A strange feeling overtook MW as he walked back to that eclectic little bar....salon, , whatever it called itself. A strange, greasy, electrical feeling, but not unfamiliar; it was the kind of feeling one got when a chronojammer, the first of the actual time-travelling ships, as opposed to tiny, discreet devices carried on the person (The chronojumper on the Beau Rosin was a whole other sort altogether), when on ewere close to the timeline that the 'jammer was travelling on. he heard noise from the sky, a cacophony of steam engines, artillery reports, and shells whistling down upon the city--but not the same city! it was like he was back in Chicago, and a version of Chicago that he had never seen before, all shining glass-and-steel domes and fanciful traceries in stone and concrete, all being pounded to burnt dust by the airship fleets. a second, thirty, forty-five, and then he was back on the Waterfront lane, running, now; he knew there wasn't much time, if the slips were that big and that noticeable... he hung a left, went up the street, saw a kid leaning a putter scooter against the wall, paid him a fifty for it, and sped up the streets and up the alley, past the dumpster with the shotgun-slug dents in it, and hung a left to skid sideways to a stop in front of the salon.
There were no time cops, as far as he knew; but he was still on call with the Customs Bureau, despite everything, and undeclared shipments of bombs and warlike implements were at least partly his business; since the Welles Affair during the last century, it had been internationally agreed that time machines were subject to search-and-seizure by customs officials when used for violent purposes. he checked to see that he had the badge in it's leather wallet, an dstepped throiugh the door...
