Wages of Sin

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The day he returned to the great Circus was the most terrifying day of Skeeter Jackson's life. He came in a cage, like one of the big cats trapped so close to his iron box on the long barge. Their snarls of rage beat through him, making. him wonder how long it had been since they'd been fed anything except prods from sharpened stakes and taunts from their keepers. Skeeter knew very much how they must feel.

Some of the gladiators on shore walked around freely, some of them still under armed guard, not yet dressed for combat or given the weapons with which they would slaughter one another. Those not under guard were free men who'd taken up the insane game of life or death and glory; those guarded were valuable slave gladiators who'd earned grand reputations and were proud of their skills--not condemned criminals awaiting a mockery of a fair chance at survival.

The previous night, though he wasn't sure where they'd actually been, he and the other prisoner-gladiators had been paraded into some kind of public banquet hall and feted, given anything they cared to eat-or could hold down. More than a few men said goodbye to family members, clearly expecting never to see them again. Skeeter didn't have even that. All he had were Yesukai's lessons to get him through a last meal under the eyes of jeering, laughing, betting Romans.

Now, with the sun high in the sky, and the races at the Circus, which took place in the mornings, just about to end, it was time for the next part of the show. Skeeter's barge halted and the cages were hauled one by one onto shore near the back of the great Circus itself, where the starting gates of the races were. Inside, the crowd was cheering so loudly it startled the raging cats-leopards, lions, sleek cheetahs--into even greater frenzy. Caged antelopes bleated their terror and hurled themselves against narrowly spaced iron bars, unable to escape.

Some of the other prisoners near Skeeter's cage, also doomed to the arena, were crying for mercy to such men as passed, none of whom listened. Skeeter wanted to do a little crying of his own, but he didn't see the good it would do. Yesukai the Valiant had taught him endurance, tenacity. He called on those lessons now with everything in him and managed-just barely-to remain silent. But he could not stop the shakes quite so easily.

Far down the line, some slave with a stack of wax tablets was busy making his way past each cage, jotting down contents or checking off his list, something like that. Inventory clerk, Skeeter thought with a sudden, near-uncontrollable desire to laugh insanely. Those infuriatingly thorough, meticulous Romans. Keeping their records right down to the last doomed prisoner and bleating antelope.

But when the slave got close enough to hear his voice asking questions of each caged gladiator, such as his name and fighting style, Skeeter gave a sudden start and grabbed the bars, straining to see. He knew that voice! He knew ... but didn't quite believe it until he came face to face with Marcus through the bars of his filthy cage.

Marcus went deathly white in a single instant.

"Marcus, I"

"Skeeter, what.."

They began, and halted again, simultaneously.

Marcus went to one knee, to be on the same level as Skeeter. His eyes were dark with emotion. "Skeeter!" He swallowed hard, consulted his tablets as though confirming the nightmare, then slowly met Skeeter's eyes. "They have paired you with the Death Wolf." His voice broke a little as he said it.

"Yeah. I know." Skeeter managed a sickly version of his old smile. "Nothing like justice, huh? I'm just -I never meant for this"-he gestured to Marcus' collar-"to happen. Never, ever. You ..." He couldn't finish it. Couldn't say, "You were the only friend I ever had." The enormity of his loss was just now opening inside his mind.

"I am sorry," Marcus whispered. "My master... I will be on the balustrade above the stalls, watching the fighting. I ..." He swallowed hard, tapped the wax tablets he carried. "I have to record who wins."

Skeeter tried, and failed, a bright smile. "Yeah. Well. Maybe I'll surprise everyone, huh? At least you can run away, get to the gate next time it opens."

Marcus was shaking his head, 'eighty-sixer fashion rather than Roman. "No. I have an enormous debt to repay. I know, here," he touched his breast, "that no man has the right to hold me slave. But I must repay the money, Skeeter. The honor of the Taurusates is all I have left, now."

There were tears in his eyes as he said it.

"Taurusates? That your real name?"

Marcus started to laugh, ended up crying. "No," he choked out. "My tribe's name. We ... we were both betrayed, you know. The moneychanger, Goldie? With the hair of purple? The one against you in the great wager." His voice came out bitter, brittle as the hot sun beating down on them both. The stink of terrified men and the reeking musk of enraged lions engulfed their awareness.

Skeeter narrowed his eyes, trying to drive present reality out of existence at least for the moment. Sweet memories of Time Terminal Eighty-Six were almost too much. "Yeah, Goldie Morran,- he managed. " What about her?"

"She told ... she told Lupus about you. How to find you. This I heard her do, right before I returned to the Neo Edo to give Farley what I owed him. As much as I could of it, anyway."

Skeeter winced, writhing inside as he recalled the tears and bitter accusation in Ianira's voice. "So she told him, did she? Too bad I won't get a chance to throttle that old witch by the throat."

Marcus shrugged, very Gallic. "She will not be doing so very well, either. Farley stole a great deal of gold from her, just before we left. He laughed as he told me of it, after my sale. I ... I asked him how he had brought so much gold through Primary. He said he took it from Goldie."

Despite the genuine calamity to Goldie Morran, Skeeter found himself laughing a little too shrilly, even as tears formed in his eyes, tears of helplessness, rage, terror. "So he got her, too, eh?" Marcus' dark eyes widened. "Christ. Both of us. What a couple of suckers we were. So goddamned sure-"

He glance through the bars at Marcus. "I don't suppose you'd believe me, anyway, if I told you I was trying to stop you from going through the Porta Romae?" Marcus' eyes widened even further. "That's when Lupus crashed the Gate behind me and cracked me across the head."

Marcus' tightly pressed lips came adrift. "But...why?"

"I'd ... I'd arranged to borrow some money, see, do some sessions with Dr. Mundy, to pay Farley the rest of what you owed him."

The look in Marcus' eyes told Skeeter he should've taken pity and kept his mouth shut. Skeeter cleared his throat roughly. "You'd better get on with your job," he said, "before your master gets pissed off and thinks you're loafing."

Marcus swallowed. "I had thought, until the moment I saw you in that cage, that I hated you, Skeeter. But now ..." He trailed off helplessly. "May the gods fight on your side."

He made a hasty mark on his wax tablet and hurried on to the next cage, and the one beyond it, until he was out of sight and hearing. Skeeter slumped against the bars, feeling the throb of hurt inside him turn slowly to bitter rage. Goldie Morran, curse her, had sent him to this. Skeeter deserved to be punished, that much he could at least admit, but to just sell him out, knowing he'd be murdered, in order to win that accursed wager ...

Skeeter owed Marcus, owed him his freedom, his family, a debt he needed to absolve himself of before he met the gods of the high Mongolian mountains, where the bite of ice in the sharp winds could kill a man in minutes. "If I get out of this alive," he vowed, "I'll get you back to Ianira and your kids. Somehow. And when I do..." He thought blackly of Goldie Morran. "When I do, I'll wring that scrawny old buzzard's jeweled neck!"

Rage sustained him through the exhibition before the start of the real games. Paired off with Lupus, whose laughing eyes and grinning mouth told of supreme confidence, Skeeter went through the motions he'd been beaten into learning, doing the whole, maddening drill in slow motion to the cheering encouragement of the crowd. Lupus' shield, Skeeter noted as he studied his adversary's every move, every potential weakness, was decorated with an odd, painted motif a coiled serpent inside a circle of feathers painted a lurid shade of green, like First Officer Spock had bled all over them. Realizing that he was thinking about a television show some fifty years old, Skeeter gave a short bark of laughter that caused shock to detonate in Lupus' eyes for just a second.

Good! Skeeter thought savagely. Keep the bastard off balance, maybe you'll live through this yet.

Some of the men near him were literally gibbering with terror. Skeeter should have been shaking, too, with fear of what Lupus was about to do to him. But all Skeeter felt was a cold, dark rage at what Goldie had done. A Yakka Mongol knew only too well that death would come sooner or later, pleasantly or in agony, which was why he lived life to the fullest every day he still breathed; but what Goldie had done, had deliberately set in motion. That could not be forgiven. He prayed to gods he thought he'd forgotten the names of, sky gods and mountain spirits and the demons which drove the great, black storms of sand across the valleys and open plains, and waited to match weapons for real with Lupus Mortiferus.

Lupus just might have a surprise or two in store.

While even in 1885 Denver was a fair sized city, with many stately buildings in brick and stone, most of the streets were dirt. Puffs of dust from their horses' hooves rose behind them as Malcolm set out with Margo on Chuck Farley's trail. Fortunately, that same dust made trailing him very easy. He left town completely, heading out to a spot that would one day become, if Malcolm were correct, a public park in the twenty-first century. He and Margo slowed their horses, which blew quietly as they slipped into the cover of a grove of trees, and watched Chuck dismount. He was whistling cheerfully. The sound carried on the slight breeze, straight toward them. The backdrop of the snowclad Rockies was breathtaking and the air was so clean, it smelt of bright sunshine and clear wind.

Malcolm glanced at Margo and smiled. Clearly she was entranced by the setting, the chase, the whole deadly game they played. Although she rode sidesaddle, a Winchester lever-action Model 76 Centennial rode in a saddle scabbard, and her skirts concealed a beauty of a revolver, one of the Colt .41 Double Actions. This time, Malcolm had no qualms at all about her ability to use-with deadly accuracy-any weapon she was forced to bring to bear. Out in the clearing, Chuck had begun to dig with a heavy spade unloaded from his pack horse. If he caught sight of them, they might well have to fight it out. But Malcolm, glancing at his own firearms, hoped it didn't come to that.

At least Margo had set those idiotic paleontologists straight. They were now properly armed with rifles and pistols that would arouse no one's curiosity.

Malcolm grinned. What a way to begin their first adventure together as Smith and Moore, time guides, soon to be Moore and Moore, time scouts. He edged his horse just far enough toward hers to catch her hand and squeeze it. She glanced up, startled, then grinned and squeezed back. Malcolm quietly unstrapped the leather satchel holding his computerized log and ATLS, opened the flap, and slipped out a digitizing video camera attached to the log. He turned it on and was gratified when Margo copied his action efficiently, setting up her own digitizing camera and training it on Chuck, still busy digging. The images both cameras captured would feed directly into their individual logs, an could be used as legal evidence, along with the sworn affidavits, in most any uptime court of law.

Chuck's hole was getting larger by the minute. What was he burying, a crate the size of a steamer trunk? Malcolm narrowed his eyes. From the looks of the luggage tied to that pack horse's back, if he intended to bury it all, he'd need a big hole.

Chuck finally laid the heavy spade aside and straightened his back, grumbling audibly. Whatever he was burying, he was going to a great deal of personal trouble about it. Antiquities smuggler was Malcolms private bet with himself. It was the only reasonable explanation he could devise for a man who went downtime with a vast sum of money, and returned with a great deal of clearly precious luggage.

What, Malcolm mused, had he brought back? Manuscripts? The way Chuck grunted when he unstrapped one case quashed that idea. That box was heavy. Chuck set it on the ground beside his deep hole, then unpacked several other cases. Then he sat down and opened them one by one. Apparently he had been too careful to examine them while in TT-86.

"Mother-fucking-" Chuck's curse was loud and startling. He was glaring into the first box, which he'd angled enough that Malcolm and both cameras could see its interior-and complete lack of contents. "Goddamned gold must've been used for something else later in history. Shit! After the trouble I went through to get those pieces ..." He muttered something under his breath, then tossed the case aside. "Just like what happened with those goddamned jewels of Isabella's. How was I supposed to know those rocks would end up in her collection, never mind Chris Columbus' greedy Italian hands? Damn. Wonder if any of it managed to come through the goddamned Porta Romae intact?"

Malcolm held back a chuckle at the look of glee on Margo's face. She was absolutely intent on her work, recording Chuck's every move, every savage curse, every case he opened. Another foul expletive cut through the air. "-gold inlay vanished!" He held up a piece that Malcolm at first couldn't identify. Then the shape took on abrupt, crystal-clear meaning. It was an ivory dildo, complete with testes, which were evidently missing a detailed inlay of some sort. Malcolm zoomed in on the piece and thought, Yes, l do believe there was supposed to be golden "hair" on that thing, and inlay for the veins along the shaft. Good Lord, what's he done, robbed or bribed every brothel in Rome?

A quick glance at Margo showed him flaming cheeks and even a pinkened throat, but she was still recording as steadily as any pro. Good girl! Chuck laid the dildo back in is velvet-lined case and examined the rest of the contents. All of them were sexual in nature, although not all of them were actual sex toys. Each new case brought to light exquisite statuary in marble, ivory, bronze, even-Chuck gloated through the digitizing camera lens-a few surviving golden pieces. A delicate little silver statue of Aphrodite in flagrante delicto with one of her lovers came to light, followed by a marble statue of Hermes with a very erect-and removable-phallus.

Very carefully, Chuck re-covered his treasures in their lined cases, dragged out a small, battered notebook and made a few notations in it, then bagged each case in waterproof plastic which he then heat-sealed with a handy little battery operated gadget. He then gently laid them in the deep hole he'd dug, clearly planning to return uptime and reclaim his treasures without having to pay ATF taxes on them. It was a nice little scam. Those pieces would bring a fortune on the black market-even if they hadn't been commissioned by some uptime collector. Chuck filled in his hole again and tamped the dirt down, then carefully replaced the sod he'd cut out and tamped it down, too, pouring water from two entire canteens over it to ensure that it wouldn't die and turn brown, sticking out like a neon sign saying "Somebody buried something here!"

Chuck then pulled out an ATLS, surprising Malcolm considerably, and shot geographic coordinates using lines of magnetism, the position of certain mountain peaks in relation to his treasure trove, and so forth. He'd have gotten a better reading at night, when he could shoot a complete scan, with star-fixes to be completely sure of his location, but Malcolm decided he'd get an accurate enough reading to find his little treasure with minimum difficulty once he'd returned uptime.

Having taken his ATLS reading, Chuck stowed the instrument generally used only by trained time scouts in its leather bag on the pack horse-which now had a much lighter burden-and started whistling again. He mounted his saddle horse, glanced back at the watered sod, and said quite distinctly, "Not a bad haul. Not bad at all. Boss is going to be pissed as hell about the lost pieces, but that's the risk you take in this business." He chuckled. "Ah, well. I should've known better than to buy that whole lot from one source. Rotten little Egyptian. Too bad I won't be able to zip back down to Rome and settle the score." With that, he clucked to his horses and set off at a brisk trot toward town.

Malcolm waited until he'd been out of sight for a full fifteen minutes, then signaled Margo to wait. She thinned her lips, clearly seething at the restriction, but this time she stayed put with no arguments. She was learning. Good. Malcolm walked his horse around the clearing several times, but Chuck showed no sign of returning. He filmed a close-up of the tamped down, wet sod, then signaled Margo to join him. She did, grinning like the evil little imp she was.

"Okay," she said, fairly bursting with excitement, "what do we do? We've got him dead to rights-but how do we catch him?"

Malcolm chuckled. "We notify the uptime authorities the moment Primary opens to stake out this spot. He'll 'show up to dig up his booty one nice quiet night and they'll nail him. Meanwhile.. ." He turned off his camera, stowed his log, and said, "Keep filming, would you, Margo? I'm going to leave a nasty little surprise for our dear friend Chuck Farley, or whatever his real name might be. Let's see, now..." He sorted through his saddlebags until he found a short-handled camp spade he'd planned to use on a jaunt he'd wanted to take Margo on out into the countryside.

Instead of camping, they had something much more enjoyable lying ahead of them. Malcolm chuckled, carefully laid Chuck's wet sod aside, then began to dig. He uncovered every single plastic-wrapped case, then filled in the hole with rocks while Margo recorded the whole thing. "What I intend to do," he said, puffing for breath as he heaved the final rock into place, "is return these antiquities to the ... proper authorities. There." He tamped dirt down around the rocks until the entire hole had been filled, then settled the sod back in place, watering it from his own canteen.

Then he glanced into Margo's digitizing camera. "I am Malcolm Moore, freelance time guide, working out of Time Terminal Eighty-Six. I hereby do solemnly swear that a man known to me as Charles `Chuck' Farley acquired the antiquities in these bags, which we recorded him commenting upon as he buried them; that said Chuck Farley should be apprehended by uptime authorities for antiquities fraud; for violation of the prime law of time travel; for tax evasion on objects of immense artistic and historical/archaeological value; and potentially for kidnapping, as two residents of TT-86 are missing as a result of his actions.

"I also hereby solemnly swear that as soon as the Wild West Gate reopens, I will turn over each and every antiquity recorded here to the proper, designated representative of IFARTS on TT-86 for cataloging, copying, and return to its point of origin. I freely agree to serve as a witness at any deposition or trial should the man calling himself Charles Farley be apprehended."

He signaled to Margo to hand him her camera. She passed it over and he settled her face in the viewfinder. Her normally vivacious countenance was unusually stern as she repeated approximately the same statement Malcolm had just made, adding only-but significantly: " ... and should be charged for murder or manslaughter, should one Skeeter Jackson be determined to have died in an attempt to stop Chuck Farley's intended plans, an attempt witnessed by several hundred individuals in Time Terminal Eighty-Six and recorded by one of the tourists. This can also be corroborated by Time Tours, Inc., as Mr. Jackson `crashed' the gate in a desperate bid to stop the kidnapping of a TT-86 resident. Should Mr. Jackson's deceased remains be discovered downtime, I strongly urge whatever court may hear this testimony to charge the man known to us as Charles Farley with murder, manslaughter, or whatever charge the prosecution may deem appropriate under the circumstances. Chuck Farley is an evil, ruthless man who will stop at nothing to gain what he wants and if caught should be denied bail and punished accordingly"

Malcolm was nodding silently, pleased that she'd thought of those finishing touches. Jackson was no friend, but his action at the Porta Romae two week previously had elevated him in Malcolm's estimation by several notches of respect. Malcolm just hoped that whatever was happening downtime in Rome, Skeeter and Marcus would make it back to La-La Land safely.

Malcolm thought of Ianira and those two beautiful little girls and silently told himself that going after Farley in person and calling him out to a duel here and now in Denver would not only be suicidal, it would put Margo in desperate danger, as well. Nevertheless, his hands itched to line up Farley's bearded face in the sights of the Colt single-action army revolver strapped to his waist and squeeze off as many shots as it held.

Malcolm did not like losing friends. If Marcus and Skeeter didn't return by the next cycling of the Porta Romae, Malcolm would be ready to go through the other direction and hunt for them. Rome was a big city, but Malcolm had his sources and so did Time Tours, Inc. Losing two 'eighty-sixers--even if one were a downtimer and the other a gate crashing con man and thief-would definitely not be good for their public image or their business. Malcolm would personally make them see that, if necessary.

Malcolm smiled grimly. Oh, yes, there would eventually be a reckoning with Mr. Chuck Farley, if Malcolm had to go uptime and hunt him down, himself. He just hoped Skeeter Jackson and Marcus were still alive and able to testify when that reckoning finally came.