The Return of Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future Read online

  "You know what the water's like in jail," said Danny. "Let me have one more drink. How can it hurt."

  Balsam shrugged. "Yeah, okay, go ahead."

  "Thanks," said Danny. He turned to the sink and held the glass under the tap as the two officers relaxed and waited for him.

  "Hot!" he croaked.

  Boiling hot water filled the glass, and in a single motion he hurled it in Balsam's face, grabbed the manacles, connected Gibbs' wrist to the sink, and raced out the door.

  Danny had a three-step lead on Balsam as he raced to the door of the Golden Fleece. The Commander pulled out a screecher, a sonic pistol that would put him out for the rest of the night and give him a headache for a week, but as he was running after Danny and taking aim, the Duchess stuck out a foot and tripped him. He fell with a bone-jarring thud.

  Danny raced back to the table, took her hand, and began pulling her toward the door.

  "I didn't mean to do that!" she said, panic-stricken. "It was instinct! I just didn't want him to shoot you!"

  "I believe you!" said Danny urgently. "He never will! Come on! He's not going to stay down forever, and he's got a partner!"

  Suddenly Gibbs, the manacle hanging from his wrist, burst into the tavern.

  "Now!" said Danny urgently. The Duchess took a quick glance at Gibbs, screamed, and actually beat Danny out the door.

  "Left!" he whispered as he caught up with her. They reached the corner and had just turned out of the line of sight when the two policemen emerged, weapons in hand, from the tavern.

  "Now they're going to kill us!" whispered the Duchess, terrified.

  "They're never going to find us," answered Danny. "Just trust me and do what I say."

  They ran through the streets, turning frequently, never seeing any sign of their pursuers, always moving farther and farther from the center of the small city. After a few minutes the buildings took on new and different shapes: some were triangular, some trapezoidal, some seemed to follow no rational plan at all.

  "Where are we?" asked the Duchess, as Danny led her down narrow winding streets that seemed totally patternless.

  "The native quarter," he said. "They won't follow us here."

  "Is it dangerous?" she asked, looking around.

  "It is if they know you work for the Democracy. They'll leave us alone."

  "How do you know?"

  "I've spent a lot of time here," said Danny, nodding to an orange-skinned being who stared right through him as if he didn't exist. "They know I won't do them any harm."

  "You have alien friends?"

  "They're not aliens, they've natives," answered Danny. "And yes, I have friends here."

  She began looking panicky again. "I can't believe it! I'm a fugitive, and I'm hiding out in the alien quarter!"

  "Calm down," said Danny. "You're safe now."

  "You calm down!" she snapped. "Maybe you're used to having the police after you, but it's a new experience for me, and I don't like it very much!"

  "They won't come to the quarter," he said confidently.

  "Are we going to spend the night here?"

  He shook his head. "We'll give the police half an hour to figure out where I went, and another couple of minutes to decide it's not worth the effort to search for us here."

  "Then what?"

  He smiled. "Then we have our choice of 53 empty houses."

  She lit a smokeless cigarette. "So it's not enough that I helped a criminal escape capture," she said bitterly. "Now the police can add breaking and entering to the charges."

  "I'm grateful that you stopped my friend Commander Balsam from shooting me," said Danny, "but no one asked you to. It was your choice to hinder a police officer in the pursuit of a criminal, so don't blame me."

  "I told you: I wasn't thinking clearly," she said. "I was just reacting."

  "Believe me, no one's going to arrest you," Danny assured her. "Any red-blooded man who was at the tavern will swear that Balsam tripped over you."

  "Do you really think so?"

  "I do. Besides, if I don't know your real name, neither do they. If you choose to stay with me, all they know is they're after someone who called herself the Duchess. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'll give plenty of ten-to-one that that's not the name on your ID disk or your passport."

  "It isn't. I didn't like my name, so I changed it."

  "They do that on the Inner Frontier, not here on the Democracy worlds. How can the government keep tabs on you if they don't know who you are?"

  "I never thought of it that way," she said, "but maybe choosing a new name wasn't a bad idea."

  "Beats the hell out of being a Myrtle."

  "Do I look like a Myrtle to you?"

  He stared at her and shook his head. "You look like a Duchess who saved my life. Of course, you won't drink with me, but if I have to choose between your doing one or the other . . ." He ended with a smile.

  "Well, you look exactly like a Danny Briggs."

  "That bad, huh?"

  "If you don't like the name, change it like I did."

  "What would I change it to?"

  "That's for you to decide."

  "I never had a hero," he admitted. "I guess I'll keep it and stay who I am."

  They stood in silence for a few more minutes, engulfed in angular shadows. Then Danny checked his timepiece.

  "We've been here almost an hour," he announced. "I think we can start hunting up a place to stay while we figure out our next move."

  "Where are we going?" she asked as he began walking back toward the city.

  "Where do you want to go?"

  "You know that little hill at the south end of town, the one overlooking Lake Belora?" she said. "Have you got anything there?"

  "I've got two houses in the area," he replied. "I won't know if either of them has a lake view until we get there."

  The first house was actually in a valley just beyond the hill, but the second, still luxurious but less impressive, looked like they would be able see the lake from the second level.

  "It's too bad I didn't know this would be happening," remarked Danny. "There's an empty villa fronting the lake. It even has a dock and a couple of boats."

  "So let's go there."

  He shook his head. "It's going to be robbed sometime tonight. We don't want to be anywhere near it, just in case."

  "How will we get in?" asked the Duchess as they approached the front door of the house they had chosen. "I don't know how to break into a house. Won't it have a security system?"

  "Have a little trust in the man whose life you saved," he replied, kneeling down to study the computer lock. "Shit!"

  "What is it?"

  "I can crack the combination in a couple of minutes, but it's got a bone reader."

  "A bone reader?"

  "Yeah. I can get around almost any retina ID system, but bone readers are tough. They scan your skeleton and compare it to anyone who the computer's been programmed to accept. I've got a couple of healed fractures that won't match up against anyone else's."

  "Then we'll do without our lake view and go to the other house."

  "Give me a minute," he said. "There's never been a security system that couldn't be penetrated."

  "By you?"

  "By somebody." He flashed her a smile. "I am but a talented amateur."

  "Sure," she retorted. "And I'm a millionaire virgin."

  "That gives me all the more reason to find a way into the house."

  He touched the lock, and a holographic screen appeared in the air, filled with dozens of icons. His fingers began moving expertly over the lock, and the icons began racing across the screen in near-hypnotic patterns.

  "How's it coming?" asked the Duchess after a few minutes.

  "Oh, it's been unlocked for awhile," he said.

  "But you can't hide your fractures."

  "I'm not trying to."

  After another minute he stood up. "Okay," he said. "I'm done."

  The door dilated, and she began to s
tep through it. He grabbed her arm and held her back.

  "Gentlemen first," he said, stepping through.

  The door slammed shut in her face. He disappeared for a moment, then opened the door and invited her in.

  "What was that all about?" she said, entering the house.

  "I fed the computer the data about my skeleton and told it I'd been approved. But I didn't know what your skeletal history might be, so after I went in I deactivated the security system." He paused. "I also ordered all the windows to polarize. We can see out, but no one on the outside can see in, even if we have the lights on."

  "Do you do this kind of thing often?" she asked.

  "Certainly not," he replied. "I get people who are hungrier than I am to do it for me."

  She stared at him with an expression that was a cross between concern and admiration. "There's a lot more to you than meets the eye."

  "Thank you," said Danny. "I won't even offer an obscene rejoinder." He looked around. "So what do you think of our new quarters?"

  "Elegant," she said, walking through the entry room. The carpet anticipated her steps and thickened as she walked, and the mural on the wall slowly, almost imperceptibly, began turning into a three-dimensional scene, then gradually added motion. It went back to being a flat painting as they passed into the next room.

  "This is some house!" she said. "I've never been close to anything like this!"

  "Yeah, a person could get used to this without much effort," agreed Danny, as a chair positioned itself to accommodate him.

  "As long as we're going to be stuck here for a day or two, let's go upstairs and see if we can see the lake," suggested the Duchess.

  "Why not?" assented Danny, following her to a staircase. As they put their feet on the first wide stair, it metamorphosed into a carpeted escalator, totally silent, and gently transported them up to the second floor.

  They walked to a window and stared out.

  "You can almost see it," she said. "If we were even one floor higher we'd have a magnificent view."

  "I saw a third level of windows when we were outside," said Danny. "There's probably an attic above us somewhere. We should be able to see it from there."

  They searched through the rooms, and finally came to an airlift next to a storage closet.

  "This has got to be it," said Danny. "It's the only thing leading up."

  "What do we stand on?" asked the Duchess nervously as she looked down to the basement some thirty feet below.

  "Just step into the shaft," explained Danny. "It'll sense your presence, and you'll stand on a cushion of air that'll take you up to the attic."

  "You're sure? I've never seen one of these things before."

  "They're all the rage on Deluros VIII and the bigger worlds," said Danny. "Give it another twenty years and they'll be just as popular here."

  She looked skeptical, so he stepped into the shaft first. When she saw him standing on air she joined him, and they floated gently up to the attic.

  "Lights," he ordered, and suddenly the attic was illuminated with soft, indirect lighting. As tidy as the house had been, the attic was that chaotic. Books, tapes, disks and cubes were stacked awkwardly on the floor, paintings were piled against a wall, each leaning on the other. Piles of old wrinkled clothes sat side by side with piles of unmarked plastic boxes.

  "Take a look, Danny!" she enthused, staring out a window. "You can see the whole lake. It's gorgeous!"

  "Just a minute," he replied, walking to another window. He knelt down, pushing a few plastic boxes aside. One of the ancient boxes literally cracked open and fell apart.

  "Don't you just love the way the moonlight plays on the water?" said the Duchess.

  "Oh, Jesus!" whispered Danny.

  "I didn't hear you."

  There was no answer, and she turned to him.

  "I thought you were looking out the window," she said, staring at him as he fingered through a stack of ancient, crumbling papers. He paid no attention to her. "Danny!" she said irritably. "What's the matter with you?"

  Finally he looked up, the strangest expression on his face. "Who'd have guessed it?" he whispered. "I mean, this is just another house. Nothing special, nothing to indicate . . ." His voice trailed off.

  "What are you talking about?" she demanded.

  He held up a sheet of paper.

  "We just hit the mother lode," he said in awed tones.

  2.

  Come if you dare, come but beware,

  Come to the lair of Altair of Altair.

  Offer a prayer to the men foul and fair,

  Trapped in the snare of Altair of Altair.

  That was the first thing Danny read. Soon he was making his way through the thousands of verses.

  "They don't even know what they've got here!" he said excitedly. "If they did, it would be under lock and key in a vault, not out in the open in a plastic box that's falling apart."

  "What is it?" asked the Duchess.

  "Listen," said Danny. He picked up another page and read to her:

  "They call him the Angel, the Angel of Death,

  If ever you've seen him, you've drawn your last breath.

  He's got cold lifeless eyes, he's got brains, he's got skill,

  He's got weapons galore, and a yearning to kill."

  "Is that supposed to mean something to me?" she asked.

  "That's the Angel he's writing about!" enthused Danny. "The Angel! Haven't you heard of him?"

  She shrugged.

  "He was the greatest bounty hunter of them all! They say he killed more than two hundred men!"

  "So you found a poem about the Angel," said the Duchess, her interest fading. "So what?"

  "You don't understand!" said Danny. He held up a sheaf of papers with the same scrawl on all of them. "This isn't just any poem! This is Black Orpheus' original manuscript!"

  "Yeah?" she said, walking over to look at it. "What makes you think so?"

  "The verses themselves. They're all about the characters he met on the Frontier. And I've heard about these characters—Altair of Altair and the Angel. Heard about them, read about them. They've even made some videos about them."

  "But anyone could write a few verses."

  He opened three more ancient boxes, and pulled verse-covered pages from each. "A few verses, sure. Ten thousand verses, I don't think so. This is it!"

  "What's it worth?" asked the Duchess.

  "Who knows? Ten million, thirty million. What's history worth to a people who don't have any?"

  "I don't know what you're talking about," she said.

  "He was the Bard of the Inner Frontier. There's no law on the Frontier, no government, and there's sure as hell no historians. He was all they had, him and this poem. Bits and pieces have been printed here and there, but no one's ever seen the whole thing." He patted the pile of papers. "Until tonight."

  "Who would buy a bundle of crumbling old papers?"

  "Every museum and every library in the galaxy," answered Danny. "And probably every collector." He held up a long, thick feather. "This is the quill pen he wrote with. This alone ought to bring half a million."

  "You're kidding!"

  "The hell I am. All I have to do is check through the whole manuscript and make sure it's authentic."

  "And you can really auction it for that much?"

  "Not publicly," he said. "I'm stealing it, remember?"

  "Well, if the people who own this place don't know what they've got . . ."

  "It makes no difference. The bidders—well, the legitimate bidders, the ones I plan to avoid—will want to know how I got it. They'll want to take it away to authenticate it, and once it's out of my possession, I can't control what happens to it."

  "So it'll be a private sale?"

  "A very limited auction, let's call it," he corrected her. "Market value could be fifty million credits. I'll take twenty million and be happy with it."

  "I hear a lot of I's," she said suddenly. "What happened to we?"

&
nbsp; "I thought you didn't want to be a criminal."

  "I'm already a criminal. I might as well be a rich one."

  "I'll take care of you," promised Danny.

  "I don't want to be taken care of," complained the Duchess. "I want to be a partner—an equal partner."

  "I don't have equal partners," said Danny.

  "You'd never have found it if I hadn't wanted a view of the lake," she persisted.

  "And you still wouldn't know what it was if I hadn't told you," retorted Danny. "I said I'd take care of you and I will. Now get off my back and let me look at what we've got here."

  "We should pack it up and leave Bailiwick tonight," said the Duchess.

  He shook his head. "Too soon. They'll have men posted at the spaceport, and I don't own a private ship."

  "What makes you think they won't still have men posted in another day or two?"

  "Look, I embarrassed them, but it was a small-time crime. Pretty soon there'll be a nice juicy murder or two, and they'll decide to go after bigger fish."

  "You'd better be right," she said.

  "You're free to leave any time you want," said Danny. "But I stay here, and so"—he patted the boxes—"do these."

  She stared at him sullenly for a long moment, then walked to the air shaft. "I'm going down to the kitchen to see what kind of food they've got." She paused, then added reluctantly: "Do you want anything?"

  "Yeah. Bring me back a beer if they have any."

  She disappeared down the chute, and returned five minutes later with a pair of beers. She walked across the cluttered floor to hand one to Danny.

  "Listen to this," he said excitedly:

  "The Songbird stalks, the Singbird kills,

  The Songbird works to pay his bills.

  So, friend, beware the Songbird's glance:

  If you're his prey, you'll have no chance."

  Danny looked up, his face aglow with excitement. "You know what I think? I think he's writing about Sebastian Cain!"

  "Never heard of him," said the bored Duchess.

  "What kind of education have you had?" he said contemptuously.

  "Math, science, computers, literature—the usual."

  "Sadly lacking."

  "Not everyone studies killers and cutthroats," she shot back.

  "They should. They're much more interesting than vectors and angles."