There wasn’t anything dangerous in my job description. I was supposed to jump back uptime before sunset on the 18th, well before serious shooting started, and any travel by me near decision points or critical individuals would be finished well before then. No, all I had to worry about was being caught in the crossfire between TIs fighting before that time to either create or block Interventions. Unfortunately, this here and now had a lot of crossfire, and as a TI myself I looked entirely too much like one of the combatants, so I stayed as alert as anyone else who knew a secret war was underway around them. That’s aside from the fact that I was trying to blend in with the locals, who were also ready and willing to commit potentially homicidal actions against each other.
I’d been sent back by the Virtual City project, whose latest plan was to record everything said and done in Boston and the nearby surrounding area on 18 and 19 April 1775. Important places, like where the Sons of Liberty had met, had long since been bugged so you could get detailed transcripts of everything said by anyone of any importance in the city on those days. But the Virtual City project aimed to create a visual and auditory record of the entire place and time. Once all of the data from the thousands of bugs was integrated, individuals several centuries from 1775 would be able to “walk” down the streets of this here and now, go into just about any building, and hear and see what had actually happened to anyone, not just the famous people.
Historians loved it, people who enjoyed soap operas loved it, privacy advocates screamed bloody murder and pointed out that people farther uptime could be doing the same thing to us. But the law said no such project could include any living person, so not enough people who were alive objected to it. And like every other TI, my implanted personal assistant made sure I was invisible to the bugs so no future voyeurs would be eyeing me. Historians insisted on that so we wouldn’t mess up the record, which is sort of ridiculous since TIs spend a good part of their time messing up history. It’s what we do. Historians love us for the facts we can tell them and hate us for changing the facts we tell them.
But I wasn’t out to change anything this time. My job consisted of walking down a preplanned grid of streets while the bug deployment gear built into the heavy coat I wore spat out bugs according to its own programming. To the casual observer here and now who got close enough to one, the bugs looked like gnats as they flitted into position on buildings or inside windows and doors to observe activity inside. Each had a nice array of visual and audio recording gear which would send their data to collection arrays which I and other TIs had dropped off in various places where they looked like rocks. If any local picked one up, they’d feel like rocks, too.
All I had to do was keep one internal eye focused on the map my implanted Assistant named Jeannie displayed my route on, and one external eye on the assorted denizens of Boston, other obstacles to be avoided, and anything suspicious or dangerous.
Not exactly safe, but not the most hazardous job I’d ever had, either. Everything went fine until I realized somebody was following me.
He was aristocratic-looking, fair-haired, wearing very nice clothes, and seemed the sort of guy who robbed people by embezzling from the bank he owned rather than the sort who followed someone down an alley and hit them on the head. But he kept showing up in my peripheral vision and that got me worried.
I finally turned quickly and focused on him for a moment before turning away again. Jeannie, lock on. Can you ID this guy? Internal communications come in very useful at such times.
Negative, Jeannie responded. You’ve never encountered him before, but he’s not a local. He does have an implanted time jump mechanism. I can’t be certain from this distance, but it seems a couple of generations more primitive than yours, placing the man’s origin a little more than a century before our home now.
Any weapons?
None detected.
Which didn’t mean none were there. But I had to know what this guy wanted with me, and accosting him in public was less risky than letting him chose the moment. I turned the next corner as my preplanned route directed, but then pivoted and took several quick steps back to the corner just in time to meet my tail as he came around. “Hi, citizen,” I greeted him in a low voice as the crowds of locals walked past us, using the anachronistic term on purpose to get his reaction.
He glowered at me. “You’ve got your nerve.” High-class British accent, and very well done. I wondered if it was authentic. “Do you think I don’t know what you’re doing?”
“Since you’ve got an implanted Assistant and jump mechanism I’m sure you know what I’m doing. So what? It’s not about you.”
His glower changed into a snarl. “I suppose it’s just a coincidence that you’re planting sensors in the same area where I was waylaid tomorrow.”
“As far as I know, yes.” Wait a minute. If he was here tomorrow and knew what had happened that meant he was also probably here today. “You doubled-back? You’ve got dual-presence in this here and now, and both within this city?” Instead of answering directly, he smiled unpleasantly. “Don’t you know what that can do to someone’s mind?” No one knows why, but being consciously present in the same here and now more than once can create a lot of problems that mimic old ailments like schizophrenia and paranoia. The closer you physically are the worse the effects are.
“That’s only a problem for weak-minded mongrels,” he replied with that supercilious sneer that only a many-generational member of the upper class can really carry off. “You think yourself very superior. But you’ve met your match.”
“Look, I’m not –”
“You won’t stop me!” He must one of the guys trying an Intervention. I took a moment to wonder what, but it didn’t matter much. Everyone who made any difference in the events of the next few days had TI bodyguards secretly following them everywhere. Every building that mattered had other TIs guarding them and sweeping them for bombs and such. The people who wanted to keep history the way it more or less was in general had a lot more money than the ones who wanted to change things, and could hire more TIs to protect turning points in history. Some of them must have taken out this Brit tomorrow.
His sneer turned contemptuous. “I know your kind. Sit back safely, give the orders, send out your hooligans to do your dirty work while you pull the strings within your lair. It’s a regular Moriarty you consider yourself, isn’t it?”
“Actually, no.”
He leaned close, his face reddening with anger. “You stopped me tomorrow but you won’t stop me tomorrow this time. Try to sic your hounds on me again and I’ll be ready.”
I leaned a little closer, too, emphasizing my words. “I don’t know you, I don’t care what you’re trying to do, I’m not here on Intervention or Counter-Intervention or Counter-Counter-Intervention. I’m just working for a data collection project. Go away and I promise you any further interactions between us will be purely by chance.”
“You lie. I have my eye on you Moriarty. Neither you nor your ruffians will be safe if you try to cross me again.”
I started losing my temper, too. “Listen, you moron. I’m not Moriarty, but if you mess with me I’ll do a Wellington on you. Understand?”
His eyes narrowed, he shifted his weight and I braced for him to jump me. I’ve got a tranquilizer crystal shooter embedded in one finger that can knock out someone for a long time, and if necessary I’d use it on this loon. But he just glanced around, taking in the crowds passing by, then stepped back slightly. “Right, Yank. Think you can rule the world, eh? And all time as well. Not bloody likely. Keep yourself and your brutes away from me and my plans.” Then he spun about and vanished rapidly around the corner.
I blew out a long breath, relaxed, then started walking my route again. Jeannie, any idea what that last little speech of his was about?
He seems to believe that you’re a citizen of the United States, which supplanted the United Kingdom as the world’s most powerful political entity.
That figured. Someone
out to try to cause the UK to stay on top of the world longer than it had. Since I didn’t intend going anywhere near any potential targets for someone like that, he’d hopefully go off and follow some other innocent TI through the streets of Boston.
My route took me down toward the docks, where the smell of the sea, rotting fish and raw sewage got worse. Even though the port had been closed by British authorities since the Boston Tea Party a while back, there was still plenty of street traffic here. The narrow lane ahead was partially blocked by a cart holding some of those fish, so I worked through the throng squeezing past on one side.
Standing against a building up ahead was a man wearing a cloak draped around him, his tricorn hat pulled low on his forehead. He looked up as I drew near and our eyes locked.
I came to a dead stop, drawing some mumbles of anger from those who had to suddenly avoid me.
The boat-cloaked figure stepped forward and extended one hand. “Thomas? I’m Palmer. I trust you remember me from London?”
“Palmer?” I took the hand, which would have been slim on a man. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“I had business.” Her voice sounded deeper than I recalled, probably because her own Assistant was tweaking her vocal cords so she’d pass as a male. The locally fashionable male wig helped, too, as did the clothes. Locals expecting to see a man would see one. “It’s nice to see you here and now.”
Jeannie actually sounded happy. I’ve established contact with her Assistant. This meeting is after our last encounter in London but prior to any other encounters. That’s the sort of thing TIs have to straighten out right away when they meet someone they know. Have I already seen you again before or after this? What did we say or do? It gets confusing. But no problem this time.
I realized I was grinning like an idiot. “Yeah. Very nice to see you, too.”
“Going somewhere?” Pam asked. I nodded. “May I accompany you?” Another nod, and we set off down the street, speaking in low voices.
“Pam, what brings you to Boston?”
“Palmer,” she murmured back. “I get really tired of enduring male attitudes toward women in downtime places like this, and even more tired of enduring the clothes they’re expected to wear. It’s easier to pass as a man at this time of year when I can wear a cloak. What are you up to?”
“Something called the Virtual City project. Do you know about it?” Maybe she’d even walked through it.
“Annie told me about it,” Pam advised. Annie must be her Assistant. “She’s happy to be talking to Jeannie again.”
“Yeah, Jeannie’s thrilled, too.” I gave Pam a speculative look. She lived way uptime from me. “I guess you could tell me how the project comes out.”
She grinned back at me. “Could. Won’t.”
Because TIs don’t share things they know about other TI’s futures. That’s the rule anyway, though I know of TIs who’ve broken it, either to help another TI or because they want to mess up another TI. “I hope the fact that you’re smiling means nothing serious happens to me.”
Pam looked away, studying the buildings around us. “Serious? I don’t know. Harmful, no, I don’t know of anything like that.”
Enigmatic at best, but she didn’t seem willing to go into more detail and I couldn’t press her on the issue. “So what brings a nice girl like you to a here and now like this?”
“Boston? Boston’s full of nice girls here and now,” Pam replied.
“Not down by the docks.”
“I wouldn’t know. I’m not a sailor.”
“Are you doing an Intervention you can’t talk about?”
She shook her head. “No. Data collection. I need to be in Lexington the day after tomorrow.”
“The day after tomorrow? The 19th? That’s the day.” I gave her a frankly skeptical look. “Data collection? Lexington on 19 April, 1775 has more bugs planted in it than the Amazon rainforest. There’s still something they haven’t got even in your time?”
Pam nodded. “The shot.”
“The shot?”
“The shot.”
I got it then. The ‘shot heard ‘round the world.’ Two forces facing each other, American militia and British regulars, both ordered not to fire unless fired upon. A shot rings out from somewhere, and both sides start shooting. The start of the American Revolution. But who fired that first shot? “They still haven’t found the shooter?”
“Nope.” Pam spread her hands in frustration. “It wasn’t from either of the forces on the Green. They’ve tried triangulating but the sound echoes and reechoes in weird ways. It can’t be tied to any window or door or open area. Sound analysis says it’s a gunshot of some kind, but can’t identify any weapon, of this period or any other, that matches it. So I’m planting more gear to try to nail down the spot and find the person responsible.” She caught my expression. “What’s the matter?”
“Lexington then and there is full of TIs and crazies from a half-dozen centuries, Pam. They must be tripping over each other. I’m just worried.”
She smiled at me. “About me? We saved London together, remember? I’m a big girl, and unlike certain guys I know I carry heavy artillery.” Pam twitched her arm then turned her hand slightly, and I saw her pistol gleaming in her palm, all smooth curves, beautiful and deadly. A description which also matched Pam in some ways, I realized. But in good ways. Then she turned her hand again and the weapon vanished. “Thanks for caring, though.”
“I just met a crazy a little while ago,” I told her. “Some Brit with a snooty attitude who called me a Yank. He’s planning something.”
Pam shook her head. “You mean like him?” She looked to one side where a seaman in a captain’s uniform was passing. “Or her?” She turned her head and gazed at an elegant woman wearing a dress that looked like it must be worth a lot here and now. “They’ve all got jump mechs. Maybe one of them will take care of your Brit.”
“I hope so. I swear he would’ve attacked me if we’d been alone. You can spot them that far away, huh?” Pam came from a century uptime from me, and had correspondingly more advanced capabilities for her Assistant.
“Yup.” She paused for a moment. “So how come you never came up to see me?”
“Because I couldn’t raise the money.” Making a time jump for a date was the sort of luxury only the insanely rich indulged in, but I’d tried to see if I could swing it. “I’ve heard a lot of loan dealers laugh at me lately. I sure am glad we ran into each other here.”
Pam gave me another smile, and I knew her Assistant had automatically analyzed my physiological reactions and told her that I was being truthful. Sometimes that’s annoying, but this time I was glad she didn’t have to wonder. “Same here. I couldn’t afford a jump down to your time on my own.”
She’s not lying, Jeannie told me.
I already knew that. Pam wouldn’t lie to me. I checked my internal map. “I’ve got about another kilometer to go this afternoon and then I get to break for the night. They don’t want me wandering around in the evening with so many British soldiers all over the place watching for suspicious Colonials. Are you free?”
“Sure am.” She smiled just the way I remembered from when we’d someday meet in London, and we set off along my route, talking about this, that and everything. I didn’t notice the snooty Brit following me anymore so stopped worrying about him and concentrated on Pam.
#
Pam led me back to the inn where she had a room. “How’d you manage a private room?” I wondered.
“It’s small, and I paid plenty, but I couldn’t exactly share.” She sighed as we entered the smoky gloom of the inn’s main room. A glowing fire cast more light than the lanterns set around the room, and most of the tables were occupied by men with pipes, their earnest visages as they debated politics illuminated by the radiance from their pipe bowls. Jeannie went to work filtering the second-hand smoke out of my lungs, suppressing my sneeze reflex and curbing the irritation to my eyes so they didn’t water. A good Assistant neve
r lets you down. “Want a drink?” Pam asked.
“How’s the beer here?”
“Safe enough. Not bad. Have you tried flip?”
“No. Should I?”
Pam grinned again and beckoned to a serving wench. One of the neat things about being a TI is that you actually get to be served by real serving wenches. This one had seen better days, or maybe this had just been a long day, but she smiled beguilingly at Pam, who must have appeared a pretty good looking young man through the haze filling the air. “Flip for two,” Pam directed.
I watched doubtfully as the woman broke three eggs into a big mug, added some irregular brown lumps of sugar, tossed in a couple of jiggers of rum and brandy, beat the mess vigorously, then filled the mug the rest of the way with beer. Carrying the mug over to the fireplace, she yanked a glowing hot poker out of the fire and plunged it into the concoction for a few moments until foam rose up, then brought what certainly qualified as a ‘mixed drink’ to our table along with another smile for Pam.
Then she did it once more and brought me the second mug, though Pam got the smile again.
I tasted cautiously. “How dangerous is this?”
“If your shots are up to date and your Assistant is on the ball? Not very.” Pam took a big drink. “It grows on you.”
“I can believe it grows in you.” I gave the server a glance where she was leaning against the bar. “If that woman could see under your cloak she’d be disappointed.”
“That’s me,” Pam admitted lightly. “Breaking hearts all through downtime. Usually it’s men’s hearts, though.”
“You damn near broke mine,” I agreed.
Pam’s smile disappeared. “Really?”
“Yeah. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to contact you a century uptime from me. It’s not easy. There’s too many ways for a message to go astray and I needed to make sure you wouldn’t see it before we’d met.”