"Move!" Skeeter snarled. He dodged around the confusion, Marcus at his heels, and dove into the Time Tours wine shop. He cold-cocked the guard at the sound-proofed door, then yanked it open and ran inside, a juggernaut that no one in the room could stop. He was aware of Marcus at his heels. New arrivals were already pushing their way into the shop, creating confusion, but Skeeter plowed right through them, as well. Cries of protest rose behind him, some of. them from Time Tours guides, then he glanced around, making sure of Marcus, grabbed him by the arm just to be sure, and dove headfirst through the gate. The sensation of falling was genuine: the moment his body hurtled through the portal, he fell flat on the steel grid and rolled violently into the solid railing with leftover momentum.
Marcus slammed into him in much the same manner.
Sirens were already sounding. Skeeter didn't care.
"we did it!"
Then he gulped. He'd have an awful fine to pay, crashing the monumentally expensive Porta Romae twice, plus Marcus' fine, which Skeeter had already decided was his own responsibility to pay for having let him down so badly earlier.
"C'mon," Skeeter said more quietly. "Might as well go down and confess to Mike Benson and take our punishment, 'fore they come and slap us in handcuffs."
Marcus' eyes showed fear for just a moment fear, Skeeter realized, that was focused on him, not for his own sake-then he nodded and pushed himself painfully up while Skeeter grabbed for the railing and hauled himself to his own feet. In the crowd below, Mike Benson stood out like an angry beacon. Security men were converging on all the ramps. Skeeter sighed, then started down the one closest to Benson. Marcus followed silently.
The return of Marcus and Skeeter was a nine-day wonder, even for TT-86, which always had something exotically strange to gossip about. But their return, together-that was something unheard of in the station's annals. An uptimer crashing a gate, remaining missing for a whole month, then crashing the gate again, with the missing downtimer? It was a thing to twist and turn and talk and argue over endlessly, late into the station's night and on into the early morning hours, the passage of time hardly noticed under the eternal glow of the Commons' lights. Everyone wondered-and laid bets on how long Marcus and Skeeter would be quarantined in one of Mike Benson's unpleasant cells.
Many another wager was laid on how soon Benson would kick Skeeter's backside through Primary into the waiting arms of prison guards.
The 'eighty-sixers waited, laid their bets, and talked the subject to death with one theory after another to explain the inexplicable why.
And just outside Benson's office door, a gathering of silent downtimers, including Ianira Cassondra and her beautiful little daughters, sat blocking the door, waiting for news or sitting in protest, nobody was quite certain. Many an 'eighty-sixer had been shocked that the downtimers, previously regarded as nonentities, had managed to organize themselves enough to hold a silent but well-orchestrated "sit-in" vigil that Gandhi himself would've been proud to claim.
More than a few bets were wagered on that, alone.
Inside Benson's interrogation room, an exhausted, pain-riddled Skeeter Jackson went through the whole story again, aching from the cut in his side, bruises sustained in the arena and their flight from the Circus, even from rough scrapes and tiny, stinging nicks along his scalp. Bronze razors were not particularly kind to the skin. Skeeter was so tired, he wasn't even certain how many times Benson had forced him to repeat his story. A bunch, anyway. Hours and hours of it. His body cried out for sleep: healing, heavenly sleep. How long he'd been here, he didn't know, but Skeeter's bleary vision spotted the strain in Benson's bloodshot eyes, on his sagging cheek muscles. He, too, was clearly fighting sleep.
Marcus, defiant to the last, had submitted under protest to the drugged-interrogation method Benson felt necessary to get at the truth. Skeeter, as an uptimer, was safe from such tactics, but Marcus had no such protection, no rights to keep the needles out of his arms. He, too, repeated his story again and again, including his re-enslavement, his discovery of Skeeter amongst the caged men and beasts he was inventorying, then the rest of it, which matched Skeeter's so closely, that despite the grueling hours of interrogation, Skeeter knew Benson had not a shred of a discrepancy. When his final, drug-induced, mumble story ended, Marcus collapsed, boneless and silent, across the table, perhaps into a coma or a fetal withdrawal to escape this unexpected torture instead of the joyful celebration of homecoming they'd both longed for.
Skeeter managed through a slurred, furred tongue, to get out the question, "What now? Hot boiling g goddamned oil?" He would cheerfully have killed Benson if he'd been able to move. But he knew if he tried to stand up, he'd crash to the floor.
"Lookit him." Skeeter more or less nodded toward Marcus, who still lay collapsed across the interrogation table, oblivious to everything-including Skeeter's continued suffering.
"Gonna kill us both, Benson, to get your goddamned truth out of us? You'd like killing me, wouldn't you? Wouldn't you, Benson?"
An odd flicker ran through Mike Benson's exhausted eyes.
"Before this," he, too, gestured awkwardly toward Marcus' inert figure, "I ... I just dunno. You're a thieving rat. Put a lot of rats like you in jail, while I still wore a City badge. Nothin' but scum of the earth, those bastards." He sat and looked unblinkingly at Skeeter. "But this.. ." He gestured toward Marcus. "This changes the whole thing, doesn't it?"
"Does it?" Skeeter asked, exhaustion causing his voice to quiver. "Aren't I still just a thieving rat, Benson? Can't have it both goddamned ways. Either I'm worthless scoundrel or I finally managed to do something decent-something you're ripping to fucking shreds."
Mike Benson scrubbed his face and eyes with both hands. "Not thinkin' straight," he muttered, to which Skeeter added a silent, snarled Amen, you stinking pig. Benson said through his hands, "Yeah. It does make a difference, Jackson. To me, anyway. Can't figure why you did it, what was in it for you, but your story's consistent and airtight with his." He nodded toward Marcus.
Benson sat back in his chair, letting both hands fall to his lap. "All right, Skeeter. You can go now. Your pal, too. I'll, uh, speak to Time Tours about the fines for crashing the gate, seeing as how it really was a mission of mercy."
Skeeter just looked at him. Benson's face flushed. He refused to meet Skeeter's eyes. "Can't promise anything, you realize; it's their gate and Granville Baxter ... well, Bax is under tremendous pressure during the holiday season and Time Tours has laid down some new rules he's going to have to enforce, despite the fact they're just not enforceable." He sighed, evidently gathering from Skeeter's closed, set expression that Skeeter didn't give a damn what Bax's management problems were.
"Anyway, Skeeter, I can be pretty persuasive. And so can Bull-and I expect he will be very persuasive when I make my report." Again, Skeeter simply blinked and looked at him. Does he honestly think this bullshit makes up for the last God-knows-how-many hours?
"Huh," was all he could find to say. Short, derisive, and abrasive.
Benson had the good grace to flush. He looked away and muttered, "Need help getting home?"
Skeeter desperately wanted to grab Benson's shirt collar and shout, "No, you stinking bully!" Pride alone demanded it. But his strength was shot and he knew it. And there was poor Marcus to consider. "Yeah," he finally muttered. "Yeah, I could use some help." He continued without a hint of a smile anywhere in him. "Don't think I could walk across this room on my own, thanks to your hospitality."
Benson flushed again, darker this time. He dropped his eyes to his own hands, knotted on his side of the tabletop.