"Linda Evans - Time Scout 2 - Wages of Sin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Evans Linda)

was La-La Land Legend. After ruling out Brian, who was left?
Just needing one more piece of expert advice, Skeeter was running out of
time to find it-and had never had many friends to find it from. Well, hell,
folks with his chosen vocation wouldn't have many friends, now would they?
Trust just didn't come with the territory. Having accepted that years ago,
Skeeter continued to mentally rummage through the list of people he might be
able to ask, tossed out all scouts, most guides (Agnes Fairchild was willing-
mmm, was she ever!-she just didn't know). He hesitated -- again -- on Goldie
Morran. She'd be motivated, all right, and she'd probably know, too; but he
wasn't about to share potentially enormous profits by confiding his plan to
any of the other scoundrels who made La-La Land their permanent home. To make
the score himself, Goldie-the-heartless-Morran, TT-86s leading authority on
rare coins and gems, was out.
What he needed was someone who'd been there, firsthand.
Other than a handful of rich visitors who'd been through the Porta Romae
multiple times-most of whom Skeeter had "liberated" from the burden of their
cash and were therefore to be avoided at any cost, Skeeter finally came up
with a single, qualified man in the whole of TT-86: Marcus.
A startled grin passed across his face. As it happened, Marcus was probably
better suited to give Skeeter advice on this particular scheme than all the
so-called experts in La-La Land. Should've just gone to Marcus in the first
place and saved myself a heap of time and trouble. But he'd been embarrassed,
feeling a pang of inexplicable guilt at the thought of conning his best (and
practically his only) friend into helping him. Of course, he'd also have
missed racking up all those on line hours against that asshole of a scout ....
By coincidence rare and somewhat miraculous, Marcus actually liked Skeeter.
Why, Skeeter had not a single clue. Downtimers often came an with the
strangest ideas, many of them quaintly useless, others so eccentric they
passed beyond the understandable into the misty, magical realm of things like
what made the gates work and what did women really want, anyway? He'd given up
on both, long ago, avoiding stepping through any more gates than absolutely
necessary and taking his flings where he could find them, not very
discontented when he couldn't. He didn't feel proud about his ignorance;
business, however, was business.
So Skeeter finished the last touches on his "business uniform" then headed
for Commons to hunt down Marcus, then meet Agnes and her group for the tour.
Skeeter liked the open airy feeling of Commons. Not only did it compensate
(a little) for the loss of vast, open plains of his teenage years, but more
importantly, it always smelled to Skeeter like money. Vast sums of cold, hard
currency changed hands here. It wasn't too much to ask of the gods, was it,
that some small trickle of that vast amount fall blissfully into his deserving
hands?
Theology aside (and only the many gods knew what Skeeter's was: he
certainly didn't), Commons was just plain fun. Particularly at this time of
year. As he strode out into the body-jammed floor, picking his way through
multiple festivals and reenactments in progress, Skeeter had to shake his head
and grin.
What a madhouse! There were, of course, the usual tourist gates with their
waiting areas, ramps, and platforms; ticket booths for those who'd waited to
arrive before deciding on a destination-fine, if you could afford the hotel