The Return of Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future (37 page)

      
"That's right."

      
"That's wrong. Two men and a female Tellargian have been taken to a psychiatric ward after spending less than half the night with him."

      
"What the hell did he do to them?"

      
"We have no idea, but it is our duty to make sure that he never does it again."

      
"Enough talk," said the Bandit. "Name your price and I'll pay it. Just turn him over to me and we'll leave."

      
"That's out of the question."

      
"Nothing is out of the question for Santiago. Now, where is he?"

      
"He's quite safe, not only from his own urges, but also from delusional intruders who think they're Santiago."

      
"I'm only going to ask once more," said the Bandit. "Where is he?"

      
The olive-skinned man glared at him and offered no response.

      
The Bandit looked around the room, turned to the wall at the far end of it, and pointed his finger. A laser beam shot out, and soon cut a doorway through it.

      
"Rhymer," he said, purposely avoiding mentioning Dante's name, "go see if he's there."

      
Dante stepped through and found himself in what seemed to be a haberdasher's storehouse. He stepped back into the room.

      
"No, there's nothing there."

      
The Bandit turned back to the olive-skinned man. "I'm going to count to five," he said, "and if you haven't told me where I can find Virgil Soaring Hawk, I'm going to melt one of your fingers to putty. Then I'll count again. When we run out of fingers and toes, I'll melt more vital things. Look into my eyes and tell me if you think I'm bluffing."

      
The man stared into the Bandit's eyes and swallowed hard. "You're not bluffing."

      
"Then save yourself a world of pain and tell me what I want to know."

      
"I'll take you there," said the man with an air of defeat.

      
He got up and led them back down the corridor through which they had come, but instead of letting them out into the street, it dead-ended at a metal door.

      
"He's in there?" asked the Bandit.

      
"Yes."

      
"Open it."

      
The man uttered a code that was half-mathematical formula and half-song. The door vanished and Virgil, who had been lying on a floating pallet, got to his feet.

      
"Well, fancy meeting you here," he said.

      
"Shut up and get out of there," said the Bandit.

      
The Injun quickly exited his cell.

      
"Made my bail, huh?"

      
"So to speak." The Bandit turned to the olive-skinned man. "How do we get back to the street?"

      
"You don't."

      
The Bandit pointed a deadly finger between the man's eyes. "Do we have to go through all this again?"

      
"I'm not kidding. The Maze doesn't want him freed."

      
"The Maze doesn't have a vote," said the Bandit. "We're leaving this planet."

      
"You can try," said the man.

      
"Let's start by going back to your office."

      
The man led the way, but when they arrived, it was no longer an office, but a stone cell with iron bars on the windows. A heavy door slammed shut behind them.

      
"I told you," said the man. "The Maze will never let you leave."

      
"Don't bet every last credit you own on it," said the Bandit. He made a slight adjustment to his artificial arm, then stepped back and pointed at the wall with the iron bars. A pulse grenade shot out and exploded when it hit the wall, and a moment later there was a huge gaping hole.

      
The Bandit stepped through it, followed by his party. They found themselves in a walled courtyard, and the Bandit shot another grenade at a wall.

      
The Maze responded, entrapping them again, and it became a battle of attrition. The Bandit would explode or melt any barrier the Maze created, and the Maze would use all its resources to find a new way to imprison them.

      
After an hour the Bandit turned to Dante. "I don't have unlimited supplies of energy or ammunition," he said. "I'm going to have to put an end to this."

      
"What are you going to do?"

      
"Watch."

      
He made one more adjustment to his arm, then pointed to the sky. Something shot out, something small and glowing with power. It reached its apex at a thousand feet, then whistled down at the very center of the Maze. There was no explosion, no sense of heat, no tremors of the ground beneath their feet—but suddenly the Maze began to vanish, starting at its core and radiating outward. Buildings disappeared, streets and sidewalks vanished, thousands of Men and aliens popped out of existence without a sound.

      
Dante thought whatever the Bandit had precipitated would gobble them up as well, but it stopped about 30 yards away.

      
"What the hell was that?" asked the poet, trying to keep his voice calm and level and not succeeding very well.

      
"A little something I commissioned a Dinalian physicist to create for me," answered the Bandit. "It works on the same principle as a molecular imploder, but it creates a chain reaction."

      
"You could have killed us!" said Blue Peter.

      
"I know its physical limits," answered the Bandit.

      
"As it was, you probably killed a few thousand Men and aliens," said Dante.

      
"They would have stopped us if they could," said the Bandit. "That makes them our enemies."

      
"Bullshit!" snapped Dante. "99% of them didn't even know you were here and couldn't care less."

      
"Then this will add to the legend. Try to understand: Santiago has no friends in the galaxy, just enemies and hirelings."

      
"So we're just hirelings?" demanded the poet.

      
"I didn't mean you, of course."

      
"The hell you didn't!"

      
"I saved your life. This is no time for an argument."

      
"You saved my life at the cost of thousands of the lives you were
created
to save."

      
"It was a value judgment," said the Bandit. "Don't make me decide I made a mistake."

      
"It wasn't an either/or situation," said Dante. "There were half a dozen alternatives. Santiago—a real Santiago—would have found one!"

      
The Bandit turned to the olive-skinned man, who had been listening intently, and burned a deadly hole between his eyes.

      
"What was
that
for?" shouted Dante.

      
"It was your fault," said the Bandit angrily. "You implied that I wasn't Santiago. I couldn't let him hear that and live to pass it on."

      
"So you killed him, just like that?"

      
"
You
made it necessary."

      
"How the hell did you get so warped?"

      
"There's nothing warped about it," said the Bandit. "It goes with the job."

      
Dante snorted contemptuously. "What do you know about it?"

      
"What do
I
know?" repeated the poet. "I
made
you!"

      
"You
found
me," replied the Bandit. "There's a difference."

      
Dante was about to reply, but something about the Bandit's expression convinced him to keep silent. A few days earlier he had told the Knife and the Blade that everyone in Santiago's organization was expendable, but he never really believed it.

      
Until now.

24.

      
Dante never wrote a verse about the Madras 300. He tried several times, but it never came out right.

      
But then, neither did the Madras 300.

      
It began a week after their experience in the Blixtor Maze. Dante, who had felt ever since they returned, was sitting alone in the dining room very late at night, sipping a cup of coffee, when Virgil Soaring Hawk approached him.

      
"What are you doing up?" asked the poet.

      
"Couldn't sleep."

      
"Why not?"

      
"Probably because you're using the strongest stimulant on the planet," said the Indian with a grin.

      
"I'm not interested in your habits or your perversions," said Dante.

      
"That's what I want to talk to you about."

      
"I just told you: I'm not interested."

      
"Neither is Santiago."

      
"Is that supposed to mean something to me?"

      
"It should."

      
"Virgil, it's halfway through the night and I don't know what the hell you're talking about," replied Dante. "I'm not in the mood for guessing games, so if you've got something to say, say it."

      
"I just did."

      
"Go away."

      
"You're not paying attention," said Virgil.

      
"I must not be, so spell it out for me."

      
"Look, Rhymer, I know why you came after me in the Maze. We're joined at the soul, you and I."

      
"The hell we are."

      
"It's an historic inevitability. Dante has to have his Virgil. But why did
he
come along?"

      
"You work for him," said Dante. "We all do."

      
"All I've done is buy drugs for him," said Virgil. "That's hardly an indispensable job."

      
Dante stared at him. "You think he
shouldn't
have come after you?"

      
"Maybe so, maybe not. But I know what I am and what I've done, and he at least knows some of it. So why did he destroy the Maze and maybe kill a couple of thousand people just to free me? I'm probably just going to get arrested again on the next world I visit for crimes against God and Nature. You know it, I know it, he knows it."

      
"Let me get this straight," said Dante, frowning. "Are you telling me you wanted him to leave you there?"

      
"I didn't
want
him to. I want to be free! But what kind of Santiago frees one lone redskin pervert at the cost of all those lives?"

      
"He's reestablishing the legend," said Dante uneasily. "He has to let people know how powerful he is."

      
"By killing the people he's supposed to protect? Hell, I could do that. He's supposed to do something better."

      
"I don't know what you want."

      
"It's not what
I
want," said Virgil. "I work for you—"

      
"You work for
him
," interrupted Dante.

      
"No!" said Virgil firmly. "Everyone else around here works for him. I work for
you
—and it's my job to tell you that I think you put your money on the wrong horse."

      
"And you reached this conclusion because he saved your life at the expense of others?"

      
"How much more honest can I be?" retorted Virgil.

      
Dante finished his coffee and sat in silence.

      
"So what do you think?" persisted the Indian.

      
"He's only been Santiago for a few weeks, and we're redefining the job."

      
"That's no answer."

      
"It's the best I've got," said Dante. "Hell, he's the best I've got."

      
"You found him very fast. Maybe you should have looked a little longer."

      
"Maybe I should have. I don't know. But the Frontier needs him
now
."

      
"It needs
help
now," agreed Virgil. "That doesn't mean it needs
him
."

      
"What do you suggest?" said Dante irritably. "Who has the authority to fire him? Who has the skills to kill him?" He sighed heavily. "Hell, he's doing what he thinks is right. Who am I to challenge that? I'm just a small-time thief turned poet. I don't have a monopoly on right or truth."

      
"All right," said Virgil. "You're the boss."

      
"I'm
not
the boss, damn it!"

      
"You're
my
boss. I won't bring it up again."

      
The Indian turned and left Dante alone with his thoughts and his doubts. By morning he had convinced himself that both of them were wrong, that this was a century and a half after the original Santiago and different times called for different approaches.

      
Then came the Madras raid.

      
Word came from an informant that a small Navy convoy was shipping gold bullion to their base on Madras IV, a mining world some 132 light-years distant.