Wagers of Sin: Time Scout II (28 page)

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."

He pointed, and waited for five sets of shocked eyes to return to him. "So they leave. Now, the herds that live in very rocky country, with lots of cliffs, have the perfect suicide mechanism built right into their habitat. Some of those cliffs drop into deep, jagged valleys. Some shadow a deep, narrow bay. One full of water," he added, not sure that their collective IQ's were above those of alive lemming. "And you know what those cute little buggers do? They run straight for those cliffs, almost as though they knew, wanted, to throw themselves and their pups over the edge. Those," he pointed to the avalanche of small rodents still falling through the gate, "have jumped off a cliff somewhere. They'd be dead already, even if the gate hadn't opened ten feet over the station floor. You can't change history-or the deep genetics of certain species. Fool about with their genetic structure, get rid of the signal-if you could-that triggers the suicidal migrations, and pretty soon you'd be hip deep in starving lemmings. And there wouldn't be anything green left for thousands of square miles."

Round eyes stared at him from pale, pinched faces. He tipped an imaginary hat and left, humming a delighted tune under his breath. He gave out a short, humorless bark of laughter, wondering what those five would say when they went back uptime?

He then joined the crew sweeping bodies into containers supplied by shopkeepers and other willing 'eighty-sixers. Kit found himself scooping warm, still little bodies into an ornate brass wastebasket that could only have come from the Epicurean. Delight. Kit grinned, then got to business filling it. He sighed. It was a shame; lemmings were so darned... cute. But their biology and behaviors were as they were, which meant that on this particular day and time in La-La Land, Kit Carson was shoveling up hundreds of dead rodents, same as everybody else on volunteer duty. Really, anything was better than attending pointless meetings!

Of all people, Goldie Morran appeared in the crowd, sniffing disdainfully but eyeing all those lemmings with speculation. What in God's name was she up to now? Hadn't she been in the infirmary recently? Didn't take her long to recover. I sometimes think Goldie's too mean to die. She turned on a stilt heel and sought out Sue Fritchey, who listened intently for a moment, then nodded impatiently and shook Goldie's hand. The look on Goldie's face as she tried to figure out where to wipe her hand, covered now with blood and lemming hair, was priceless. Then, when she leaned over an intent newsie's vidcammer and cleaned her hand thoroughly while asking him sweet-voiced questions to distract him from the motions she was making against his back, it was almost too much to bear.

In fact, when one film crew caught it on camera, Kit did laugh-but softly enough Goldie couldn't possibly hear him.

Whatever she'd wanted, she'd clearly gotten, as she left with a contented smile on her face. Kit worked his way toward Sue.

"What'd Goldie want?"

"Hmm? Oh, hi, Kit. She wanted the skins. Said she'd pay a downtimer to skin 'em and tan the skins for her, then maybe the big sternbergi might take a fancy to lemming meat. God, I hope so. Have you got any idea what it's going to smell like, all through the station, if we have to incinerate these little beasts?"

Kit shuddered. "Yeah. I got a real good idea."

She glanced sharply at him. "Oh, damn, I'm sorry, Kit. I was distracted ... forgot all about that witch's burning you were forced to watch ... ."

He forced a shrug. "Thanks. I appreciate the apology, but that's one of 'em I sometimes still wake up screaming over. And it's the smell that lingers with you, like a spirit as malicious as the goddamned inquisitors who ordered the burnings in the first place." He cleared his throat and pointed his gaze into the far distance. "Sue, one of those so-called witches was a little girl, curly red-blond hair, couldn't have been above two years old, screaming for her mommy-who was burning on the stake right next to her."

Sue had squeezed shut her eyes. "I will never, ever again complain about my job, Kit Carson."

Kit thumped her on the shoulder. "Go ahead and complain away. Makes me feel good to hear other people's problems. Not my own."

Sue swallowed hard, then managed a shaky smile. "Okay, Kit, one helluva big job complaint, comin' at you. Why the hell are you just standing there in that bloody three-piece suit? Pick up a goddamned shovel and start shovelin'!"

Kit laughed, hugged her, then swung his own shovel like a baton, whistling as he returned to work.

At last Pest Control hummers with attached sidecars for hauling whatever needed hauling, pulled up. The cleanup crew dumped their loads into the hoppers. Kit did the same, then turned back for more.

Fortunately, the unstable gate closed before the entire herd of several thousand fell into TT-86, but a final lemming, halfway through as the gate closed shut, was sucked back with an almost startled look in its button-black eyes, the inexorable shutting of the gate sending the animal back into its own time-and a probable fall with its fellows off whatever cliff they'd found. Judging from the size of the piled little bodies, at least a quarter of that herd had ended up on the floor. It took hours of back-breaking work to get them all into hoppers, never mind cleaning bloodstains from the floor. The newsies from uptime covered the whole event, not only for the on-station television network but for the hope of a potential scoop by getting the video through Primary first.