But when Artemisia and Gelasia woke up from their long, drugged sleep, all hell broke loose—and Paula Booker recognized him. Her eyes widened in shock and she opened her mouth to speak . . . then closed it again, looking abruptly frightened. She understands, he realized with a jolt of hope, she understands we are in danger, even if she is not sure of the cause.
Meanwhile, the whole camp had erupted and the baggage manager, who was not an ‘eighty-sixer, but an up-timer hired by the tour organizers, demanded to know what insanity had prompted him to bring two toddlers off the station. The uproar echoed off the black-shadowed mountains hemming them in.
Nearly stammering under the close scrutiny of Sarnoff, aware that Noah Armstrong’s hand was poised on the grip of a pistol at the detective’s side, Marcus offered the only explanation he could: “I am a down-timer and we are never allowed off the station, sir. My little girls have never seen the sun . . .”
It was true enough and more than a plausible reason. In fact, several women burst into tears and offered the sleepy girls candy and ribbons for their hair while other tourists, irate at such a notion, vented their wrath on the head baggage handler, protesting the cruelty of enforcing a law that didn’t even permit down-timers’ children to leave the station.
“It’s not healthy!” one woman glared at the hapless Time Tours guides, men who lived full time down the Denver Gate, rarely returning to the station. They did not recognize him, thank all the gods. One woman in particular, the wedding photographer, was thoroughly incensed. “I’ve never heard of such an awful thing in all my life! Not letting little children go through a gate for some real sunshine! When I get home, you can believe I’m writing my congresswoman a nasty letter about this!”