Madman's Dance (Time Rovers #3)(73)

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Not to them. Why else would TPB have issued an Open Force Warrant with her name on it?”

Hamilton was right.

“We need damage control, sir,” Fulham counseled. “We need the public to know who’s the victim here. It may be very important down the line.”

“Exactly what I was thinking.” Morrisey swiveled toward Hamilton. “Get the real story out there; just don’t mention the Null Mem treatment yet. That’s our ace in the hole.”

“On the message boards?”

“No. Go where you and Miss Lassiter are known. They’ll trust your word better if they hear it in person. ”

Hamilton thought for a second. “The Time Pod. All the Rovers and groupies go there.”

“Then do it. It’s time to strike back.”

The favorite bar of both the Rovers and their groupies, the Time Pod was the marketing ploy of a man who’d made only one trip into the stream and then realized that time travel scared the living hell out of him. Dan Mead promptly resigned his job and opened the bar. It’d been an immediate success, and now the guy was earning way more than he would have as a Senior Rover.



“Hey, Ralph!” the owner called out from behind the cherry wood bar. He was still thin as a pipe stem. Ralph had always joked that Dan and Cynda had been separated at birth.

“Hi Dan, how’s it going?”

“Good. Eisler Lager?”

“Yup. Full pint this time.”

“So when are you going to come to work for me?”

That was a recurring proposition, one that Ralph had never taken seriously…until now.

“Don’t know. Maybe soon,” he replied. He’d had about as much of Morrisey as he could handle. It was like working for Albert Einstein and Marie Curie’s love child.

“How’s it goin’ at TEM? Is Morrisey like they say?”

“Worse,” Ralph replied, waiting as the amber fluid rolled into the glass.

“What’s this I heard about your buddy, Lassiter? Do they really have an OFW out on her?”

“Yup. I don’t know why they’re bugging her.”

Dan placed the pint on the bar with a grin. “On the house.” His way of garnering information from those in the know. He lowered his voice. “So what’s really goin’ on?”

Ralph took a sip of the beer and leaned closer. “You won’t believe it.”

“Try me.”

Later, Ralph settled himself in his favorite corner under the giant movie poster of H.G. Wells’ Time Machine, the 2029 version. Dan was already moving the tale along, customer by customer. A few were Rovers, and that was the key. Every now and then, someone would shoot Ralph a questioning look and he’d nod. If they wanted more details, they’d come to him.

The bar began to fill up, like someone had fired a starting pistol. It was easy to tell the groupies as they came in two flavors—the geeks and the women. Not that women couldn’t be geeks, but it just seemed to fall out that way.



He glanced up at The Wall, as it was called. It was like a scoreboard, but the Rovers were the players and the groupies were the ones who awarded the points. The Emeritus Section was for those who’d contributed the most to the profession. Harter Defoe was the only name listed. Time Rover One was the perennial favorite, not subject to the day-to-day rankings. He would always be Rover One, if nothing more than for having the sheer balls to take the first inter-dimensional trip.

The In the Stream section changed on a daily, if not hourly, basis. Currently, a Rover named Hubbard sat in First Place. Ralph had never heard of him. The run report that had moved him so far up the rankings was blinking below his name. On a whim, Ralph tapped on the console embedded in the table to download it.

It was pretty compelling: Hubbard had managed to save a tourist from the jaws of a Bengal Tiger in 1864 India, without harming the animal. Since the tourist in question was the son of a prominent politician and Bengal Tigers were nearly extinct in 2057, he’d received quadruple points.

Cynda was in seventh place and sinking rapidly. That trend had begun even before the bad press. Arguably the best Rover besides Defoe, she rarely broadcast her exploits and resisted having her run reports uploaded to the TimersNet. That had been a longstanding point of contention between them. He’d always ascribed to the “if you’ve got it, flaunt it” philosophy. If the groupies didn’t know what she’d done, she couldn’t rise on the list.

There was another entry in the Memorial section. Ralph didn’t need to download the final run report to know the specifics of Chris Stone’s death. Cynda had told him everything. It still hurt. He’d liked Stone a lot. Chris been good for Cynda and for a time Ralph had thought she’d finally found her guy. Then he was gone.

What a lousy way to die. Beaten, overdosed on chloral hydrate, then dumped into the Thames. It was a miracle she’d ever found his body.



His attention moved to the Deserves to Be Lost in Time section. That was always good for a laugh. Davies, the head of TPB, was on there, posted anonymously, probably by some furious Rover who’d been fined for violating some mindless regulation. Chris’ killer was there too. Dalton Mimes had six times as many votes as the chairman of the Time Protocol Board and was currently in the lead. The time periods suggested for Mimes’ trip all had one thing in common: zero survivability.