Wagers of Sin

by Robert Asprin

  He hid a smile, looking forward to the little scene about to unfold. Passing through the Urbs Romae section of the terminal, he paused to change clothing in a men's room, slipping into a custom-made harness arrangement under uptime clothes and stuffing his Roman disguise of tunic and toga into a shoulder satchel, then sought out the shop of that appalling, purple-haired gargoyle of a money changer. He entered as quietly as an owl on the hunt for a particularly delectable mouse.

  The gargoyle glanced up from another customer. Goldie beamed at him. Chuck smiled politely back and waited, laughing inside already.

  Ah, what joy it was, setting up someone who thought themselves a pro. . . . She finished hastily with the other customer, all but shoving him out the door in her greed.

  "Mr. Farley, what a lovely surprise! Have you reconsidered?"

  Chuck allowed himself a small smile. "Not precisely." He reached into the satchel holding his Roman garments and extracted from a side pocket the bait. "I wanted to discuss this with you." He rubbed the back of his neck as though self-conscious. "I was told you were the expert on such things." With well-practiced deference, he handed over a faded newspaper clipping.

  Eyes glancing curiously from his face to the bit of paper, Goldie Morran scanned what he'd handed her. Avarice gleamed for a lovely instant. Hook, line, and sinker.

  "Well, that is most interesting," Goldie Morran said with a slight clearing of her throat. "This is legitimate?"

  "I assure you, it is. I'm something of an amateur historian and I was tracing some of my family's history. I came across this in my uptime researches into the Gold Rush in Colorado. Imagine my surprise." It came out droll enough to cause Goldie to laugh. He smiled and gestured to the newspaper clipping. "There I am, preserved for posterity, standing over the gold mine I discovered, while some primitive cameraman takes my photograph for the folks back home." He chuckled. "So, you see, I have this opportunity—destiny?—and all I require to fulfill it is a grubstake to purchase the blasted bit of ground."

  "Ahh . . ." Goldie smiled and beckoned him to a comfortable seat on the customer side of her counter. "You'll be wanting to exchange uptime currency for American currency of the proper type for the Wild West Gate, then?"

  "Exactly. I'll need a lot of money downtime to buy the camping gear, mining equipment, horses, and so on, to develop the mine quickly and make me seem legitimate. And you understand I don't want to exchange such a large sum of money officially—the ATF is suspicious, you know."

  Goldie chuckled unexpectedly. "No wonder you weren't interested in any of my suggested investments. You had your own nicely arranged. Very clever, Mr. Farley." She wagged a talon at him. "How much did you have in mind to exchange?"

  "A hundred thousand."

  Goldie Morran's eyes widened.

  "I did bring the cash," he added with a small smile.

  "All right. A hundred thousand. I'll see what I have. There will, of course, be a small transaction fee included in the exchange rate."

  "Oh yes, I quite understand," Farley reassured her.

  She walked down the counter and opened up a locked drawer. She returned with a large wad of oversized bank notes and a handful of gold and silver coins.

  He then dutifully unbuckled the money belt under his uptime clothing and counted out a hundred thousand-dollar bills. Goldie's eyes gleamed. She swiftly counted the money he handed to her, and pushed the unwieldy pile of downtimer money to him.

  The exchange completed, Goldie smiled. "You realize sir, that you'll also need a good quantity of gold nuggets to take into the assayer's office as proof of your strike, in order to stake a proper claim."

  Chuck looked taken aback. "I hadn't realized that. But I was told I'd need at least this much money to buy the new gear in 1885 because of the high prices during the gold rush. And this is all I have."

  Goldie nodded, reminding Chuck of a cathedral downspout he'd once seen, come to full and hideous life. "Well, maybe I can help you. As it happens, I have a good bit of my own assets in the form of gold. I'll give you the gold you need to substantiate your claim if you cut me in for a percentage of your strike. Say about fifty percent?"

  Farley looked eager, then less so when she named the percentage. "Well, that seems a bit steep. How about twenty percent? After all, I did find it."

  "Yes, but without my gold, you'll have to spend a lot of back-breaking, sweaty work just to rush into town to make your claim before the gate closes. Then you'll have to get back to your mine, wasting time that could be devoted to getting more gold out of the ground."

  "True enough. Hmm, how about fifty percent and you agree to exchange my share of the gold dust I bring back without charging your usual fee?"

  "Done, sir."

  She dove into back room and after a short time came back with a rolling cart on which were piled small sacks with odd lumps sticking through the cloth. She pulled out a set of scales and calibrated weights from a shelf underneath the counter, and sat down.

  "Now, mostly what I have is dust, but there are a few nuggets," she said with a smile. "This should be enough to convince the assayer about your strike." She set up the scales carefully, filling one side with brass weights designated in troy ounces. She opened a sack and tipped gold into the other pan until the scale read level. "At the current rates of exchange, that's a hundred dollars."

  She was lying—it was actually more like thirty-five. Chuck said diffidently, "Er, isn't that a bit light?"

  "Oops, sorry, these are the ones I reserve for the zipper jockeys. Let me get the real ones." She opened a drawer behind her, and pulled out another set of counterweights, and continued measuring out hundredweights until she'd finished with the pile. It was a big pile.

  "You probably think it's odd that I happen to keep this much gold around. But I went through the big crash after the Accident, and I don't trust banks, not anymore."

  Chuck rubbed the side of his nose and murmured sympathetically. "My dear lady, you are a life saver. A fortune saver," he added with a small laugh. "But I still have one problem." He gestured to the bags of dust and nuggets laid out across the top of the counter. "I can't very well go walking through the Wild West Gate with that in plain sight. I've got to look like someone who's been in the field for months, accumulating it. Do you have a period-style leather satchel, perhaps, that I could carry everything in?"

  Goldie smiled in what she probably considered her most winsome manner. "I have just the thing. A set of saddlebags brought uptime by one of my agents—for you, no charge. I'll just go and get them."

  She vanished into the back of her shop yet again.

  Chuck was tempted to steal back his bills, just lying there on the counter, but he didn't want to risk being arrested when he came back. His fake ID was good, but why take unnecessary chances? Besides, getting caught by his boss for his little extracurricular activities on TT-86 would be bad for his health. Permanently.

  He and Goldie concluded their business with a handshake, and Farley headed for the nearest public restroom to ditch his clothes, settle the heavy bags of gold into his carrying harness, and don his toga for the Roman gate. He rejoined Marcus, who waited quietly with his luggage. He smiled at the younger man, then headed up the ramp with the other tourists.

  By the time Goldie discovered the scam and reported it, he'd be long gone. Chuck laughed aloud, softly, drawing a curious look from the slave he'd purchased all those years ago. Yes, he'd have given a great deal to see the look on her face under all that purple hair. Amateurs. Still chuckling, he slid his time card with its fake identification into the reader, had his departure time and date duly logged, and gestured to Marcus. The young man hoisted the baggage and followed silently through the gaping portal in the concrete wall of Time Terminal Eighty-Six.

  Unable to leave his apartment, he felt so ill, Skeeter—in looking for ways to make some illegal profit during his convalescence, hit quite suddenly on the answer. Something Marcus had once said brought new inspiration when Skeeter needed
it most. He was still hung over and hurting, a particularly nasty throb where Farley had struck the back of his skull. Or whoever it had been. He was also, however, running out of time. So he quietly bought up a supply of small glass bottles, corks, and paper labels from various outfitters, ordering them over the computer and asking to have them delivered immediately to his apartment. When everything arrived, Skeeter got busy, diligently gluing handwritten labels onto each filled, corked bottle of tapwater, tinged just slightly with a drop of ink. The longer he counted the potential profits to be had in the patent medicine business, the more cheerful he grew, despite headache and hangover from too much alcohol combined with too much chloroform. Each label exclaimed in gorgeous, "antique" script (Skeeter could, among other odd skills, forge just about any signature he'd ever seen): miracle water—direct from downtime importer! famous springs of cauterets! own a bottle of mystic history from gallia comata, ad 47! a thousand passionate nights GUARANTEED with ancient world's most sought-after love potion!

  He hadn't spent much and the uptime tourist crowd was just as gullible as any nineteenth-century Iowa farmer. The descendants of twentieth-century new-ager crystal mystics, in particular, ought to be "medicine show" pushovers. As Ianira Cassondra's little booth on the Commons had proved, they'd buy anything even moderately wacky—particularly if he hinted that the stuff had not only been bottled in Gallia Comata, but that the water from the famous spring actually bubbled up from the sacred rivers of lost Atlantis. He pasted another label, wondering how much he could get per bottle? Ten? Twenty? Fifty? Shucks, some fools might go as high as a hundred.

  Gingerly humming a little ditty Yesukai the Valiant's aged mother had taught him, the tune warlike and lighthearted, Skeeter was as happy as any exiled Yakka tribesman in a lot of pain could be. He had several bottles left to label when someone buzzed his doorbell frantically. Curious, he peered through the peephole.

  "Huh?" Skeeter opened to the door to find Ianira Cassondra outside his apartment, literally wringing her hands in the folds of a pretty, Ionic-style chiton. "Ianira! What are you doing here?"

  He ushered her in, shocked by the tears sparkling on pale cheeks and ashen lips. The door clicked softly behind him, the latch catching, but he was so distracted he didn't bother with the deadbolt. Ianira had clutched at his arm.

  "Please, you must help him!"

  "Who? Ianira, what's happened?"

  "Skeeter, he's going with that terrible man, and I don't trust him, and it's your fault he's going at all—"

  "Whoa, slow down. Now. Who's going where?"

  "Marcus! To Rome!" The words were torn from her.

  Skeeter blinked. "Rome? Marcus is going to Rome? That's crazy. Marcus would never go back to Rome."

  Her nails dug painfully into his arm. "His cursed master came back! You know his pride, his determination to pay that man his purchase cost, to be free of the debt!"

  Skeeter nodded, wondering what on earth had happened. "He should've had plenty, I'd think. I mean, I know the new baby was expensive, and all, and what with little Artemisia getting so sick from the fever that idiot tourist brought back they had to quarantine her, but there's that bet money I gave him—"

  "That's just it!" she cried. Her nails drew blood. "He found out how you got it and gave it back!"

  "He . . . gave it back?" Skeeter's voice hit a squeak. "You mean . . . he just gave it back?" Then: "Oh, shit, that means he knows how to find that maniac that's been—"

  "Yes, yes," Ianira said impatiently, "Lupus had been staying with us, because he needed help and we didn't know it was you who had stolen the money he needed to start a new life away from the blood and the killing!" Harsh accusation rasped along Skeeter's nerves. After that fight with Marcus, this new accusation felt like Ianira had just dumped a whole shaker of salt into an open wound.

  "Okay, I really screwed up with that gladiator. I've known that a while, Ianira, and I'm sorrier than you know. But, what does that have to do with Marcus going to Rome?"

  Ianira gave out a strangled sound like a sob. "How can you be so blind? That man came back, the one who bought him. Marcus didn't have quite enough money to pay him back. Not after all the medical bills. So Marcus agreed to carry his luggage to Rome to finish paying off the debt."

  Skeeter relaxed. "Is that all? He'll be back, then, in a couple of weeks, free and clear."

  "No, he won't!" Petite little Ianira, snarling like an enraged wolverine, backed Skeeter into a corner. He'd seen that look in a woman's eyes before—more than once and usually when Yesukai's new bride had vented her temper on some hapless victim in her imprisoning bridal yurt.

  "Can't you see it, idiot?" Ianira demanded, raising the fine hairs on his neck and arms. "He's made Marcus keep records of certain people who come and go. The man who calls himself Farley, a name which does not match the soul-darkness in his eyes, steals things, downtime. Expensive things. Artwork. Some of it sexual and very rare! Once they're in Rome, Marcus will be just another expendable bit of profit to be auctioned off! That horrible Farley man has tricked him. I can feel it—and I was trained in such arts nearly three thousand years before you were born!"

  A touch of coldness settled in Skeeter's belly. Chuck Farley was Marcus' old master? That put a whole, new—and utterly terrifying—wrinkle on the situation. After his own experience with Chuck Farley, Ianira had to be right. Hell, Ianira was never wrong. The lump on the back of his head still ached, making rational thought nearly impossible. Torn by helplessness, he asked quietly, "What do you want me to do? I can't afford the price of a ticket to Rome."

  Dark eyes flashed rage. "You mean you can't and still save enough to win your horrible wager!"

  Skeeter groaned. That damnable wager, again. "Ianira, the man kidnapping Marcus robbed me, of almost everything I had left. And Brian Hendrickson is holding every red cent of what I've accumulated for that stupid wager."

  "So steal it back! Before it's too late! There are still a few minutes before the Porta Romae opens! Marcus is in line, Skeeter, looking confused and scared, just standing there guarding that miserable man's luggage." Her nails dug even deeper into his arm. Skeeter winced. "I've got The Found Ones out there, but we don't have the money between us, and he won't listen to them if he can't pay off that debt. Please, Skeeter, he is your friend. Help him!

  "I—" He stopped. He didn't have many resources at the moment and if he were going to stop Marcus from stepping through the Porta Romae, he'd have to come up with some fast cash to pay off Farley before the gate opened. "Oh, hell!"

  He switched on his computer and searched out the listing he needed, then picked up the telephone and dialed. The elderly Nally Mundy answered a bit testily.

  "Yes, yes, hello?"

  "Dr. Mundy? It's Skeeter Jackson. I—I know you're going to think this is a scam, because of that damned wager I made with Goldie, but a friend of mine, Marcus, the bartender from Rome, he's in trouble and I need money to keep him from doing something stupid. Dangerous and stupid. If—if you still want to do that interview with me about Yesukai and the Khan's boyhood," he swallowed hard, "I'll do it. I swear. And Ianira Cassondra's here to witness it."

  A long silence at the other end ticked away precious seconds. "Put her on the phone, Skeeter."

  Ianira took the instrument and spoke rapidly to the elderly historian—in Archaic Greek. Then she handed the telephone back to Skeeter.

  "Very well, young rascal. I should probably be committed to an asylum for such folly, but I'll authorize the transfer. You can pick up the money from a cash machine in five minutes. If you cheat me on this one, Skeeter Jackson, I swear to you I will make certain you get tossed off this station into the highest security uptime prison I can land you in!"

  Skeeter winced. He'd pledged his word—and besides, the elderly and utterly harmless Dr. Nally Mundy was an 'eighty-sixer. "Thank you, Dr. Mundy. You don't know what this means."

  If he could just get to the Porta Romae departure line with that money in time . . .

>   The door imploded.

  Skeeter swung around, shocked, even as Ianira gasped with fright. Lupus Mortiferus stood in the shattered remains of his door, face flushed with murderous anger.

  "Now," he growled in Latin, "now we will settle accounts!"

  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 hiccupping 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.