"Hello," she said, from halfway across the room, "I'm looking for Kit Carson. I was told he might be here."

Ann and Rachel exchanged glances. Even Bax lifted one brow. "No," he said in a friendly fashion. "I'm afraid he isn't, unless he's in back playing billiards."

The young woman swung around, clearly ready to interrupt the game in progress. Every male eye in the room followed the swing of her short skirt.

"No, he isn't back there," Ann said, forestalling her. "That's Skeeter and Goldie, trying to out scam one another."

The crack of billiard balls underscored the statement: The red-haired girl all but scowled. "Any idea how I can find him? It's important."

"Well," Bax scratched the back of his head, "you could pull up a chair and wet your throat until he gets here." He looked hopeful. "He'll be here, probably sooner than later. Kit always stops by, especially on gate days."

Whoever she was, this girl didn't look in the mood to hang around and wait. Marcus, in his delightfully accented English, volunteered, "He has the hotel. He is there?"

Her eyes brightened. "Hotel? Which hotel?"

Sven set his mug on the table with a faint click of glass on wood. "The Neo Edo. It's right on the Commons, down by the big fish pond, with an entrance that looks like-"

She was gone before he could finish.

"Well," he said into the astonished silence.

Before anyone else could speak, Malcolm Moore stepped into the bar. He was still dressed for business and wore a wicked grin. "I see by the open mouths you've all met Margo. Anybody find out why she's looking for Kit?"

"Margo? You know her?" Bax demanded. "Who is she?"

Malcolm dragged over an empty chair. Ann highsigned Marcus for another beer. "No," he admitted with a chagrined air, "I don't know her. She came barreling through Primary and collared me right off, asking about Kit, then promptly got lost back in Residential looking for the Down Time. I was hoping maybe she'd told you guys why she wants to find Kit. Prickly little cactus blossom, isn't she?"

Sven laughed at the look on Granville Baxter's face. "Bax, she'd put you in an early grave. Stick to Time Tours if you want to die young."

Bax shot him a look of utter disgust and studied his beer.

"Well," Malcolm nodded thanks when Marcus brought him a chilled mug, "I get the feeling things are going to be lively for a while." He saluted the group with his beer and grinned.

"You," Sven Bailey muttered, just said a freakin' mouthful. The sixty-four thousand dollar question is, do we warn Kit?"

Ann and Rachel exchanged glances, Bax choked on his beer, and across the bar even Marcus started to laugh. Malcolm chuckled. "Poor Kit. Well, let's put it to a vote, shall we? All in favor?"

Solemnly, but with eyes twinkling, Kit's friends cast their votes with their hands. Malcolm plucked a few threads from the raveling hem of his tunic. "Short thread does the honors."

Malcolm, of course, came up short. As always. He sighed, took the inevitable ribbing with a long drag at his beer, and headed for the phone.

Government paperwork was only one of many things about running a time-terminal hotel which Kit Carson hated. A laundry list of his favorite complaints, carefully filed away in one corner of his mind where they wouldn't distract, included laundry bills, the price of food brought in past customs, the cost of replacing towels, ashtrays, and plumbing fixtures carted off by the guests, a work force likely to vanish at a moment's notice, crushing boredom interspersed with ulcer-generating crises, and-near the top of the list tourists.

Paperwork, however, was the thing he despised most.

He'd almost rather have returned to academia.

The Neo Edo's executive office, larger than some modern, up-time homes, was one of the features of his current career that made it tolerable. His office boasted a video wall with panoramic real-time views of the Commons and equally panoramic taped views of multiple down-time vistas. A wet bar stocked with illegal bottles of liquid ambrosia (which both Kit and his predecessor, the builder of Neo Edo, had brought back up time) was available any time the job grew too hairy.

Priceless paintings and art treasures rescued from palaces, destroyed by the Onin Wars in fifteenth century Kyoto graced Kit's office, which also boasted pristine tatami rice mats on the floor and the clean, uncluttered look of sliding paper-screen walls and delicately carved woodwork.

The office's best feature, however, was a recessed light well which cast realistic-looking "daylight" over a miniature Japanese dry-landscape garden. The serene arrangement of raked white sand, upright stones, and elegantly clipped topiary which filled an entire corner of the office rested the eyes and soothed the soul.

It was Kit's salvation on paperwork days. He would periodically sit back in his chair, nurse a good bourbon, and contemplate the symbolic "islands" the rock formations represented, floating in their withered "sea" of sand. It gave Kit intense pleasure to symbolically consign the drafters of the requisite government forms to a long life marooned on one of those miniature desert islands, without hope of rescue.

Talk about the perfect Zen hell ....

The phone call interrupted him halfway through a form designed to require an entire battery of expensive lawyers to decipher. Kit grinned despite the fact that the call had come through on the "Panic Button." He tucked the receiver between shoulder and ear, allowed his gaze to stray to the corner garden, and said, "Yeah, Jimmy?"

Jimmy Okuda, at the front desk, was the only person with direct access to that particular intercom line. A call on the Panic Button usually meant another jump in Kit's blood pressure; today, the distraction was more than welcome.

"Call from Malcolm Moore, Kit."

"Malcolm?" What was Jimmy doing, buzzing him on the Panic Button for a call from Malcolm Moore? "Uh ...put him through."

An outside line flashed as Jimmy transferred the call. What on earth could Malcolm Moore want? Kit had offered him a job more than once, only to be refused politely but firmly. Kit pressed the button. "Malcolm? Hello, what can I do for you?"

"Kit, sorry to interrupt whatever you're doing, but you're going to have a visitor in about five minutes."

"Oh?" Malcolm's tone invited all sorts of speculation. From the background noise, Malcolm was calling from the Down Time. That could mean anything might be on its way. Just as Kit had started reviewing lethal potentialities from his down-time adventures-and wondering where he'd left the soft body armor he'd used in his scouting days-Malcolm said, "An up-timer's looking for you."

"Up-timer?"

Malcolm chuckled thinly. "Some day, Kit, I will get you to tell me about that deal in Bangkok. Yeah,. an uptimer. Real impatient, too. We took a vote and decided you deserved a warning before this one collared you." Malcolm was laughing at some inside joke to which Kit was clearly not privy.

"Uh-huh. Thanks, I think."

"Don't mention it. What're friends for? Relieve our curiosity, would you? Sven says he'll buy, if you'll tell."

Kit raised a brow. If Sven Bailey was that curious, something decidedly odd was up. "I'll let you know. Thanks for the warning."

Malcolm hung up. Kit shoved back his chair. Whoever was on his way, meeting the guy face to face, cold, was not Kit's idea of good strategy. He paused at the doorway to slip on his shoes, thought about his attire and hastily exchanged his comfortable kimono for a business jacket and slacks, then headed down to Neo Edo's main desk. "Jimmy, Malcolm says an up-time visitor is headed this way. Tell 'em I'm out, would you? I want to be scarce for a few minutes. Lay a false trail or something."