He nodded, then winced at the bruising along his ribs. "Yeah. Thanks."

"My pleasure." He said it like he meant it. Literally. A feral grin had begun to stretch his lips. "Whoops, here comes Mike Benson. Him, you don't need breathing down your neck. Scoot, Skeeter. I'll catch you later."

Skeeter blinked, then made tracks. Kit was right about one thing. The last person Skeeter wanted to tangle with was Mike Benson cleaning up a riot. Skeeter disappeared into the stunned crowd as Rachel Eisenstein's medical team arrived, setting broken bones and sewing up gashes. Fortunately, from the look of things, they wouldn't be dealing with anything fatal. How, he wasn't sure. Spears, swords, knives, construction tools of half-a-dozen shapes and lethal potentialities... He shook his head in amazement. One member of the Angels of Grace Militia sported gashes down her face from a fistful of bear claws, where she'd made the mistake of taking a swing at Eigil Bjarneson.

And right at the edge of the riot zone, down at the border between Edo Castletown and Victoria Station, Skeeter found Ann Vinh Mulhaney, totally unscathed despite her tiny size. The petite firearms instructor was sitting calmly atop a wrought iron lamp post, with a small, lethal-looking revolver clutched in each hand. It was clear from the path of wreckage that no one had cared to challenge either her position or her person. Skeeter grinned and waved. Ann smiled and nodded, then holstered her pistols and slithered down the lamp post, lithe and agile as a sleek hunting cat. She landed lightly on the cobbles and headed Skeeter's way.

"Good God, Ann," he said, eying the guns she'd used to defend her perch, "you could've held off an army from up there. Those pistols of yours are cute little things. What are they?"

The petite instructor chuckled. "Webleys, of course. The Royal Irish Constabulary Webley, a different animal altogether from your later military Webley. Pack quite a punch for their size, too, in a delightfully concealable package. Lots of Britannia tourists have been renting them for the Ripper tours."

"No wonder nobody challenged you up there."

She laughed easily. "Occasionally, we get a tourist or two with brains. I don't know about anybody else, but after all that excitement, I could use a drink to cool my throat. Come with us, why don't you, Skeeter?"

He flushed crimson, aware that what little money he had left wouldn't even cover the cost of a beer. "Uh, thanks, but I've got work to do. I'll, uh, take a raincheck, okay?" She probably knew he'd been fired, the whole station knew that, by now, but a guy had his pride, after all.

"Well, all right," she said slowly, studying him with her head tilted to one side. "See you around, then, Skeeter. Hey, Kit! Over here! I saw Robert headed toward Urbs Romae. What say we stop at the Down Time for a quick drink before Primary cycles? We'll probably catch up to Robert there and I heard they had a cask of Falernian..."

Skeeter edged his way deeper into the crowd as Kit exclaimed, "Falernian? When did they bring in a cask of heaven?"

Even Skeeter knew that Falernian was the Dom Perignon of ancient Roman wines. And Kit Carson was a connoisseur of fine wines and other potent potables. Skeeter sighed, wondering how marvellous it really tasted, aware that he wouldn't have been able to afford a glass of Falernian even if he had still been employed. But since he wasn't...

He cut around the damaged riot zone the long way, heading for Primary again. Skeeter dodged around one corner of the Shinto Shrine which had been built in the heart of Edo Castletown, and wheeled full-tilt into a short, stout woman. The collision rocked her back on her heels. Skeeter shot out a steadying hand to keep her from falling. Familiar blue eyes flashed indignantly up at him. "Cor, blimey, put a butcher's out, won't you, luv? Right near squashed me thrip'nny bits, you ‘ave!"

That patter identified her faster than Skeeter could focus on her features. Molly, the down-timer Cockney barmaid who worked at the Down Time Bar & Grill, favorite haunt of station residents, was rubbing her substantial chest with one arm and grimacing. "Molly! What are you doing halfway to Primary Precinct?" Skeeter had to shout above the roar of voices as she tugged her dress to rights and glared sourly up at him. "I thought you were working late today? Did you get caught up in the Festival of Mars procession after all?"

Molly's expressive grimace encapsulated a wealth of disdain, loathing, and irritated anger into one twist of her mobile face. "Nah. Bleedin' newsies invaded, bad as any whirlin' dervishes, they are, wot broke a British square. Devil tyke ‘em! I'd like t'see ‘em done up like kippers, so I would. Got the manners of a gutter snipe, won't let a lady put ‘er past be'ind ‘er, not for all the quid in the Owd Lady of Threadneedle Street." When Skeeter drew a blank on that reference, as he often did with Molly's colorful Cockney, she chuckled and patted his arm. "Bank of England, me owd china, that's wot we called ‘er, Owd Lady of Threadneedle Street."

"Oh." Skeeter grinned. "Me owd china, is it? I'm honored, Molly." She didn't admit friendship to many, not even among the down-timers. He wondered what he'd done to earn her good opinion. Her next words gave him the answer.

"I come up ‘ere t'find Bergitta. Needs a place t'stay, is afraid o' that blagger wot blacked ‘er face, livin' alone an' all, an' I got room in me flat, so I ‘ave. It'd be cheaper, too, wiv two of us sharin' the bills."

Skeeter didn't know what to say. He found himself swallowing hard.

"You ain't seen ‘er, then?"

He shook his head. "No. I was heading for Primary, when that riot broke out."

"Might come along, me own self," Molly mused. "Got nuffink better to do, ‘til I finds Bergitta, anyway."

Skeeter grinned. "I'd be honored to escort you, Molly."

She fell into step beside him.

"I've never seen this many people at an opening of Primary." Skeeter had to shout above the roar of voices. Using elbows and a few underhanded moves, Skeeter shoved his way through the mob until he found a good vantage point where he and Molly could settle themselves to wait.

Gaudy splashes of color marked long lines of departing tourists and the hundreds of spectators arriving just to watch the show. Montgomery Wilkes, ruling head of BATF on station, wasn't in sight yet. Security officers were scarce, too, in the wake of the riot.

BATF carels, manned by tax-collection agents of the Bureau of Access Time Functions, carefully clad in dress-uniform red, lined the route into and out of Primary Precinct. Once past the BATF carels, inbound tourists and visitors arriving at TT-86 had to run a gauntlet of medical stations, a whole double row of them, which formed the entryway into the time terminal.

Tourists inbound had to scan their medical records into the station's database files before entering Shangri-La. This gave station medical baseline data to compare the tourists' health with, once they returned from their time tours. All departing tourists were required to undergo an intensive physical before leaving the station, as a quarantine procedure against exporting anything nasty up time. The system had stopped an outbreak of black death a couple of years back on TT-13, keeping the deadly plague from reaching the up-time world. The medical screening system wasn't foolproof, of course—nothing in life was—but it kept time tourism operational, which was the lifeblood of a station like Shangri-La.

Skeeter just hoped, with a superstitious shiver, that the irate up-time senator whose daughter had been kidnapped failed to swing enough votes to shut down the time terminals. If station violence on TT-86 continued much longer, he just might get those votes. If BATF was worried about it, however, that worry didn't show in the attitudes of its agents. They were as rude as ever, from what Skeeter could see of the check-out procedures underway. BATF agents ignored the increasing crush of onlookers, busy valuing souvenirs brought back from down-time gates. The agents' main job on station was to establish taxes due on whatever was brought up time from the gates and to levy fines for anyone caught smuggling out contraband. They searched luggage—and occasionally, the tourists and the couriers who ran supplies and mail back and forth through Primary—for anything undeclared that might be considered taxable. At one tax kiosk, a middle-aged lady with diamonds on every finger was protesting loudly that she hadn't any idea how those granulated Etruscan gold earrings and necklaces had come to be sewn into her Victorian corset. She hadn't put them in her suitcase, why, they must have been planted in her luggage by some ruffian...