"I, uh, think I'll try the yakitori," Kit hastily amended, trying to suppress a grin. "Talk to Bull Morgan about the problem."
"I have," Keiko said sourly as he fixed Kit's lunch. "He says, let them eat my fish. He will pay me. This does not make my customers happy when they steal my fish and leave messes!"
There was- no doubt about the messes. Paper parasols, particularly those with hideous monster faces painted on top-had become all the rage in La-La Land. Kit stole a glance over his shoulder at the pterodactyls and the primitive birds busy swooping and diving on La-La Land's ornamental fish ponds, sidewalk cafes, and open air food stands and grinned. Half the people in sight carried open parasols.
Across the nearest pond a very elderly japanese man missing a couple of fingertips (and probably tattooed over his entire body) cursed at one of the Ichthyornises when it dove after a goldfish he'd been admiring, not only swallowing it in two gulps but splashing his suit in the process of flapping away again. Its feathers were so waterlogged, the primitive, short-tailed bird made it only as far as the top of a nearby shrub, where it spread wings to dry in the manner of cormorants or anhingas. The singular difference was a beak filled with extremely sharp teeth.
That tooth-filled beak--and an angry hiss--changed the elderly gentleman's mind when he advanced, evidently intent on wringing its neck. His subsequent retreat was calculated to look thoughtful and planned. Kit managed not to laugh. He'd never seen a yakuza thug back down from a bird. Kit felt like cheering.
"Thanks," he said when Keiko handed him a plate filled with rice and barbecued chicken chunks on little wooden skewers. "Mmm..."
He strolled over to a seat and hurried through his lunch while tourists snapped photos of the Ichthyornis drying its wings. Sue Fritchey was sweating it out until Primary cycled again, waiting for a message from colleagues up time about La-La Land's newest residents. The giant pterosaur was supposedly recovering just fine from its adventure and was eating all the fish they could toss into its enormous beak. They'd urgently need a resupply of fish by the time Primary cycled, what with a thirty-foot fish eater and two separate flocks of smaller ones to keep happy.
Bull had given standing orders that station personnel were to secure fish from any down-time gate that opened. What would happen if they couldn't get permission to ship the beasts to an up-time research facility? ...
Kit had visions of shopkeepers like Keiko buying shotguns.
Knowing Bull, he'd order an enormous fish tank constructed somewhere in the Commons and stock it with several thousand fish, then sell tickets to the feeding shows and lectures. Kit grinned. Sounded like a good subject for a quiet bet or two.
He finished his lunch and headed downstairs to the weapons ranges. Margo was just getting started with Ann when she glanced up. She flushed when she saw him.
"Hi," he smiled, trying to sound friendly.
"Hi." Her closed expression said "I resent you checking up on me."
Well, that was exactly what he was doing and he had no intention of backing down.
"Hi, Kit," Ann said with a friendly nod. "Have a seat."
"Thanks." He settled on one of the benches at the back of the range and slipped in foam hearing protectors.
Ann started Margo off with a relatively "modern" topbreak revolver, double-action, very similar to the one Malcolm said she'd been unable to use in London. Margo donned eye and hearing-protection equipment. Ann did the same and ran out a target, then said, "Whenever you're ready."
Margo took her time and placed five of the six on the paper-but nowhere near the center.
"Front sight," Ann said patiently. "concentrate on the front sight."
Margo opened the action and dumped out the spent brass. "I thought the whole sight picture was important."
"It is, but the front sight is critical. As long as the front sight is placed properly, your rear sight can be slightly off and you'll still hit near what you're shooting at. But let that front sight drift off, and it won't matter how perfectly your rear sight is aligned, either with the target or with the front sight. You'll miss, clean."
Margo tried again. She was still flinching, but the shots were a little closer together.
"All right, unload the brass and hand me the pistol."
"Why?" Margo asked curiously.
Ann took the pistol-offered, Kit noticed approvingly, in the roper manner, action open, muzzle down. "You've developed a who ping flinch. So we'll do a ball-and-dummy drill. I'll load the pistol for you."
Ann turned away, blocking the gun from Margo's immediate view, then handed it back. "All right. Let's see how bad that flinch is."
Margo fired the first round with a solid bang. The second time, the pistol only went click-and the barrel jerked about an inch anyway.
"Oh!" Margo gasped. "I did that, didn't I?"
"Yes. You're anticipating the noise and the recoil. This drill will help you learn to pull through smoothly without flinching, because you'll never know which chamber might be loaded or empty"
Ann put her through a solid twenty minutes of ball-and-dummy drills. By the end, Margo had developed a much smoother trigger pull and her group size shrank considerably.
"Very good." Ann pulled in the target and ran out a new one. "Now, concentrate on that front sight."
Another fifteen minutes, and the spread of Margo's shots was down to six inches at six yards. Not exactly impressive, but an improvement. Ann drilled her on front sight for another ten minutes, then let her take a short break. Margo pulled off the protective eyeglasses and earmuffs and ruffled her hair. Kit regretted the necessity to dye it. She looked like an abandoned waif with, pale skin and dark hair, but it was far safer for her.
The discouragement in her eyes needed dispelling, though.
"You're doing well," Kit said when she glanced his way.
Margo flushed again, but from pleasure this time. "I'm working hard on it."
Kit nodded. "You keep practicing, you'll get much better. Maybe Malcolm will even win that bet."
Margo's whole face went scarlet. "You heard about that."
Kit laughed. "Margo, everyone in La-La Land heard about it."
"That'll teach me to make bets," she said ruefully.
"All right," Ann said, coming back with another case, "back to work. Now we take a step backwards in time. Muzzle-loading black-powder firearms were more common far longer than metallic-cartridge, breechloading guns. Metallic cartridges didn't become common until the 1870's. The little, low-powered rimfire and pin-fire cartridges date from the decade before the American Civil War, but they were nowhere nearly as common as percussion-fired, muzzle-loading blackpowder guns. Flintlock and matchlock guns in particular had a longer period of use than cartridge guns. You'll need to know how to handle these firearms and they're a bit more complicated to use."
Margo gave Ann a brave smile. "All right. Show me."
"We start with a little demonstration."
Ann shook out a thin line of various types of powders: smokeless rifle powders, smokeless pistol powders, then black powder. "Modern, smokeless powders are not explosive. They burn. They don't explode. The priming compound in the base of the cartridge case is a chemical explosive, but it's a tiny, tiny amount of it. All the primer does is create the spark of flame needed to start the powder burning. This is modern pistol powder and this is modern rifle powder. Now this," Ann pointed, "is black powder. Unlike modern powders, it is explosive. It burns far, far faster and is much more dangerous, particularly under compression. Watch."
She lit a long match and touched it to the end of the line of powders. The modern rifle powder flared and burned slowly, the pistol powder burned a good bit faster-then the black powder flashed wildly, gone in a split second.
"Good God!"