Wizard

14 Gingeroso

"Hey, lover, if you don't come out of there soon, I'm coming in with you."

Chris was looking down at the water running off his body, splashing on his naked feet. There was a bar of soap in his hand. He looked up and got a faceful of spray.

Unusual to blank twice in a row.

"Leave me some water, will you?" It was a female voice, the voice of a stranger. Now where had he been, what was the last clear memory...? He turned off the water and stepped from the tiny shower stall. The walls and floor were bare wood planks. Through an open window he could see the ground thirty meters below. He was in a tree, probably in the Titantown Hotel. He peered cautiously around the doorjamb. The small connecting room held some lightweight furniture and a substantial bed, and on the bed was a nude woman, also substantial. She sprawled on her back in a pose that would have looked enticing had she not been so bonelessly relaxed. Was this before or after? he asked himself, but his body knew the answer. It was after.

"Ah, finally," she said, lifting her head as he came out. "I don't know how much more of this heat I can take." She rose and stood before the bedroom window, lifted her mass of black hair from her shoulders, and fastened it with a pin. Chris thought she was lovely and was sorry he had missed having her. Most things he missed were just as well forgotten, but she looked like the exception. She had long legs and a perfect complexion. Her breasts were perhaps a trifle too large, but he would have liked the chance to prove that experimentally.

She glanced at him. "Oh, no, you don't. Not again, not now, brother. Haven't you had enough?" She hurried into the shower.

He couldn't find his shorts. Poking around, he saw a few unusual implements and many jars of creams and oils. He frowned, looked around some more, and there it was, tacked to the wall. It was yellowing and torn, but it was a prostitution license, issued five years before in Jefferson County, Texas.

"What's wrong now?" she asked when she came out, drying her neck and shoulders. "You sure are changeable, you know?"

"Yeah, I do know. What do I owe you?"

"We talked about that, remember?"

"No, I don't because I might as well tell you I can't remember anything for the last... I don't know how long. From before I met you. And that's just how it is, and I don't want to talk about it, but I can't even remember your name, I can't find my clothes, and would you just tell me how goddamn much I owe you so I can get out of here and not bother you anymore?"

She sat beside him on the bed, not touching him, then reached out and took his hand.

"Like that, huh?" she said, quietly. "You told me about that, but you said a lot of things, and I didn't know what to believe."

"That part was true. Everything else was probably lies. If I told you I had a lot of money somewhere, that was a lie. I had some when I arrived, but after my last blackout all I had left was a pair of shorts."

She knotted the towel around her waist, went to a wooden bureau, and took something from the top. "You threw the shorts away just after you picked me up," she said. "You were going back to nature." She smiled, not teasingly, and tossed something to him.

It was a small gold coin. Stamped into one side were the words "BLANK CHECK" and some Titanide symbols. On the other side was a signature: "C. Jones." Something was coming back to him, and he closed his eyes to squeeze it into recall.

"You said that entitled you to anything in Titantown. Just as good as money. I'd never seen one, but you were on a spending spree, and everyone seemed to honor it."

"I cheated you," he said, knowing it was true. "Only Titanides have to honor it. I was supposed to use it to ... use it to ... to outfit myself for a trip I'm supposed to make." He stood up, suddenly panicked. "I bought a lot of things, I remember that now. I was supposed to ... I mean, where are-"

"Easy, easy. That's all taken care of. I had them take it over to La Gata, like you said to. It's safe."

He sat down slowly. "La Gata... ."

"That's where you're supposed to meet your friends," she prompted. She glanced at a gyroscopic Gaean clock on the bureau. "In about fifteen minutes."

"That's right! I have to ..." He started for the door, then stopped with the feeeling he was forgetting something.

"Do you have a towel I could borrow?"

Wordlessly she handed him the one she was wearing.

"I ... uh, I'm sorry that I don't have anything to give you. I don't know what sort of line I gave you, but I guess I'm surprised you didn't ask for-"

"Money up front? I wasn't born yesterday. I knew what I was getting into." She went to the window and put her hands on the sill, looking down at the town below. "I've been here for quite a while. The Earth was never too good to me. I like the people here. At least, I think of them as people. I guess I'm starting to go native." She looked at him as though she expected him to laugh. When he didn't, one corner of her mouth turned up. "Hell, I own a third interest in a Titanide myself. You stay here long enough, you start shooting marbles." She went to him and kissed him on the cheek. "I can't believe we did all that and you can't remember any of it. Sort of hurts my professional pride." For a moment he thought she was going to cry and could not imagine what was wrong.

"There's a girl going with you on your trip," she said.

"Robin?"

"That's the one. You tell her I said "hi" and to be careful. And good luck. Wish her good luck for me. Will you do that?"

"If you'll tell me your name again."

"Trini. Tell her to watch out for the Plauget woman. She's dangerous. When she gets back, she's always welcome here."

"I'll tell her."