Clearly, this would be a long, long day.

CHAPTER FOUR

The klaxon marking the re-opening of Primary sounded just as Kit settled down for breakfast in Frontier Town's Bronco Billy Cafe. He smiled to himself, wishing a mental bon voyage to the redheaded Margo of No Last Name. The computerized register of incoming tourists had shown only "Margo Smith" who held a transfer ID stamp from New York. In New York City anyone could get any sort of credentials, could have any fake name tacked onto one's mandatory medical records, which had to match a person's retinal scans and fingerprints to get past ATF Security.

After the orbital blowup which had created the time strings that made temporal travel possible, so many records had been damaged and destroyed, New York's underworld had cleaned up issuing new identities. Scuttlebutt had it that new ID's were cheaper than downtime tickets to a temporal station.

If Smith were Margo's real last name, Kit would eat his shoes.

He hadn't seen her since her arrival-thank God although he'd heard from several people she was asking everywhere for a teacher. So far as he knew, everyone had turned her down flat. Now she'd be departing for home where she belonged. It was with a sense of profound relief that Kit banished all thought of Margo "Smith." He smiled at the waitress, clad primly in a high collared dress with a striped, floor-length skirt.

"Morning, Kit," she dimpled "The usual?"

"Good morning, Bettie. Yes, please, with a side of hash browns."

Bettie poured coffee and produced a copy of this morning's Shangri-la Gazette. Kit was halfway through the "Scout Reports" section-which comprised at least a third of the small newspaper-when the klaxon announcing the closure of Primary sounded. Kit grinned "Bye, Margo. Have a nice, safe life." He settled deeper into his chair, sipped coffee, and continued reading the latest reports from young time scouts who were busy continuing his work into all manner of unlikely places and times.

"Well, what do you know about that?" Some lucky scout over at TT-73 had pushed a gate into the middle of the Russian palace built by Catherine the Great and had inadvertently caught her in flagrant delicto with one of those infamous Russian boars ....

Kit chuckled, then raised a brow at the purported offers generated in a bidding war between up-time porno outfits. The clever scout had brought back a videotape.

Another scout, over at TT-13, had returned from a hair raising trip into the European Wurm glaciation with an anthropologist's ransom in documentation on Cro-Magnon lifestyles.

Sometimes, Kit really missed his old life.

Bertie returned with his breakfast and a smile. She glanced at the open newspaper. "I see you found the story on Catherine's palace."

Kit chuckled. "Yep. Lucky mutt."

Bertie rolled her eyes. "Personally, I think it's disgusting what the porno outfits are offering him. And who'd want to sleep with a giant hog? Now, the scout who took the video is another matter.--She winked. "Any lonely time scout needs a room for the night ...."

Kit grinned, knowing Bertie's offer was only a tease, at least where he was concerned. Kit had afar-flung reputation as the world's straightest-laced time scout. It made most of the women on TT-86 treat him like a favorite uncle or a third grandfather. That had its advantages, but sometimes ...

He sighed and pushed away thoughts of Sarah. Ancient history, Kit. But he still couldn't help wondering sometimes if he might have found a way to make it work. Yeah. Right. You weren't good enough for her, Georgia Boy. Despite the years, their last fight still had the power to hurt him. And when he'd gone looking for her, what her father and uncle had said ...

Kit gave a deliberate mental shrug. She'd made her choices and he'd made his. He'd been through every conceivable argument over the years, trying to figure a way it might have gone differently, and he'd never found one. So Kit picked up his fork, carefully not allowing himself to wonder what had become of Sarah or if she ever thought about him when she read the newspapers or watched the idiotic docudramas ....

Really, Kit told himself sourly, after all this time, there is no point crying about it. He smoothed the paper, turned to a fresh page, and dug into the heaping plate of Denver style steak and eggs, with a bird's-nest side of golden-brown hashed potatoes drenched with meted cheese and liberally mixed with fried onions and green pepper chunks. Ahh ...Bronco Billy's knew how to make breakfast.

Kit was halfway through the steak, cooked rare just the way he liked it, when a shadow fell across his table. He glanced up-and nearly choked on a bite of half swallowed beef.

Margo.

She was dressed conservatively enough in jeans and a semi-see-through sweater, but wore a-look of determined sweetness that didn't fit the tilt of her chin. "Hello, Mr. Carson. May I join you?"

Kit coughed, still half-choked on the bite in his throat. He grabbed the coffee cup and gulped, scalding the roof of his mouth and his tongue. Kit burned the back of his throat, too; but the steaming liquid dislodged the bite of steak. He wheezed, swallowing while he blinked involuntary tears. He finally sat back and glared at her. This was the second time she'd nearly strangled him, catching him off-guard like that. Christ, I'm losing my touch if a half-grown kid can damn near kill me twice in two days.

"Still here, I see," he growled, still sounding half strangled. "I was hoping you'd gone home."

Margo's smile was chilly. "I told you, Mr. Carson. I have no intention of going home. I'm going to be a time scout and I don't care what it takes."

He thought about Catherine the Great and her Russian boar and wondered what this green kid would've done in that situation. Gone all schoolgirl incensed, or burst in protesting cruelty to animals?

"Uh-huh. Just how much money have you got, kid?"

Her face flushed unbecomingly. "Enough. And I've applied for a job."

"Doing what?" Kit blurted. "Serving drinks in that damned leather miniskirt of yours?"

Margo's eyes narrowed. "Listen, Mr. Carson, I will stay on this terminal, no matter how long it takes or who I have to find to teach me. But I'm going to be a time scout. I was hoping I could persuade you to change your mind. I'm not stupid and I have some pretty good ideas about overcoming the handicap of my gender. But I'm not going to stand here and be insulted like some truant school kid, because I am not a child."

You damn near are, Kit groused to himself, impressed with her tenacity and appalled that she was so determined to die. Kit sat back in his chair and ran one hand through his greying hair. "Look, Margo, I admire your determination. Really, I do."

The look in her eyes, sudden and unexpected, disturbed Kit. Good God, is she going to cry? Kit cleared his throat.

"But I won't be a party to your death, which is likely to be messy and very painful. Did you bother to read any of the scouting reports in this?" He held up the Gazette. "Or the obituaries section?"

Time-scouts' obituaries took up a whole page of the Shangri-la Gazette. The details were often gruesome.

She shrugged. "People die all the time."

"Yes, they do. So do time scouts. Let me tell you how time scouts die, kid. Sam One-Eagle over at TT-37 was killed by the Inquisition. They burned him alive, Margo, after taking all the skin off his back with whips and breaking all his major bones on the rack. His partner crawled back through with burns over most of his body from trying to rescue him. David lived for a month. The nurses said he spent most of it screaming."

Margo had blanched. But her chin came up. "So what? I could get run over by a bus, too, and plane crash victims get toasted just as thoroughly."