Gladiatrix (10 page)

‘How did you do it?'

Mertling had told Constan to look after me. Translation, he was not to let me out of his sight. So now we were standing in the doorway of the NTA version of a staff restaurant.

It must've been impressive once, a space to entertain politicians and visiting dignitaries. The style was minimalist in that classic 1960s way, with the main feature being the eight floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over Union Square. But now the place was full of worn-out furniture arranged in uneven clusters, each set screened by drooping potted palms. All sitting on a carpet that may have been a richer tint when it was first laid, but had been cleaned so many times it was now the shade of dishwater. The place was half-full of people pushing their food around their plates with a distinct lack of interest. No-one had even looked up as we entered. They were tired, stressed.

‘Well?' Constan was persistent.

‘I told Mertling I'd go outside and talk to the media if he didn't let me see her.'

He raised his eyebrows.

‘What? I had to find a way to get access. He was going to kick me out of the building and never let me in again.'

‘It's not that,' he chose his words carefully, ‘Mertling's not an easy man to deal with.'

‘Are you trying to politely say he's a bastard?'

He shifted, uneasy with my choice of words. ‘It's not quite that simple either. Things are pretty tough here at the moment. What I meant was that Victoria is the only person I've ever seen stand up to Mertling and come away with exactly what they wanted.'

I didn't reply. Now that I was actually going to meet Victoria, I felt a bit shy. I wasn't used to reeling out my personal history for everyone in sight.

Constan caught my reticence and said, ‘Come on, let's get some dinner.' There was a table free near one of the windows.

It was dark outside, but we got a clear view of the Square, still bathed in light from the street lamps and the surrounding buildings. The big hotel at the other end, the St Francis, was lit up like a Christmas tree. There was a tall slender column in the centre of the park. I hadn't paid any attention to it in the middle of the riot, but now I could see there was a statue on top. I squinted, trying to make it out. It was a woman dressed in flowing robes and poised on one gracefully pointed foot. She had a trident in one hand and a wreath in the other.

Constan followed my eye line. ‘Oh, old Fifi.'

‘Fifi? She looks more like a Beatrice or Maud.'

‘It's actually a statue of Victory handing out a laurel wreath to one of our glorious admirals. Commemorates a famous naval battle won in the Spanish – American War in 1898.' He winked. ‘But everyone in the NTA
calls her Fifi. Apparently the statue bears a definite resemblance to a stripper who was a close friend of several of the marshals here in the 1960s.' He shrugged. ‘The name stuck.'

‘Sounds like it must have been a real boys' club then?' With Victoria at the top, surely it'd changed?

‘Oh, you have no idea. They all took being marshals to heart. Just different frontiers. Wyatt Earp had nothing on them.' He grimaced. ‘Actually they're still a bit like that.'

‘What, cowboys?'

‘Yes. Just with higher degrees.'

I looked around the rest of the Square, puzzled. I couldn't see any sign of the police or media. Where were they? I stood slightly to get a clearer view of the Iseum. The street corner was busy, full of cars and pedestrians again, but no police or TV anywhere in sight. The Iseum itself looked deserted, but it'd been cleaned up. No red paint anywhere, how had they done that?'

‘Everything looks back to normal down there,' I said, as I sat down again. ‘That all went away very quickly, not even any red paint left on the Iseum walls.'

‘The Isiacs must have known it was coming. They probably had a clean-up squad ready.'

That was strange. ‘Well, why did they go ahead with it if they knew about the protesters?'

Constan shrugged. ‘Religion and politics. Don't ask me why either group does half the things they do in this town.'

‘Still,' I shook my head refusing to be put off, ‘what happened to the police and the media?' I wasn't happy with the thought that my threat to talk to the cameras hadn't lasted too much longer than my meeting with Mertling.

‘The Mayor's an Isiac and he doesn't want that kind of publicity on primetime TV. So …'

‘He can get the media off a juicy story like that?' I nodded over at the Iseum.

‘Sure can,' he said, with certainty. ‘Lot of powerful Isiacs in this town. And none of them want things to get any worse. Still, at least the riot was of use to someone.' Constan, for whatever reason, had placed himself firmly on my side. ‘The thought of you out there in front of the cameras must have really scared Chief Mertling. The Governor is touchy enough about all this as it is.'

Mertling. That reminded me. ‘Constan, thanks so much for getting me in to see him. I know you were taking a big risk for a stranger.'

‘Kannon,' he used a motherly tone. ‘I couldn't face Victoria if I'd let you slip away.' Another thing that he'd made clear over the past little while was that he was gay and out. ‘This may be a coincidence, but what if it's not? The only way is to face it and find out.'

Speaking of faces, I wondered about Mertling's expression when he left 301. ‘Just how much trouble will you be in?'

He didn't reply immediately. Then said, in a sightly strained voice, ‘Don't worry. I know Victoria will support me on this whatever the outcome. Of that I'm certain.' He did seem very sure.

‘Constan, how long have you known Victoria?'

He mused, ‘It must be going on eleven years now. I started as one of her assistants and she mentored me. I owe her a great deal.'

‘What's she like?' She'd looked determined, even hard, in the press conference footage. Cop's eyes. What kind of person was going to step out of the portal tonight?

‘It's hard to sum up a person like Victoria.' He thought for a moment. ‘She's very strong, very capable. She didn't get to the top in this place by taking no for an answer.' He smiled, ‘Like you.' He patted my hand. ‘Don't worry. You'll like her.'

But would she like me?

He checked my expression. ‘I see Mertling has managed to put you off in some way, but don't worry — this is the right thing to do.'

‘He said I'd upset her, make the mission even more dangerous for her.' Now that I'd changed out of fight mode the doubts were back. And they'd multiplied.

‘Listen to me. It'd be more dangerous if she found out about you and you had gone.'

‘You really believe I'm Celeste, don't you? Why?'

‘Because you're so alike,' he said with crisp certainty. ‘Let's order, you have to be hungry. Have you had anything besides plane food today?'

‘No. And I'm starving.'

The menu was short but varied. I felt like something simple, so I ordered steak and a salad. Constan went for pasta. We both asked for tea and coffee while we waited.

I wanted to know more about Victoria. ‘Does she have any family here in San Francisco?' I felt awkward asking. There'd been nothing in the material about Celeste's father. But in the past twenty years Victoria could've had a whole tribe of children.

‘No children, no husband. And no-one special, if that's what you mean. Though she does date a little. I don't think she ever got over losing her child.'

That last comment gave me a strange feeling in my chest, a brittle hollowness. It scared me. My tea had arrived, so I concentrated on stirring in some milk and sugar.

‘She has family in the South — Louisiana mainly — and some cousins in New York. She has close friends, but really, her work is her life.'

‘Was she married before? When Celeste was born?'

‘Oh!' He slapped his hand on the table. ‘You don't know about Celeste's father, do you?'

‘No, nothing.'

‘Sorry, Kannon.' He said carefully, ‘I believe he died before she was born. I don't know anything else. Victoria doesn't talk about what happened then. Maybe Mertling knows?'

He was dead? I didn't know how to feel about that yet, or whether to let myself feel anything. ‘I don't think Mertling will answer any more questions at the moment.'

‘That's certainly true. But it's not just you, Mertling's been in a complete frenzy over this mission since it all started. He's under a lot of pressure to get it right, a lot of heavy political pressure. This could make or break the future of the NTA.'

I looked around the shabby room. ‘The present doesn't look too glossy either. I thought I'd be walking into a gleaming building bristling with all the newest technologies. Instead everything's old and falling apart.' I pointed at the table under the next window along. ‘And look at them.' Two men in grey technician coats were sitting there having a low-voiced argument. ‘Morale seems to be non-existent.' I shook my head. ‘I just don't understand. What happened to this place?'

‘A lot of things.' He sighed. ‘A lot of things. Politics and otherwise.' He seemed too tired to even talk about it.

‘Like what?' I really wanted to know. The material I'd read from StopWatch had made me question what
I thought I knew about the NTA and the portal. Seeing the place in the flesh had started all my alarm bells ringing. This place was falling apart. Was Victoria really safe on her mission? I was very glad I'd followed my hunch here.

‘Things haven't been good for us for a long time.' He stopped. ‘I'm not supposed to talk about this.'

‘I'm not a reporter. You know exactly why I'm here.'

He grinned. ‘Yeah, well I suppose you deserve the truth. When things started for the NTA …'

‘That was back in the sixties, wasn't it? Just after NASA was set up.' Now that I was counting down the hours till Victoria arrived I wanted something to focus on. Keep my attention.

‘Yeah. President Kennedy established the National Time Administration two years after NASA. Eisenhower started NASA. Kennedy did the NTA. It was his baby.'

‘Nice chunk of political credit there.'

‘Yes. It was the flagship of his New Frontier policies. All that stuff about conquering new worlds, solving old problems … Union Square was built and the portal was going to do everything. Give us answers to all our old mysteries, abolish crime and so on …'

‘The sixties, hmm. That was the Cold War era. There must've been a lot of expectations about intelligence gathering.'

‘Of course. The problem was, things started falling apart pretty quickly. We'd made a major enemy. A big one. One with the power to cut us down to size: J. Edgar Hoover.'

‘Whoa. How did that happen?'

‘Well, our mandate originally was to conduct legal investigations and gather intelligence.'

‘Yep. I remember that. That's why the officers who
go through the portal are US marshals, isn't it?'

‘Yes, and that's why Hoover had us in his sights. He didn't like another organisation having those kinds of powers, it was too close to what the FBI did. We would ultimately replace him. In the meanwhile, we were rivals, for funding, publicity, everything. Of course, we also reported directly to the President and Hoover hated JFK.' He gave me a cynical glance. ‘Hoover had secrets of his own to keep. He didn't want us turning over any rocks and finding him under them.'

‘Really?' That was intriguing.

Constan nodded. ‘J. Edgar had a few …' He stopped. ‘That's a whole other story. Anyway, right from the start Hoover used every way he could to sabotage us. He called us The Factory. Said we'd manufacture whatever the Kennedys wanted us to say. Anyway, he finally got his chance to screw us when people started protesting about the Axion portal.'

‘Oh, I remember reading about that. The Axion could go to any time in the past. Just not into the future.'

‘That's right, everyone from Hoover through to Congress was getting really nervous about what they did yesterday becoming public knowledge. So they forced us to build limits into the portal. Now, the present model can't transpond to any time closer than thirty years in the past. Hoover tried to force us to have a hundred-year curfew, but we had enough lobbying power to cut that down to thirty. Even so …' He shook his head.

‘Thirty years …' If it had just been twenty then … I didn't continue that thought. The portal could only be used for issues of national importance, not my own personal problems. ‘That must have severely limited
what the NTA could do, what they could investigate.' I'd just accepted the thirty-year curfew when I'd been taught about it in school. I'd thought it was for scientific reasons, not political ones.

‘Yes. It was a terrible blow to the NTA. Changed the whole nature of our operations. Not being able to access the recent past effectively put an end to the marshals' function as real law officers. And our ability to play a key role in government and society. So Hoover won. But just to make sure, the FBI has been after us ever since. Over the years they've undermined us and even actively sabotaged us whenever they could. We made a few rookie mistakes at the start, and they've never let us forget them. Now we're at the point that we have to fight each year just to keep our budget high enough so we can stay operational.'

Hmm. ‘Constan, unless your security system is operating mainly behind the scenes, you're gonna have another big “mistake” happening very soon.'

‘I know. But with all the cost cutting … And now we're got problems with Mayor Ruttle too.'

‘The Isiac? The same guy who got rid of the media?'

‘He wants us gone from here. Wants to kick us out of San Francisco.'

‘Is this to do with Victoria's mission?'