s extra rent he had left on his bed would help ease her hurt.

His first destination of the day was the shambles behind a butcher’s shop in Schmargendorf. He paused in the dim alley and glanced about him. The sounds of a small town coming to life were all around him, but the people themselves were well out of the way. It should be safe. He sat down on a box and ate an apple.

Two minutes later, Herbert appeared.

‘Oh, my God.’ The Home Timer screwed his face up in disgust and put his hand to his nose. ‘What is this place?’

‘We’re behind a butchers,’ the Correspondent said. ‘Good morning, Herr Herbert.’

‘Good morning, Herr… ?’

‘Wittgenstein. Ludwig Wittgenstein.’

‘Your loyal servant.’ Herbert gazed around him and it looked as if he were going to be sick. ‘You’ve always been good at locating dirt and grime but this time you’ve excelled yourself.’