Prologue
The agent folded at the knees, falling to the ground in a lifeless heap. The man he'd been chasing—the one who'd shot back—was free to take his chances on the rainy streets. But first, he stripped the agent of his precious leather wrist-strap.
The man ran across wet pavement, dodging pedestrians and cabs. At precisely 22:00, the rain stopped. Fortuna bless the Weather Net.
He was still being followed. He couldn't see anyone, but the agent he'd taken out had had two friends, and there was no way either of them was dead. (Even if they were, they weren't the sort of people who'd let that stop them.)
He ducked into a Calvani night club. The streets weren't crowded enough to get lost in, but if he knew his holes-in-the-wall, this one would have at least one loose panel or secret exit that he could exploit. Prohibition had been helpful like that.
The music inside was loud and just a little wild—not his kind of wild, but fluttering and fast, and unmistakably smart. It sounded like a physicist on halluchips.
He sauntered up to the bar and greeted the tall androgyne bartender—shi had a long, flat head shaped like the back of a chair and the same colour as a kind of green ore he'd seen once.
Shi winked four of eight beady mercury eyes at him. "What's your pleasure?" shi asked smoothly.
He smiled back at hir. "I'll have a shot of DaVinci's Ransom," he said.
The bartender's nostrils—a long column of slits that ran down either side of hir head parallel to hir eyes—flared slightly, and shi moved hir mouth to show teeth in what shi probably thought was a convincing imitation of a humanoid smile. (Hir teeth were grey and jagged, so most of the friendly effect was lost.)
"Coming right up."
A few moments later, shi presented him with a glass of liquor that smelled like solvent but, as he knew from experience, tasted like la berries, and a small white and silver card two centimetres wide and about four long. He raised his glass in his right hand and discreetly palmed the card with the other.
"Thanks," he said, and threw back the drink.
He waited a few minutes, getting a couple more drinks and leaving the bartender a big tip. (It was a pair of earrings designed for an Iffrat, but if shi had more than half a brain, shi could get a hell of a price for them on Canal Street.)
He went to the back of the club. Most of the patrons were Calvani, of course, but there were purple-skinned Opinari and the occasional Hath. (He'd never been sure how it was that Hath could get drunk, with their re-breathers covering their mouths.) There were a handful of humanoids and near-humans, too, which was good, because he didn't want to look completely out of place. People would remember the lone human wandering in, and he did not want to be remembered.
As he passed the platform where the band was set up, he noticed that one of the musicians was apparently human. He was good-looking, and tall, with dark hair. He was playing that big guitar like a pro. The guy on the keyboard was Calvani—all those hands were an advantage. The drummer was a Hath, which explained what the other Hath were doing in here. Probably his family come to cheer him on. (Though, as he seemed to be a relatively good-looking Hath: they might have been groupies).
He'd seen weirder trios, but the human kept his eye. It was probably the smile the man gave him as he passed. Too bad he couldn't stay. He'd have to stop in again next time he was on the run in the City.
He went into the restroom with the humanoid stick-figure on the door. The walls were covered in graffiti; what had once been a stylish silver tile was now a plaster of black ink and holo-stickers. He hedged his bet on the middle stall, and locked himself in. The back wall was covered in the same general paraphernalia as the rest of the room. He was delighted to find a small, friendly cartoon scrawl smiling up at him. This kind of graffiti was everywhere in the City, if you knew where to look. Good old Wally: always there to help a guy in need.
He held the datacard the bartender had given him up to the little man in the striped shirt and was rewarded with a wink. The toilet flushed and the wall's hermetic seal hissed. He pushed and the whole thing slid easily back and to the side.
Feeling pretty pleased with himself, he stepped into the narrow passageway that had been revealed.
The hidey-hole was pretty clean, which was a pleasant surprise. Most of these places were littered with discarded fix wrappers and bodily fluids of varying provenance. This one was set up like a little sitting room, complete with comfortable chairs and what looked like a sink. There was a pile of boxes in the corner, part of an Opinari liquor shipment. Good booze on Opintar.
He chose a chair facing the entryway and leaned back. He put his feet up on the little table in front of him and thought about where he was going to go first.
"Hands up," said a smooth, feminine voice with a posh Sanctuary accent. He could feel the end of the blaster on the back of his head. He sighed and slowly raised his arms.
"You do know that we know all about your friend with the glasses, don't you?" she asked.
He rolled his eyes. "I bet it's only because you cheated."
He could feel the agent leaning closer. Her breath warmed his left ear. Her perfume was heady, with a trace of what he recognised as a solvent used in pheromone distillates. Very nice, though he wondered if that was strictly Agency issue.
"Stand up," she murmured. "Slowly."
He got to his feet.
"Turn around."
He kept his hands where she could see them and obeyed. He could reach for his own gun, but she was quicker than him. And probably smarter, he thought ruefully.
The Time Agent smirked at him. She was wearing a shiny white jacket over a black cat-suit, which on most people would have been a big mistake, but on her… He looked over her frankly spectacular frame and felt a pang of regret. Her hair was blonde and very curly, and she had made no attempts to tame it. She appeared to be somewhere in her thirties—she might have been younger than he was—but Agents tended to go in for body clock adjustments.
"You know," he said thoughtfully, not bothering to be subtle about looking her over, "if you just wanted to forget about this whole 'arresting me' thing, I'm sure you and I could find something a bit more… entertaining… to do."
Her smile took on a lazy characteristic. "Tempting. But I quite enjoy the 'arresting you' thing."
"That must be why you do it so often," he answered. "Or is that because you keep letting me get away?"
"Not this time," she said lightly. "But first things first. Where did you hide it?"
"Where'd I hide what?" he asked innocently.
"You're very pretty, Boe," she said. "But don't think that will keep me from shooting your face off."
He grinned. "No worries. I know how important your work is to you." He heard something moving in the restroom upstairs. There was a telltale sound of flushing water.
"I haven't got all day," she said, narrowing her eyes.
"You're a Time Agent," he retorted. "You've got all the time in the universe. Tell you what; we'll chalk this one up to you. Then you can let me go, and we'll see who catches who next time."
"Whom," said another voice. "It's bloody 'whom'!"
The man called Boe rolled his eyes. "You brought your pet?"
"Partner," she corrected, smiling slyly.
The partner revealed himself dramatically from behind the liquor boxes.
Should have checked behind the boxes. Amateur mistake. Just because no one was supposed to know about a hiding spot, that didn't mean they wouldn't. If this was the way things were going, he really was going to have to concede their superior intellect. Of course, they might have just teleported in. Time Agents were renowned for ignoring local teleportation regulations.
"If you can't bother to speak the language properly, Boe," the second agent said petulantly, "then you shouldn't dirty it with your tongue." He was a willowy but muscular human, with ashy brown hair and cheekbones that might as well have been carved out of marble. He had a leonine way of moving that was more than a little attractive. (He'd gone with a loose red jacket in an ancient military cut to offset the slim black Time Agency trousers. He had very nice legs.)
"I can think of a few things my tongue could d—"
"That's enough," said the woman, rolling her eyes. "You're coming with us, Boe."
"Yeah," said her partner, pulling his blaster from his belt. For someone so uptight about the language, his attempts at the Sanctuary accent weren't very good.
"I thought you wanted to know—"
Someone was coming down the steps. He wasn't sure whether to praise his luck or curse it.
Curse, apparently. It was just the human musician from upstairs. The two Time Agents stared at the newcomer; they were completely taken by surprise.
Blessing, then.
He moved quickly, grabbing the man by the arm and taking his blaster from its holster. He pressed it up to the musician's jaw.
"Don't try it," he warned as the woman took a step forward. "I know you well enough to know you don't want to hurt innocent bystanders. Let me go, or I shoot this pretty man's head off."
She raised her gun level with her eye. "You don't know me as well as you think you do."
"I d-don't want to g- to g-g-get…" The musician couldn't even get the words out, he was so nervous.
He probably ought to feel guilty about that, he thought. Instead, he backed them towards the staircase. It was hard to get the musician to follow him—he wasn't practised with up-the-stairs-with-a-gun-to-your-throat manoeuvring, which he could hardly be blamed for, but the Time Agents were creeping closer.
She was a piece of work, there was no doubt about that—not after she fired, missing both their heads by millimetres.
He ought to have abandoned his hostage at the top of the stairs, but when the agent's second shot clipped the musician's shoulder, it was a matter of leaving an innocent person to bleed on a filthy restroom floor, or, at least, getting the unlucky bastard out of that bitch's way.
He dragged the wounded man out of her line of sight and pulled the third agent's wrist strap from his coat pocket and wrestled the musician's hand over it. He was a little bit hasty with the co-ordinates, but he still had the satisfaction of seeing the look on both Agents' faces as the restroom melted away.
Their arrival was rough. He almost threw up. (The alcohol had been a bad idea.) The musician collapsed to the dirt and retched loudly.
"Sorry about that."
It was a few moments before the man could stop puking long enough to look up at him. "Who the h-hell are y-y—" He grimaced and heaved again.
"My name's not important," he replied. Then, as an afterthought, he asked, "What's yours?"
"L-Lee."
"Nice to meet you, Lee." He fought the wide leather strap onto his wrist and helped Lee to his feet. "You can call me Jack."