Goldie nodded, reminding Chuck of a cathedral downspout he'd once seen, come to full and hideous life. "Well, maybe I can help you. As it happens, I have a good bit of my own assets in the form of gold.

I'll give you the gold you need to substantiate your claim if you cut me in for a percentage of your strike. Say about fifty percent?"

Farley looked eager, then less so when she named the percentage. "Well, that seems a bit steep. How about twenty percent? After all, I did find it."

"Yes, but without my gold, you'll have to spend a lot of back-breaking, sweaty work just to rush into town to make your claim before the gate closes. Then you'll have to get back to your mine, wasting time that could be devoted to getting more gold out of the ground."

"True enough. Hmm, how about fifty percent and you agree to exchange my share of the gold dust I bring back without charging your usual fee?"

"Done, sir."

She dove into back room and after a short time came back with a rolling cart on which were piled small sacks with odd lumps sticking through the cloth. She pulled out a set of scales and calibrated weights from a shelf underneath the counter, and sat down.

"Now, mostly what I have is dust, but there are a few nuggets," she said with a smile. "This should be enough to convince the assayer about your strike." She set up the scales carefully, filling one side with brass weights designated in troy ounces. She opened a sack and tipped gold into the other pan until the scale read level. "At the current rates of exchange, that's a hundred dollars."

She was lying-it was actually more like thirty-five. Chuck said diffidently, "Er, isn't that a bit light?"

"Oops, sorry, these are the ones I reserve for the zipper jockeys. Let me get the real ones." She opened a drawer behind her, and pulled out another set of counterweights, and continued measuring out hundredweight's until she'd finished with the pile. It was a big pile.

"You probably think it's odd that I happen to keep this much gold around. But I went through the big crash after the Accident, and I don't trust banks, not anymore."

Chuck rubbed the side of his nose and murmured sympathetically. "My dear lady, you are a life saver. A fortune saver," he added with a small laugh. "But I still have one problem." He gestured to the bags of dust and nuggets laid out across the top of the counter. "I can't very well go walking through the Wild West Gate with that in plain sight. I've got to look like someone who's been in the field for months, accumulating it. Do you have a period-style leather satchel, perhaps, that I could carry everything in?"

Goldie smiled in what she probably considered her most winsome manner. "I have just the thing. A set of saddlebags brought uptime by one of my agents, for you, no charge. I'll just go and get them."

She vanished into the back of her shop yet again.

Chuck was tempted to steal back his bills, just lying there on the counter, but he didn't want to risk being arrested when he came back. His fake ID was good but why take unnecessary chances? Besides, getting caught by his boss for his little extracurricular activities on TT-86 would be bad for his health. Permanently.

He and Goldie concluded their business with a handshake, and Farley headed for the nearest public restroom to ditch his clothes, settle the heavy bags of gold into his carrying harness, and don his toga for the Roman gate. He rejoined Marcus, who waited quietly with his luggage. He smiled at the younger man, then headed up the ramp with the other tourists.

By the time Goldie discovered the scam and reported it, he'd be long gone. Chuck laughed aloud, softly, drawing a curious look from the slave he'd purchased all those years ago. Yes, he'd have given a great deal to see the look on her face under all that purple hair. Amateurs. Still chuckling, he slid his time card with its fake identification into the reader, had his departure time and date duly logged, and gestured to Marcus. The young man hoisted the baggage and followed silently through the gaping portal in the concrete wall of Time Terminal Eighty-Six.

Unable to leave his apartment, he felt so ill, Skeeter-in looking for ways to make some illegal profit during his convalescence, hit quite suddenly on the answer. Something Marcus had once said brought new inspiration when Skeeter needed it most. He was still hung over and hurting, a particularly nasty throb where Farley had struck the back of his skull. Or whoever it had been. He was also, however, running out of time. So he quietly bought up a supply of small glass bottles, corks, and paper labels from various outfitters, ordering them over the computer and asking to have them delivered immediately to his apartment. When everything arrived, Skeeter got busy, diligently gluing handwritten labels onto each filled, corked bottle of tapwater, tinged just slightly with a drop of ink. The longer he counted the potential profits to be had in the patent medicine business, the more cheerful he grew, despite headache and hangover from too much alcohol combined with too much chloroform. Each label exclaimed in gorgeous, "antique" script (Skeeter could, among other odd skills, forge just about any signature he'd ever seen): MIRACLE WATER-DIRECT FROM DOWNTIME IMPORTER! FAMOUS SPRINGS OF CAUTERETS! OWN A BOTTLE OF MYSTIC HISTORY FROM GALLIA COMATA, AD 47! A THOUSAND PASSIONATE NIGHTS GUARANTEED WITH ANCIENT WORLD'S MOST SOUGHT-AFTER LOVE POTION

He hadn't spent much and the uptime tourist crowd was just as gullible as any nineteenth-century Iowa farmer. The descendants of twentieth-century new ager crystal mystics, in particular, ought to be "medicine show" pushovers. As Ianira Cassondra's little booth on the Commons had proved, they'd buy anything even moderately wacky-particularly if he hinted that the stuff had not only been bottled in Gallia Comata, but that the water from the famous spring actually bubbled up from the sacred rivers of lost Atlantis. He pasted another label, wondering how much he could get per bottle? Ten? Twenty? Fifty? Shucks, some fools might go as high as a hundred.

Gingerly humming a little ditty Yesukai the Valiant's aged mother had taught him, the tune warlike and lighthearted, Skeeter was as happy as any exiled Yakka tribesman in a lot of pain could be. He had several bottles left to label when someone buzzed his doorbell frantically. Curious, he peered through the peephole.

"Huh?" Skeeter opened to the door to find Ianira Cassondra outside his apartment, literally wringing her hands in the folds of a pretty, Ionic-style chiton. "Ianira! What are you doing here?"

He ushered her in, shocked by the tears sparkling on pale cheeks and ashen lips. The door clicked softly behind him, the latch catching, but he was so distracted he didn't bother with the deadbolt. Ianira had clutched at his arm.

"Please, you must help him!"

"Who? Ianira, what's happened?"

"Skeeter, he's going with that terrible man, and I don't trust him, and it's your fault he's going at all-"

"Whoa, slow down. Now. Who's going where?"

"Marcus! To Rome!" The words were torn from her.

Skeeter blinked. "Rome? Marcus is going to Rome? That's crazy. Marcus would never go back to Rome."

Her nails dug painfully into his arm. "His cursed master came back! You know his pride, his determination to pay that man his purchase cost, to be free of the debt!"

Skeeter nodded, wondering what on earth had happened. "He should've had plenty, I'd think. I mean, I know the new baby was expensive, and all, and what with little Artemisia getting so sick from the fever that idiot tourist brought back they had to quarantine her, but there's that bet money I gave him-"

"That's just it!" she cried. Her nails drew blood. "He found out how you got it and gave it back!"

"He ... gave it back?" Skeeter's voice hit a squeak. "You mean ... he just gave it back?" Then: "Oh, shit, that means he knows how to find that maniac that's been-"