When the buzzer on his desk lit up and Jimmy told him Malcolm was headed up, Kit actually sagged in his chair.
"Thank God..."
He hated to lose friends.
A hesitant knock at the door signaled Malcolm's arrival.
"Come in, it's open."
The door slid back, Japanese style. Malcolm Moore glanced into the spacious office. He looked massively uncomfortable. -Uh ... you busy, Kit?"
Something in Malcolms eyes told Kit he hoped the answer would be "yes."
"No. Come on in."
Malcolm sighed, then slipped off his shoes and entered. His posture told Kit he'd rather have faced the hangman.
"I, uh ..." He faltered to a halt, staring at the floor, the walls, anywhere but at Kit.
"Malcolm, it wasn't your fault. She's a headstrong little hellion. It wasn't your fault."
A deep flush darkened the guide's cheeks. "You don't have to be nice about it, Kit. You weren't there." He shoved hands into his pockets, then paced uneasily toward the withered-sea landscape garden, leaving his back to Kit. There were holes in the toes of his socks and both heels were threadbare.
"I, uh, heard she came back. Then vanished.
"Yes," Kit said quietly. "Do you have any ideas at all?"
Malcolm halted. For just an instant his shoulders drooped. "No." Then he straightened his back again. "But I heard something odd this morning. I thought you ought to know. You know, just in case..."
"Park 'em. Talk."
Malcolm hesitated, then took the chair. But he still wouldn't meet Kit's eyes. "I was down in the gym working out. Ripley Sneed came in."
"Ripley? Where the hell has he been keeping himself? I haven't seen him in months."
Malcolm grimaced. "Went down an unknown gate and damn near didn't come back. Had some pretty wild stories to tell. Anyway, I mentioned you'd been asking about unknown gates anybody had explored recently. He said he'd gone through one a couple of months back, but it was completely worthless."
Kit frowned. "What gate? Where?"
Malcolm rubbed the fingers of one hand. "He said it opened in the back of Phil Jones' store."
"Phil Jones? Isn't he the nut who goes down time and rescues totem poles?"
"Yeah, that's the one. His shop gives me the creeps. Phil gives me the creeps. Anyway, Ripley said a small gate opened up in his storeroom. He went through, logged it, came back, told Phil the gate was useless.
"Why was it worthless? Where and when did it go?"
Malcolm glanced at his hands, pretending to inspect his fingernails. "He wouldn't say."
Kit tightened his hands down around the edge of his desk. "Ripley Sneed always was a goddamned bastard How much did he want?"
Malcolm sighed unhappily and finally met Kit's gaze. "A thousand."
"A thousand dollars? To tell me where a worthless gate leads?" Kit swore savagely. "Where is that miserly little prick now?"
"The Down Time. He's telling everyone about his adventures in the sultan's harem."
Kit rolled his eyes. "Good God. What an idiot. Okay, Malcolm. Thanks. Maybe this'll be worth it. God knows I haven't had any other clues worth following. I'm afraid she's wandered through one of the question gates without filing proper paperwork with Bull and if she's done that..."
Malcolm nodded. "You may be right." He hesitated. "Margo ... Well, she wasn't in any mood to wait any longer. Something awful happened to that kid before she came here. I'm not sure who she's trying to prove herself to, but it's riding her harder than we ever did."
Kit didn't answer. He'd spent a lot of sleepless hours doing exactly what Malcolm had been doing: blaming himself.
"That doesn't matter, does it, if she's wandered down a gate without telling anyone. She shouldn't have shadowed herself already," he said raggedly, drawing a flinch from Malcolm, "but if she's actually gone down a question gate secretly, she might as well have."
The legal consequences of stepping through an unexplored gate without filing proper forms were minuscule, a mere fine if you actually made it back alive, but the practical consequences ...
If no one knew which gate you'd gone through, no one could even mount a rescue attempt.
Kit tracked down Ripley Sneed at the Down Time Bar & Grill. Malcolm, to his surprise, followed doggedly. Kit ordered a Kirin, offered to buy one for Malcolm, then shrugged and settled into an empty chair at Ripley's table.
"Mind if we join you?"
"Sure," the scout said with a smile. "What have you been up to, Kit?"
"Oh, this and that. I hear you've been exploring unknown gates."
"Sure have," Ripley grinned. His dark hair needed washing. He smelled bad, like month-old gym socks left to soak in mare's sweat. The regulars at the Down Time had taken tables upwind of him.
Doesn't this jerk ever bathe?
"So, I hear you checked out a gate in Phil Jones' place."
Ripley took a long pull of his own beer. "Yep."
"Odd place for a gate to open up. Of course, they've opened in stranger places." Kit smiled politely.
"You're telling me. How come you're interested in gates again? Thought you'd retired?"
"Oh, just curious. I like to keep up with the business."
Ripley laughed. "You're not fooling anybody, Kit. You want to know about that gate worse than I want to get rich. It'll cost you." His eyes glinted.
"Really?" Kit leaned back and folded his hands across his belly. "You'd charge a man for information on a worthless gate? Hell, l'll just wait until it cycles again and take a look, myself."
Ripley chuckled. -Nope. You're too cautious. You've been through too damned many gates, Kit Carson. You want to step through that bad, it'll really cost you to find out whether or not you'll go `pool' before you hit the other side."
Kit restrained the urge to throttle him.
Malcolm leaned forward on his elbows. "You're an unpleasant louse for someone who just spent a week in some poor schmuck's harem, getting his wives pregnant while he was off fighting the Christians."
Ripley laughed, unoffended. "I can afford to be unpleasant. You can't." He belched. "okay, Kit, I'll tell you about the gate if I see a thousand up front."
"A hundred, tops."
They fell to serious haggling. Kit finally agreed to pay Ripley five hundred. The scout dug out his log and downloaded a file, then passed the disk over. "There it is. Enjoy."
"Thanks," Kit said dryly, passing back a check for five hundred.
"Better not bounce," Ripley said, tacking on a grin at the last moment.
"Watch your mouth," Malcolm growled.
"It's all right, Malcolm. Ripley can't help being abrasive any more than a monkey can help having fleas. Come on, let's see if I got my money's worth."
They left Ripley chuckling as he folded up Kit's check and stuffed it into his wallet.
The file contained very little information. Ripley had gone through the gate and logged for location and time: thirty-two degrees east longitude by twenty-six degrees south latitude, late September of 1542. "There's a small Portuguese trading settlement about two miles north of the gate on Delagoa Bay, Mozambique. A number of native tribal groups in the region are split between Swazi and Shona dialects.
"I see some Moslem influence from contact with Islamic traders, but not much. Relations between the indigenous peoples and the Portuguese is hostile at best. There is absolutely nothing of value to be found in this settlement. Delagoa Bay is merely a stopover to take on fresh water and food supplies for Portuguese ships headed to India. From what I've been able to gather, the Jesuits didn't even leave a mission here when Francis Xavier stopped in 1541. My conclusion is that this is an utterly worthless string not warranting further exploration."