| Chapter three: Haven't the Heart |
Nathan Saylor's home was built with a logwall exterior, but inside it met and surpassed the best housing codes of the fifty enlightened worlds. Marcus Flaccus Congrio saw that the decor was Primary Route Eclectic, which meant that upright chairs were favored instead of the stools and couches of his home timeline. After three decades serving the ITA, first as a volunteer private and ultimately as chief of ISS Scouts, Congrio was comfortable sitting on anything from an acceleration bench to a pile of furs, but his own home and office still reflected his roots.
"He's not interested in leaving Refuge now, Mark," said Saylor's wife, Nadeoil. She was a tall woman with natural epicantic folds to her eyes and red hair. Her original timeline had been one where the Scythians had overwhelmed the Persian Empire and the Hellenic citystates, starting a rich civilization which had reached the moon by what other cultures would call the Seventeenth Century AD. Unfortunately, war and resource depletion had cast her world into iron-age barbarism within two centuries of its peak, and when the ITA had discovered Nadeoil's world, her homeland was using armored knights to defend what in her husband's world would have been Poland & Byelorussia.
Defying regulations, Colonel Saylor had taken the teenaged Nadeoil off her world after her parents had been slain by militia men of the Danubian Pentarchy. Back then, ten years earlier, Congrio had offered to conceal Saylor's misdeed, but Saylor wouldn't listen.
"We gave those sonsofbitches guidance," Saylor had protested to Congrio. "We got them organized in proper musket era formations and we even used radios and satellite observations to make sure they could not lose."
"By Venus' crotch, Nat," protested Congrio, "the Hysekopans still practiced slavery and the strangulation of widows. The Pentarchy are republics with a thriving merchant class -- they even invented steam engines on their own."
"Yeah, and they imported mercs from the Sahara too."
Congrio did not correct Saylor on his terms, even though the Sahara was the Great Desert and the Mediteranean was the Punic Sea in Nadeoil's timeline. "A half dozen companies -- and most never got out of hand."
"That one did!" said Saylor angrily.
"And you slew them all with an automatic rifle! Nat, you're even with them, you got your revenge for what they did. Nobody in the Real Worlds will care about some armed thugs in a cannon and pike world -- but none of that excuses you taking that girl back here!"
"I'm all she's got and I'm not leaving her to the mercy of those fat lords of the counting house which the ITA feel should rule her world."
"Don't shout at me soldier," Congrio said sternly. "I'm still your commanding officer."
"Not after my courtmartial, sir," Saylor said stiffly. "Then I'll be a civilian, sir, and I won't have to see the things I'm tired of seeing, sir."
Ten years ago, thought Congrio, and Saylor and his war orphan had made a nice life for themselves. Three kids and a good home on Refuge, a quality world where humans had never been prior to the TDRS gateways. Saylor had the right idea.
Now I have to get him back in the field, take him from all this.
The back yard had a grove and a garden carefully prepared so Nadeoil could commune with the gods of her timeline in the natural surroundings they preferred. Saylor was back there, slapping mortor on bricks, building a restraining wall.
"Could use help with that bucket," said Saylor.
"I could use help with other things," answered Congrio. He reached to the bucket handles, ready to move it as Saylor moved along the wall.
"The ITA warping yet another history, Mark? Plenty of tragedy today so that some world might be an associate member one or two centuries from now?"
"I didn't come here for an argument."
"You should have known you would never get agreement from me." Saylor watched his wife, who was looking at them from behind the floor length windows. Noticing that he was watching her, Nadeoil backed away from the window.
"You remember your last scout mission before Nadeoil's world." Congrio made a statement, not a question.
"Sure. Where Richard III financed Columbus and became trading partners with the Aztecs. What happened? The Polynesians blow up the Aztecs or are there too few pieces to tell what happened?"
"That world hasn't had a nuclear war," said Congrio, carrying the bucket as Saylor took the wheelbarrow of bricks a few feet to the left. "We kept some monitors there, just in case, of course."
"ISS has plenty of sneaks," said Saylor, stirring the mortar. "If you want to entrap some kid into accepting a bribe, or ignoring smuggling, find somebody else to rat on her."
Congrio nodded his head no. "No. Our agents are clean there. Our trouble are unlicensed Gridneys and culture smuggling."
"Where aren't those your trouble, Mark?" asked Saylor. "I have kinda lost interest in the possibility that some numbnut in a Real World might pirate a bestseller from an Edge World and make a million pounds."
"You heard of Bert Steckler?"
"Rep only," stated Saylor. "Electronics was his bag. He would take some from an advanced Edge World and be some great inventor in another Edge World. Make a few billion and keep a lot in gold and jewels so he could flee rich when the D-Cops found his scam."
"He died in the Anglo-Aztec World."
"And why should that interest me?"
"The Aztec secret police stopped him on a train to Chicago -- their version of Chicago. He self-demolited his luggage but didn't escape off the train. They shot him."
"Better than having your heart pulled out of your chest because dawn is coming and a priest wants to conduct morning service," said Saylor.
"Our informant in southern West England -- the place usually called the American Georgia -- got us the all-points bulletins WES -- West England Security-- is spreading everywhere.
"Turns out that Steckler had two accomplices at a minimum. He had gone to the local version of Omaha and picked up some contraband from them."
"If they didn't have a Gridney ready, they are up the creek," shrugged Saylor. "Official Paranoia was the mode of governent back there ten years ago. I would be surprised if it got better."
"They killed the man and confiscated an apartment full of equipment from alternative timelines. Last we knew, the woman was on the run."
"It has happened before," said Saylor, "and will again. It will be an unsolved mystery that will be closed in a few years time because every smart cop will shun the file, knowing its a career dead end." Saylor lifted the last brick up and put it in line. "No big deal."
"Its a very big deal," stated Congrio, holding a fax sheet before Saylor, who took it from him, laying his trowel on the brick wall. "Using the photos and fingerprints distributed by the Anglo-Aztec authorities, we identified the woman they are looking for."
Saylor glanced down the print-out. "Kathy Ingram . . . what the hell." Saylor looked at Congrio. "What is a Gridney Conduit Engineer doing in an Edge World as a culture smuggler?"
"The TDRS expelled her," explained Congrio. "She had a high resistance to shift-lag so she spent more and more time under the dome, cheating on her log books to cover her violation of regs. She collapsed one day and if a passenger hadn't known the fundamentals of Gridney operation, they would all have been as lost as Theodore Gridney."
"I can figure the rest," said Saylor grimly. "Her career is over and she is prevented by ITA law from leaving the Real Worlds. She cannot even be a mechanic on a Gridney; she faces a prison term if she assembles one on her own, and then Bert Steckler approaches her.
"She has lost everything, so it is no big deal sliding deeper into crime. So why wouldn't she be a culture smuggler on an Edge World?"
"A space-faring Edge World," said Congrio needlessly. "One that can duplicate a Gridney within a month if they take advice from a Gridney conduit engineer."
"You want me to snuff her?" Saylor asked. He looked around his garden and at his house. "I could not do that anymore, even if I had to."
"I want you to find her," said the chief Scout. "Extract her from the world she is in, but get her out of there by any means necessary.
"I can't train another agent to worthwhile fluency in the local Nahuatal and English in time," Congrio said. "Our agents there are deep cover, and I don't want them improvising field agent tactics off the cuff. I need you, Nat"
Saylor clenched his lips tighly, then nodded no. It took a couple of seconds for Congrio to realize that the gesture had an affirmative meaning in Nat Saylor's culture.
| Chapter three: Haven't the Heart |