Wagers of Sin

by Robert Asprin

  He sighed philosophically and changed course, heading for Bull Morgan's office before trying the Prince Albert Pub to see what action he might pick up there. If he didn't score something big soon, he was a lost man. As he took the lift to the station manager's capacious office on the second floor, Skeeter realized Ianira's comments had shocked him in another way: he did have people rooting for him, friends among the downtimers he hadn't realized would back him so staunchly.

  Very well, he would try harder. For their sake as well as his. It was comforting to know he wasn't entirely alone.

  Kynan Rhys Gower had no love for Skeeter Jackson.

  It was said by those who knew that Skeeter had attempted to seduce the grandchild of Kynan's liege lord, Kit Carson, by passing himself off as something he was not. Kynan had not been a resident of Time Terminal Eighty-Six when Skeeter Jackson had lied about being a time scout. But during the period when Kynan was struggling hardest to adjust to his new life, he had very nearly been killed protecting the lady Margo. Therefore, any man who would stoop so low as to besmirch her honor was—and had to be—a sworn enemy.

  However, life in this place he had been forced to call home was never as simple and straightforward as it had been in his own time. He began to realize the depth of that truth when Ianira, a Greek beauty some called the Enchantress, but who seemed to Kynan a very devoted wife and mother, called for a Downtimers' Council meeting in the bowels of the time terminal. There, she revealed word of the latest development in the bet between the Scoundrel and Goldie Morran—and what he heard made Kynan Rhys Gower's blood sing.

  Goldie Morran was stealing from the Scoundrel. But Ianira wasn't pleased. Instead, she was asking their help. Ianira Cassondra was actually asking them either to steal back from Goldie, or to ruin as many of her schemes as possible, to pay a debt she and Marcus—unbelievably—owed the Scoundrel, along with all other Found Ones. He'd missed the last meeting due to his work schedule and hadn't had a chance to catch up on Council business since. Everything he heard amazed him.

  A thief had actually given money to a downtimer, to the whole community of downtimers, keeping his word. Kynan despised the philandering Scoundrel. But the chance to act against Goldie Morran, with the Found Ones' full Council blessings . . .

  Kynan Rhys Gower, too, had a score to settle, one it would give him great pleasure to set right. The scars on his back and chest were mute testament to what Goldie Morran's greed and persuasive, silver tongue had wrought—mute testament to the near loss of his life in the fetid, steaming heat of an African twilight, with witch hunters hard on his heels and a crossbow bolt aimed dead at the lady Margo's breast.

  Goldie Morran had lied to him about the conditions under which he was to work for her, had lied to him about the extensive, potentially fatal dangers, then had arrogantly refused to pay him because their "adventure" had failed. It was his liege lord, Kit Carson, who had risked death in more ways than even Kynan could understand, Kit Carson who had rescued Kynan from the clutches of the Portuguese witch hunters, Kit Carson who had made certain that the wounds Kynan had sustained were mended by the great magic available to healers here. And it was Kit Carson who had paid him solid coin for his part in the work Goldie Morran had hired him to do. And paid him, moreover, twice the amount Goldie had named.

  Kit Carson was Kynan's liege lord, Goldie Morran a proven enemy. Kynan might not love Skeeter Jackson, but if helping that scoundrel's cause brought disgrace and banishment for Goldie Morran, well, there were worse ways a man could spend his time and effort. He needn't actually help Skeeter make money, all he needed to do was prevent Goldie from earning any. The stranded Welshman chuckled to himself and began laying careful plans.

  Goldie was sipping wine at an "outdoor" cafe table in Victoria Station, listening to the tourists preparing for departure down the Britannia Gate. One of them, seated nearby, was a florid-faced man who kept wiping his brow with a handkerchief and patting his coat pocket.

  "I tell you, Sally has been after me so long I finally agreed to bring her on this tour, but I had no idea it would all be so expensive! The ticket into Shangri-La, the ticket through the Britannia Gate, the hotel bills here and downtime, the costumes. Good God, do you know how much money I just dropped in that Clothes & Stuff place? I tell you, I'm down to my last five thousand and Sally will pitch a fit beyond belief if I don't buy her expensive presents in London, and then there's the ATF tax to pay on whatever we bring back. . . ."

  His companion, looking bored, just nodded. "Yes, it's expensive. If you can't afford it, don't go."

  The disgruntled man with the florid face huffed. "That's easy for you to say. You don't live with my wife."

  The other man at the table glanced at a pocket watch. "I'm due on the weapons ranges. See you later, Sam."

  He paid his bill and departed, leaving the florid Sam to mop his brow all by himself. Goldie smiled and moved in. She picked up her wine glass and approached his table.

  "Mind if I join you?"

  He glanced up, surprise widening his eyes, then belatedly mumbled, "Sure, sure, sit down."

  Goldie took her seat with the dignity of a dowager empress settling into the ancestral throne. "I'm sorry, but I couldn't help overhearing your conversation. I hope you don't think it forward of me, but there are ways to cut the cost of a time tour. Considerably. You can even turn a tidy profit on occasion. If," she smiled, "you're . . . mmm . . . willing to bend the rules a little? Nothing genuinely illegal, mind you, just a tad . . . exciting. I've tried it dozens of times, myself, or I wouldn't recommend it."

  She sipped her wine and waited, smiling politely.

  Her mark blinked a few times, taking in Goldie's expensive Victorian-era tea-gown and glittering jewelry. He blinked a few times more, swallowed loudly enough to be heard two tables away, then went for it. "What ways?"

  Goldie leaned forward slightly, just touching Sam's hand with well-manicured fingertips. Diamonds winked from one ring, sapphires from another. "Well, as you know, we uptimers are legally forbidden to bet on sporting events downtime—boxing, horse races, that sort of thing—because we might be able to find out the results in advance. ATF considers that an unfair advantage."

  She allowed a tinge of aristocratic disdain to creep into her voice and glanced derisively in the direction of Primary, with its Bureau of Access Time Functions tax collectors, luggage-searching busybodies, and officious bureaucrats.

  Sam grunted once. "So I've been told. Our guide said we'll be watched to keep us from doing any betting while we're in London. Interfering, high-handed . . ."

  Goldie let him rant at length, then brought the conversation around toward her intended direction again. "Yes, I know all that, dearie." She patted his hand. "As I said, I've done this dozens of times. It's very simple, really. You find out the winners of whatever race you want to bet on, then give that information and your money to one of the downtimers hanging around the station. Many of them pick up odd jobs at the last minute for Time Tours as baggage handlers, so it's really a very simple matter to arrange. The downtimer places your bet and collects your winnings. You give him a small cut, and voila! You've helped defray expenses, at the very least. And best of all, you split the earnings downtime, so you can either convert it to uptime money the ATF can't touch or buy a few trinkets to bring home as souvenirs."

  Goldie lifted her wineglass, tilting it so that the endless light in the Commons glittered on the jewels adorning her fingers. Come on, Sammie boy. Go for it. Not that any downtimer'll come near your lovely bankroll. She smiled politely and sipped wine as though the outcome of his decision meant nothing whatsoever to her. Hook him, then tell him the idiot downtimer wandered through a gate and Shadowed himself, went "Poof!" money and all. Complain to management if you like, but of course, it's your word against mine and there's that matter of admitting an attempt to place an illegal bet. . . .

  Sam wiped his brow one last time with a wilted handkerchief, then said decisively, "I'll do it! I will. Tell me
how."

  Goldie set her wineglass down. "As it happens, I've already made arrangements with a gentleman to place a bet for me this trip. He can place a bet for you, as well, on the same race. The wagering stands at ten-to-one. I'm placing ten grand on it. This time next week, I'll have a cool hundred thousand more in my retirement fund."

  Sam, his face flushed now with excitement rather than nerves, reached for his coat pocket and pulled out a fat wallet. Goldie salivated and swallowed while toying idly with her wineglass to keep her fingers from trembling in anticipation of all that lovely money.

  "How much . . ." Sam was muttering. "How much to risk? Oh, hell, here. Have him bet it all."

  The man handed her British pound notes which added up to five thousand dollars, American. Goldie smiled again, her predatory heart singing. Then a shadow fell across the table. They both glanced up. Goldie widened her eyes in astonishment.

  "Kynan Rhys Gower!"

  "I come, lady, as I promise. The bet, lady. Do I hear right? I make bet for this man, too?"

  Goldie blinked once, owl-like, aware that her lips had fallen into a round O of surprise. Then she forcibly recovered her composure. "Why, yes, that's right, Kynan. I just didn't realize you'd come early to collect my stake."

  "I prompt, lady. Place bet good. All bets." He winked.

  Then he plucked the money from nerveless fingers before she could part lips to protest. Kynan bowed and kissed her hand gallantly, then bowed to Sam, who was beaming, clearly impressed by the charade. Goldie didn't know what to do.

  But if Kynan Rhys Gower thought she'd let him out of her sight, he was a greater fool than she thought.

  The Welshman bowed again and started to leave.

  "If you'll excuse me," Goldie said hastily, "Kynan and I have business of our own to finish."

  "But—"

  "Don't worry, we'll be on the tour together. I'll catch up to you at the Britannia Gate, Sam."

  Goldie fled after the Welshman, who had already vanished around a corner of Victoria Station's cobbled, twisted "streets" of shop fronts, cafes, and pubs. She spotted him ahead and picked up speed.

  "Kynan!"

  The Welshman ducked into a pub and vanished in a wooden-floored room with air so thick from cigar smoke and alcohol fumes, it was as though a marshland miasma rose from dozens of beer mugs, brandy snifters, whisky glasses, and stinking black stogies. Goldie stood glaring from the threshold until her eyesight adjusted, but there was no sign of Kynan Rhys Gower.

  "Has anybody seen Kynan Rhys Gower?" she demanded of the crowded room at large.

  "Headed toward the loo, love," someone sang out.

  Grim-faced, Goldie stormed into the men's room, not caring a fiddle for the shocked men who grabbed at open flies and cursed her in scalding terms when she started searching stalls.

  Kynan was not in the "loo."

  She emerged, color rising high in her cheeks from sheer ire.

  Then someone came past, saying, " . . . won't believe it! Biggest domestic screaming fight I've ever seen! Yelling cat and dog, they are, her waving a fist full of money at him, and the poor schmuck trying to explain it was for her he'd got himself swindled. . . ."

  Goldie cursed once aloud, explosively, earning curious stares from several 'eighty-sixers hanging on this gossip.

  "Something wrong, Goldie?" Rachel Eisenstein asked, her brow furrowing slightly.

  "Not a thing!"

  Rachel shrugged and turned back to the storyteller. "Think it'll require stitches before they're done?"

  Goldie stormed away from the terminal's head physician and the rest of the gossipers yammering about her money.

  That . . . that honor-bound, incompetent, downtime rat!

  He'd given the blasted money back to Sam's wife!

  She beat a dignified, hasty retreat toward her money-changing shop, seething inside as she tried to come up with some other scheme that would net her a big gain over that mongrel cur, Skeeter Jackson.

  Goldie slammed shut the shop door so hard, the bell jangled wildly against the glass. She stalked behind her counter and indulged in at least five minutes of unrestrained, sulky cursing where nothing but her glittering coins and jewels could hear.

  Then, drawing several savage breaths, she added Kynan Rhys Gower to the list of names she owed serious paybacks. And then—caution overcoming wrath—she carefully struck his name off her list again. For reasons personally painful to recall, Kynan Rhys Gower was under Kit Carson's personal—and far-reaching—protection. After what Goldie Morran had suffered as a result of Kit's wrath, she did not want to find herself on the losing end of another deal with Kenneth "Kit" Carson, world-famous time scout and land-shark businessman.

  Goldie muttered under her breath. "Damn meddling scouts, guides, and downtimers, one and all." She turned her savage anger toward a more productive target: Skeeter Jackson. She had to know what he was up to. After that blitzkrieg attack by those boys she'd hired, he'd gone virtually underground. Goldie tapped long, manicured nails against the glass countertop, noticed the rings she'd borrowed from her inventory. She replaced them in the glass case with a snort of disgust, then reached thoughtfully for the telephone. She might not have won this battle, but the war was far from over.

  All communities, no matter their size, have rituals by which they measure the passage of time and gauge the meaning of life. These rituals serve purposes beyond seemingly superficial appearances; they provide necessary cohesion and order within the primate group to which humanity belongs, they sustain continuity in the endless chaos of life, they ensure proper passage from one phase of life into the next as the individual grows from childhood into adulthood responsibility and from there into old age, all within the context of the social group to which that individual belongs. This need for ritual is so profound, it is locked within the genetic code, transmitted over the generations from the vast distance of time when Lucy and her predecessors roamed the steaming plains of Africa, learning to use tools and language in a hostile, alien world—a world whose harsh beauty struck awe into the soul, a world where the terror of instant death could not be fully comprehended.

  And so humans learned to survive via the evolution of rituals, changing not so much their physical bodies as their cultural, social patterns of behavior. In a world without rituals, humans will create their own, as in the gangs of lawless children who had before and still did, after The Accident, terrorized the streets of major cities.

  The more chaotic the world, the greater the need for ritual.

  La-La Land was an utter morass of conflicting cultures, religious beliefs, and behavior patterns. Its very nickname reflected the insane nature of the small community of shopkeepers, professionals, law-enforcers, medical personnel, scholars, con artists, time-tour-company employees, stranded downtimers, freelance time guides, and the most insane of all the residents, the time scouts who explored new gates, risking their lives with each new journey alone into the unknown past.

  In order to keep the peace, Station Management and representatives of the uptime government both had laid down sets of rituals—codified into law—by which residents and tourists alike were required to abide. Others sprung up naturally, as such things will any time human beings come together into more or less permanent groupings of more than one. (And, in fact, even hermits have their own rituals, whether or not they care to admit it.)

  In La-La Land, there were two rituals of paramount importance to every resident: Bureau of Access Time Function's incessant attempts to enforce the cardinal rule of time touring, "Thou Shalt Not Profiteer from Temporal Travel" and the residents' unceasing attempts to thumb their collective noses at said cardinal rule.

  The High Priests of the two opposing factions were Bull Morgan, Station Manager, whose sole purpose in life was to maintain an orderly, profitable station where a body could do pretty much as he or she pleased, so long as the peace was kept—and the other was Montgomery Wilkes, head ATF agent, a man dedicated to enforcing the cardinal rule of
time touring at all cost.

  Inevitably, when Bull and Montgomery locked horns, sparks flew. This, in turn, had given rise to a third universal ritual in La-La Land. Known affectionately as Bull Watching, it involved the placement of bets both large and small on the outcome of any given encounter between the two men. In its classic form, Bull Watching provided hours of entertainment to those men and women who had chosen to live in a place where light blazed from the ceiling of the Commons twenty-four hours a day, but where the only real sunlight came from the occasional trickle through an open gate.

  In this sunless, brightly lit world, it was inevitable that Montgomery Wilkes would grow ever more bitter as residents flouted his authority at every possible moment and made bets that infuriated him about every word he did or did not utter. When Goldie Morran came to him with her plan to rid the station of Skeeter Jackson, he saw a golden opportunity to rid it of Goldie Morran, as well—a woman he knew in his bones broke the cardinal rule of time touring with every gate that opened, but was slick enough not to get caught.

  In taking that wager with Skeeter—and then coming to him—she had sealed her own doom.

  Montgomery Wilkes intended to deport both of the scoundrels before this business was done. That decision made, he indulged in a little ritual of his own. He called it "inspecting the troops." The ATF agents assigned to TT-86 called it words impossible to repeat in polite company.

  Dressed in black uniforms that crackled when they walked, their hair cut to regulation length (Montgomery had been known to use a ruler to measure hair length to the last millimeter), every ATF agent in the ready room snapped to attention when he stalked in, six feet, one hundred-eighty pounds of muscle, close-cropped red hair, crackling green eyes, and set lips that underscored the lines of discontent in his face.