Margo glanced at her watch. How long had they been searching, now? Four hours, twenty minutes. Time was running out, at least for her and anyone else heading down the Britannia Gate. She bit one lip as she glanced at Shahdi Feroz, who represented in one package very nearly everything Margo wanted to be: poised, beautiful, a respected professional, experienced with temporal gates, clocking in nearly as much down time as some Time Tours guides. Time Tours had actually approached Dr. Feroz several times with offers to guide "seance and spiritualist tours" down the Britiannia. She'd turned them down flat, each and every time they'd offered. Margo admired her for sticking by her principles, when she could've been making pots and kettles full of money. Enough to fund her down-time research for the next century or two.
And speaking of down-time research...
"Kit," Margo said quietly, "we're running short of time."
Her grandfather glanced around, checked his own watch, frowned. "Yes. Skeeter, I'm sorry, but Margo and Dr. Feroz have a gate to make."
Skeeter turned his head slightly, lips compressed. "I'm supposed to work that gate, too, you know. We're almost directly under Frontier Town now. We finish this section of tunnels, then they can run along and play detective down the Britannia as much as they want."
Margo held her breath as Kit bristled silently; but her grandfather held his temper. Maybe because he, too, could see the agony in Skeeter's eyes. Kit said only, "All right, why don't you take that tunnel?" and nodded toward a corridor that branched off to the left. "Dr. Feroz, perhaps you'd go with Margo? You can discuss last-minute plans for the tour while you search."
Margo squirmed inwardly, but she couldn't very well protest. She was going to spend the next three months of her life in this woman's company. She'd have to face her sooner or later and it might as well be sooner.
Kit pointed down one of the sinuous, winding tunnels. "Take that fork off to the right. I'll go straight ahead. We'll meet you—how much farther?" he asked Skeeter.
"Fifty yards. Then we'll take the stairs up to Frontier Town."
They split up. Margo glanced at Shahdi Feroz and felt her face redden. Margo barely had a high school diploma and one semester of college. She had learned more in Shangri-La's library than she had in that stuffy, impossible up-time school. And she had learned, enormously. But after that mortifying mistake, with Shahdi Feroz correcting her misapprehension about Nichol gangs' weapons of choice, it wouldn't matter that Margo had logged nearly two-hundred hours through the Britannia or that she spoke fluent Cockney. Kit had drilled her until she could not only make sense of the gibberish that passed for Cockney dialect, but could produce original conversations in it, too. Without giving herself too savage a headache, remembering all the half-rhymes and word-replacement games the dialect required. None of that would matter, not when she'd goofed on the very first day, not when Margo's lack of a diploma left her vulnerable and scared.
Shahdi Feroz, however, surprised Margo with an attempted first gesture at friendliness. The scholar smiled hesitantly, one corner of her lips twisting in chagrin. "I did not mean to embarrass you, Miss Smith. If you are to guide the Ripper Watch Tour, then you clearly have the experience to do so."
Margo almost let it go. She wanted badly to have this woman think she really did know what she was doing. But that wasn't honest and might actually be dangerous, if they got into a tight spot and the scholar thought she knew more than she did. She cleared her throat, aware that her face had turned scarlet. "Thanks, but I'm not, really." The startled glance Dr. Feroz gave her prompted Margo to finish before she lost her nerve. "It's just that I'm in training to be a time scout, you see, and Kit wants me to get some experience doing fieldwork."
"Kit?" the other woman echoed. "You know Kit Carson that well, then, to use his first name? I wish I did."
Some of Margo's nervousness drained away. If Dr. Shahdi Feroz could look and sound that wistful and uncertain, then maybe there was hope for Margo, after all. She grinned, relief momentarily transcending worry and fear for Ianira's family. "Well, yeah, I guess you could say so. He's my grandfather."
"Oh!" Then, startling Margo considerably, "That must be very difficult for you, Miss Smith. You have my sympathy. And respect. It is never easy, to live up to greatness in one's ancestors."
Strangely, Margo received the impression that Shahdi Feroz wasn't speaking entirely of Margo. "No," she said quietly, "it isn't." Shahdi Feroz remained silent, respecting Margo's privacy, for which she was grateful. She and the older woman began testing doors they came to and jotting down the numbers painted on them, so maintenance could check the rooms later, since neither of them had keys. Margo did rattle the knobs and knock, calling out, "Hello? Ianira? Marcus? It's Margo Smith..." Nobody answered, however, and the echoes that skittered away down the tunnel mocked her efforts. She bit her lower lip. How many rooms to check, just like these, and how many miles of tunnels? God, they could be anywhere.
No, she told herself, not just anywhere. If they had been killed, the killer would either have needed keys to unlock these doors or would've had to use tools to jimmy the locks. And so far, neither Margo nor Shahdi Feroz had found any suspicious scratches or toolmarks indicating a forced door. So they might still be alive.
Somewhere.
Please, God, let them still be alive, somewhere...
Their tunnel twisted around, following the curve of the cavern wall, and re-joined the main tunnel fifty yards from the point they'd left it. Kit was already there, waiting. Skeeter, grim and silent, arrived a moment later.
"All right," Skeeter's voice was weary with disappointment, "that's the whole section we were assigned." The pain in his voice jerked Margo out of her own worry with a stab of guilt. She hadn't lost anything, really, in that goof with Shahdi Feroz, except a little pride. Skeeter had just lost his only friends in the whole world.
"I'm sorry, Skeeter," she found herself saying, surprising them both with the sincerity in her voice.
Skeeter met her gaze steadily for a long moment, then nodded slowly. "Thanks. I appreciate that, Margo. We'd better get back up to Commons, get ready to go through the Britannia." He grimaced. "I'll carry the luggage through, because I agreed to take the job. But I won't be staying."
No, Margo realized with a pang. He wouldn't. Skeeter would come straight back through that open gate and probably kill himself searching, with lack of sleep and forgetting to eat... . They trooped wordlessly up the stairs to the boisterous noise of Frontier Town. With the Wild West gate into Denver set to open tomorrow, wannabe cowboys in leather chaps and jingling spurs sauntered from saloon to saloon, ogling the bar girls and pouring down cheap whiskey and beer. Rinky-tink piano music drifted out through saloon doors to mingle with the voices of tourists speculating on the search underway, the fate of the construction workers who'd attacked Ianira, her family, and her acolytes, on the identity of the Ripper, and what sights they planned to see in Denver of 1885 and the surrounding gold-mining towns.
In front of Happy Jack's saloon, a guy with drooping handlebar mustaches, who wore an outlandish getup that consisted of low-slung Mexican sombrero, red silk scarf, black leather chaps, black cotton shirt, black work pants tucked into black, tooled-leather boots, and absurdly roweled silver spurs, was staggering into the crowd, bawling at the top of his lungs. "Gonna win me that medal, y'hear? Joey Tyrolin's the name, gonna win that shootin' match, l'il lady!"
He accosted a tourist who wore a buckskin skirt and blouse. She staggered back, apparently from the smell of his breath. Joey Tyrolin, drunker than any skunk Margo had yet seen in Frontier Town, drew a fancy pair of Colt Single-Action Army pistols and executed an equally fancy roadhouse spin, marred significantly by the amount of alcohol he'd recently consumed. One of the .45 caliber revolvers came adrift mid-air and splashed into a nearby horse trough. Laughter exploded in every direction. A scowl as dark as his clothes appeared in a face that matched his red silk bandanna.