Borrowed Time (12 page)

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 19
^th
? 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 never 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.”

“That’d be hard to set-up,” she agreed, taking another long draw on her mug. “People with TI mindsets don’t pay attention to ‘do not open file until X date’ instructions. Drink your flip.”

“Are you trying to get me drunk?” She laughed, because Assistants only let someone get a buzz on before they start filtering out the alcohol. We can drink pure grain alcohol all night and not feel it. “Look, about the day after tomorrow –“

Pam made a shushing gesture. “Finish your drink and we’ll go up to my room to talk in private.” Then she grinned again. “Hey, I invited you to come up and this time you can.”

A pair of empty mugs later I followed Pam toward the stairs after she snagged a lit lantern. A harried-looking woman intercepted us on the way to the stairs and gave me and then Pam a hard look. Pam obligingly hauled out some coins and dropped them into the woman’s palm, who smiled in a way that showed teeth in serious need of dental care and hustled away. “Inn-keeper,” Pam explained as we went up the narrow, steep stairs. “She thought I was trying to sneak someone else into the room.”

It was common practice here and now for men to share beds just to save money. The landlady must have thought Pam was trying to sublet half of ‘his’ bed and pocket the cash. “You paid for me?”

“It was easier than worrying about her spying on us while you’re up there. I’ll put it on my expense account.” Pam led the way down a corridor as narrow as the staircase, to another small set of steep stairs that led up again and ended in an even narrower door. “And, Annie says no one has disturbed my room.” She pulled open the door and gestured inside. “Welcome to the Boston Palace circa 1775 CE.”

The room had a bed, a small dresser with a wash basin and cracked pitcher of water, and not much else except a small, high window in which sealed shutters made do in place of glass. Not that there was room for much more than that. Pam waved me to the bed, set the lantern on the dresser, then sat down beside me. “Annie says we’re clear of bugs, even the ones you’re spreading around. She’s got a beautiful suite of jamming capabilities.”

Sitting close to Pam, I couldn’t help thinking that she had some beautiful qualities, too. Pam pulled off the wig she’d been wearing and tossed it onto the dresser, then shrugged out of the cloak. Her coat was nicely cut to still do a pretty good job of concealing her woman’s figure even without the cloak. “Now, don’t worry about me,” she added, her voice going back to its normal pitch now that we were alone. “I’m not going to get in anybody’s way. I just need to deploy the gear and then step back and let it search for the shooter.”

“At Lexington on 19 April 1775,” I added.

“Do you know any reason why anyone would be targeting me?” she asked.

“No, but there was no reason for that guy to come after me, either. I don’t think he was a TI. I think he was an amateur out to change history.”

“You’re probably right,” Pam conceded. “Boston in April 1775 is the sort of then and there that attracts amateurs and fanatics.”

“And he’s here and now multiple times.”

“You’re kidding! What an idiot,” Pam observed.

“You didn’t seem that worried about running into yourself when we’ll be in London,” I pointed out.

“Of course I was. I just didn’t want to admit that to some guy I’d just met. But this nut-case isn’t after me. You keep your eye out for him and relax about me. I’m not in any more danger than you are.”

That wasn’t exactly reassuring. “You asked me up here just to tell me that?” I probably sounded a little angry and I was. I wanted Pam to take my worries seriously.

“Not just for that.” She leaned over slightly, her shoulder brushing mine.

It felt comfortable up here and the flip had left me with a happy buzz. I’d spent a lot of nights thinking about Pam, and here she was sitting beside me. Sitting real close beside me.

Pam looked over at me for a long moment, then stood up and peeled off her coat, dropping it onto the small dresser. When I’d first seen her well over a hundred years from now she’d been wearing clothes appropriate for an Edwardian English lady, which weren’t exactly revealing. The cloak and coat she’d been wearing today didn’t show much of what was underneath either. But now, though the light from the lantern wasn’t great, it was plenty good enough to reveal that Pam looked very good in tight breeches.