The Time Traveller's Ball (The Erik Midgard Case Files Volume 1)

Chapter 4

IV

We rode back up in the lift in Black Hole silence. Mirabi stood with her arms folded and lips pursed, not looking in my direction. I waited a couple of minutes, until the self loathing started to become unbearable.

            “You were right,” I said.

            “Really?” she said.

            “If you had stunned all of them; we’d have been buried in lawsuits.”

            Mirabi snorted despite herself. She looked at me again with a smile and a small nod. My apology was accepted; on grounds of effort, if not quality. It was not just because we were on the case and needed to stay a team. Our partnership, our friendship, was one of the few things I had in the universe that was real. Mirabi – even though she had a complete life outside of work and a huge family – understood that and she tried, harder than was actually necessary, to live up to it. I never doubted that our bond was real. There had never been any romantic chemistry between us, but she knew all the different ways in which I needed her.

            I remained angry at myself though, because she was right about the bomb. I had been stupid. I could have set it off and killed myself and headquarters could still have brought me back; though that was hardly the right term for what they would have done. Xeroxed another copy, in XXth century slang, came closer. The prediction – the prophecy – would be intact. I had assumed. I had counted on the future; something I had once sworn to myself that I would never do. It could easily have turned around and bitten me; leaving me alone. And it still might, I reflected, as the lift climbed back towards the Ballroom. Any moment now, Helmcom was going to flash up that the ships were trying to leave again, or that multiple weapons discharges had been detected as the suspects took advantage of our absence.

            To my relief, everyone was still present in the ball room when the lift doors opened, more or less where we had left them. They were all standing in a semi-circle, watching a gripping spectacle of marital strife.

            “You two-timing witch!” shouted Brian Mammon, red in the face, hands clenched and his foot stamping. “You lying, deceitful, mendacious heart breaker!”

            “Oh, do shut up, Brian,” said Xandra, standing tall and icily serene. “We have guests. This is neither the time nor the place.”

            “What is going on?” I said, as we broke through the crowd.

            “Apparently, our hostess has been somewhat less than loyal of late,” said Lucian Hell, who was grinning as if he was watching a Shakespearian holo-comedy. “With none other than dear departed William!”

            “The time or place!?!” screamed Brian Mammon. “You told me you’d stopped! After Carlos. And Henry. And Nguyen! And the others!”

            “I told you I would stop when you removed the need,” said Xandra. “You have not.”