Viennese Waltz: Journeys
Well, of course it wasn't going to be that easy, Rose reminded herself the next morning, as the time jumper's backlight remained pristine Alpha white. With a world this unstable, as the book had outlined it, any number of things could push it over and send the dominoes tumbling. If she understood Jared's explanation correctly, the inertia of the timestream was probably still seeking a way to light the fuse and send the world to hell. But she didn't see what else she could do at the moment; she was going to have to wait and see. The ball seemed to be firmly in Franz Ferdinand's court, at least for now.
She had no television to keep up with things (had they even been invented yet? she wondered idly), or even a radio, but from what she could determine when she walked cautiously into town, the royal couple had left Sarajevo as planned the day before, via train. She went back to the same cafe she'd eaten at on Friday, and carefully pumped the German-speaking waiter for information – not that it took much pumping to get the loquatious man going. His vivid descriptions of the various attacks on the Archduke seemed to leave no detail out – except for any mention of a woman who had tussled with the gunman and then briefly hung on to the royal car during the second phase. The town was abuzz with speculation about the conspirators now in custody, after their pitiful failed attempts at suicide by cyanide capsule. All indications were pointing towards a loose confederation of young Serbian Nationalists suffering from testosterone poisoning and lack of sense, but nothing seemed to tie them to any larger group – or the Serbian government. Rose, not normally one to let perpetrators off the hook, breathed a sigh of relief that their back trail had apparently gone cold; war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia would not happen over this incident, at least.
But now she was completely at loose ends. She had no way of getting home – "home" hadn't been "invented" yet. But she had nowhere else to go and nothing to do, and zero idea how long she would be here. And this little back corner of nowhere wasn't enticing her to stay, especially in the dreary, primitive accommodations on the hill – she was getting tired of going to the bathroom in the bushes and lugging water up from the fountain.
Besides, if there WAS anything else she needed to do, any further assistance she might render to the Archduke, for instance (as ludicrous as that might seem), she sure wasn't going to get it done here. She needed to be where the action at least might be. And that was in the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire: the fabled city of music, Vienna.
She waited a couple more days for things to calm down a bit, and spent a bit more of that thick wad of money she'd pickpocketed on a couple of changes of clothing, as well as a small carpetbag to carry her things in. I'm going to have to watch out, she thought ironically. A few more possessions and I might start thinking I've got roots here or something.
Finally, on the Wednesday following the fateful day, she folded up her clothes and the blanket and put them into the bag, on impulse adding the water/wineskin and the remaining candles, then, on the First Principle of Hiding in Plain Sight: Give Them Something Else to Focus On, she also took off the kerchief for the first time in town, letting her distinctive, shoulder-length blonde hair swing freely. Firmly closing the door of the hut for the last time, she walked down into town and across to the train station, then waited in line behind several men at the ticket window – there was only a single ticket seller working – until it was her turn.
And, for the first time, she ran into rampant chauvinism. The ticket seller, who had quite happily been chatting in German with the man directly before her, suddenly turned deaf and dumb in the language when it came to serving a mere woman. He kept looking right through her, as if expecting someone else to step up, his arrogant black eyes dismissing her as nothing. She was getting quite ready to reach through the bars and throttle him, when suddenly the scene was interrupted.
"Sonia?" The utterer of that thunderstruck name loomed up beside her, then, as she turned to stare at him, his face immediately cleared. "No, I'm sorry, forgive me," he went on in German. "I thought you were someone else."
He was about to step back again, graciously, making as if to get into line behind Rose, when suddenly the ticket seller perked up. Here was a man to do business with! "Bitte, mein Herr?"
Rose crossed her arms and glared at the agent; if looks could kill, by rights the worm should have been smeared on the floor. The new arrival looked back and forth between the two, somehow divining the situation. Perhaps he'd seen it played out before.
"Ja," he replied. "Two tickets to..." he turned to Rose, asking quietly, "Where are you going?"
"I'm trying to get to Vienna," was her arch, clenched-teeth reply, still glaring over the counter.
"... to Vienna," he finished. He paid the fares, then turned away, placing a light hand on Rose's arm and pulling her along, too – by that time more passengers had joined the line, waiting.
"Here you are, Fraulein," he said kindly, handing her one of the tickets. He tried to refuse her repayment, but she insisted stiffly. She wasn't going to be beholden to anyone, even somebody with such dancing blue eyes, friendly, easygoing smile, and curly dark hair... STOP that, she told herself firmly. Nothing doing. I'm not interested. Clutching her ticket firmly, she thanked him kindly one last time and turned away towards the platform.
She didn't see his amused eyebrow as he stood and watched her go.
^..^
The ticket turned out to be for First Class – something she hadn't noticed until the train came rumbling in to a stop. Poking through the First Class cars, she found an empty compartment and settled in, sighing, tossing her light bag up on the overhead rack. The train rattled out of the station ten minutes later, and she sat back to watch the gorgeous scenery.
Just then, the compartment door slid open again, and in came her benefactor. "Forgive me, Fraulein; there are no other empty seats." Which was a bald lie, but he said it so disengenuously, and she did owe him... He heaved his rather heavier case up onto the other rack and sank into the seat opposite her, sighing theatrically, then held out his hand.
"Alex Toller, Fraulein."
Rose hesitated a split second, before she remembered that it was going to be at least a century before her name meant anything to anybody. "Rose. Rose Tyler." She shook his hand.
"Charmed... You're English?"
"Ja. Who is Sonia?" She asked to divert him.
He grinned. "My cousin. She looks like you from the back – same hair, same build. She lives in Salzburg – which is why it startled me so to see her in Sarajevo – I thought. But tell me, what brought you to that beautiful city so far from your own shores, Fraulein Tyler?"
She looked at him levelly for a moment. "My own business."
His eyebrows shot up, then both his hands darted to his chest, and he groaned dramatically, slumping over sideways, feigning a wound in a fencing duel. "Ooooh! A touch, a touch!"
Rose couldn't help smiling at his antics, and he straightened up again, smiling back. "That's better. All right, Madame Mysterious, keep your secrets. I won't pry."
Yeah, we'll see about that. In the interests of staving him off, however, she turned to the tried and true method of interviewing him in return. And as she suspected, talking about himself was no problem at all for the animated extrovert. Alex Toller was a writer, it seemed, living in Vienna on a small inheritance – "God grant it holds out long enough to see me established" – and had in fact already made a bit of a name for himself selling stories to various magazines. He had been in Sarajevo at the invitation of a friend, to see the festival, and had written a piece on the attempted assassination of the Archduke and his Duchess, and already mailed it off to an interested editor back home. Naturally, the talk turned once again to the topic of the week, although Rose "couldn't" tell him anything new – only repeating what the German waiter had told her two days before, which was the word on the street.
An hour or two thus passed pleasantly. Suddenly Alex bounded to his feet. "I'm hungry! Let's eat! Shall we share lunch? What did you bring?" he asked Rose enthusiastically, as he pulled his bag down to the seat beside him and started taking out what looked like an entire picnic.
"Bring?" she asked faintly.
He looked at her sharply. "You didn't bring any food for the journey?"
She was lost. "I didn't know I needed to," she admitted softly.
Alex was flabbergasted. "How in the world did you get to – Never mind, Madame Mysterious." He sighed theatrically again – apparently his favorite method. "You know," he went on, picking up the loaf of thick, chewy bread and pulling off a large chunk, then holding it out to her across the aisle. "It's a good thing for you that I like my Cousin Sonia."