Wages of Sin

by Robert Asprin

  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 thin
k 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, ne
ver 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."