The Return of Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future (19 page)

      
It was when he rode an alien steed halfway across Galapagos V to hunt down an escaping killer that he picked up the sobriquet of the Rough Rider, for the terrain was positively brutal. Men envied him, women loved him, children worshipped him, and criminals all across the Frontier feared him.

      
He never did become a bounty hunter, because he wasn't in the game for the money. He believed that when you saw Evil you stood up to it, and for twenty years he never flinched, never backed down, never once worried about the odds before he marched into battle, burners blazing, screechers screaming.

      
And then one day Varese Sarabande, who was only 26 at the time, called him out, just like a cowboy in the Old West, and because he was the Rough Rider he stepped out into the street like Doc Holliday or Johnny Ringo might have done a few millennia earlier. They went for their guns together, but Varese Sarabande was faster, and a moment later Tchanga lay writhing in the street, blood spurting from an artery in his neck.

      
They saved him—barely—but as he lay in the hospital recuperating, he finally came to the realization that he was mortal, and that whatever guardian angel had been protecting him over the years had taken up residence on some other lawman's shoulder. He was 43 years old, and he had painful proof that he couldn't outgun a 26-year-old outlaw like Sarabande. And he knew in his gut that he couldn't beat a strong young man—or woman—in any kind of a fair fight, with weapons or without.

      
His body, which had resisted age for so many years, suddenly felt decades older as he lay there. He was just a day from being released when a gang of three men burst into the hospital, shot two security guards, and began robbing the pharmacy of its narcotics. A young nurse suddenly entered his room, tossed him a burner, and told him what was happening.

      
He refused to leave his bed.

      
They almost had to pry him loose from the hospital the next morning. He resigned his job before noon, withdrew his savings—he didn't transfer them to another world, because he didn't want anyone to know where he was going—and left before the day was over.

      
He set up housekeeping under a new name on Bedrock II, but the Spartan Kid found out he was there and went gunning for him to pay him back for killing his father and two brothers.

      
He ran.

      
He wound up on Gingergreen II. No one knew who he was, no one bothered him, and he lived in total obscurity for three years. Then a thief tried to sneak into his house under cover of night, and he killed him. Shot him dead as he stood there, then shot him 30 or 40 more times. And since he was using a burner, he inadvertently set the house on fire.

      
They saw the blaze and found him still firing into the charred, unrecognizable corpse. He went berserk when they tried to take his weapon away, threatened to kill them all, and finally collapsed as he was about to turn the burner upon himself.

      
He spent a year in an asylum, and when he came out he was 50 pounds lighter and his eyes were still haunted by visions that no one else could see. This time they knew who he was, but even the young toughs who wanted to make a reputation knew that they couldn't make one by killing this emaciated, fear-ridden old man, and so he was left to live out his years in a kind of peace.

      
The Rhymer heard about him and was touched by his story, and even though they never met, no one who knew Tchanga ever argued with the truth of the poem.

      
"So what makes this Rough Rider so special?" asked Matilda as Dimitrios directed their ship to Gingergreen II after dropping Jacobs off at the nearest bounty station. "The word I get is that he's lost his nerve."

      
"He was my hero when I was a kid."

      
"That was a long time ago."

      
"The qualities that made him a hero haven't changed," said Dimitrios.

      
"But other things have changed
him
," she said. "So why, of all the people you might have suggested, are we seeing the Rough Rider?"

      
"To give him a chance to save his soul."

      
"We're not in the salvation business," said Matilda.

      
"Really?" said Dimitrios wryly. "I thought Santiago was going to be the salvation of the Inner Frontier."

      
"You know what I mean."

      
"Yeah, I know."

      
"Then why him?"

      
"When I was a kid, I wanted to grow up to be the Rough Rider," said Dimitrios. "A man who couldn't be bought off or scared off. A man who knew that the humanists are wrong, that there is good and there is evil, and both are abroad in the galaxy, and that someone had to confront evil and destroy it. You slept better knowing there were men like Wilson Tchanga."

      
She got to her feet and walked to the small galley. "I'm getting hungry. Do you want anything before we land?"

      
"Yeah, might as well," he said, joining her.

      
"I hope this Tchanga is everything you think he is."

      
"He was once."

      
"That's not much of a recommendation," said Matilda. She sighed. "I've never recruited a Santiago before. I don't know if I'm doing it right." She ordered beer and sandwiches for both of them. "I hope you've got the right man, but somehow I can't believe it's this easy."

      
"We'll know soon enough," said Dimitrios. "And don't forget, all but the first Santiago had an advantage ours won't have—a ready-made organization. Maybe they had to take it over, convince it, mold it to their needs, but it was there. Our man will have you, me and the poet. That's not much of an army to stand against the Democracy."

      
"Then we'll get more."

      
"Where?"

      
She shrugged. "Where we got you."

      
"Bounty hunters?" he replied. "There aren't that many of us, and most bounty hunters don't have any reason to be unhappy with the Democracy."

      
"No, not bounty hunters," answered Matilda. "Just men and woman who know the time has come for Santiago to walk among us again."

      
"When you describe him like that, he sounds bigger than life," noted Dimitrios.

      
"He is."

      
"That's a lot to ask of one man."

      
"Maybe that's why it's been a century since he last manifested himself."

      
"You make him sound like he's still alive."

      
"He is," said Matilda. "He's an idea—and it's harder to kill an idea than a man."

      
Dimitrios took a bite of his sandwich, then tossed the rest of it into the atomizer. "Next big one I bring in, I'm using the money to buy a ship with a better galley," he announced.

      
She stared at her sandwich. "It's not spoiled."

      
"No. It's just not good enough. Like most of your candidates for Santiago. They won't be evil, and they won't be stupid. They just won't be good enough."

      
"Well,
I
like it," she said, taking another bite.

      
"I hope you're choosier when it comes to Santiago."

      
"You worry about your Rough Rider; I'll worry about my decision."

      
"Fair enough."

      
They finished their beer and returned to the control cabin just as the ship went into an elliptical orbit around Gingergreen II. A moment later they received their landing coordinates from the sole spaceport, and shortly thereafter they were on the ground.

      
"So where do we find the Rough Rider?" asked Matilda when they had cleared Customs.

      
"I've got directions to his place," answered Dimitrios. "It's out in the country."

      
She looked around. "Except for maybe a square mile, the whole damned planet's out in the country."

      
"It's an agricultural world," said Dimitrios. "They grow food for seven nearby mining worlds."

      
"They don't need a whole world for that. Most of the mining's done by machine."

      
"Then they sell what's left to the Navy at rock bottom prices . . . or maybe they just give it to them in exchange for being ignored."

      
"Ignored?" she repeated.

      
"At tax and conscription time."

      
"Were you ever in the Navy?"

      
"The Army."

      
"For how long?"

      
"53 days."

      
"And then what?" she persisted.

      
"And then I wasn't in the Army any more," said Dimitrios, and for the first time since she'd known him, she felt a trace of fear.

      
She followed him in silence to a ground vehicle, and a moment later they were speeding out of the planet's only town, skimming a few inches above a dirt road that took them through blue-tinted fields of mutated corn. Finally, after about 20 miles, Dimitrios instructed the vehicle to take the shortest route to a location that consisted only of numbers, no words.

      
It turned onto a smaller, narrower road, bore right through two forks, and finally came to a halt before a small one-story home. Dimitrios and Matilda got out of the vehicle and approached the front porch.

      
"That's far enough!" said a voice from within the house. "Who are you?"

      
"I'm Dimitrios of the Three Burners," said the bounty hunter, holding his hands out where they could be seen. "This is Waltzin' Matilda, a dancer."

      
"What's your business here?"

      
"We want to talk to you."

      
"What about?"

      
"Why don't you invite us in and give us something to drink and we'll be happy to tell you," said Matilda.

      
"The man drops his burners where you stand," said the voice.

      
Dimitrios unfastened his holster and let it fall to the ground.

      
"And the one in your boot."

      
"Good eyes for an old man," said Dimitrios with a smile. He removed the third burner and placed it atop the other two.

      
"You got any weapons?"

      
"I just took them off," said Dimitrios.

      
"Not you. The lady."

      
"None," said Matilda.

      
"You'd better be telling the truth. You'll be scanned when you walk through the door, and I'll have the punisher set on near- lethal."

      
"Well, let me check and make sure," said Matilda. In quick order she found two knives and a miniature screecher and left them next to Dimitrios' pile of weapons. "I must have forgotten about them," she said with an uneasy smile.

      
"Can we come in now?" asked Dimitrios.

      
"Yes—and keep your hands where I can see them."

      
They obeyed his instructions, got past the scanner without incident, and found themselves in a small, modestly-furnished living room. Standing against the far wall was a tall black man, his face ravaged by illness and inner demons, his body emaciated, a pulse gun in his right hand.

      
"Sit down," said Wilson Tchanga.

      
They sat on a couch, and he seated himself on a chair about fifteen feet away.

      
"Why don't you come a little closer?" suggested Matilda. "We're not here to harm you."

      
"I'll be the judge of that," said Tchanga. "Now talk."

      
"Do we call you Wilson, or Mr. Tchanga, or Rough Rider?" asked Dimitrios.

      
"You know who I am?" said Tchanga.

      
"Why else would we be on your doorstep?" said Dimitrios. "Before we begin, let me tell you that you've been my hero since I was old enough to
have
a hero. Meeting the Rough Rider is quite an honor, sir."

      
"I haven't been the Rough Rider in a long, long time."

      
"You're my hero just the same."

      
Tchanga stared at him, his face expressionless, for a long moment. "What did you say your name was?" he said at last.

      
"Dimitrios of the Three Burners."

      
"Lawman?"

      
"Bounty hunter."

      
"I suppose you have your reasons."

      
Dimitrios nodded his head. "Valid ones."

      
Tchanga turned to Matilda. "And you are?"

      
"Matilda."

      
"Got a last name?"

      
"Got a couple of dozen of them," she said.

      
He smiled. "
You're
no lawman or bounty hunter."

      
"No, sir, I'm not."

      
"All right, now we know who we are," said Tchanga. "Why have you sought me out?"

      
"I want to see if you're the man I'm looking for," said Matilda.

      
"If you're looking for Wilson Tchanga, I'm him." He smiled grimly. "If you're looking for the Rough Rider, I used to be him."