Wages of Sin

by Robert Asprin

  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 ma
y 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.

  Chapter Eighteen

  THE SUN BEAT down fierce as any Mongolian desert sky, and the sand underfoot was hot enough that Skeeter could feel it through the thin leather soles of his shoes-sandals that were mostly straps. Heat radiated off the arena sands, boiled off the embossed plaques of the great bronze turning posts, blinded the eye with tier after tier of stone and wooden seats and marble temples built right into the stadium itself. Sound roared down, assaulting his ears until his head ached, with the heart-freezing beat of a hundred thousand voices screaming in one solid mass nearly a mile long on each side.

  Skeeter swallowed, briefly closed his eyes, and thought, If Ianira's right, then I could use a little help here, Artemis.- And Athene, Ianira says you even, beat the God of War in battle once. I sure could use some assistance. He even prayed to the Mongolian sky and thunder gods, as well as the singular Trinity of the Methodist church to which his mother had dragged him as a small boy. When it came to prayer, Skeeter wasn't too particular at just this moment Who answered, so long as They helped him get out of this fight alive. He wondered how many other prayers were winging their way heavenward with his.

  He counted the pairs: twenty men, fighting in ten pairs, all at the same time. Two pairs of essedarii would be fighting from chariots drawn by a couple of horses each. A pair of laqueatores would fight one another with throwing slings-he'd seen what they could do during practice and was glad he wasn't fighting one of them. Two pairs of myrmillones in their weird, Gaulish helmets with the fish soldered on top would slash and stab it out with swords. Two retiarii were paired off against their traditional pursuers, the heavily shielded secutores with their massive, visored helmets, shields, and short swords. A duo of mounted andabates brought a dull, burning anger to Skeeter's gut. Mounted, he could've held his own for at least a little while, by running his horse in circles around the gladiator until Lupus fell down from exhaustion, if nothing else. But he didn't have a horse. The last two pairs were armed the same way he and Lupus were: the underdogs with nets and tridents, like the retaarii, with lassos as backup weapons, while they faced seasoned champions who fought nearly naked-but with a wicked sword in each hand.

  As a group, they marched stolidly out across the burning arena sands to the Imperial Box, while the slam and whap of the starting-gate boxes being closed up reached his ears. A deep water moat at least ten feet across separated the fighters from the crowd, not to mention an iron fence tall and solid enough to keep an elephant from breaking through it. A few massive dents which even blacksmiths hadn't quite been able to unkink caused Skeeter to wonder if injured elephants had tried an escape through that fence.

  The only hiding place anywhere out here was up on the spine, a collection of long, rectangular pedestals between the racing turns, on which stood statues of various deities, winged Victories that Skeeter hoped were smiling on him today, and an enormous Egyptian obelisk right in the center.

  Skeeter's lanista prodded him. The gladiators were bowing to the Emperor. They shouted as one, "We who are about to die..."

  Skeeter stumbled over the words, more because his Latin just wasn't very good than from a shaking voice. Besides, he didn't feel like saluting the Roman emperor.

  Claudius was sitting up there like a deformed god, gazing coldly down on them like they were insects about to provide some trifling amusement. As a displaced Mongolian bogda, that made Skeeter mad. For five years, l was a god, too, dammit. I was lonely as hell, but I'm just as good as you are, Imperator Claudius.

  Anger was far better than fear. He fed it, cunningly, as a fox fed his craftiness to catch unsuspecting the prey that thought itself safe. The champion of a hundred or more victories, Rome's wildly popular Death Wolf, bowed low and received the adulation of tens of thousands of voices: "Lupus! Lupus! Lupus!"

  Skeeter glanced at his trainer who held a whip in one hand and a red-hot branding iron in the other, to encourage him if necessary. He laughed aloud, visibly disconcerting the man, then turned his back. He wouldn't need that sort of encouragement. A swift glance at Rome's Death Wolf showed him a grinning, overconfident champion already counting his victory. Skeeter knew he should've been scared to his bones. But the knowledge that Marcus was standing somewhere to his left, watching helplessly because both of them had been betrayed, burned away fear as effectively as the Mongolian desert sun.

  The Emperor raised his hand, then dropped it. A monstrous roar beat at him-then he was dancing aside, away from Lupus' flashing double swords. He narrowed his eyes against the glare, wishing for a pair of sunglasses, a suit of chainmail made from titanium links, and an MP-5 submachinegun with about fifty spare magazines of ammo, and began the fight for his life.

  The roar of the crowd faded from his awareness. Skeeter's whole concentration narrowed to Lupus Mortiferus and his flashing swords and grinning face. He danced this way and that, feinting and falling back, getting the champion's rhythms down, then made his first net cast. Lupus lunged aside barely in time. The crowd's roar penetrated his concentration even as he danced backward, away from those deadly blades and reeled in the net by the attached string. He held the heavy trident out to block thrusts or slashes and allowed his mind to race ahead with ideas.

  The great spine of the Circus wasn't solid. It had gaps in it, wide enough for a man to duck into-or through. Skeeter ducked. Lupus swore hideously, his bulk too large to follow. He ran around the long distance of the spine to catch him on the other side. Skeeter simply ran back the other way. The crowd's roar turned to howls of laughter. Lupus' face, when Skeeter glimpsed it, was almost the color of pickled beets. The gladiator, veins in neck and throat standing out in clear relief, charged back down the long wall of the spine.

  Gee, maybe hell have a stroke and I'll win by default.

  No such luck, though. Lupus scrambled through sideways this time, grunting and cursing at him as he scraped belly and back on rough stone. Skeeter dodged out into the open, where he most profoundly did not want to be, but avoided a deadly sword thrust aimed at his side. Shouts and cries from the stands indicated that someone had gone down. Skeeter's peripheral vision showed him one of the netmen down, left arm upraised in supplication. The crowd was roaring, thumbs turned up . The Emperor copied their motion, jerking his thumb upward from gut to throat.

  The secutore who'd hacked his opponent's leg out from under him plunged the sword through his fall
en opponent's chest. The crowd roared its approval. Skeeter ran, Lupus chasing him, and dodged around behind one of the racing chariots, drawing curses from its driver as well as from Lupus. Skeeter caught the harness of one of the horses and hung on, letting the horse save his strength while Lupus fought to get past the encumbering chariot. Down where the dead gladiator lay, a man raced out from the starting stalls and smote the poor bastard a skull-cracking blow from an enormous hammer, then dragged the body away.

  Okay. Thumbs -up means you're a gonner and if the guy you re fighting doesn't do it properly, they'll finish you off. Good things to know, Skeeter, my boy.

  He let go of the chariot horse's harness and darted between a pair of circling horsemen, ducking under one horse's belly. The startled animal screamed and reared, blocking Lupus' way. The crowd roared its approval with cheers and laughter. Sweat dripped into his eyes, along with a pall of dust stirred up from the speeding, circling chariots and horsemen-forcing him to blink tears from his eyes. Not near as bad as a rip-snorting Gobi sandstorm, though, Skeeter decided. He was quite abruptly very glad Yesukai the Valiant had made him go on that hunt so many years previously.

  If I can take a snow leopard with a bow, I can take this bastard.

  Maybe.

  If I'm really damned careful.

  When Lupus closed, Skeeter dove for the ground, rolling under the stabbing swords, and came up with a fistful of sand and a net, both of which he flung at the cursing gladiator. Lupus snarled, swiping at his eyes with the backs of his hands while fighting blindly to free one entangled leg. Skeeter hauled-hard. Lupus went down-harder. The crowd surged to its collective feet, screaming its bloodlust. Lupus hacked at the net, managing to free himself before Skeeter could close with the lethal trident.