Wages of Sin

by Robert Asprin

  Lupus was still coming, inexorable as a Mongolian sandstorm.

  Skeeter passed a cash machine without time to stop.

  Shit! Now what? Maybe he could sprint around the waiting area, double back somehow, grab the money, and snatch Marcus? Even as the thought formed, the klaxon for a gate departure sounded.

  "Your attention, please-"

  Skeeter ignored the loudspeakers and concentrated on the crowd waiting to step downtime to Rome. Maybe if he just burst up to the pair of them and offered an IOU? Yeah, right. Cash deal or nothing, buddy. Your credit's no good. It was a bitter pill to swallow. The line had already started to move up the long ramp as returning tourists exited the gate. Skeeter caught sight of Marcus, but was too winded to call out. He and Farley were near the front of the line, almost to the portal already.

  With no time to stop for cash, no breath to call out anything-much less the deal he'd made with Dr. Mundy-Skeeter did the only thing he could do. He jumped the roped-off waiting area's steel fence, caught a ramp girder, swung himself up and around, and landed on his feet next to a Time Tours guide so shocked she actually screamed. More screams behind him told Skeeter that Lupus, curse him, was still back there. He put on a burst of speed, clattering up the steel meshwork ramp, trying to catch up to Marcus before he could step through the portal.

  "Marcus! Wait!"

  His heart plummeted to his toenails.

  Just ahead of him, Farley and Marcus vanished into the distortion of the open gate. Skeeter would've sworn in a court of law that Farley had bodily dragged Marcus through after hearing Skeeter's desperate shout.

  Skeeter had two choices. He could jump off this platform and elude Lupus yet again, leading him another merry chase through the station, or he could crash the gate and find a way to get Marcus back through. Time Tours, Inc. was going to fine him something dreadful.

  Skeeter drew a deep breath and threw himself bodily through the portal. He landed in the familiar wine shop, momentum hurtling him past shocked tourists. Skeeter crashed into a rack of stacked amphorae and knocked the whole thing over. Wine, like foaming seawater against rocks, spread out in rushing waves across the entire floor. Tourists screamed and tried to dive out of the way. He couldn't see Farley anywhere in the confusion.

  "Marcus!"

  No familiar voice answered. He grabbed the nearest guide he spotted and gasped out, "Farley! Where'd Farley go with Marcus.

  The man shook his head. "They just left, in the first group. For the inn."

  Skeeter laughed semi-hysterically. "If Farley ends up at the inn, I'll eat your shoes."

  He was just about to dodge into the street when, a heavy hand closed on his shoulder. Someone spun him around with brutal force. Screams of panic rose all around. Lupus Mortiferus' visage loomed enormous in Skeeter's vision. He had just enough time to think, "Oh, shit-"before a massive fist and darkness crashed down.

  Sights and smells overwhelmed Marcus from both past and present the moment the door to the wine shop's warehouse opened onto the street. A tremble hit his knees. Farley glanced around.

  "Stop dawdling," he said irritably in Latin.

  Marcus clutched the man's luggage with sweating hands and followed the rest of the group toward the Time Tours inn on the far side of the Aventine Hill from the great Circus. They headed down the Via Appia toward the hulking edifice of stone bleachers, rising in tiers to the arches high overhead. When the rest of the group turned left to skirt the Aventine, Farley surprised him by heading the other way, toward the Capitoline Hill.

  "Mr. Farley-"

  "Be quiet and follow me!" Farley snapped.

  Marcus glanced once at the tour group disappearing into the crowd. Then, hesitantly, he followed Farley. He'd given his word. And he needed to clear this debt. But the longer they walked, passing the Capitoline Hill and moving through the great Forum, where the rostrum towered with its glittering trophies of war, the battering rams of ships taken in battle, the greater grew Marcus' sense of wrongness.

  "Mr. Farley, where are you going?" he asked in English as they left behind the Forum.

  "To a place I've arranged," Farley answered carelessly.

  "What place?"

  Farley glanced over his shoulder. "You ask too many questions," he said, eyes narrowed.

  Marcus stopped dead in the street, setting down the man's bags. "I believe I'm entitled."

  Farley's mouth twitched at one corner. "You? Entitled?" He seemed to think this outrageously funny. "Hand me that bag. That one."

  Marcus stooped without thinking, handing it over automatically. Farley opened it

  And the next thing Marcus knew, his face had slammed into a brick wall and Farleys fist into his left kidney. He gasped in agony and felt his knees begin to go. Farley held him up with a fist twisted through his tunic. The next moment, Marcus' hands were manacled in iron chains.

  "Now listen, boy," Farley hissed in his ear, "you're not in La-La Land any longer. This is Rome. And I am your master. I paid good, goddamned gold for you and I intend to do with you as I see fit. Is that clear?"

  Marcus tried to struggle, knowing even as he did that any fight was hopeless. Farley put him on the ground with another punch to his kidney. He groaned and lay still at the man's feet.

  "Get up."

  Marcus fought to catch his breath.

  "I said get up, slave!"

  Marcus glared up at him through a mane of fallen hair across his eyes. "Bastard!"

  "Get up, slave, or l'll have you branded as a runaway"

  Marcus blanched. The letter F burnt into his cheek ... He struggled and lurched, but finally made it to his feet. Curious onlookers shrugged and returned to their business. Farley fastened a long rope to Marcus' chains, then signaled to a couple of idle fellows at a wine stall, their sedan chair leaning against the wall.

  "You, there! Is your chair for hire?"

  "It is, noble sir," the broader of the two said eagerly, setting aside a chipped earthenware mug of wine. "You have merely to tell us your destination."

  In a daze of disbelief and growing terror, Marcus watched Chuck Farley climb into the sedan chair and accept his luggage, which he balanced on his lap. The porters struggled and grunted to get him airborne and settled onto their shoulders. "Come here, slave!" Farley snapped. "I don't want you getting tangled up in traffic and causing me to fall!"

  Marcus stumbled behind the sedan chair, wrists weighted by the heavy cuffs. Chains clanked with a sound of buried nightmare. He remembered being chained ... chained and worse. Ianira! he cried silently. What have I done, beloved? If opportunity had presented itself, he would cheerfully have plunged a dagger through Chuck Farley's black heart. But he knew opportunity would not present itself.

  The porters carried Farley to an imposing villa, where one of them pounded on the door. A slave chained to the interior wall of the entryway opened the door and bowed low, asking their business.

  "Tell your master the man he was told to expect has arrived," Farley said, his Latin flawless. "With the goods, as promised."

  The slave bowed and passed word to someone deeper in the house. A moment later, the porters had set down their burden, sweating and gasping for breath as though they'd just carried five men, rather than one. Farley paid them and sent them away with a wave of his hand. Then he turned to Marcus, an unpleasant smile lighting his eyes.

  "This way, if you please, young Marcus. You are about to meet your new owner."

  He wanted to run. Everything in him shouted the need. But in broad daylight, with hundreds of Romans to take up the cry "Runaway!" trying to bolt now was tantamount to suicide. He swallowed down a dry throat. Farley jerked him off balance with the rope, dragging him forward into the villa. He said in an ugly whisper, "You'll have to work a few years to pay off this debt, boy."

  Marcus felt sick-sick and trapped. He knew in his soul that no man had the right to own him, but that was in a world two thousand years away. Here, now, to gain his freedom and satisfy the law and his sens
e of honor, he would have to obtain his purchase price, somehow. Or compromise the values he'd come to believe in so highly and simply run.

  It was even money at the moment which he would choose.

  Then he was stumbling into the presence of a wealthy, wealthy man. Marcus actually went down, catching himself on hands and knees. Gods ... He had seen this man many times, at public functions, on the Rostrum, in the law courts. Farley was selling him to ...

  "Farlus, welcome! Come in, come in."

  "Your hospitality is gracious, Lucius Honorius Galba. Congratulations, by the way, on your election to curule aedileship."

  Tremors set in, chattering his teeth. Lucius Honorius Galba had been elected curule aedile? As powerful as his hated first master had been, Galba was a thousand times more so. Escape this man? Impossible. Galba glanced down at him.

  "This?' the man said, disdain dripping from his voice. "This cowering fool is the valuable scribe you offered for my collection?"

  Farley jerked on the rope. "Get up, slave." He said to Galba, "He didn't wish to be sold from my household. And he doubtless knows your illustrious reputation very well." The smile Farley gave Marcus was cool as a lizard's. "I assure you, he knows his job well. I purchased him some years back when the estate of one of the plebeian. aediles was being disposed of due to the man's death. As to the terror, his desire to make a good impression has left him shaking like a virgin."

  Galba chuckled. "Come, boy, there's nothing to fear. I'm a fair man. Get up. I have need of a new scribe and your master, here, has offered a fine trade, a very fine trade. Come, let's see a demonstration of your skills."

  Marcus, hands trembling as Farley unlocked the chains, wet his lips, then took the stylus and wax tablet handed him.

  "Now," Galba said with a slight smile, "let's see if you can take this down properly."

  The stylus jittered against the soft wax, but he did his best to take the dictation, which ranged from a partial letter to a business partner to household accounts to cargoes and trade sums earned at interest. Galba nodded approvingly over the result.

  "Not bad," he allowed, "for a man trembling in terror. Not bad at all. In what capacity did you serve your plebeian aedile, boy?"

  Marcus' voice shook as badly as the rest of him. "I kept records ... of the races, at the Circus, the inventories of the wild beasts for the bestiary hunts, and the records of gladiators who won victories and those who did not ... ."

  Memory closed in, harsh and immediate despite the time elapsed since those days. He heard Galba say,

  I do believe you've brought me a boy who'll settle in nicely. Very well. The bargain is agreed upon."

  They retired to a small room off the atrium and its splashing fountain. Chuck Farley and his new master bent over papers, signing their names and exchanging coins for Marcus' life. A moment later, his new owner had called for the steward of his house.

  "See to it the new boy is made comfortable, but confined. I want to be certain he doesn't run at the first opportunity. Now, about the pieces you wanted in trade..."

  Dismissed entirely from the man's awareness, Marcus stumbled dazedly between a burly steward and another thickset man who guided him toward the back of the house. The room they put him in was small and windowless, lit with a lamp dangling from the ceiling. A shout from the steward brought a collared slave girl running with a tray of food and rink. Marcus had to hold back a semi-hysterical laugh. If they thought he could possibly eat now without being sick.. .

  They left him and the untouched meal alone in his cell, locking the door from the outside. Marcus sank onto the only piece of furniture, a bed, and closed his hands into the thin mattress until his fingers ached. The blur of the alcohol Farley had plied him with was beginning to wear off, leaving him colder with every passing moment. Light from the oil lamp gleamed against the sweat on his arms. He felt like screaming, cursing, battering down the door with the bed .... Instead, with as much calm as he could dredge up from the depths of his soul, Marcus forced himself to eat and drink what he'd been given.

  He would need to keep up his strength.

  Marcus was aware that it would be ridiculously easy, in a few weeks' time, to simply slip away and run for the Time Tours wine shop on the Via Appia. Everything in him screamed to do just that. Everything except his honor.

  And that honor-the only bit of his parents, his family, his whole village and the proud tribe of the Taurusates, kinsmen to the great Aquitani themselves, left to him-demanded he repay the debt of coin his new "master" had paid for him. Somehow, someday, he would find his way back through the Porta Romae and hold Ianira in his arms again. It would take years of work to repay his purchase price and he had no guarantee that beautiful Ianira would wait. Perhaps he could send a message, somehow, with a Time Tours employee? How, he didn't have the faintest idea. But he would. And he would get back to her, somehow. Or die trying.

  Kit Carson was on his way to a business luncheon he'd rather have avoided-he hated the monthly business meeting of TT-86 hoteliers-which was scheduled to take place at the Neo Edo's expensive and excellent restaurant this month. 'Eighty-sixers and tourists alike appreciated Kit's kitchen. But these stupid monthly meetings, where everyone talked, no one did anything, and Kit invariably sat through, silently fuming ... he'd accomplish nothing except the loss in revenue to the Neo Edo from a group of men and women more interested in the delicacies of his kitchen than they were in Guild business.

  Thank God the meetings rotated from one hotel to another, so Kit didn't suffer too often. He was nearly to the doorway of the Kaiko no Kemushi, the Silkworm Caterpillar--any form of bug, particularly caterpillars, elicited greater disgust from japanese than even cockroaches did for Americans, so most of his japanese customers found the restaurant's name hysterically funny Then it happened. The miracle he'd been hoping would rescue him from this interminable luncheon.

  His skull began to buzz in the old, familiar way, but he was constitutionally certain that no gate was due to open today. He grinned suddenly, transforming in a blink from serious businessman to imp of mischief ready for some fun.

  "Unstable gate!" he crowed, racing into the Commons, even as warning klaxons blared. What would it be this time? Another peek into the late Mesozoic? No, the buzzing of his skull bones wasn't intense enough for a gate that big. The eerie, nonsound told him that this would be a smallish gate, open for who knew how long? Would it cycle several times, then vanish, or set up a steady, long-term pattern? Where? Kit wondered, having seen everything from giant pterodactyls to murderous Welsh bowmen stumble through unstable gates.

  Kit arrived a few instants earlier than Pest Control, with their innocuous grey uniforms and staunch faces, discontinuity detectors sweeping the whole area. They also carried rifles, shotguns, and capture nets to be ready for whatever roared through. Mike Benson and several of his security men raced up next, followed by a puffing Bull Morgan. Mike looked terrible-eyes bloodshot, bags under them so dark a purple they looked nearly black, jawline unshaven. Bull looked sharply at his Chief of Security as well, then snapped out, "Any ideas?"

  Pest Control's chief, Sue Fritchey, always had a quiet, almost demure air about her-and it often fooled people. Sue was twice as strong and at least four times as smart as she generally looked. Kit chuckled silently. There she stood, looking exactly like a carbon copy of all the other Pest Control agents. You'd never guess to look at her that she held doctorates in biological/ ecological sciences, nematological/entomological sciences, had large- and small-animal veterinary and zoo degrees, and a paleontological science Ph.D to boot: in both flora and fauna. With a master's in virology thrown in for good measure.

  Sue Fritchey was very good at her job.

  A shimmering in the air opened ten feet above Time Tours' Porta Romae gate platform-and about four feet to one side of it. The air shimmered through a whole doppler range of colors and indescribable motion, then the dark, ever-shifting edges of an unstable gate slid open. Little yellow-brown things fell
through it, all the way to the concrete floor below, where they smacked with a bone-cracking sound. A flood followed them, a tidal wave. Kit widened his eyes when he realized what it was. He laughed aloud. "Lemmings!"

  Pest Control tried desperately to stem the flow at the gate, using nets to capture and toss back as many as possible while leaning dangerously far over the rail of Porta Romae's gate platform. For every batch of five or six they caught and hurled back, twelve or fifteen more got through, falling messily to their deaths on the now enormous pile of silent, brown-fin-red bodies. Tourists, aghast at the slaughter, were demanding that Pest Control do something, it was cruel, inhuman

  Kit interrupted a group of five women dressed in the latest Paris haute couture, all of them badgering Sue while she tried to direct one group at the gate, tried to get another squad into position from a different angle, and put a third squad to work shoveling the bodies into large bags.

  "'Scuse me, ladies," he smiled engagingly, "I couldn't help overhearing you."

  They turned as one, then lost breath and color in the same moment as they recognized him. Kit hid a grin. Sometimes world-famous reputations weren't such a curse, after all.

  "Mr.-Mr. Carson?"

  He bowed. "As I said, I couldn't help but overhear, your conversation." He drew them adroitly away from Sue Fritchey a few steps at a time and was rewarded with Sue's preoccupied smile. "Are you ladies by any chance acquainted with the behavior patterns of the ordinary lemming?"

  They shook their heads in time, well-practiced marionettes.

  "Ah ... let me help you understand. Lemmings are rodents. Some live on the Arctic tundra, where predators generally keep their populations in check. But they also live in cold, alpine climates like you'd find in, say, the northern tip of Norway. Without sufficient predators our sweet little rodents breed out of control, until they've destroyed their environment, not to mention their food supply" Five sets of eyes went round. "When that happens--and it does to many a herd of lemmings, I assure you-then something in their genes or maybe in their brain structure kicks in and causes them to leave their environment, sometimes by the thousands. You see, that unknown signal is a warning that their population has become too large for the land to sustain it. It's as unstable as that gate up there."