Annette faced her own crisis when the cab stopped. "That'll be twelve and a half big ones," the driver said. A big one was a hundred euros, the same way a benjamin was a hundred dollars. Inflation had added enough zeros to the old currencies to make them clumsy to use.
"Please come in the office with me," Annette said. "They'll pay you in there—I promise they will."
Why do these things happen to me? the cabby's face shouted. "I didn't think you were a deadbeat," he said reproachfully.
"I'm not," Annette answered. "I don't have any money, that's all." It made perfect sense to her. The cab driver didn't look any happier. He got out of the Honda, muttering to himself in Spanish—the English did come through the implant, then.
"If they give me a ticket for parking here, that's yours, too," he said. Annette nodded. She would have promised to pay for the whole car just then.
Into the Crosstime Traffic offices they went. A receptionist spoke to them in lisping Spanish. "Do you understand English?" Annette asked.
"Of course," the woman replied. Her accent was British. After the man in the building with the outlaw transposition chamber, that made Annette antsy. The receptionist went on, "What can I do for you, Miss ... ?" She waited for a name.
"I'm Annette Klein," Annette said, wondering what would happen next.
The receptionist's eyes widened. She called up an image on her monitor and looked from it to Annette and back again. "You are Annette Klein!" she exclaimed. "What are you doing here?"
"Trying to pay this nice man his cab fare, only I haven't got a euro or a dollar or anything," Annette said. "Could you please give him fifteen big ones?"
"Of course," the receptionist said again. She handed the driver a thousand-euro bill and a five hundred. He gave Annette a nod that was almost a bow, then hurried out to his car. The receptionist started to ask questions.
Annette beat her to it: "Are my mother and father all right?" That was the most important thing in her mind just then.
"Yes," the woman said. She looked back at the monitor to get her facts straight. 'They were taken to, uh, Marseille, and some of our other people bought them there. They're in the USA now." She checked the monitor again. "The report was that you were taken to Madrid in that alternate, but nobody could find you there. You might have fallen off the face of the earth."
"I did," Annette said grimly.
"I'm sorry, but I don't understand," the receptionist said.
"I'm sorry, too, for a whole lot of things." Annette's mind was racing a million kilometers a minute, working out what she needed to do. Knowing her mother and father had come back to the home timeline made it easier. "Please take me to your chief administrator here. And I need to talk to the head of security. And please call my parents—here are their numbers." She wrote them down. "Set up a conference call in the administrator's office, please. That way, I can tell everybody everything at once." And somebody outside the office will be listening when I do, too.
The receptionist nodded. "I will take care of it." She got on the phone, where she spoke in Spanish. When she hung up, she smiled at Annette. "Mr. Olivo's secretary will arrange the call for you. And a messenger will take you to his office." A young man—only a couple of years older than Annette—hurried up. "Here's Jorge now."
"Hello," Jorge said. "Come with me, why don't you?"
"Okay." Annette wished she could clean up beforehand, but maybe looking—and smelling—the way she did would help persuade the officials that something inside Crosstime Traffic had gone dreadfully wrong.
People stared at her as she went by. She heard her name mixed in with a lot of Spanish. A man clapped his hands. A woman walked over and kissed her on the cheek. They were glad she'd made it to the home timeline. That was good. If their bosses had anything to do with the slavery ring, they would have a harder time fixing up an accident for her.
PEDRO OLIVO, said a sign on a door. Below the name was CHIEF ADMINISTRATOR in the six EU languages, Spanish first and bigger than the others. The man at the desk in front of the door grinned at Annette and spoke in English: "I have the conference call set up, Senorita Klein. Your parents will be glad to hear from you."
It would still be in the wee small hours back in Ohio. Phone calls at that time of day were rarely good news. Dad and Mom must have had their hearts in their throats till they found out she was all right. "Thank you," Annette whispered.
"My pleasure." The secretary opened the door to Pedro Olivo's office. "Go right on in. The head of security is already in there with Mr. Olivo. Her name is Luisa Javier."
"Luisa Javier," Annette repeated so she'd remember. "Thanks."
Pedro Olivo looked like a man who ran things. He was in his fifties, with gray hair, a neatly trimmed mustache, and an expensive suit. Luisa Javier put Annette in mind of a schoolteacher. She was thin and dark and looked clever. Annette gave them only a glance apiece, though. Staring out of a big monitor were her parents. Sure enough, they looked as if they'd just got out of bed.
"Annette!" Dad exclaimed when the camera in Mr. Olivo's office picked her up. "Are you all right, sweetheart?"
"I'm not too bad," Annette answered. "I'm awful glad to be back in the home timeline again, I'll tell you that."
"What happened, darling?" Mom asked.
"Yes—what did happen?" Pedro Olivo sounded like a man who ran things, too. His voice had a let's-get-to-the-bottom-of-this tone to it. He leaned forward behind his desk.
Annette spoke to her parents: "Mom, Dad, I hope you're recording this."
They looked at each other, there on the screen. Mom reached out and flicked a switch. "Now we are," Dad said. Annette eyed the Spanish Crosstime Traffic officials. Neither of them flinched. The phone connection with the USA didn't suddenly and mysteriously break, either. She took those things as good signs.
"What happened?" she said. "You know I got caught when my folks did, right? And you know I got taken to Madrid instead of Marseille." She waited for everyone to nod. "I got sold there," she said, "and when I did. . . ."
After using their deadly toys against the locals, the guards went out to clean them up. Some of the men in mottled clothes were on foot, others on horseback. Jacques wouldn't have wanted to try to stand against them, and his countrymen knew a lot more—a lot more—about the art of war than these people did.
Because the fighting was going on, he needed a while to realize the guards and the masters had other worries, too. He found out the hard way. A guard came up to him, pointed a musket at his belly, and said, "You—come along with me."
"I didn't do anything!" Jacques squeaked—a slave's automatic protest when he got in trouble with the people in charge.
"Ha!" the guard said, and then, "You were friends with that Khadija, weren't you?"
That told Jacques what kind of trouble he was in. He wished it told him how to get out of trouble, too. No such luck there. "What if I was?" he said—he couldn't very well deny it, not when they knew better.
"That's what we're going to find out." The guard's words held a grim promise Jacques didn't like. He couldn't do anything about it, though. The guard gestured with the musket. "Come on. Get moving." Jacques went. He was sure the guard would shoot him if he tried anything else.
The man took him to a room near the masters' quarters. He'd never been there before. It had no windows, which worried him. One of the lamps that gave light without fire or smoke glowed in the ceiling. Three other guards waited there. They didn't have any torturer's tools that he could see, but he didn't think they'd invited him over to share a roast chicken and a pitcher of wine.
"Tell me everything you know about Khadija," said the guard who'd brought him there.