The Return of Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future (50 page)

      
"So no one's going to hassle you for shooting the Bandit?" he said.

      
"
Was
he a bandit?"

      
"No. That was just his name—the One-Armed Bandit. He lost his left arm years ago. You saw just a minor demonstration of what his prosthetic replacement could do."

      
"He called himself Santiago," she said.

      
"I know."

      
"There has to be a connection. I wrote about Santiago, and he thought he
was
Santiago." She paused. The waiter mistook it for a signal and instantly walked over to their table. She glanced at him and gestured him away. "But even if he was delusional, what did that have to do with me?"

      
"It's a long story." Dante leaned back, and his chair changed shape to accommodate him. He realized that he could no longer reach the table and eat his food comfortably, and he moved forward again.

      
"I've got all the time we need," said September Morn. "And it's about my two favorite subjects—Santiago and me."

      
"All right," he said, sampling a mouthful of mutated shellfish in a cream sauce, and deciding she had good taste in restaurants. "But let me begin with a question. When did Santiago die?"

      
"No one knows." She learned forward confidentially. "But do you know what I think? I didn't even put it in my poem, but I think there were
two
Santiagos!"

      
"Do you really?"

      
"And I'm almost certain the second was a bounty hunter named Sylvester Cain."

      
"Sebastian Cain," he corrected her, taking a sip of Belarban wine from a crystal goblet. "And he was the fourth, not the second."

      
"How do you know?" she demanded sharply.

      
"I've read Black Orpheus's original manuscript."

      
Her eyes widened with excitement as she considered his revelation. "You've actually
seen
it?"

      
"I own it."

      
"How do you know it's authentic?"

      
"First, because the style of the verses that no one's seen match those that we all know. Second, because everything he says in those verses checks out."

      
"Checks out how?"

      
"I know his great-granddaughter. She's verified a lot of it. Others have verified other parts. And my ship's computer tells me the paper is more than a century old."

      
She was silent for a long moment.

      
"So the Songbird was the fourth Santiago!" She looked directly into his eyes. "Do you want to repay me for saving your life? Let me see the poem!"

      
"It's on Valhalla."

      
"So what? We'll go to Valhalla."

      
"I thought you couldn't leave the planet without a bodyguard. Santiago's people will blow them out of the sky if they approach Valhalla."

      
"For
this
I'll find a way to leave them behind," she said. "Now tell me everything you know about Santiago. There were four, you say?"

      
"No, I didn't say that," replied the poet. "I said Cain was the fourth. There were actually five. The last one died in 3301 G.E."

      
"Five?"

      
"That's right."

      
"There couldn't have been that many!"

      
"I can give you names and dates of death for the last three, and I can prove to you that none of them can possibly have been the original Santiago."

      
"And only you know it?" exclaimed September Morn, her face and her voice reflecting her excitement. "We've got to find a way to make the poem public. All the lost verses, the apocrypha, everything!"

      
"There's thousands of pages."

      
"All the better."

      
"We'll talk about it," said Dante. "But I'm still waiting for you to ask the operative question."

      
"And what is that?"

      
"How many Santiagos have there been
since
then?"

      
"What are you talking about?" she asked, confused.

      
"After I found the poem, I thought my calling was to continue it, to bring it up to date, to continue describing the adventurers and misfits who come out from the Democracy—and in a way it was. But the more I delved into it, the more I realized that it was time for Santiago to come back to the Inner Frontier, that conditions were ripe for him. The Democracy was still oppressing and overtaxing the colonists out here, aliens were still being treated like animals, rights were being violated, and it was apparent to me that we needed Santiago more than we ever had . . . so it became my mission to find him."
Talk about hubris,
he thought;
listen to me!
He grimaced in embarrassment. "So I went looking for him," he concluded lamely.

      
"And the One-Armed Bandit was your candidate?"

      
"We were wrong."

      
"'We?'" she repeated. "Then you're not alone in this?"

      
"No."

      
"Good. It was too big a blunder for one man to make all by himself." September Morn stared at Dante. "So what will you do now? Go back to whatever you were doing before you found the poem?"

      
"Not a chance," he replied. "I was a small-time thief with big-time dreams who was going absolutely nowhere. I'm not going back."

      
"Then what?"

      
"Santiago's story isn't over yet," said Dante. "I'll keep writing it."

      
"What are you talking about?" she said. "He's dead. I just killed him."

      
"He wasn't Santiago," answered Dante. "He was just the One- Armed Bandit."

      
Her eyes widened. "You mean you've got another one?"

      
"Yes. That's why the Bandit was on Hadrian."

      
"I don't understand."

      
"We'd built him an organization, a couple of hundred strong. I found him the best financial brain on the Frontier to manage his money. He had a great-granddaughter of one of the original Santiagos helping him. Even Dimitrios of the Three Burners, the man he just killed, was part of the organization."

      
She placed a hand on the bottle. "Do you want another?"

      
"No, I'm okay now," answered Dante. "Anyway, there were two alternatives once we knew the Bandit had to go. Silvermane, our new candidate, could meet him face-to-face . . . but you saw what just happened to a top-notch bounty hunter who tried that. One or the other was bound to die, and we couldn't be sure which. The other option was to lure the Bandit thousands of light-years away from his headquarters and take control of the organization before he got back, to make the place impregnable. We felt there was even a slim chance that he might be willing to become the One-Armed Bandit again and work for Santiago. After all, he still believed in the cause."

      
"All right, I follow you so far," said September Morn. "But what does that have to do with me?"

      
"He knows . . . knew . . . that I've been continuing Orpheus's work," explained Dante. "I thought the best way to get him out here was to run some stanzas in the local paper that revealed secrets about the organization."

      
"I never saw any."

      
"They ran in the classified section."

      
"I never read the classified ads. Most people don't. So why run them there?"

      
"It's very complicated, but believe me, it was the surest way to bring them to his attention. I figured when he saw the information was in verse form, he'd know it was me, and he'd come out here to kill me." Dante sighed deeply. "I never planned to come within 50 parsecs of Hadrian. I was going to stay with Silvermane when he took over Santiago's organization. The one thing I never counted on was that there'd be a prize-winning poet on Hadrian II, and that you'd have won your prize for a poem about Santiago. As soon as I learned that, I knew I had to come out here and try to stop him before he killed you for writing the stanzas that
I
actually wrote."

      
"Now it all makes sense," said September Morn. She stared admiringly at him. "You're a very brave man, Dante Alighieri. You were willing to sacrifice your life for a woman you'd never even seen."

      
"It was guilt, not bravery," answered Dante, shifting uncomfortably on his chair. "I've been responsible for the deaths of enough innocent people."

      
"Whatever the reason, you went out there unarmed and faced a man who had just killed a skilled bounty hunter. That's the kind of courage I wrote about in my poem."

      
"I have to admit I haven't read it. I'm sorry."

      
"I'll give you a copy," she promised. "It's a Romance, with a capital R. There are heroes and villains, high adventure, Good and Evil in juxtaposition, and a man who isn't without fear but finds the strength to overcome it, which in my opinion is
real
bravery, the kind you displayed."

      
"What led you to write about him?"

      
"A feeling that we'd forgotten his values, that in the overpowering shadow of the Democracy we'd conceded one liberty after another for more and more security until we had no liberties left to give, and one day we woke up and found we needed protection from our protectors. I never thought of Santiago as a role model—I mean, whoever thought he might come back again?—but I felt it was time to remind people that the ideals he embodied didn't have to die with him." She smiled. "And here I was, just writing my daydreams about it, while you were actually going out and
doing
something about it."

      
"An awful lot of people have died because I went out and did something," said Dante grimly. "You were almost added to the list."

      
"This is real life, not a book or a play," answered September Morn. "Things don't always work out the way men of virtue hope they will, and sometimes the effort is every bit as important as the results."

      
"It sounds good," said Dante, "but right about now I'd say we need some results."

      
"It would be nice," she said. "The Frontier could use a Santiago again." A pause. "To tell the truth,
I
could use him more than most."

      
"Oh?"

      
"There are some serious disadvantages to being a Living Monument," said September Morn as the waiter cleared the table and brought them their desert pastries and coffee.

      
"So you told me," replied Dante, watching the waiter retreat in utter silence to the kitchen.

      
"You mean having to stay here?" she said. "That's a minor annoyance."

      
"What's the major one?"

      
"When word of my official status got out, it didn't take long for anyone who heard about it to conclude that if they could steal me away, the government of Hadrian would pay quite a ransom to get me back."

      
"Have there been many attempts?"

      
"There have been a few. Nothing I couldn't handle." She paused. "Until now."

      
"Who's after you now?"

      
"Something even more formidable than your One-Armed Bandit," answered September Morn.

      
"I don't think there
is
anyone more formidable, except maybe Joshua Silvermane."

      
"I said some
thing
, not some
one
."

      
"Exactly who or what is it that's after you?" he asked, curious.

      
She took a bite of her pastry. "Fabulous stuff," she said. "You should try it."

      
"I will," he said. "But first tell me what's after you."

      
"Have you ever heard of Tweedledee and Tweedledum?"

      
"Dimitrios mentioned them once," said Dante. He chuckled and took a sip of his coffee. "Those names aren't exactly designed to strike fear into one's heart."

      
"Don't laugh!" she snapped angrily. "Their names may be childish, but there's nothing childish about them. They're they most dangerous creatures on the whole Frontier!"

      
His smile vanished. "What makes them so dangerous?"

      
"They conquer whole planets, just the two of them."

      
Dante frowned. "You're telling me these two aliens can defeat an entire military force?"

      
"Yes."

      
"And they're after you?"

      
"That's the word that's reached the planetary authorities," she replied. "That's why I was carrying the burner. When I heard that both you and the Bandit wanted to find me, I thought one or both of you worked for them."

      
"They work as a pair, this Tweedledee and Tweedledum?" he persisted.

      
"Yes."

      
"What do they look like? What makes them so formidable?"

      
"I don't know," admitted September Morn. "I've never actually seen them. All I know is what I've heard and read—and based on that, I hope I
never
see them. They conquer entire worlds, just the pair of them, and nobody who's tried to stand up to them has lived to tell about it." Her expression hardened. "And now they're after me."