The Time Thieves

The following story is based on a prompt by @cranksfk, as part of a story exchange. It contains some damsel-in-distress bondage and humiliation, although it's pretty mild on that front. Apologies also to the great science-fiction author Connie Willis, whose wonderful time-travelling universe I've ripped off quite shamelessly.

1. (December 2115)

"She means to retire?"

"That's what I heard."

"To do what, by heavens? Visit the sick? Play at bezique? Practise her needlepoint?"

Sofia Criblace's notions of retirement, insofar as she grasped the concept at all, were a little old-fashioned. But then again, so was she; despite looking like a beautiful woman in her mid-twenties, she had married Mr Criblace well over 300 years ago. It had not been a successful union, but she still missed him.

"I can't imagine Lady Schrapnell as an old-age pensioner," Rachel agreed. "I don't think she's happy unless she's telling someone off."

"My dear, what makes you imagine she intends to stop?"

Rachel smiled. "Yes, I see what you mean. Although she might want to take that into account when choosing when to retire to. Opinionated women haven't always been popular."

"Oh la, that shall not be a problem; and after all she is vastly genteel for an American. I believe she shall choose the late nineteenth century. They survived 60 years of female monarchy. They ought to be able to live with Lady Schrapnell."

One of the perks of working for the Chrono Acquisitions Department, or CAD, was that you were allowed to retire to the time period of your choice. Provided the techs could find a way to slot you in without creating a paradox, of course.

"But who shall supply her place once she is gone?" asked Mrs Criblace. "They will bring in Robespierre from CED, I suppose."

"They want to promote internally."

"Lord! Then that means..."

"Either you or Putnam."

"That boring old baggage. Heavens, can you imagine?"

"I'd rather not."

2.

"Retiring? Be thou certain?"

"She wants something in the late nineteenth."

"A Plague on her. I suppose they shall bring in Robespierre; and this Department goeth down yonder Toilet, by God."

"My friend in personnel says Robespierre wants Paradox Analysis."

"Then that means..."

"Either you or Criblace."

"That perfum'd Drab? God forbid!"

"The mind boggles."

3.

The briefing room was as full as Rachel had ever seen it. All five active agents were there, of course; even Miller, the new recruit, unshaven and nursing a very obvious hangover. He'd spent most of the week in 10th-century Denmark, Rachel remembered. The techs were there in force, too, even though they usually skipped briefings, along with most of costume and the entire linguistic team. Everyone wanted to hear the news.

"Yes, yes, sit down and shut up," said Lady Schrapnell impatiently. She was a formidable American with grey hair and a disinclination to suffer fools or take prisoners. "You can have personal conversations on your own time, thank you very much. Mr Miller, leave that young lady alone. Miss White, kindly stop making eyes at Mr Miller."

"Sorry, Lady Schrapnell," said Rachel. The accusation was wholly unjust, but there was no point disagreeing. Lady Schrapnell was convinced that half the department was madly in love with the other half, and that nobody was doing any work.

"I suppose you have heard by now, office gossip being what it is, that I intend to retire," she said. "The rumour is true. God knows I've earned a break from you people. Put that phone

down

, thank you. However, I do not want this to be a distraction from your work. There are three assignments left this quarter and I expect them all to be completed to the standards for which this department has become known.

"Management have asked for my thoughts on the matter of my successor. I have not yet made my recommendation; but it will not surprise you to learn that performance in the remaining assignments will have a strong influence on my exit report. That is all."

4. (June 1670)

There was a gentle fizzing sound and a slight smell of elderberries, and the air shimmered. Rachel felt sick and dizzy, managing just barely to refrain from vomiting. This was her thirty-third jump, and she could never quite get used to it.

Emerging from the portal, which had been prudently sited at the end of an alley, Rachel looked about and tried to see if there had been any slippage. It was supposed to be the 12th of June, but specific days were difficult to check in pre-19th drops. (Even in later periods, Rachel thought to herself irritably, one very rarely happened across convenient newspapers supplying the date and mission-relevant information about damaged clock towers and presidential theatre visits. Her experience was that time travel involved even more guesswork than flying.) But it was certainly summer, and plainly Port Mahon, which was a good start.

The techs had planned the drop to give Rachel a cushion of 6 days before the arrival of the

Rose Revived

, which ought to be fine. Slippage had been known to run into years - a CED assignment to the Kehlsteinhaus before the principles of time travel were fully understood had aimed for April 1939 and arrived there in the late 40s - but this only applied to nexuses of historical importance. There was nothing within a decade and 100 miles of the drop that warranted slippage of more than a few hours.

It was a short walk to the seafront, and the combination of hot sun and cool breeze was very pleasant. The costume wasn't bad either: snug leather britches and boots, a loose white shirt and a short plain corset. Far more comfortable and practical, at any rate, than the stays and bustles which Rachel was often forced to endure. Time travel was easier for men.

"A pretty young Wench she be and no Mistake," came a voice, and Rachel sighed, looking around warily. This was another hazard of female time travel. She undoubtedly

was

pretty, with dark wavy hair and large eyes, but she suspected that men of earlier centuries would say the same thing about anyone not visibly stricken with the pox. "A veritable Jezebel, i' faith," the voice continued, "to warm my Bed." And Rachel saw the speaker, stumbling out of a tavern: a young man, little more than a boy in fact, with a deep tan and every sign of secondary syphilis. She shuddered.

"Get thee hence, Boy," she said firmly, "and speak ye not to them as seek ye not." Why was she rhyming? She cursed inwardly, wishing she had spent longer in the language trainer.

"Ah, be kind to a poor Sailor," said the boy sentimentally, "and he away at Sea these past three Months and more. Wench, a Kiss!"

"You be not in need of a Wench, Boy, but a Lesson in Manners."

"And ye propose to teach me, I suppose? Ha ha ha!"

He stumbled forwards, reaching out, dangerous, a problem. Rachel looked around for an exit, but two more sailors had emerged from the shadows and were leering at her. There was no alternative but to fight. She drew her cutlass.

"I shall not warn ye again," she cried. "Get thee hence."

"Oh Madam, be thou kind, by God," he said, producing a wicked-looking dagger from his boot. But the boy was drunk, and Rachel had worked hard on her fencing. It was not a fair fight, and before long her blade was placed carefully just below his Adam's apple.

"I yield!" he piped, and the two other sailors expressed a disinclination to prolong matters.

"Kindly direct me, Gentlemen, to the Port," she said, "and give me thy Assurance not to trouble me further."

"I give it, and gladly," squeaked the boy, "for I mean to travel in the said Direction myself, lest the

Rose

should leave without me; and I penniless and left ashore with no Friend to plead my Case, for Shame."

5.

Evidently it was

not

the twelfth; it was the eighteenth, and Rachel had cut things alarmingly fine. Almost a week of slippage with no nearby nexus was unheard of. Somebody had miscalculated badly, and that somebody would lose their job, if Lady Schrapnell heard about it. Which she would, inevitably.

Accompanied by the sailors, who now regarded her with a curious admixture of lust and awe - no matter which historical period you visited, she found, men looked at your bottom and thought you couldn't tell; it was almost endearing - Rachel made her way to the seafront where the

Rose Revived

lay at anchor. The historians had explained that the vessel would stay for less than a day: long enough to take on water and a few casks of salt beef and gunpowder, and no more. Time was of the essence.

The captain of the vessel was standing by the ship with her arms folded, superintending the loading of supplies. The fact that she was a woman was remarkable enough; but her long blonde hair and flawless fair complexion made her stick out like a sore thumb among the port riff-raff. Rachel marched up to her and presented her compliments, while her three attendant sailors stood awkwardly and pretended not to be there.

"What be the Meaning of this, Mr Smith?" the captain demanded. Rachel noticed that her cheek flushed slightly as she said this. She really was

very

pretty.

"This Wench wishes to meet ye, Captain," Smith muttered.

"Why, by God?"

"A Berth, sweet Lady," Rachel interrupted. "Pipe me aboard, Captain, and I will earn my Gold, by God's Wounds. I can hand a Rope with the best of 'em, and I thrash'd these green Boys without breaking Sweat; I can be of use in a Fight. And in other Ways, perhaps." She winked.

"Hmmm." The captain blushed a little more, then looked around at the first mate, a colossal, bearded redhead looming over her shoulder, who nodded. "We are short by a Hand or two, or I'd send you away with a Flea in yer Ear. I'll give ye a Chance; but be warn'd that Mr Quint here is a mean Hand with the Cat."

6.

The assignment was a book. It was nearly always a book, in Rachel's experience. She didn't see the attraction: even in her own time they had been dropping out of use, and by 2115 they were completely unknown outside of museums. If she wanted to read in her spare time, she used a neuro-pod like a normal person.

The book was known as The Pendejo's Bible, and like most valuable copies of that holy tome, it was valuable because of a misprint: in this case, every instance of the name "Jesus" had been accidentally replaced by "Julio!", including the exclamation mark. This baffling error had cost the printer, one Julio Zubizarreta, ten dollars and his right hand, and the edition had been brutally suppressed... with only one copy known to have survived the initial purge before being lost at sea 50 years later. Which made it a prime target for CAD agents, whose domain was items lost to history.

In the department's early years attempts had been made to snatch numerous historical treasures, with an unaccountable lack of success. Portals failed to open, or drastic slippage sent agents to the wrong place and time entirely. If they were able to place their hands on the artefact - the spear of Longinus, for example, or Steve Jobs' iPod - then the return portal would refuse to open, leaving agents stranded in some of the most dangerous periods of history. It took some years before chronotheoreticians deduced that history was protecting itself, and that items of historical significance could not safely be removed from the timeline lest their absence create a paradox. But the corollary of this discovery was a vital loophole: if an item could be retrieved

at the moment when it was lost

, no subsequent absence would be noticed, and no paradox would be created.

Rachel's briefing had made it quite clear that the book would be stowed in the captain's cabin, but she couldn't see it anywhere. Not in her sea-chest, not among the books below the stern window, not hidden by the voluminous piles of clothing. (There was a rather lovely gown in silver satin, but Rachel decided this was not worth the risk.) She must be carrying it about her-

"What be the Meaning of this?" The door was open and the captain had her cutlass out. Hell and blast, the assignment was in ruins.

"Captain, I was sent to obtain the Sextant. Er... be it elsewhere?"

"Ye sought it amongst my Gowns, did you, by God? Quint, seize her!"

The giant moved faster than she would have believed possible, and wrenched both arms behind Rachel's back. She cried out in pain.

"I meant no Harm, Madam! Release me, Sir!"

"Find something to bind this little Spy," sneered the captain, while Quint muttered sarcastically about the ship likely containing one or two coils of rope, "and gag her firmly so the Hands are not disturb'd. I wish to dine without delay. She can walk the Plank on the Morrow, and make her Peace with the Lord."

7.

Rachel wriggled and strained, but to no avail. Quint had proved predictably and painfully expert with a rope, and her bonds were tight and cunningly secure. Her wrists were bound behind her back... but not in the comparatively comfortable position she had expected, nestled against her pert bottom. Instead, her captor had forced them upwards and lashed them together palm to palm between her shoulder blades, as if she was praying to one of the antique gods which had dropped into disuse shortly after books. These wrist bonds were then anchored to the harness of ropes about her chest, shoulders and neck, and she found to her alarm that trying to free her wrists had an inconvenient effect on her ability to breathe.

Rachel was certain she had not the faintest hope of freeing her arms, but Quint had made sure she wouldn't be able to run, walk or even crawl away either. Her slender legs were so comprehensively bound that she could see more rope than leather when she looked down - itself a tricky action because of the restrictive rope leash about her neck, tied off to a stout metal ring in the bulkhead of the captain's cabin. The captain herself was sound asleep in her cot, which felt like a further indignity: Rachel was so obviously helpless that her enemy regarded her as furniture or a well-domesticated pet rather than any kind of threat. That was about right. A thick knotted bandana threaded between her teeth and securely knotted behind her head ensured she couldn't even create much of a nuisance... and the captain had made it clear that waking her before six bells in the morning watch would result in consequences the prisoner would not enjoy.

As a pretty, young and female time traveller, Rachel was well aware that men's attitudes to the opposite sex throughout history were dependably deplorable; when her assignments went wrong and she was apprehended by hostile vectors of one sort or another, which was not uncommon, she knew perfectly well that the men of the 3rd and 20th centuries alike were sure to take pleasure in binding her tightly in humiliating and objectifying ways. They liked to regard her as a damsel in distress, and that was often how she ended up. What she

didn't

expect was treatment of that sort from a female contemp. Not because Rachel was unaware of lesbianism - she had dabbled a little in this area while at college - but because pre-20th women so rarely had the power to enforce their desires on those weaker than themselves.

The captain, however, was plainly interested in Rachel as more than simply a thief or spy interrupted in the course of her treachery. She had not been subtle in her glances at Rachel's increasingly revealing clothing while Quint was drawing the cords tight across her chest - the shirt was no longer loose, nor was it doing much to conceal her cleavage - and her eccentric decision to keep the prisoner in her cabin rather than the brig could be explained only by sexual motives. Yet no attempt had been made on Rachel's virtue, which raised the question of whether the captain was blind to her own predilections. Perhaps the unfortunate time traveller could look forward to an encounter in the early hours of the following morning, with a watery grave to follow. Although she was naturally optimistic and felt sure that a solution would present itself before matters reached that point.

Was it her imagination, indeed, or could she detect the merest shimmering in the dust motes floating about the lantern-lit cabin? And was it possible she could smell the faintest hint of... elderberries?

"Well, my dear; and here you are," said a familiar voice, as Mrs Criblace emerged from a portal. "Wish you joy of your rescue." She was wearing ringlets, a sumptuous gown in yellow satin and an expression of the utmost complacency.

"Phnnh gnn mnn'rm hmrm," Rachel replied, beaming through her gag. Like most of the agents, she had found it impossible to eradicate the speech patterns of her own time, gods and all. "Wnch nnph fnr phhm pnrnphm qnmmn."

"Do not be alarmed; I flatter myself that she shall present no difficulties."

Mrs Criblace walked softly over to the cot, suffering no apparent difficulties from either the motion of the vessel or the flickering insufficiency of the light - she was one of those people who seem to breeze through life without ever putting a foot wrong - and reached down to place a soft cloth pad on the face of the sleeping captain. There was a squeak and a small struggle, but it was all far too late.

8.

It was perhaps 20 minutes later, and the tables had been comprehensively turned. Now Rachel was free of her bonds, albeit conscious of a chafing in some parts of her body and a dull ache in others, in consequence of the severity of her bondage. And the captain was squirming and moaning in the same ropes and gag, deployed in precisely the same configuration, as had formerly confined her visitor from the 22nd century.

On top of which, she had been deprived of her clothing, as per departmental policy.

"I do believe she regrets her treatment of you," said Mrs Criblace, directing a look of amused contempt at the unfortunate and helpless captain. "She regrets it extremely."

"Don't gloat over the prisoner," Rachel replied. "It was my fault, not hers. How long?"

"I desired the technological gentlemen to wait for five-and-twenty minutes. So another five, I suppose."

"Good."

Rachel looked at the captain and held up the book, which the two agents had discovered in that lady's garments while stripping and binding her.

"I just needed this," she said. "You would have lost it anyway. But I am sorry."

"Cnrphm ymnn!"

"I suppose I deserve that."

The portal opened.

"We had better go."

Rachel looked once last time at the captain, staring daggers up at her and straining desperately against her bonds. With her hands bound tightly behind her back, she was quite unable to hide her naked breasts, and Rachel knew this would be spectacularly humiliating when the captive was discovered the next morning. She was worried about this partly because it felt so utterly unfair, but mainly from a paradoxical point of view. But she supposed that one or both portals would have refused to open if this was likely to create a problem.

"Good luck, my captain," she said, stroking the captive's cheek, before following Mrs Criblace through the portal.

9. (December 2115)

"Be thou wholly bereft of Sense?"

Abigail Putnam was furious. The briefing room, despite being virtually empty, was ringing with the sound of disputation.

"I think it's fine," said Rachel, trying not to be intimidated. Mistress Putnam could be shockingly fierce.

"Oh, 'fine', says she! 'Fine'! Be a parachronistic Incongruity 'fine'?! Be the Destruction of the very Universe 'fine'?!"

"The universe is not destroyed, madam," Mrs Criblace reminded her, "unless I am most sore mistaken."

"Thinkest thou there be no such thing as delayed Consequences, Slattern?"

"Not in this case, I collect, or so at any rate am I kindly informed by the technological gentlemen. Were an incongruity so severe as to destroy the universe, it would have always been destroyed; and none of us should have been born. I hope I am not moving too fast for you, my dear."