Carson nodded. "Roman Gate. Some asshole tourist decided it would be fun to buy a slave and brought him through to La-La Land, then dumped him and vanished up time before the ATF could arrest him. Not only does Marcus have no legal standing whatever, he literally could never overcome the handicap he's carrying in terms of education, ingrained superstitions, what have you. He's an ancient Roman slave. And if you don't know what that means, not only here," he tapped his temple, "but also here," he tapped his heart, "then you have no business even trying to become a time scout."
"I'm not an uneducated slave dumped up time to cope with alien technology,- Margo countered. "It's a helluva lot easier to understand ancient superstitions than it is to comprehend physics and math. And I got brilliant grades in dramatics, even had a chance to work off-Broadway." The half-truth sounded convincing enough; at least her voice had held steady. "I came here, instead. Frankly, I don't see how your argument holds water."
Carson sighed "Look. First of all, there is no way I'm going to shepherd some greenhorn scout, regardless of who they are or how brilliant at dramatics they think they are, through the toughest training you've ever imagined, any more than I'm going to try to hammer some sense into that empty little head of yours."
She bristled silently.
"Second, you're a woman."
Congratulations, she fumed silently. An MCP, on top of everything else. You and my father should start a club. "I know all the arguments-"
"Do you?" Brown ayes narrowed into an intricate ladder of lines and gullies put there by too much sun and too many years of hard living. "Then you should've had the sense not to waste my time. Women can't be time scouts."
Margo's temper flared. "You're supposed to be the best there is! Why don't you stop quoting all the doomsayers and find a way! From what I've gathered, you had to retire but didn't much like it. Think what a challenge it'd be, training the first woman time scout in the business."
His eyes glinted briefly Interest? Or acknowledgement of spunk? impossible to tell .... He knocked back his bourbon and gave her a long, clear-eyed stare. Margo, determined to match him, knocked back her own. This was getting easier. Either that or her throat was numb. The edges of Carson's face had begun to waver a bit, though. Bad sign. Definitely should've had lunch.
Carson, evidently sober as a stone, tipped more bourbon into his tumbler. Gamely she held out her glass. Very gently, he closed his hand around it and pushed it to the table.
"Point one: you're drunk and don't have the sense to quit. I will not ride herd on a greenhorn trying to prove a point to the whole world." Margo flushed. "Point two: the role of women down time, just about anywhere or anywhen you might land, is ...less than what we'd consider socially respected. And women's mobility in many societies was severely limited. Then there's the problem of fashion."
Margo had thought all this through and had a counter argument ready, but Carson wasn't slowing down long enough to voice it. She sat and listened helplessly while the man whose accomplishments had given her the courage to keep going nailed down the coffin lid on her dreams.
"Women's fashions change radically from locale to locale, often from year to year. What happens if you go scouting through an unknown gate and show up a couple of centuries off in clothing style? Or maybe a whole continent off? Any idea how ridiculous you'd look in 200 B.C. China, wearing an eighteenth-century British ball gown? You'd stick out like the proverbial sore thumb. Maybe-probably, even you'd end up dead. Quite a few societies weren't real tolerant of witches."
"But-"
"At best, you'd end up in prison for life. Or even more fun, in some asshole's private harem. Just how fond of rape are you, Margo?"
She felt like he'd punched her. Painful memory threatened to break her control. Margo was shaking down to her fingertips and Carson, damn him, wasn't done yet. In fact, the look in his eyes was one of growing satisfaction as he noticed the tremor in her hand.
He leaned forward, closing in on the kill. "Point three: I will not train a nice kid and turn her over to the likes of some of the brutes I've encountered. Even the nicest down-time men often had a nasty habit of beating their favorite women for cardinal sins like talking too much. Whatever your reasons, Margo, forget 'em. Go home."
The interview was clearly over.
Kit Carson didn't quite condescend to pat her head on the way out. He left her sitting in the candlelit booth, fighting tears of rage-and worse, of crushing disappointment. Margo downed a big glass of bourbon and vowed, One day, you're gonna eat those words. Cold and raw, you'll eat 'em. She couldn't bear to glance in the direction of his friends. Margo flinched inwardly at the spate of laughter from a crowded table across the room. She closed her hand around the bourbon bottle, gripping until her fingers ached. She was not a quitter. She intended to become the world's first woman time scout. She didn't care what it took.
The bill, when Marcus the displaced slave presented it, represented a third of everything Margo possessed in the world. The bill would've been higher, but the glass of white wine didn't appear on it. She was being charged only for the bottle of bourbon. Margo groaned inwardly and dug into her belt pouch for money. How she was going to pay for a room now ...
"Well," she told herself, "time to put Plan B into operation."
Find a job and settle in for a long, hard battle to find someone willing to train her. If Kit Carson wouldn't do it, maybe someone else would. Malcolm Moore, maybe. Freelance time guide wasn't what she had in mind, but it was a start. If, of course, he could be convinced to help train his own competition ...
Margo poured another shot of bourbon. As long as she was paying for it...
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.