Mars the Divine (Empire of Time Series) by John Argo

Page 43.

Chapter 19. Whitechapel Combat

Surprisingly, when we parted company at the London Transfer, we had only known the two men for about two weeks, barely enough time for Tatnall's Victorian neighbors to become nosy about two very attractive young women in mannish clothing who came and went with a lack of demureness that placed them definitely outside the social corset of the middle class. The neighbors, mostly upper middle class doctors and lawyers, and industrialists like Tatty living along these wide, tree-lined avenues, had long since stopped being curious about the hammering and the blow torches. They were used to that. They were curious about how a lower class upstart like Tatnall managed to suddenly be domiciled with not one but two self-sufficient and self-contained yet friendly women. More curious they must have found the fact that Trini and Sindi did not fit exactly into any one of the rigid molds of this class-conscious society. In the end, some neighbors apparently wrote them off as American frontier women because of their accents and tanned, 'coarse' appearance.

The neighbors would have been more astonished at this story. We five had been to dinner late at a restaurant (where women were socially permitted though not near the bar). We were walking through Whitechapel on a foggy night when no hansom could be had (yes, the area where, just six years ago in the late 1880s, Jack the Ripper had operated), we were accosted by several ragged young men (street Arabs) who demanded our money at knifepoint. Tatnall and I were handy with our fists, and Wells was a scrappy little fellow, but the two women took care of the situation. The five or six young men were not expecting what happened. Under the light of a single gaslamp reflected on damp cobblestones and diffused in the fog like cotton, they moved in on us like ghosts. Trini, usually the leader of the two women, said softly to us: "Dance with me." What she meant became clear. As she moved to the side, so did we in a block, until the street lamp was behind us and shining in the lads' eyes. After we all circled like wolves for two or three minutes, the boys came wading in. They went right past the two women, a mistake, for they walked into a classic encirclement. As the boys confronted us three men, the women launched a rattling series of kicks from behind that smashed kidneys and broke knee joints. A knife is a knife. You threaten someone with a knife, the assumption is you're going to kill with the knife. This calls for a total response. The two priestesses delivered that in a half minute. Our assailants ran or hobbled away as best they could. What would the neighbors have said at this unlady-like behavior? Ha! Anyway, it was time for us to go. Wells had made clear that he intended never to reveal the time machine to the world, for fear of seeing it grabbed by militarists and industrialists (the irony not lost on Tatnall) to destroy mankind. Wells had long ago dreamed up some vague idea for a tale about a time traveler, or Chrononaut, and now he had his material.

We said goodbye to Wells and Tatnall in the curiously quiet and clean, but dangerous, world ruled by the Future Alien Rulers And Oppressors (FARAOs, or in the popular idiom, the Faraos).

Thank you for reading. If you love it, tell your friends. Please post a favorable review at Amazon, Good Reads, and other online resources. If you want to thank the author, you may also buy a copy for the low price of a cup of coffee. It's called Read-a-Latte: similar (or lower) price as a latte at your favorite coffeeshop, but the book lasts forever while the beverage is quickly gone. Thank you (JTC).

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