Wages of Sin

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The unnatural quiet, broken at regular intervals by a high, beeping sound, convinced Goldie she was neither in her shop nor her apartment. Confused, disoriented, she turned her head- and found an IV bottle hanging near her head and a heart monitor beeping softly beside her. The slight movement tugged at monitor leads placed at seeming random about her torso. Then Rachel Eisenstein came into her frame of view and smiled.

"You're awake. How do you feel?"

"I-I'm not sure. What am I doing in the infirmary'

"You don't remember?"

Goldie frowned, but nothing came back to explain this.

"You collapsed in the library. Brian thought you were dead, started hollering for help." Rachel smiled. "I was afraid you'd had a heart seizure or a stroke, but it seems you simply fainted for some reason."

Fainted? Why in the world would she have...

Memory returned, shocking and brutal. Farley had conned her. There was no such mine-the article had been a fake.

Rachel uttered a little cry and fumbled for something, then injected it into Goldie's IV lead. The room stopped spinning as drowsiness tucked itself around her awareness like a woolly blanket, but memory remained, harsh and inescapable.

Rachel had found a chair. "Goldie?"

She managed to look up.

"Goldie, what is it? What happened?"

She started to laugh, high-pitched and semi-hysterical. Laughter gave way to hiccuping sobs as the reality of her loss sank in. Nearly her entire life's savings, gone. All of it, except for a few coins and the odd gem or three. And, thank God, her precious parakeets, which were safe at her apartment. She'd have to raise cash to live on by selling what little was left-except for her beautiful birds, which she'd sell only after she'd sold everything else she possessed-including her soul. She found herself blurting it all out between sobs, mortified yet strangely comforted when Rachel eased her up and put both arms around her, letting her cry it out. By the time she'd told it all, Goldie realized that whatever Rachel had slipped into that IV line was more potent than she'd realized. Drained of tears and energy, the drug took hold with triumphant strength. The last thing she was aware of was Rachel's hand on hers, comforting. Then she was asleep, face still wet with tears she hadn't shed in many, many years.

Skeeter barely had time to think, Aw, nuts ...

Then the enraged gladiator dove at him. Skeeter lunged across the bed, scattering labelled and corked bottles as he went. He ducked as the gladiator threw something. The mirror above his dresser shattered. Skeeter scooped up a couple of water bottles and hurled them back in the gladiator's general direction. He heard a meaty smack and a roar of pain and anger, but didn't wait to see what damage he'd done. He scrambled for the door, shoving Ianira aside as gently as he could. She shrieked behind him and he heard a loud curse in Latin, then he was around the corner and running hard.

Damn.!

Lupus Mortiferus' voice roared out behind him. The chase was still on. A swift glance over one shoulder revealed the gladiator, shirt dark and wet with inkstained water, face contorted with murderous fury, gaining ground. Skeeter put on a burst of speed and skidded around a corner into the corridor leading toward Commons. He caught his stride and shot into the midst of a packed crowd gathered to watch gate departures. He slithered between tourists and 'eighty-sixers who'd gathered to watch the usual antics of a gate departure unfold.

Cries of dismay and anger in his wake told Skeeter Lupus was still back there, dogged as a cursed snow leopard after its favorite prey. Skeeter vaulted over a cafe table in Victoria Station, startling screams from the diners and scattering glassware and lunches in several directions. A bull's roar and more screams accompanied the crash of the whole table. Skeeter raced and dodged through Victoria station, whipping around iron lamp posts, jumping park benches whether they were occupied or not, flinging himself past gaping tourists and residents while his mind raced in several directions at the same time.

He had to save Marcus. To do that, he had to get that money and stop Farley from taking Marcus through the gate. To get the money, he'd have to stop running. That meant Lupus the Murderous back there would chop him into minced Skeeter. He skidded into Urbs Romae, splashed straight through a shallow goldfish pond scattering a flock of Ichthyomises with a flapping of wings and shrill, toothy screams of protest and risked a glance back.

Lupus was still coming, inexorable as a Mongolian sandstorm.

Skeeter passed a cash machine without time to stop.

Shit! Now what? Maybe he could sprint around the waiting area, double back somehow, grab the money, and snatch Marcus? Even as the thought formed, the klaxon for a gate departure sounded.

"Your attention, please-"

Skeeter ignored the loudspeakers and concentrated on the crowd waiting to step downtime to Rome. Maybe if he just burst up to the pair of them and offered an IOU? Yeah, right. Cash deal or nothing, buddy. Your credit's no good. It was a bitter pill to swallow. The line had already started to move up the long ramp as returning tourists exited the gate. Skeeter caught sight of Marcus, but was too winded to call out. He and Farley were near the front of the line, almost to the portal already.

With no time to stop for cash, no breath to call out anything-much less the deal he'd made with Dr. Mundy-Skeeter did the only thing he could do. He jumped the roped-off waiting area's steel fence, caught a ramp girder, swung himself up and around, and landed on his feet next to a Time Tours guide so shocked she actually screamed. More screams behind him told Skeeter that Lupus, curse him, was still back there. He put on a burst of speed, clattering up the steel meshwork ramp, trying to catch up to Marcus before he could step through the portal.

"Marcus! Wait!"

His heart plummeted to his toenails.

Just ahead of him, Farley and Marcus vanished into the distortion of the open gate. Skeeter would've sworn in a court of law that Farley had bodily dragged Marcus through after hearing Skeeter's desperate shout.

Skeeter had two choices. He could jump off this platform and elude Lupus yet again, leading him another merry chase through the station, or he could crash the gate and find a way to get Marcus back through. Time Tours, Inc. was going to fine him something dreadful.

Skeeter drew a deep breath and threw himself bodily through the portal. He landed in the familiar wine shop, momentum hurtling him past shocked tourists. Skeeter crashed into a rack of stacked amphorae and knocked the whole thing over. Wine, like foaming seawater against rocks, spread out in rushing waves across the entire floor. Tourists screamed and tried to dive out of the way. He couldn't see Farley anywhere in the confusion.

"Marcus!"

No familiar voice answered. He grabbed the nearest guide he spotted and gasped out, "Farley! Where'd Farley go with Marcus.

The man shook his head. "They just left, in the first group. For the inn."

Skeeter laughed semi-hysterically. "If Farley ends up at the inn, I'll eat your shoes."

He was just about to dodge into the street when, a heavy hand closed on his shoulder. Someone spun him around with brutal force. Screams of panic rose all around. Lupus Mortiferus' visage loomed enormous in Skeeter's vision. He had just enough time to think, "Oh, shit-"before a massive fist and darkness crashed down.

Sights and smells overwhelmed Marcus from both past and present the moment the door to the wine shop's warehouse opened onto the street. A tremble hit his knees. Farley glanced around.

"Stop dawdling," he said irritably in Latin.

Marcus clutched the man's luggage with sweating hands and followed the rest of the group toward the Time Tours inn on the far side of the Aventine Hill from the great Circus. They headed down the Via Appia toward the hulking edifice of stone bleachers, rising in tiers to the arches high overhead. When the rest of the group turned left to skirt the Aventine, Farley surprised him by heading the other way, toward the Capitoline Hill.

"Mr. Farley-"

"Be quiet and follow me!" Farley snapped.

Marcus glanced once at the tour group disappearing into the crowd. Then, hesitantly, he followed Farley. He'd given his word. And he needed to clear this debt. But the longer they walked, passing the Capitoline Hill and moving through the great Forum, where the rostrum towered with its glittering trophies of war, the battering rams of ships taken in battle, the greater grew Marcus' sense of wrongness.

"Mr. Farley, where are you going?" he asked in English as they left behind the Forum.

"To a place I've arranged," Farley answered carelessly.

"What place?"

Farley glanced over his shoulder. "You ask too many questions," he said, eyes narrowed.

Marcus stopped dead in the street, setting down the man's bags. "I believe I'm entitled."

Farley's mouth twitched at one corner. "You? Entitled?" He seemed to think this outrageously funny. "Hand me that bag. That one."

Marcus stooped without thinking, handing it over automatically. Farley opened it

And the next thing Marcus knew, his face had slammed into a brick wall and Farleys fist into his left kidney. He gasped in agony and felt his knees begin to go. Farley held him up with a fist twisted through his tunic. The next moment, Marcus' hands were manacled in iron chains.

"Now listen, boy," Farley hissed in his ear, "you're not in La-La Land any longer. This is Rome. And I am your master. I paid good, goddamned gold for you and I intend to do with you as I see fit. Is that clear?"

Marcus tried to struggle, knowing even as he did that any fight was hopeless. Farley put him on the ground with another punch to his kidney. He groaned and lay still at the man's feet.

"Get up."

Marcus fought to catch his breath.

"I said get up, slave!"

Marcus glared up at him through a mane of fallen hair across his eyes. "Bastard!"

"Get up, slave, or l'll have you branded as a runaway"

Marcus blanched. The letter F burnt into his cheek ... He struggled and lurched, but finally made it to his feet. Curious onlookers shrugged and returned to their business. Farley fastened a long rope to Marcus' chains, then signaled to a couple of idle fellows at a wine stall, their sedan chair leaning against the wall.

"You, there! Is your chair for hire?"

"It is, noble sir," the broader of the two said eagerly, setting aside a chipped earthenware mug of wine. "You have merely to tell us your destination."

In a daze of disbelief and growing terror, Marcus watched Chuck Farley climb into the sedan chair and accept his luggage, which he balanced on his lap. The porters struggled and grunted to get him airborne and settled onto their shoulders. "Come here, slave!" Farley snapped. "I don't want you getting tangled up in traffic and causing me to fall!"

Marcus stumbled behind the sedan chair, wrists weighted by the heavy cuffs. Chains clanked with a sound of buried nightmare. He remembered being chained ... chained and worse. Ianira! he cried silently. What have I done, beloved? If opportunity had presented itself, he would cheerfully have plunged a dagger through Chuck Farley's black heart. But he knew opportunity would not present itself.

The porters carried Farley to an imposing villa, where one of them pounded on the door. A slave chained to the interior wall of the entryway opened the door and bowed low, asking their business.

"Tell your master the man he was told to expect has arrived," Farley said, his Latin flawless. "With the goods, as promised."

The slave bowed and passed word to someone deeper in the house. A moment later, the porters had set down their burden, sweating and gasping for breath as though they'd just carried five men, rather than one. Farley paid them and sent them away with a wave of his hand. Then he turned to Marcus, an unpleasant smile lighting his eyes.

"This way, if you please, young Marcus. You are about to meet your new owner."

He wanted to run. Everything in him shouted the need. But in broad daylight, with hundreds of Romans to take up the cry "Runaway!" trying to bolt now was tantamount to suicide. He swallowed down a dry throat. Farley jerked him off balance with the rope, dragging him forward into the villa. He said in an ugly whisper, "You'll have to work a few years to pay off this debt, boy."

Marcus felt sick-sick and trapped. He knew in his soul that no man had the right to own him, but that was in a world two thousand years away. Here, now, to gain his freedom and satisfy the law and his sense of honor, he would have to obtain his purchase price, somehow. Or compromise the values he'd come to believe in so highly and simply run.

It was even money at the moment which he would choose.

Then he was stumbling into the presence of a wealthy, wealthy man. Marcus actually went down, catching himself on hands and knees. Gods ... He had seen this man many times, at public functions, on the Rostrum, in the law courts. Farley was selling him to ...

"Farlus, welcome! Come in, come in."

"Your hospitality is gracious, Lucius Honorius Galba. Congratulations, by the way, on your election to curule aedileship."

Tremors set in, chattering his teeth. Lucius Honorius Galba had been elected curule aedile? As powerful as his hated first master had been, Galba was a thousand times more so. Escape this man? Impossible. Galba glanced down at him.

"This?' the man said, disdain dripping from his voice. "This cowering fool is the valuable scribe you offered for my collection?"

Farley jerked on the rope. "Get up, slave." He said to Galba, "He didn't wish to be sold from my household. And he doubtless knows your illustrious reputation very well." The smile Farley gave Marcus was cool as a lizard's. "I assure you, he knows his job well. I purchased him some years back when the estate of one of the plebeian. aediles was being disposed of due to the man's death. As to the terror, his desire to make a good impression has left him shaking like a virgin."

Galba chuckled. "Come, boy, there's nothing to fear. I'm a fair man. Get up. I have need of a new scribe and your master, here, has offered a fine trade, a very fine trade. Come, let's see a demonstration of your skills."

Marcus, hands trembling as Farley unlocked the chains, wet his lips, then took the stylus and wax tablet handed him.

"Now," Galba said with a slight smile, "let's see if you can take this down properly."

The stylus jittered against the soft wax, but he did his best to take the dictation, which ranged from a partial letter to a business partner to household accounts to cargoes and trade sums earned at interest. Galba nodded approvingly over the result.

"Not bad," he allowed, "for a man trembling in terror. Not bad at all. In what capacity did you serve your plebeian aedile, boy?"

Marcus' voice shook as badly as the rest of him. "I kept records ... of the races, at the Circus, the inventories of the wild beasts for the bestiary hunts, and the records of gladiators who won victories and those who did not ... ."

Memory closed in, harsh and immediate despite the time elapsed since those days. He heard Galba say,

I do believe you've brought me a boy who'll settle in nicely. Very well. The bargain is agreed upon."

They retired to a small room off the atrium and its splashing fountain. Chuck Farley and his new master bent over papers, signing their names and exchanging coins for Marcus' life. A moment later, his new owner had called for the steward of his house.

"See to it the new boy is made comfortable, but confined. I want to be certain he doesn't run at the first opportunity. Now, about the pieces you wanted in trade..."

Dismissed entirely from the man's awareness, Marcus stumbled dazedly between a burly steward and another thickset man who guided him toward the back of the house. The room they put him in was small and windowless, lit with a lamp dangling from the ceiling. A shout from the steward brought a collared slave girl running with a tray of food and rink. Marcus had to hold back a semi-hysterical laugh. If they thought he could possibly eat now without being sick.. .

They left him and the untouched meal alone in his cell, locking the door from the outside. Marcus sank onto the only piece of furniture, a bed, and closed his hands into the thin mattress until his fingers ached. The blur of the alcohol Farley had plied him with was beginning to wear off, leaving him colder with every passing moment. Light from the oil lamp gleamed against the sweat on his arms. He felt like screaming, cursing, battering down the door with the bed .... Instead, with as much calm as he could dredge up from the depths of his soul, Marcus forced himself to eat and drink what he'd been given.

He would need to keep up his strength.

Marcus was aware that it would be ridiculously easy, in a few weeks' time, to simply slip away and run for the Time Tours wine shop on the Via Appia. Everything in him screamed to do just that. Everything except his honor.

And that honor-the only bit of his parents, his family, his whole village and the proud tribe of the Taurusates, kinsmen to the great Aquitani themselves, left to him-demanded he repay the debt of coin his new "master" had paid for him. Somehow, someday, he would find his way back through the Porta Romae and hold Ianira in his arms again. It would take years of work to repay his purchase price and he had no guarantee that beautiful Ianira would wait. Perhaps he could send a message, somehow, with a Time Tours employee? How, he didn't have the faintest idea. But he would. And he would get back to her, somehow. Or die trying.

Kit Carson was on his way to a business luncheon he'd rather have avoided-he hated the monthly business meeting of TT-86 hoteliers-which was scheduled to take place at the Neo Edo's expensive and excellent restaurant this month. 'Eighty-sixers and tourists alike appreciated Kit's kitchen. But these stupid monthly meetings, where everyone talked, no one did anything, and Kit invariably sat through, silently fuming ... he'd accomplish nothing except the loss in revenue to the Neo Edo from a group of men and women more interested in the delicacies of his kitchen than they were in Guild business.

Thank God the meetings rotated from one hotel to another, so Kit didn't suffer too often. He was nearly to the doorway of the Kaiko no Kemushi, the Silkworm Caterpillar--any form of bug, particularly caterpillars, elicited greater disgust from japanese than even cockroaches did for Americans, so most of his japanese customers found the restaurant's name hysterically funny Then it happened. The miracle he'd been hoping would rescue him from this interminable luncheon.

His skull began to buzz in the old, familiar way, but he was constitutionally certain that no gate was due to open today. He grinned suddenly, transforming in a blink from serious businessman to imp of mischief ready for some fun.

"Unstable gate!" he crowed, racing into the Commons, even as warning klaxons blared. What would it be this time? Another peek into the late Mesozoic? No, the buzzing of his skull bones wasn't intense enough for a gate that big. The eerie, nonsound told him that this would be a smallish gate, open for who knew how long? Would it cycle several times, then vanish, or set up a steady, long-term pattern? Where? Kit wondered, having seen everything from giant pterodactyls to murderous Welsh bowmen stumble through unstable gates.

Kit arrived a few instants earlier than Pest Control, with their innocuous grey uniforms and staunch faces, discontinuity detectors sweeping the whole area. They also carried rifles, shotguns, and capture nets to be ready for whatever roared through. Mike Benson and several of his security men raced up next, followed by a puffing Bull Morgan. Mike looked terrible-eyes bloodshot, bags under them so dark a purple they looked nearly black, jawline unshaven. Bull looked sharply at his Chief of Security as well, then snapped out, "Any ideas?"

Pest Control's chief, Sue Fritchey, always had a quiet, almost demure air about her-and it often fooled people. Sue was twice as strong and at least four times as smart as she generally looked. Kit chuckled silently. There she stood, looking exactly like a carbon copy of all the other Pest Control agents. You'd never guess to look at her that she held doctorates in biological/ ecological sciences, nematological/entomological sciences, had large- and small-animal veterinary and zoo degrees, and a paleontological science Ph.D to boot: in both flora and fauna. With a master's in virology thrown in for good measure.

Sue Fritchey was very good at her job.

A shimmering in the air opened ten feet above Time Tours' Porta Romae gate platform-and about four feet to one side of it. The air shimmered through a whole doppler range of colors and indescribable motion, then the dark, ever-shifting edges of an unstable gate slid open. Little yellow-brown things fell through it, all the way to the concrete floor below, where they smacked with a bone-cracking sound. A flood followed them, a tidal wave. Kit widened his eyes when he realized what it was. He laughed aloud. "Lemmings!"

Pest Control tried desperately to stem the flow at the gate, using nets to capture and toss back as many as possible while leaning dangerously far over the rail of Porta Romae's gate platform. For every batch of five or six they caught and hurled back, twelve or fifteen more got through, falling messily to their deaths on the now enormous pile of silent, brown-fin-red bodies. Tourists, aghast at the slaughter, were demanding that Pest Control do something, it was cruel, inhuman

Kit interrupted a group of five women dressed in the latest Paris haute couture, all of them badgering Sue while she tried to direct one group at the gate, tried to get another squad into position from a different angle, and put a third squad to work shoveling the bodies into large bags.

"'Scuse me, ladies," he smiled engagingly, "I couldn't help overhearing you."

They turned as one, then lost breath and color in the same moment as they recognized him. Kit hid a grin. Sometimes world-famous reputations weren't such a curse, after all.

"Mr.-Mr. Carson?"

He bowed. "As I said, I couldn't help but overhear, your conversation." He drew them adroitly away from Sue Fritchey a few steps at a time and was rewarded with Sue's preoccupied smile. "Are you ladies by any chance acquainted with the behavior patterns of the ordinary lemming?"

They shook their heads in time, well-practiced marionettes.

"Ah ... let me help you understand. Lemmings are rodents. Some live on the Arctic tundra, where predators generally keep their populations in check. But they also live in cold, alpine climates like you'd find in, say, the northern tip of Norway. Without sufficient predators our sweet little rodents breed out of control, until they've destroyed their environment, not to mention their food supply" Five sets of eyes went round. "When that happens--and it does to many a herd of lemmings, I assure you-then something in their genes or maybe in their brain structure kicks in and causes them to leave their environment, sometimes by the thousands. You see, that unknown signal is a warning that their population has become too large for the land to sustain it. It's as unstable as that gate up there."

He pointed, and waited for five sets of shocked eyes to return to him. "So they leave. Now, the herds that live in very rocky country, with lots of cliffs, have the perfect suicide mechanism built right into their habitat. Some of those cliffs drop into deep, jagged valleys. Some shadow a deep, narrow bay. One full of water," he added, not sure that their collective IQ's were above those of alive lemming. "And you know what those cute little buggers do? They run straight for those cliffs, almost as though they knew, wanted, to throw themselves and their pups over the edge. Those," he pointed to the avalanche of small rodents still falling through the gate, "have jumped off a cliff somewhere. They'd be dead already, even if the gate hadn't opened ten feet over the station floor. You can't change history-or the deep genetics of certain species. Fool about with their genetic structure, get rid of the signal-if you could-that triggers the suicidal migrations, and pretty soon you'd be hip deep in starving lemmings. And there wouldn't be anything green left for thousands of square miles."

Round eyes stared at him from pale, pinched faces. He tipped an imaginary hat and left, humming a delighted tune under his breath. He gave out a short, humorless bark of laughter, wondering what those five would say when they went back uptime?

He then joined the crew sweeping bodies into containers supplied by shopkeepers and other willing 'eighty-sixers. Kit found himself scooping warm, still little bodies into an ornate brass wastebasket that could only have come from the Epicurean. Delight. Kit grinned, then got to business filling it. He sighed. It was a shame; lemmings were so darned... cute. But their biology and behaviors were as they were, which meant that on this particular day and time in La-La Land, Kit Carson was shoveling up hundreds of dead rodents, same as everybody else on volunteer duty. Really, anything was better than attending pointless meetings!

Of all people, Goldie Morran appeared in the crowd, sniffing disdainfully but eyeing all those lemmings with speculation. What in God's name was she up to now? Hadn't she been in the infirmary recently? Didn't take her long to recover. I sometimes think Goldie's too mean to die. She turned on a stilt heel and sought out Sue Fritchey, who listened intently for a moment, then nodded impatiently and shook Goldie's hand. The look on Goldie's face as she tried to figure out where to wipe her hand, covered now with blood and lemming hair, was priceless. Then, when she leaned over an intent newsie's vidcammer and cleaned her hand thoroughly while asking him sweet-voiced questions to distract him from the motions she was making against his back, it was almost too much to bear.

In fact, when one film crew caught it on camera, Kit did laugh-but softly enough Goldie couldn't possibly hear him.

Whatever she'd wanted, she'd clearly gotten, as she left with a contented smile on her face. Kit worked his way toward Sue.

"What'd Goldie want?"

"Hmm? Oh, hi, Kit. She wanted the skins. Said she'd pay a downtimer to skin 'em and tan the skins for her, then maybe the big sternbergi might take a fancy to lemming meat. God, I hope so. Have you got any idea what it's going to smell like, all through the station, if we have to incinerate these little beasts?"

Kit shuddered. "Yeah. I got a real good idea."

She glanced sharply at him. "Oh, damn, I'm sorry, Kit. I was distracted ... forgot all about that witch's burning you were forced to watch ... ."

He forced a shrug. "Thanks. I appreciate the apology, but that's one of 'em I sometimes still wake up screaming over. And it's the smell that lingers with you, like a spirit as malicious as the goddamned inquisitors who ordered the burnings in the first place." He cleared his throat and pointed his gaze into the far distance. "Sue, one of those so-called witches was a little girl, curly red-blond hair, couldn't have been above two years old, screaming for her mommy-who was burning on the stake right next to her."

Sue had squeezed shut her eyes. "I will never, ever again complain about my job, Kit Carson."

Kit thumped her on the shoulder. "Go ahead and complain away. Makes me feel good to hear other people's problems. Not my own."

Sue swallowed hard, then managed a shaky smile. "Okay, Kit, one helluva big job complaint, comin' at you. Why the hell are you just standing there in that bloody three-piece suit? Pick up a goddamned shovel and start shovelin'!"

Kit laughed, hugged her, then swung his own shovel like a baton, whistling as he returned to work.

At last Pest Control hummers with attached sidecars for hauling whatever needed hauling, pulled up. The cleanup crew dumped their loads into the hoppers. Kit did the same, then turned back for more.

Fortunately, the unstable gate closed before the entire herd of several thousand fell into TT-86, but a final lemming, halfway through as the gate closed shut, was sucked back with an almost startled look in its button-black eyes, the inexorable shutting of the gate sending the animal back into its own time-and a probable fall with its fellows off whatever cliff they'd found. Judging from the size of the piled little bodies, at least a quarter of that herd had ended up on the floor. It took hours of back-breaking work to get them all into hoppers, never mind cleaning bloodstains from the floor. The newsies from uptime covered the whole event, not only for the on-station television network but for the hope of a potential scoop by getting the video through Primary first.

They tried, without success, to interview him where he knelt hip deep at one edge of the miniature mountain, blood all over his expensive three-piece suit and previously immaculate white silk shirt. Despite his absolute, categorical refusals-"I'm busy, can't you see? Talk to someone else."-they hovered around him like hornets, vidcams whirring with the sound of hornets' wings.

Ignoring the newsies as best he could, he continued shoveling bodies into the Pest Control hoppers: While most of the lemmings had landed on concrete, several hundred had splattered against expensive, exquisite mosaics funded by the Urbs Romae merchants and built by a downtimer artisan who had designed and placed mosaics in his native time. Now the beautiful, tiled pictures of grapevines, gods and goddesses, even the portraits of Imperial family members done with astonishing accuracy from memory, had not only to be cleaned, but cleaned with painstaking care to get the blood out of the grout between colored tiles no larger than Kit's pinkie fingernail.

A voice he'd know anywhere growled, "Goddamn mess."

He glanced up into Bull Morgan's face. "Yes, it is."

"Those tiles under there cracked?"

Kit used his hated necktie to scrub away enough blood and intestines to see. " 'Fraid so. Some cracked, some shattered to bits. Damn."

Bull echoed him. Then he shouted, "Sue!"

Sue Fritchey slewed around, then began walking toward him. When she arrived, covered in even more blood than Kit, Bull said, "Show her, Kit."

He pointed out the damage done to the mosaic. Sue groaned. Already news was spreading to the Urbs Romae shopkeepers, hoteliers, and restaurateurs, mostly thanks to newsies who rushed at them to "get their reactions on record." Bull narrowed his eyes. "Sue, when the worst of this mess is gone, get your people to digitally map each damaged mosaic. Station Manager's office will foot the bill for any repairs. Spread the news to 'em and fast, before they start mobbing your people." Sue hurried off to spread the word and instruct her crews to spread it farther-the faster, the better.

Bull grinned abruptly, looking very much like a fireplug riveted to living human arms, legs, and head. Kit, his shoulders aching almost worse than his knees, took in Bull's grin and muttered, "Want to share the joke? I could use a laugh. Goddamned newsies crawling across me like flies ..." He shivered. Bull's laugh only deepened as he thumped the taller, slighter man's back. "Never heard of Kit Carson giving in to a newsie."

"And you won't, either," Kit muttered, "unless they doctor the tapes, in which case I can sue. And lose my fortune, my reputation, and my case, all in one fell swoop."

"Yeah," Bull said through narrowed eyes as he watched them pestering anyone they could for a story. "Can't win a case against a newsie, that's for goddamned sure. Gotta think up a reason to toss 'em all up Primary and keep any more from coming in."

Kit's full, blazing grin was seen so rarely, even the stolid Bull Morgan blinked. "And what, exactly, are you thinking, Kenneth Carson?"

"Oh, nothing too mischievous. I was just thinking you might want to plant a little bug in someone's ear, you know, just a hint about courageous newsies coming to the rescue in a Station Crisis. Get their flunkies to film 'em scooping up busted-open lemmings. Ought to be good for, what, fifteen points on the Nielsons just for the gore content alone?"

Bull Morgan slowly pulled a cigar from one pocket and lit it, sucking until it created clouds of obnoxious bluegrey smoke. His eyes crinkled. "Yeah," he said around the cigar, starting to smile. "Yeah, that's a good, solid idea you got there, Kit. Keep 'em out of our crews' hair, away from the shopowners, 'til they've had their fill and leave to shower someplace where the water's endless and hot enough to wash away the blood, the stink, and their own puke."

Kit chuckled. "You, Bull Morgan, are a wicked judge of human character."

"Hell, Kit, thought you'd figured it out by now: all human character is wicked. Just varies in degree is all."

Leaving Kit to ponder that odd, un-Bull-like bit of philosophy, Bull Morgan waded through the slop and bent to murmur into the ear of the nearest newsie. She looked startled, then delighted. Soon, every newsie in the place was down on hands and knees, scooping up dead rodents alongside the Pest Control crews and 'eighty-sixers who'd seen, done, and been through everything. Or at least enough to know that a mountain of dead lemmings wasn't exactly a dire crisis, just a massive pain in the butt.

True to Bull's prediction-Kit was glad he hadn't wagered-the newsies didn't last long. They retreated to their hotel rooms with their vidcams and flunkies and were not seen again until much later that evening, when La-La Land's very own in-house TV network ran various tapes and commentaries. Kit didn't bother to watch the broadcast. If it contained anything truly terrible, friends of his would let him know-and probably hand him a recorded copy or six.

Once the dead lemmings had all been carted away, and the blood scrubbed away with toothbrushes and ammonia, Pest Control filmed every cracked or shattered tile in every single mosaic affected. Bull's generous offer settled several upset merchants. Sly cuss, their station manager. He had to be, or he'd watch La-La Land's artificial world crumble apart like dry cake left outside too long in brittle, harsh sunlight, slowly turning to dust.

Yeah, Bull Morgan was just the right man for the job, a man who found the law useful in how far it could occasionally be bent to save a friend. He chuckled aloud, drawing startled stares from the Pest Control crews still filming damaged mosaics. He didn't care. This would make a great story, full of places for artistic embellishment-and Kit Carson knew he could spin a very good yarn. He laughed again, anticipating the reactions of his granddaughter and his closest friend, soon-to-be his grandson-in-law.

He grinned like a fool and didn't care about that, either. For the first time in years, Kit Carson realized he was genuinely happy. The last of the hummer-trains groaned into motion, then Kit glanced down at himself. His three-piece suit from the same designer who'd fashioned clothes for that idiotic quintet of rich, empty-headed women-was soaked in blood and thick with yellow-brown fur. And the smell was even worse. No wonder Bull had smiled. He sighed. Maybe the suit and silk shirt could be salvaged.

Kit returned to the Neo Edo, managed to sneak past the still-in-progress hoteliers' meeting, and took the elevator to his office. He didn't feel like going home and he did feel like putting on the kimono left in the office for the sole purpose of comfort during work. There was a shower, too, hidden away behind a screen that had once been the pride of some ancient Edo nobleman's house.

He stripped, showered, toweled off, then found the kimono. Ahh ... much better. He left the suit on the shower floor, unwilling to touch it; this kimono had cost him a small fortune. More, actually, than the suit. He telephoned the front desk for a runner and soon heard the breathless knock of one of his employees.

"C'mon in, it's not locked!"

"Sir?" the wide-eyed runner gasped, trying to appear that he was not staring, awestruck, at Kit's office.

Kit chuckled and said, "Come on in. Stare all you like. It is a bit different for an office."

The boy, a downtimer Kit had rescued and employed, stepped into the office.

The boy's gaze drank in Kit's eclectic office, with its wall of television screens, some of which played tapes of views uptime and some of which showed views of various parts of the Neo Edo and the Commons. The sand-and-stone garden, with its artificial skylight, drew his attention so powerfully, he actually bumped right into Kit, who had paused at the edge of the screen hiding his bathroom.

The boy reddened clear down into the neckline of his green-and-gold Neo Edo tunic. "Oh, sir, please forgive me-"

Before the apology could turn into an avalanche thick as those lemmings, Kit smiled and said, "It is rather impressive, isn't it? I remember the first time I saw it, after Homako Tani vanished and left this white elephant on my hands. I think I dropped my teeth clear onto the floor."

A hesitant smile passed over the boy's face, revealing as clearly as though his face were made of mountainstream water, rather than flesh and blood, how unsure he was that he might be taking liberties.

"Through here," Kit smiled. "I, er, rather made a mess of that suit scooping up dead lemmings."

The boy brightened. "I heard about that, sir. Were there really millions and millions of 'em?"

Kit laughed. "No, but sometimes it seemed like it. There were probably at least two or three thousand, though."

The boy had gone round-eyed with wonder. "That many? That's a big number, isn't it, sir?"

Kit reminded himself to be sure this youngster was included in orientation and education sessions he held at the Neo Edo for downtimer employees and their families. Many had profited enough from the lessons to leave the Neo Edo and drudgery work behind forever, finding or even making better jobs for themselves. Kit prided himself that none of his downtimer employees, current or former-had walked through a gate and shadowed him- or herself, vanishing forever the moment they crossed to the other side.

The boy took the ruined suit and promised he'd take it to the best drycleaner in the station-there were only two-then bowed and ran for the elevator.

Kit chuckled, then sighed and decided he might as well tackle the four stacks of triple-damned government paperwork every shop owner on TT-86 was required to file weekly. Sometimes, he pondered as he sat down and began on the first tedious document, Kit wondered if Bull Morgan was seen so rarely because he had locked himself into his office to cope with his mountains of paperwork.