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...
"Tell it to the judge," the red-clad BATF agent said in a bored tone, "or pay the taxes."
"But I tell you—"
"Lady, you can either pay the five-thousand-dollar tax fine due on this jewelry, or you can turn it over to a representative of the International Federation of Art Temporally Stolen, to see that it's returned to its proper place of origin, or you can go to prison for violating the Prime Rule of time travel. You can't profit illegally from a time gate. Robert Li is the designated IFARTS agent for Shangri-La Station. His studio is in Little Agora. You have exactly a quarter of an hour to dispose of it there or pay the taxes due here."
The woman sputtered indignantly for a long moment, then snapped, "Oh, all right! Will you take a check?"
"Yes, ma'am, if you have three forms of identification with a permanent address that matches the information you gave in your records when you entered Shangri-La Station. Make it payable to the Bureau of Access Time Functions."
"Fine!" She was digging into a large, exquisitely wrought handbag. That bag had walked out of some designer's studio in Paris, or Skeeter didn't know high fashion. And since Skeeter had made it a lifelong practice to keep tabs on haute couture as well as cheap knock-offs, as a way of distinguishing rich, potential marks from wannabe pretenders, he was pretty sure it was the real McCoy. She dragged out a checkbook cover made from genuine ostrich leather with a diamond insignia in one corner and scribbled out a check. Five thousand was probably what she dropped on restaurant tables as tips in the course of an average month. Skeeter shook his head. The richer they were, the more they tried to pull, sneaking out contraband past customs.
The BATF agent verified her identification and accepted the check.
The lady stuffed her Etruscan gold back into her corset with wounded dignity and snapped shut the case, moving deeper into the departures area with an autocratic sniff.
"Next!"
Gate announcements sounded every ten minutes until the five-minute mark, after which the loudspeaker warnings began coming every minute, reminding stragglers they were running out of time. At the three-minute warning, a familiar voice from somewhere behind him startled Skeeter into glancing around.
"Skeeter!"
He caught a glimpse of Rachel Eisenstein pushing through the crowd. She was panting hard, clearly having run most of the way from the infirmary.
"Rachel? What's wrong?" He entertained momentary, panic-stricken visions of Bergitta having thrown a blood clot from that beating or something else equally life threatening. As Shangri-La's Station's chief of medicine pushed her way through to Skeeter and Molly, he grasped her hand. "What is it? What's wrong?"
Rachel blinked in startled surprise. "Wrong? Oh, Skeeter, I'm sorry, of course you'd think something's happened to Bergitta. Nothing's wrong at all, other than I just finished triage from that riot and decided I'd better work Primary, too, just in case." She patted a heavy hip pack. "Brought all the essentials. I was just trying to get here before the gate opened, hoping I might find someone I recognized who already had a good spot. Hi, Molly!"
Skeeter drew a long, deep breath and slowly relaxed. "Well, we've got a decent spot. You're welcome to share."
"Thanks, this is a great spot." Rachel pushed back damp hair from her brow. "God, I hope we don't have another riot on the heels of that mess."
"Me, either," Skeeter muttered. "Because now I've got two ladies to look out for, if the fists start flying."
The slim surgeon smiled, dark eyes sparkling. "Skeeter, I'm touched, really. I didn't know you cared. What brings you out here in all this madness?"
"Me?" Skeeter shrugged, wondering if she'd believe the truth. "I, uh, was wondering how many pickpockets and con artists I might spot on their way in."
Rachel Eisenstein shot him a surprisingly intent stare. "I have been paying attention, you know, Skeeter. I'm not sure, exactly, what triggered it, although I suspect it had something to do with Ianira."
He flushed. "You could say that." Skeeter shrugged. "I'm just trying to make things better around here. For the down-timers." He glanced at Molly, whose eyes reflected a quiet pride that closed his throat. "Folks like Molly, here, they've got a rough enough time as it is, trying to survive, without some jerk stealing them blind." Skeeter shrugged again and changed the subject. "I've been keeping count of outgoing departures. I was up to nearly a hundred before you got here. Want to bet we get more inbound than we send back outbound?"
Rachel chuckled. "No bets!"
Skeeter grinned. "Wise woman."
The klaxon sounded again, blasting away at Skeeter's eardrums. "Your attention please. Gate One is due to open in one minute. All departures, be advised that if you have not cleared Station Medical, you will not be permitted to pass Primary. Please have your baggage ready for customs..."
The departures in line hastily gathered up their luggage. Those still at the customs tables scrambled to pay the astromical taxes demanded as a condition of departure. Then the savage lash of subharmonics which heralded the opening of a major temporal gate struck Skeeter square in the skull bones. A fierce headache comprised of equal parts low blood sugar, stress, and gate subharmonics blossomed, causing him to wince. Skeeter resisted the urge to cover his ears, knowing it wouldn't shut out the painful noise that wasn't a noise, and simply waited.
The sight was always impressive as Primary opened up out of thin air. A point of darkness appeared five feet above the Commons floor. It grew rapidly, amoeba-like, its black, widening center an oil stain spreading across the air. The outer edges of the dark hole in reality dopplered through the whole visible spectrum, with the spreading fringes shimmering like a runaway rainbow. A stir ran through the spectators. Every person in the station had seen temporal gates open before, of course, but the phenomenon never failed to raise chill bumps or the fine hairs along the back of the neck as the fabric of reality shifted and split itself wide open...