Falling by Debbie Moon

–’
    â€˜Didn’t you hear what I just said?’
    Schrader turned back towards the river. The water was thick with disturbed silt; people were moving hastily away, clamping handkerchiefs over their faces as curls of sulphurous fumes rose from the deep.
    â€˜It’s a waste of resources,’ he said.
    â€˜ReTracing doesn’t take any resources!’ Jude screamed, oblivious to the stares they were attracting from the rabbit-in-headlights revellers. ‘I felt a Split. A big one. That woman was important for some reason. Her death changed things – big things. You know the drill. It’s vital that you get back there and save her.’
    Schrader stared at her for a moment, as if sizing up his opponent in a forthcoming prize-fight. For the first time, she felt a shiver of apprehension.
    â€™I didn’t feel anything,’ he said.
    â€˜Well, I did.’
    â€˜Well,’ he whispered, barely audible over the murmur of horror spreading through the crowd below, ‘I didn’t.’
    â€˜What’s it going to cost you? Is it really too much just to help a fellow human being?’
    His mouth wrinkled in disgust. ‘She was a SoftGreen, Jude. A wastrel, spending her life chasing fantasies. Worthless. Who am I to undo the ironies of post-industrial pollution?’
    â€˜You heartless bastard.’
    Shrugging, Schrader turned back towards the festivities. ‘So file a report.’
    And he was walking away, back to the Germans and the festival and the utterly irrelevant, leaving her with the bitter aftertaste of failure, and a sudden, new understanding.
    He felt it. He knows what happened here. But for some reason, he wanted it to.
    Jude pressed her face against the cold metal railings, waiting for the body to surface. It might take a while, and it wouldn’t be recognisable when it did, but…
    Auburn hair.
    Just like the woman in the fortune booth.
    â€˜Oh shit.’
    And she is back in her future-present; and still falling.
    This is a tough one. She’s never had to make more than three journeys to resolve a single problem before. Four is incredibly rare. Five almost unheard of.
    No time.
    ReTrace –

THREE
    The Bankside, fifteen years ago
    â€˜Hey, Drosser!’
    A child’s challenge, fierce and shrill, slicing the still night like a razor. She blinked. Dark skies overhead, midnight blue horizon hazed with smog. Her fingers were numb, her treasured padded polyfabric jacket blazed blue and red under the faded streetlights. Cold air burned her lungs like acid. Curtains twitched and settled at the high windows surrounding her, satisfied that whatever outrage was in progress was no worse than usual.
    â€˜Jude DiMortimer,’ the voice demanded, ringing from the closed windows and the icy roofs. ‘You gonna shut up your boasting and run the Sidewalk, or not, Drosser?’
    Jude lifted her face to the glow of the muddy yellow streetlights, and smiled.
    Little East Bankside, still and silent as the grave in a January frost. Weather Control switched off the city’s modifier towers a couple of nights a year. Just long enough to drop the temperature a couple of degrees below freezing, covering the city with an icing-sugar frost. It gave them a chance for essential repairs, and the old folks a chance to hold their grandchildren up to the windows and boast, ‘When I was a child, it was like this every night.’
    The police always made sure they had pressing paperwork to do on a Frost Night; because motorbikes and black ice don’t mix and, let’s face it, no sane person was going to go out on a night when the air temperature actually fell below freezing.
    Sanity was a commodity in very short supply on Little East Bankside.
    Mum, of course, thought Jude was tucked up safe in bed; but vital-signs monitors were designed to monitor sickly babies, not kids old enough to find the ALARM SILENCE switch. And now Mum, like parents up and