Wages of Sin

CHAPTER NINETEEN

For the remainder of their stay in Denver, the man calling himself Chuck Farley spent his time visiting one cathouse after another. Margo wrinkled her nose as they watched quietly in the darkness while he entered yet another establishment of ill repute.

"I hope he catches something really nasty!"

"He might, at that," Malcolm muttered. "He's doubtless been inoculated, because smallpox is still rampant in these parts, but he might catch a social disease and be put into quarantine. Dr. Eisenstein could either heal it or recommend permanent quarantine. Uptime, too; Rachel Eisenstein takes her job very seriously, she does. She wants to ensure diseases like that don't get passed on to anyone in the real world." A bitter chuckle issued near her ear. "He would certainly deserve it. But it's more likely he's gathering additional inventory.

"To make up for the pieces that didn't come through the gate with him?"

"Exactly."

Margo flounced as only Margo could do while standing perfectly still. Her dress rustled like wind through aspens at her movement. "He's disgusting," she muttered under her breath. "And he doesn't look or act rich enough to keep those for himself. Wonder who his uptime buyer is?"

Malcolm stared at her with considerable surprise. He hadn't expected her to pick up on that part of it so fast. But there were uptime billionaires who paid agents to loot the past for their collections. A tiny number of the agents moving downtime then uptime again had been caught, their stolen antiquities confiscated and turned over to IFARTS for evaluation and return downtime. Disgusting was far too mild a word for the kind of man who'd pay others to take the risks, do the legwork-the dirty, often lethal work. The payoff from the actual client would, of course, be only a fraction of what the antiquities were worth, but enough to keep them busily moving back and forth time and again, to steal even more artwork.

Malcolm realized from Margo's look, she'd like to do murder when Farley exited the house. And with the gun concealed in her fur muff, she probably could have drilled him through whichever eye she chose. As though following his thoughts, she glared at the cathouse Farley had entered. He half expected a Margo-style explosion or an outright attack murderous with pent-up emotion, but all she said was, "Creeps."

The deep silence of the late Denver night was shattered abruptly by the rumbling, squeaking, and groaning Conestoga wagons-along line of them, which began forming up nose-to-tail on a long, dirt road that led southeastward out of town. "Malcolm," she whispered, "is that what I think it is? A real, honest-to-goodness wagon train?"

With the ease of long practice, Malcolm shifted into his Denver persona.

"Yeah, I s'pect so, ma'am. Lots of prairie schooners in that train."

Malcolm's uncanny ability to mimic local languages, even dialects, always amazed Margo. It was his way of reminding Margo that she, too, would have to master the knack.

"But I thought all the wagon trains were a thing of the past? I mean, I read somewhere that the whole continent had been settled by 1885 or so."

Malcolm shook his head. "Nope. With book learnin' you has to go deep to ferret out truth. Lemme 'splain somethin', ma'am. This here city o' Denver weren't nothin' more'n paper plans, laid out nice and neat, back in '59. Then along comes the Pikes Peak rush, over what?'

Margo's brow furrowed delightfully Then her whole face lit with an incandescent glow. "Gold! The 59 Gold Rush."

Malcolm chuckled. "Very good. 'Cept nobody could find any. Miners called it the biggest humbug in all history, they did, and left in disgust. But the experienced men, now, the ones who'd sluiced and dug out the big Georgia and California motherlode, they stayed on. Saw the same signs, they did, same as the signs they'd noticed before. So they stayed on and come late '59 and into '60, made the really big strikes. Caused another rush, of course," he chuckle.

"Yes, but what's that got to do with that?" She pointed toward the wagons.

"W-e-e-l-l-l, that's another story, now, ain't it? There's still odd bits and pieces o' land rattling around this big country, pieces that're still unclaimed for homesteadin'." He lowered his voice to a nearly inaudible murmur. He whispered into her ear, "In fact, four times as many acres were homesteaded after 1890 than before it, but you'd never guess it from period attitudes about land. It borders on sacredness." Then at a slightly higher volume and a more discreet distance, he said, "Take careful note 'o what those wagons is carryin'. And what they ain't."

Another lesson, even during the very serious duty of watching for sluglike Farley? Malcolm Moore was always so sure of himself, yet so gentle compared to the men in her old life. She studied each wagon in turn, trying to ignore weird shadows thrown against the canvas tops as those departing checked over their equipment. She saw the usual rifles and pistols, bandoliers and boxes of ammunition to hunt game for the table, dozens of tools whose use Margo could only guess at, and a few rough-hewn bits of furniture.

"No women's things," Margo said abruptly. "No trunks for clothing or quilts, no butter churns, no barrels of padded china from back East. And no children. Those men aren't married. No farming equipment either, and no livestock except the oxen and horses pulling those wagons. Not even a single laying hen-and you can hear them clucking a fair distance away. And believe me, they cluck loud when they're upset. Do you hear any chickens?"

Malcolm shook his head solemnly.

"No, me neither."

"Very nice, indeed," Malcolm purred. "You've a good eye-and ear-for detail. Now just keep up with the bookwork and you'll make one damned fine time scout."

Margo's fierce blush was, thank God, hidden by the dark night.

"Those," Malcolm continued very quietly, "are hardened frontiersmen, always on the move. They follow the remnants of the buffalo herds for their hides, which are commanding good prices again, now that there are so few buffalo left. They follow hints and whispers of gold found on this creek or that. Or they work for hire as ranch hands, even drovers, although that profession is just about as extinct as the poor buffalo. Now that bunch," he turned Margo's head toward the front wagon in the caravan, "is bound for the Indian Territory, or my name isn't Malcolm Moore."

"Indian Territory?" Margo echoed.

"Later renamed several things, but Oklahoma was generally mixed in there somewhere. Right now men are streaming in by the hundreds to support David Payne, a cutthroat frontiersman leading a band of even more violent frontiersman in a war against the Indians given that land, even against the Federal Government."

"Your accent's slipping,"

"Right you are, ma'am, and thank you it is for the reminder."

"So," Margo concentrated, her brow deeply furrowed as she thought it through, "these men are going to stir up Indian tribes by taking part of their land illegally?"

"Yep. Worse trouble'n anybody thought they'd stir up. But the whole country's clamorin' to kick out the `savages' and open up Oklahoma for `decent' folk to settle."

Margo shivered, watching these men pack away their clothes, excess weapons, and whatever they considered valuable enough to take along. The rest, they abandoned along the road, in bundles and boxes, for anyone to salvage. "The more I learn about history, the more savage I find it was. These men are going out to murder as many Indians as they can get into their goddamned sights, aren't they?"

"My dear lady, you shock me! Such language!"

Gentle reprimand, steel-hard warning behind it. Ladies of quality did not curse like sailors in 1885, not even in the frontier. Of course, barmaids and whores could be expected to say anything and everything ... but Margo did most emphatically not wish to be associated with them.

Not Minnesota prudishness this time-she'd lost a lot of that on a beach in Southeastern Africa-but a cold, calculated decision in the direction of survival. Time scouts, as her grandfather Kit Carson put it, had to be bloody careful anywhere downtime. Especially if scouting an unknown gate. Shaking inside her frontier, multibutton, impossible-to-fasten boots (until Malcolm, shaking with silent laughter, handed her a button hook and explained its use) Margo recalled her formidable but lonely grandfather, a man who'd stepped through a gate to rescue her, not knowing if he'd survive the trip to the other side; then glared at the men in those murder-wagons, at the ones standing outside in little knots, smoking some kind of foul-smelling cigars, their boasts of killing no-account Indians like it was some insane game where they tallied score by the number of people they butchered.

Not that she thought the Indians shoved into that Oklahoma Reservation to be the peaceful, nature revering, squeaky clean role-models the TV ads and movies made them out to be. She'd read with a clinical, removed-from-the-dreadful-scenes detachment as her only defense against descriptions of massacres perpetrated by desperate and enraged young warriors, young men with their blood up, refusing to give up either tribal or manly pride. Pride! How much trouble that one little word had caused the world ... That was new-these insights and connections she'd begun making about all kinds of subjects, to the everlasting astonishment of her professors and the steady rise of her GPA.

She slitted her eyes slightly against the sting of windborne cigar smoke, thinking it all through as carefully and thoroughly as possible-as Kit and Malcolm had jointly taught her to do. No, the Native American tribes hadn't been peaceful nature lovers at all, even before the coming of Europeans; before that momentous date, they'd made war on one another in just as savage a fashion as they later made war against the pale invaders of their continent. But what the American government had later done to these people was hideous, unforgivable. margo liked getting her facts strait, more and more so the longer she was in college, delving through books she had once abhorred, so she could understand the real message behind admittedly biased writing on Native American Indians--contemporary accounts by trappers, traders, settlers, mountain men-as well as modern scholarly research-hero-worship crap about people who-according to several archaeological site-analyses written by the archaeologists themselves, tossed their meal scraps right out of the teepee's front door for weeks, maybe even months on end (at least, that was true of some of the plains tribes, well before the arrival of the European); people who thought nothing of making their immediate surroundings a latrine/cesspit and thought their women attractive in hair dressed in bear-grease applied six months previously. Margo shuddered delicately.

Ultimately, what she had found were two differing stories of two very different peoples, each savage in their own way. Who was to say which was worse? Warriors taking scalps as trophies of victory or men who calmly plotted the obliteration of entire tribes. She finally managed to choke out, "Will they give a damn about shooting women and children, too?" And this time, notably, she received no scolding for her anachronistic manners.

After a look of pain passed through Malcolm's expressive eyes, he said very quietly, "W e-e-l-l-l, not really. Least, not everywhere. But yeah, ma'am, it happens, here 'n there, all across the whole land. They say the first known record of biological warfare was takin' a load of blankets from a smallpox victim still aboard ship and delib'retly handin' 'em over to a tribe of six-foot Indians down in Florida, men who could put a long, heavy arrow through a mans leg, his horse, and mebbe catch his other leg on the way out again."

Margo nodded silently, letting him know she'd read about that already. "Now, these men," he nodded toward the wagoneers, "they're a tough bunch o' claim-jumping cutthroats with one aim in mind. They'll settle down in parts of the Oklahoma Reservation that don't no one tribe actually own, massacre a bunch from one tribe, just so's another would go on the warpath. Not just for revenge for a fellow tribe. Hell, the poor bastards just figure they re next, anyway, and who wants to be shot in bed, like a fat, lazy cow waitin to be milked?

"It's been gettin' so bad, Fed'ral troopers have done come in to stop it all and toss the Boomers, as they style themselves, out o' Indian land. But shucks, there's always ten, twelve men waiting to replace every corpse or kickin', cursing Boomer tossed out or arrested. That's decent farmland, compared to what was left everywhere else at a cheap price. What them men wanted was decent, cheap land to homestead. And the only place left to get it was in Indian land, see? Hell, ma'am, and 'scuse the language, but some o' them Boomers mean to have as much as they can beg, borrow, or steal by murderin' whoever's already there that ain't got a white hide. It's a dirty, rotten land-grab of a business, played like some damned child's game, only a long-sight bloodier."

"And there's nothing we can do to stop it?

A sigh gusted past her ear. "Nope. Not a goddamned, helpless thing. History cain't be changed. One of the first rules of time travel, and you should know 'em all by heart now."

Margo's sigh echoed Malcolms. "Rule One: Thou shalt not profit from history nor willfully bring any biological specimens-including downtimer human beings-into a time terminal. Rule Two: Do not attempt to-change history-you can't, but you can get killed trying it." She halted the rendition of `The Rules" to glare at the wagons. "Too bad. I'm a pretty good shot, these days."

Malcolm, who'd witnessed her performance in the "Lesson for a Few Rattled Paleontologists," silently agreed. "Quite a good one, in fact, at least with modern cartridge guns and most of the black-powder stuff. But we're not here to stop Indian wars. We're here to track Chuck Farley's movements and discover what disguise he'll wear back uptime to the station. Believe me, if it would do any good, Margo, I'd shoot every one of those mother's sons and leave 'em to bleed into the dirt.

"But, Margo," and he placed warm hands on her shoulders, which tingled at the contact through thin cotton calico, "that wouldn't stop the massacres of hundred of millions of innocents since the beginning of human existence, now, would it?" Margo shook her head, trying to hide the grief in her eyes, none too successfully given the look on Malcolm's face. "We can't, Margo. We simply cannot change it. Something will always go wrong, leaving you in the delicate position of run like hell or be painfully shot/stabbed/ sliced/burned/scalped/or done in through other, even more gruesome methods. Can you really imagine me just popping in to visit the Pope and saying, `Hey, I'm an angel of death. God's really pissed over your little crusade against the heretics in France. Ever hear of a thing called Black Death? It's the prize your butchers have earned for themselves.' Or maybe I could wait a few years, let Temujin grow up a good bit, then show up at his yurt one fine evening and change his mind about slaughtering half the population of Asia and Europe." He snorted. "Rotten as he is, if you ever get the chance, ask Skeeter Jackson sometime about that."

Margo blinked, surprised. "Skeeter? He spent time with Temujin?" Then, as no answer was forthcoming, she swallowed a little too hard. "I know nothing important can be changed. It's just so ... hard." She thought about a certain, terrible fight with this man who wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, thought about a dingy London street that bordered the true, deadly slums where her ignorance had nearly gotten them both killed, and fought a lump in her throat.

"Malcolm?- Her voice was whispery and unsteady as she reached for his hand in the darkness. The security of his strong hand wrapping around hers gave her courage again.

"Yes?" he asked, quite seriously.

"Why is it that whenever I go downtime with you, thinking it'll be a special treat, I end up seeing so much misery?"

Malcolm didn't speak for quite a while. Then he said, "It's just like that bloody wretched day in London, isn't it?"

Margo nodded. "Yes. But only worse, because some of these people have no hope. That's what's going to give me nightmares."

Malcolm squeezed her hand gently. "It's a rare scout who doesn't suffer damned terrifying nightmares." Margo, recalling those her grandfather had suffered, simply murmured agreement. "And," he said more gently than before, "it's a very rare man or woman who sees past the glitter and romance to the scalded hands of Chinese coolies washing clothing for others.

"It takes ... I don't know ... heart, something truly alive inside, to possess the wit and courage to grieve for victims of the world's great migrations, to see the scars of rejection in their eyes and hearts. A Chinese, an Indian, a Brit, all of them see the world through vastly different eyes. Do they see the same things? Mere facets of the whole? Or something else entirely? Classic case of the blind men and the elephant." He sighed. "I don't have the answers to that, Margo. But finding them out ... together ... is as good a lifetime's work as any I can think of."

Margo squeezed his hand, glad of the deep shadows. She didn't want him to discover the tears on her face. She swallowed hard to avoid snuffling the mess in her nose and sinuses.

"How do they manage to make this" she gestured around them "-so confounding dull in school when it's so absorbingly human, so marvelously, tragically interwoven, it makes me ache and want to cheer at the same time?"

Malcolm's only answer was a long, desperate kiss that somehow conveyed the fear that he would lose her to someone else, someone who outshone him, had more money than he did, or an estate and noble lineage longer than many a champion horse's, to a man who was younger and more attractive than he was, or had ever hoped to be. In answer, she crushed herself against him, returning the kiss with such fervor, holding him so tightly that for a moment she thought he meant to join with her right then and there. But being British in his soul, a tumble in the weeds along a dirty Denver roadside was not seemly-and it was her reputation he so carefully guarded.

"Oh, Malcolm," she sighed against his lips, "my beloved, my silly, insecure Malcolm. Do you honestly think any other man could take the place of a certain person I know who sold eel pies and green glop along the streets of Whitechapel, saving my idiotic life in the process? I almost got us both killed because I hadn't studied enough, hadn't learned my shooting lessons properly, not to mention my sense of when to strike and when to just give 'em what they want. I nearly got us both killed!" She crushed him close. "Don't ever let me go, Malcolm! Whatever my role downtime as a scout turns out to be, even if it's a skinny boy-"

"Hey, you're not skinny!"

Appreciative hands ran across curves until Margo flushed in the darkness. "It's all these wretched underthings and bustles and gewgaws that make me look fat. Playing the role of a young boy is much more comfortable. No bustles, no corset stays, no drawers, no layers of camisoles and underskirts and no final dress which I have to be literally wedged and cinched into just to avoid being called a loose woman-and pursued as such."

"Mmm... sounds like romantic illusion number twenty-seven hitting the ground and shattering into zillions of pieces."

"That's not funny!"

"I didn't mean it to be. It's just that being a guide is tough enough. Tackling the job of scout ... that's scary, Margo. I almost panic when I think about watching you leave me, maybe never to return and I'll never know why or how you vanished from my life-"

"Then come with me."

Malcolm stiffened at her side, then covered her entire face in kisses, paying sweet attention to wet eyelashes and tender, trembling lips. "I've prayed you would ask me that. Yes, I'll go, when and wherever it is. I'll go."

During the clench and flurry of kisses and hasty promises on both sides, Margo's eyes widened.

"Malcolm! It's Farley! Looks like you were right. New inventory."

Malcolm said something truly creative and extremely filthy, giving the lie to those brave words earlier about their mission being to follow Farley everywhere. He swore once more beneath his breath, then turned slightly in her arms as Farley left the brothel with a heavy leather satchel which bulged in odd places.

"You don't suppose he'll try to add it to the hole he's already dug and discover our tampering?"

Malcolm chuckled. "Nope. If we'd attempted to change history, something would have stopped us from carting off that prize of erotic loot. He'll make a second treasure hole, all right, near the first. We'll mark its position, then leave it for the uptime authorities as incriminating evidence in his arrest."

Margo grinned. "Malcolm Moore, have I ever said, `I love you'? Your evil genius is beyond compare."

"Huh," Malcolm muttered, "just a few tricks and pointers I picked up from your grandfather."

She nuzzled his arm. "I like that. Hey, if we're going to follow that lout, we'd better get moving!"

They mounted up, Malcolm giving her a leg up, not because she needed it, but because it was what just about any man in this time period would have done. Cautiously they followed the lone rider into the darkness while shadows raced across a three-quarter moon, bringing with it the taste of ice and waist-deep snow in the high mountains above Denver on a chilly night sometime late in 1885.

It was a good night to be alive. If they hadn't been stalking a criminal to his hoard, Margo would have burst into exuberant song. Instead, she held rigidly quiet, as did the remarkable man at her side, both of them intent on the figure ahead, bathed in the faltering light of a cloud-cocooned moon.

Neither the Praetorian Guard nor the city's watch patrol found them. Skeeter's and Marcus' disguises were good-and no Roman would think to look for an escaped gladiator in the fine tunic and toga of a citizen, with his freedman accompanying him. But, just as a precaution, they changed inns often, paying for each night's lodging and meals with the dwindling amount of money Skeeter had picked up from the arena sands.

Late one night, the only time they risked speaking English, Marcus asked in a troubled voice, "Skeeter?"

"Mmm?"

"When you gave over your winnings to pay the debt I owed," his voice faltered a little, "all you had left was the coins you plucked from the sands. I have nothing. Do we have enough money to survive until the gate opens again?"

"Fair question," Skeeter answered. "I've been worrying about that a little, myself"

"May I make a suggestion?"

"Hey, it's me. Skeeter. You're not a slave, Marcus. If you wanna talk, I'll listen. If I'm bored, I'll probably fall asleep. Hell, I might, anyway. I'm bushed and my back and arm muscles are screaming bloody murder."

Marcus was silent for a moment. "That leap you made. I've never seen a thing like that, ever."

Skeeter snorted. "Obviously you've never seen a tape of the Summer Olympic Games. It was just a pole vault, after all. A little higher than most pole vaulters are used to, maybe, but then I had the added advantage of my horse's height. So enough. Wipe that worshipful look off your face and tell me what's on your mind."

"I-at the Neo Edo-what I said-"

Very quietly, Skeeter muttered, "I deserved every word, too. So don't go feeling bad about that, Marcus. God, I was stupid and selfish to fool you, to force you into a position where you had to decide between honor and your family." For a moment, neither man spoke. Then Skeeter continued, "Your village, the one in France, the men there must've taken honor very seriously if an eight-year-old boy who grew into a man as a Roman slave still puts honor ahead of everything."

Marcus took a long time answering. "I was wrong about that, Skeeter. Since the moment Farley tricked me back here and sold me to the arena master, I have discovered that such honor is cold and empty compared with protecting those of your own blood I have hurt Ianira terribly, and my children ..."

It took a moment to realize that Marcus was crying. "Hey. Hey, listen to me, Marcus. We all make mistakes. Even me."

That brought a watery snort of near-laughter.

"Point is, when you fall flat on your backside or put a new dent in your nose from smashing it into the ground, you learn something. From whatever stupid thing you've done wrong this time, file away the lesson learned as a warning against the same mistake, then just keep on going. I'd never have survived in Yesukai's camp if I hadn't been able to learn from the multibejillion mistakes I made there. You know, it's funny. I came to feel like that murderous old Yakka Mongol was more of a father to me than my real one. Did I ever tell you he made me Temujin's uncle? Believe me, that's a helluva responsibility and honor in Mongol society: uncle to the Khan's first-born son. And you know, he was a decent little kid, toddling about the yurt, curling up to sleep against his mother, maybe begging "Uncle Bogda" to play with him. When I think what he went through as a teenager, what all that did to him, made him into, I sometimes just want to sit down and bawl, 'cause I can't change it."

Marcus' silence puzzled Skeeter. Then, "There is much hurt inside you, Skeeter, a very great much. One day you must let it out or you will never heal yourself."

"Hey, I thought Ianira was the mind-reading wizard of the family?"

Marcus' laugh was thin but genuine this time. "Amongst my people-my family-there were certain ... talents that passed from generation to generation."

"Oh, God, please don't say you're psychic."

"No," Marcus said, the smile in his voice clear even to Skeeter. "But ... you have never asked me about my family."

"Thought that was a bit too private, friend."

An indrawn hiss of breath was followed by Marcus' shaking voice. "You can still call me friend? After what I have done to you, can I still be your friend?"

"I dunno. Can you? I got no problem with it."

Dark silence passed. "Yes," Marcus said quietly. "Perhaps I am mad to say it, knowing what you are, but after what you sacrificed to wrench me out of slavery ... I seldom know what to think about you any longer, Skeeter. You steal from good, ordinary people to make your living, yet you give part of your stolen money to The Found Ones to help us stay active-"

"How'd you find that out?" Skeeter demanded, voice breathless.

Marcus laughed quietly. "You are so certain of your privacy, Skeeter. The Found Ones have many ways to find out things we desperately need to know. In one such search, it became clear to us where some of the money was coming from."

"Oh." Then, "Well, I hope my goddamned ill-gotten gains helped." He turned on the hard bed and groaned as aching muscles sharply called attention to themselves from his shoulders to his thighs and from his biceps down to his wrists.

A stirring of the darkness gave him scant warning. Then, when hands touched his naked shoulder in the darkness, panic hit. "Marcus, what are you doing?" The other man was kneading his sore shoulders as though they were bread dough.

"I am doing what I was trained to do from boyhood. To give my master soothing back- or shoulder- or foot and-leg rubs when he requested them. Just lie still, Skeeter. I'll work through your tunic cloth, since you do not have the mindset-that is the right word? of a Roman. Your privacy is a dark shroud you pull about yourself. That is your choice; every man needs his privacy intact."

A certain darkness in Marcus' voice connected quite abruptly with other things he'd said on occasion, leaving the truth about Marcus' boyhood lit by a scathing spotlight. He knew; but he found he had to confirm it to believe it. "Marcus?"

"Yes, Skeeter? What is wrong? I have hurt your shoulder?"

"No. No, that's fine. Feels like maybe I'll be able to move it tomorrow after all."

"It would be better with liniment, but we have no coin to buy it."

"Marcus, would you please shut up? I have something really important to ask. You don't have to answer; but I have to ask it. Your old master, the one before that bastard Farley dragged you through the Porta Romae ... when you gave him rubdowns like this, did he request--order--other things as well?"

The sudden stillness of the hands on his shoulder and the utter silence, broken only by rattling breaths, gave Skeeter all the answer he needed.

Surprisingly enough, Marcus answered anyway, in a whisper torn from a proud man's soul, leaving it filled with nothing but pain and fear. "Yes. Yes, he did, Skeeter. He was ... not the first."

Skeeter blurted out, "He wasn't? Then who the hell did rape you first?"

Marcus' stilled hands on his shoulder flinched badly. "A man. I never knew his name. It was on the slave ship. He was the first."

It hit Skeeter harder than most, for he'd seen prisoners of the Mongols buggered before being split open from throat to genitals and left to bleed out. "My God, Marcus! How can you even bear to touch another person? To father children, to give my aching muscles the rubbing they need. I mean, the rubbing they want?"

He said simply, "Because for whatever foolish reason, I have come to trust you again, Skeeter. My life is literally in your hands. If we are caught, they will take you back to the gladiatorial school. You have become famous in the Circus, so you are valuable. I am only a scribe. I've grown too old for the other, thank all gods and goddesses, but even as a scribe, I am worth little compared to you. If we are caught, our faces will be branded with the F of a fugitive. That's all that will happen to me, if I'm lucky. My so-called master could well cripple me to keep me from running again, or turn me over to the state for execution, or sell me to the bestiary masters, to be torn apart by ravening wild animals." He drew a deep breath. "So, I stay with you, Skeeter, as my only hope of survival until the gate opens. And ... I wish to ease your pain because you are my friend, and you acquired that pain saving me from the arena master's ownership. I knew that was wrong, but not another man in Rome would have questioned it, never mind defended me."

"Hey, I wasn't just helping you. As I recall, I had some pretty selfish reasons to get the hell out of that arena, too, you know."

"Yes, but..." He gave up with a sigh, and said instead, "What I said at the Neo Edo, Skeeter ... I had no right to say it. Any of it. The truth of what happened between you and Lupus Mortiferus I will never know, for I was not present, and I know now the kind of professional killer he is. So ... who am I to judge?"

"Huh." Skeeter remained silent a moment. "Well, just to set the record straight," he couldn't keep a bitter hoarseness from creeping into his voice as, for once, he told the gods' own truth about what he had done, "I swindled and pickpocketed every bit of the money I brought back from that profitable little trip. Right down to the little copper asses and their fractions."

Marcus was silent a long time, kneading muscles along Skeeter's back until they felt like pudding.

"There are many ways of growing up, Skeeter, and I have no right to judge when I, of all people, know your truth-the way you were brought up. Your childhood, Skeeter, was far worse than mine."

"Huh? How the hell do you figure that-?"

Marcus wasn't listening. He gave out a little, wan laugh just this side of anguish. "Believe me, Skeeter, when I say mine was hell. But yours was far worse. I was every kind of fool for judging you so cruelly."

"The hell you were." Silence fell between them, both of them stilled to the point that the sound of an unknown voice outside their hideaway would have drawn indrawn, ragged screams from them both. Skeeter finally broke the silence with a sigh. "No judging, huh? Is that how your Found Ones operate their business?"

"First," Marcus dug into a muscle under Skeeter's shoulder blade with enough force to wring a yelp of pain from him, "we are not a `business.' We are a survival necessity for those of us ripped from time and left stranded at TT-86. We serve as what Buddy would call a `support group.' And we have to accommodate the religious and political beliefs of many, many differing times and nations and kinds of men and women. It is not easy to be a leader of that group."

"And you are?"

"Mere" Honest shock filled his voice. "Great Gods, no! I am neither talented nor patient enough for such demands." A brief pause. "I did say that the right way, did I not? It is `either/or' and `neither/nor' is it not.

Skeeter knew far better than to chuckle. Marcus was a man with little but battered pride left and Skeeter didn't want to make more mistakes than he felt he already had. "Yes," he said quietly, "you got it right, Marcus. But if you're not a leader, who is? You've adapted better than almost anyone else, you're smart and driven to improve yourself-"

"Skeeter! Please ... it is some other man you must be speaking of, not I" He drew a deep breath and let it out. "It is Ianira who leads us, with a few others who take responsibility for certain tasks. Things like making sure no downtimer goes hungry." He chuckled, then, clearly over his embarrassment. "Do you have any idea how long it took to convince Kynan Rhys Gower that we were not devil-worshippers damned for all time? Yet now he comes to our meetings and speaks up with ideas that are good."

"Humph. I didn't know you were that organized, or even if you were organized, but I figured you needed help. I gamble away most of my money, anyway, you know, a habit I picked up in Yesukai's yurt, so I just take some out first and send it to you, so I can tell myself I'd done something decent as judged by this world."

His voice caught slightly on the word. Surprising himself immensely, he found himself saying, "Do you have any idea how my two worlds tug at me? Some days ... some days they come near to ripping me apart. In my most secret heart, I still yearn for the honor of riding on raids as a Yakka warrior. But I lived in the squalor and deadly dangers under which they live, Marcus-lived in it for five years. It is a perilous life, usually brutally short; yet I still want it. And another part of me is pulled the other way, into the now in which I was born. The now where I hated my father so much for not caring, that I became an accomplished thief and swindler by the age of eight. In that same heart, I know Yesukai would have been proud of me, these past years. But here I am tolerated only because I don't steal from 'eighty-sixers. They don't seem ever to understand they're the only family I have left." It was Skeeter's turn to suffer hot, stinging eyes. "What you said, about my lying to myself? Maybe you were right. I just don't know, any more."

Marcus said nothing, just moved magical hands down his spine, kneading burning muscles as he went. "Those were harsh words, I know," Marcus finally said, "and I am sorry I said them the way I did. But I worry about you, Skeeter. If you are caught often enough, Bull Morgan will have you sent uptime for trial and I would lose a friend ... and not merely a dear friend, but also a Lost One."

Skeeter, puzzled, stopped feeling sorry for himself long enough to ask, "Lost one? That's silly, when you know my apartment number, my phone number-"

"No, Skeeter, you do not understand. A Lost One is a downtimer in need of help, but from fear or terror of being discovered, disguises himself or hides until starvation drives him to action. Until we find them, we cannot help. They are lost to us, to the whole universe, until they make themselves known. And even then, it may take weeks, months, sometimes years before such a one trusts us enough to become a Found One.

"You remember, Skeeter, the Welshman I spoke of, Kynan Rhys Gower? He was such a one. Weeks it took to convince him we were not after his soul. Fortunately, one of us was a Christian-an early Christian, true, who had come through the Porta Romae-but he managed to convince Kynan that it would be safe, no, that it would be God's will-to join us." Marcus sighed. "It always brings great pain to know there is a Lost One amongst us and be unable to reach him, through word or action."

Vast astonishment like light pouring into his soul, drove away the vestiges of lingering self-pity. "Are you talking about one, Marcus?"

The answer was very soft in the darkness. "Who else?"

It was too much to take in that fast, all at once. Retreat was literally the only course he could take in that moment. "Huh. Well, thanks for the backrub, anyway. I don't think I could move now if I had to. Felt good, Marcus. I'm glad you're my friend again. It gets awful lonely when a man loses his only friend."

And with that statement, he drifted to sleep.

Marcus sat up in his own bedding for a long time, gazing blindly in the direction of Skeeter's sleeping breaths. At least he is willing to become a friend again. Marcus was struck with such pain he could scarcely breathe. The words, " ... only friend" kept battering at him. He didn't know quite how, but if they did manage to get back through the Porta Romae, Marcus would do everything in his power to give Skeeter more than one friend in the world. He swallowed hard, recalling the terms of the wager with Goldie Morran.

They might step through to find Goldie declared the winner in the face of Skeeter's long absence. To go through what Skeeter had gone through already and then be thrown off the station, bag and baggage ... it was simply not to be borne. Should that happen, Marcus and the other downtimers would make very certain that Goldie lost her entire business and was driven, bankrupted, back uptime to the world Marcus would never know first-hand. Somehow, the Council of Found Ones (a very great many of whom were capable of very long-lived blood wars, indeed) would find a way.

Marcus smiled bitterly in the darkness. Very few uptimers took any downtimer seriously. Tourists considered them unmannered savages with just brains enough to carry luggage through the time gates. Uptimers didn't even seem to mind that more than a few had vanished through shadowing themselves because no one had thought to warn them of the danger. Time Tours, Inc. took great measures to protect their customers, but no measures at all to protect the men who hauled baggage for them.

Such uptimers were in for a rude shock, very soon, if Marcus had anything to say about it.

If he and Skeeter got back safely through the gate.

If...

Well, he told himself prosaically, there is not a thing you can do stuck in this inn, waiting for the Porta Romae to cycle. Better get some sleep while you can. Tomorrow may find us in the hands of the slave-catchers, or worse, the Praetorian Guard. He shivered involuntarily, having heard the tales of what happened to runaways caught by the elite Praetorians. Marcus settled down in his hard bedding-far superior, of course, to the slave cots he'd grown re-accustomed to, but a miserable bed, indeed, compared to the wonderful one in his apartment on TT-86, where Ianira waited with no word of his fate.

Marcus drifted into sleep planning his reunion with his family and plotting either Skeeter's salvation or Goldie's ruin.

One or the other would come to pass as surely as the sun rose and set on a blazing hot Roman day or a crisp and lovely one in Gaul.

One or the other ...

Marcus finally slept.

When the Wild West Gate dilated open at the back of a Time Tours livery stable, Malcolm and Margo stumbled under the weight of their luggage. Both had managed to get digitized video of Farley burying his Denver haul on their scouting logs. Farley had, as predicted, chosen a site just a few yards away from the original site they'd already dug up and camouflaged. They shot more video with their scout logs when Farley emerged from his hotel sporting blond hair going grey at the temples, a different nose, and an enormous moustache which matched the color of his hair. He carried with him almost no baggage at all.

If they hadn't been tailing him for a week, neither would have known him. This guy was good. Too good. A whole lot of uptime money had to be paying for a professional of this caliber. Farley stepped through the Wild West Gate ahead of them, a new man (doubtless with new ID forged to perfection in New York, right down to the retinal scans and med records). Fortunately for Malcolm and Margo, he did not suspect a thing was amiss, even though Malcolm staggered under the weight of the fortune in antiquities they had so carefully unearthed. Margo was having an even worse time. She stumbled and staggered like a teenager who'd drunk one too many beers. Margo was stone cold sober, but even her luggage was enormously heavy, despite the fact that Malcolm had packed the heaviest items in his own bags.

Mike Benson, Chief of Station Security, was nearby, scrutinizing returning tourists when they emerged, clearly watching for any signs of illegal activities. Someone must've tipped him off. Goldie? Couldn't have been Skeeter-he'd been gone nearly a month, now. When Benson caught sight of them, his eyes widened, then narrowed again into angry slits.

"Mike!" Malcolm hissed, aware that Farley was still near enough to hear. "Need your help! Official help."

Benson, whose biggest excitement came when an unstable gate broke open inside the station, or when kids left behind with the station's babysitter got loose and went on a rampage, clearly recognized An Important Event about to unfold. His expression moved through vast, sudden relief to deep curiosity and a cold anger that built in his eyes. He motioned curtly for Kit Carson, who'd come to see his granddaughter and almost son-in-law return. Kit was looking puzzled, as well, and murmured in Mike's ear. The relief on Kit's face was actually comical. Both men waited until they'd descended the ramp all the way, passing their timecards through the automatic reader at the bottom of the ramp, to be updated in a Time Tours effort to keep its customers from shadowing themselves.

"What is it?" Benson asked quietly.

"See that guy up there, greying blond hair, protruding nose, huge moustache?"

Benson squinted through the crowd. "Yeah, I've got him. What's so special about him?"

Kit put in quietly, "If I'm not mistaken we've just seen Chuck Farley in a new face."

Benson glanced sharply at Kit, eyes a bit wide, then nodded abruptly. "Yeah, I expect you're right."

Kit laughed quietly, puzzled eyes still studying their massively heavy luggage. "Mike, you should know by now, I am always right." He let that sink in, then forestalled any outburst by adding, "Unless I'm wrong, of course. That's actually happened, oh, eight or nine times, and most of them"-he tickled Margo's chin "were over this little fire-eater."

Margo blushed to the roots of her hair.

Malcolm broke through their levity with a low-voiced, "Mike, I really think you should have someone tail him until Primary cycles, but not so close that he bolts the second he's gone through."

Mike nodded. "My men are very, very good. Most of 'em got dumped on the street after The Accident when the DEA was torn down and its employees let go. They're good, Malcolm."

He nodded his trusting acquiescence. "I've got this plan, you see, Mike, to catch a member of that gang of notorious `antiquities acquisition specialists.' A really slick one. We'd appreciate your escort to the IFARTS office. We'll tell you the entire story there."

Kit put in wistfully, "I know this is police business, but could I come, too? After all, my only relative is involved."

Mike Benson snorted. "Kit Carson, you could wheedle your way into Buckingham Palace."

Kit laughed. "I already have, Mike. Long story" His eyes twinkled.

"Oh, you're impossible. Suit yourself. Hell, you probably know almost as much about antiquities as Robert Li does."

With that, Benson plucked off his belt the in-station radio unit all TT-86 security wore and efficiently set up the undercover tail.

"There. Now lets go find Li, shall we?"

They started toward Robert Li's antiquities shop, which also served as the IFARTS office in La-La Land. Every station had an IFARTS facility, staffed by at least one thoroughly trained expert, and sometimes more than one for the really big stations with twenty or thirty active gates. Since carbon dating was now useless, experts had to be relied upon to judge fake from genuine, to assign an approximate date as well as detailed descriptions, photos, the whole bit. Mike noticed Margo's red-faced struggle with her baggage only a few feet closer to their goal. Evidently, so did Kit, because before Mike could call for a baggage cart, Kit took the heaviest bag, earning a dazzling smile from his granddaughter. .

Mike sighed, jealous of Malcolm Moore because he'd found her first and because Kit had asked him to help train her. Given the looks that passed between the two lovebirds, each was as smitten with the other just as surely as Goliath had been smitten by little David. He shook his head over mixed metaphors and quietly herded them toward the IFARTS office.

They were approximately a third of the way there when Kit changed the suitcase to his other hand--again. "Thundering-" Kit cut off the oath midsentence, shaking out his cramped hand. "What the living hell is in this thing? Solid gold?"

Margo grinned up at him. "Yep. Mostly. Our Mr. Farley had expensive if disgusting taste in collectibles."

Mike gave her a long, measuring look, but all she did was wink at him. Damn. that lucky bastard, Moore. That one smile had seriously interfered with the transfer of oxygen-laden blood from his brain to a spot somewhat considerably lower. Grumbling, he grabbed one of Malcolm's bags to hide it, and actually staggered under the weight.

"Warned you," Malcolm laughed. "You're not gonna believe what that rat buried. And we even left the other motherlode intact, so uptime authorities can nail him digging it back up."

"That's ... great ... can we just ... get a move on, please?"

In minutes, he was as red-faced as they were. Margo laughed, Kit chuckled, and Malcolm gave him that irritating smirk-smile that was uniquely his own. From necessity, they stopped chatting and speeded up. Thank God. He wasn't as young as he'd once been and the strain was telling in his heart-rate, painful spasms in arms, shoulders, and bone-deep pain down his back from an old gunshot wound sustained while still working as a cop. This had better be worth it, Moore, or you're going to find yourself in deep, deep trouble whenever I'm around.

But when they opened the cases and spread the contents (except dirty clothes) across Robert Li's counter, Li gave out a strangled sound like a cat in orgasm, Kit Carson's eyes widened until his whole face was little more than luminous, shocked eyes, and Mike Benson forgave Malcolm with a low whistle. He glanced from one glittering figurine to the next, openmouthed, unable to believe he had a chance to catch an international thief of this magnitude.

Malcolm explained their whole story, recording it on his guide/scout's log, then sighed and added, "He was really angry that some of the pieces had vanished, obviously because the gold on them or in them was destined for something important. He made quite a haul in Denver's cathouses, too, and buried that a few yards from the hole he'd dug for these." He gestured carelessly at what amounted to an entire room's worth of display cases in some museum that didn't mind putting erotic devices of antiquity on display.

"Well," Robert Li rubbed his hands in anticipation, "shall we begin?"

It took several hours, with Kit occasionally arguing over a date for some weird little piece made of gold or wood where gold inlay hadn't survived stepping through the Porta Romae. Malcolm drew up a stool and watched quietly. Margo leaned against the counter, chin resting on elbows, drinking in every word, every date assigned. She was charming, leaning there like that, still in her Denver getup, so absorbed in the cataloging he doubted she would hear her own name if he said it.

One by one the pieces were examined, determined genuine, and carefully packed away. Occasionally a piece wrung groans and exclamations from Robert Li, and a few times, even from Kit.

"My God, Kit, look at this! It's a solid gold herm, you won't believe the detailing! Look, there, at the back end. The face and attributes of Hermes himself, and look at the expression on his face!"

Kit took what looked like a slightly-larger-than-life-size phallus, turned it carefully in reverent hands, and held it up to the light. The beautiful art on what should have been the flat "base" was muttered over in tones of ecstasy. "I've read of pieces like this," Kit said with a low moan in his voice, "but to hold one ..."

"Know what you mean," Robert said softly.

"The detailing is incredible. Lost wax?"

"Possibly Or mold and the mold lines rubbed out."

Kit held it up to the bright light again. "No, I don't think so. That would leave marks and I don't see anything like that."

"Lost wax would leave similar marks," Robert mused. "How the hell did they do it?"

Surprisingly, Margo spoke up. "Well, maybe it's a real man's, uh, you know, dipped in gold after it had been severed."

All three men stares at her. Then Robert Li managed a strangled-sounding reply. "That's, uh, not a bad guess, Margo," he started, breaking off to cough and get his voice back under control, "particularly considering the detailed veins, ridges, and foreskin, but a phallus dipped in gold wouldn't be nearly as heavy as this. It's solid metal."

"A copy of the original palladium of Athens perhaps?" Malcolm offered quietly. "I doubt Farley could wrest away the real one. After the Romans stole it, it was used in annual secret rituals which only the Pontifex Maximus was allowed to attend. But a copy, perhaps, carved from an ingot?"

"Carved from an ingot?" Robert echoed. Then, sudden realization hit. "Yes, that must be how it was done. Carve it from a solid piece, polish out any tool marks left over ... my God, it must have taken a master artisan months to craft this!"

Kit was nodding agreement. He said, grinning slightly, "Sometimes we forget your doctorates, Malcolm."

He bowed slightly in acknowledgement of the compliment. Then said a bit smugly, "Apology accepted. And coming from you, Kit, any apology on professional matters is an honor to hold forever."

Kit flushed. "Huh. Ever since you got engaged, you've gone soft-headed and sentimental."

Malcolm just grinned, neither defending himself nor admitting guilt.

"Oh, you're impossible." Kit ignored him in favor of Robert Li. "Bob, do you have that phallus logged in?"

"Yes. And the next piece is ..." He simply stopped talking. His gaze was riveted to an exquisite little jade figurine.

Margo gasped. "Why, that's Kali-Ma, dancing on her dying consort, Shiva! But they're deities of India. However did that little statue end up in Rome? And without breaking any of those delicate little pieces off?" The hands, the feet, the nearly translucent crown, were so fragile light poured through them as though the solid stone had gone transparent.

Kit said slowly, -There were some unsuccessful forays into India. An officer might have plundered it, wrapped it carefully, carried it on his person. Then again, by the time of Claudius there were some trade routes open to the East. Or a slave artisan might have carved it from memory. We'll probably never know."

With reverent hands, Robert Li lifted the little multiarmed, multilegged dancer. "Flawless," he whispered. "Absolutely flawless." A low moan of pleasure escaped him as he turned it around and around in his hands, absorbing details with his dark, quick eyes, caressing it with trembling fingertips. "But why would a man who collected those," he gestured toward the small hoard of sexual implements, representations, and brothel art, "want this?"

Margo cleared her throat. "Well, the dance of Kai-Ma and Shiva is sexual in nature. Very much so. They dance the dance of life, meant to regenerate the entire universe each year. Shiva has to die, so his blood will fertilize Kali-Ma, impregnating her so she can give birth to his reincarnated self, plus all the grain crops, the fruits of the earth, the birds and game animals, the deadly snakes that could kill a man within three dizzy steps ..." She trailed off, suddenly uncertain under the stares of all three men, each of whom was qualified at least five times more than she was.

Kit spoke first. "Margo, I see you have been hitting the books hard." He shook his head. He leaned across the corner of the cabinet and ruffled her hair playfully. "You done good, kid. Real good."

Margo's delighted grin brightened the room.

Robert Li smiled, too, then entered the Kali-Ma/Shiva statue into his computer, carefully wrapped it up, and with a sigh-moved to the next piece.