The Return of Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future (7 page)

      
They emerged in the lobby a moment later. He stopped by the desk to speak to the robot clerk, then rejoined her.

      
"What was all that about?" she asked.

      
"I told it we're going shopping."

      
"Why does a robot care?"

      
"It doesn't—but if the police start searching all the hotels near the spaceport, and it won't be too long before the thought occurs to them, I don't want it to respond that it doesn't know where we are. It should take them a day to figure out that I used a phony ID to register—but if they have a reason to want to learn more about us, they'll break that identity in five minutes." He looked out into the street, then slung the bag containing Orpheus' poem over his shoulder. "Okay, let's go."

      
"Are you planning on stealing the ship now?" she asked, indicating the manuscript.

      
"No, I'm just not willing to leave it in a spaceport hotel."

      
They walked out, arm in arm, and began window-shopping up and down the street. Dante kept looking for an excuse to cross to the spaceport's side of the thoroughfare if anyone was watching them. He needed a stray animal, a child who might step into traffic while his parents were concentrating on each other, anything like that—but nothing turned up.

      
"Okay, we'll do it the bothersome way," he said after about ten minutes.

      
"What way is that?"

      
"We walk about a mile down the road, far enough that no one from the spaceport is still watching us, and then cross the street and walk back. We're no longer window-shopping; now we're taking our afternoon constitutional."

      
They walked away from the spaceport for ten more minutes. Then, as they reached the outskirts of the small city, they crossed the street and began walking back.

      
As they neared the spaceport, Dante, looking straight ahead, said, "When we get opposite the entrance through the force field, twist an ankle."

      
"What?"

      
"Twist an ankle. Fall to one knee. Make a bit of a fuss about it. I'll kneel down and examine it."

      
"What does this have to do with the lock?"

      
"Just trust me."

      
They walked another two hundred yards. Then, when they were within five yards of the door, the Duchess lurched forward, fell to her knees, and began holding and massaging her left ankle.

      
Dante knelt down beside her, his back to the entrance, his hands shielded from any onlookers by her body.

      
"What's that?" she asked as she heard a faint beeping.

      
"Quiet!"

      
She fell silent, and concentrated on her ankle.

      
More beeps, and suddenly he looked at her and grinned. "Okay, we can walk through it any time we want."

      
"You could do that with your pocket computer?" she asked, surprised.

      
"Well, it's not an ordinary computer. It's been jury-rigged by experts. Well-paid experts, but on days like today I decide they were worth the money."

      
"Why don't we walk through right now? We could be at the ship in less than a minute."

      
He shook his head. "If anyone's been watching, your being able to walk or run without a limp will be a dead giveaway."

      
"So I'll limp."

      
He looked up and down the force field. "We'll wait until dark."

      
"But the place is deserted."

      
"It's
too
deserted," he said. "I haven't made any more reservations yet. They're all still here.
Someone's
got to be watching the private ships."

      
"Why? They're waiting for us to show up for the spaceliner to Far London."

      
He shook his head. "It's already taken off. Besides,
most
of them will be there, but the bright ones—and that includes Balsam—will know we'll never show up at the public terminal, and the only other way off the planet is to swipe a ship."

      
"But there's no one here!
Now
is the perfect time. We don't have to take off until you want, but they're more likely to search our room than the ship."

      
"It's too easy," he said, frowning. "I don't see a single guard. Do you?"

      
"No. That's why—"

      
"It's wrong," he said. "It's almost as if they're inviting us to try to steal a ship." He helped her to her feet. "Come on, lean on me and limp back to the hotel. I'll start making some more reservations."

      
"I don't want to," said the Duchess. "You've unlocked the entry, and there's no one around. I say we go to the ship. Even if they know we're there, we can take off before they can do anything about it."

      
"They'll blow us out of the sky."

      
"It's owned by Schyler McNeil. Just call the tower and tell them you're McNeil and you've got an emergency back on Goldstrike. They may not believe you, but they'll hesitate about destroying the ship until they find the real McNeil."

      
Dante studied the area once more, then shook his head. Something felt wrong, and he always listened to his instincts.

      
"Tonight," he said, still scanning the spaceport. "Now let's go back to the hotel."

      
She made no reply, so he turned back to her—and found that she was gone.

      
"Shit!"
he muttered, trying and failing to grab her arm as she darted through the entrance and raced toward the private ships.

      
He didn't know how they would stop her, but he knew in his gut that she'd never make it to McNeil's ship. Then he heard a hideous roar, and he turned to see a huge animal, almost four feet at the shoulder, not canine and not feline but clearly a predator, racing toward the Duchess.

      
"Get into a ship now!" he yelled, breaking into a run.

      
The Duchess turned back to him, startled, then saw the creature bearing down on her. It was possible that she couldn't even have made it into the ship she had just passed, but she didn't even try. She screamed and raced toward McNeil's ship, and the animal swerved to run her down.

      
Dante saw that he couldn't reach her in time, even if he hadn't been carrying the huge manuscript. He looked for a weapon, even something as primitive as a club, as he ran, but the spaceport was neat as a pin, and he couldn't see anything he could use. Then he saw another motion out of the corner of his eye—the animal's keeper.

      
It made sense. Someone had to be able to control it, or it might savage someone with a legitimate reason for being there. The keeper, armed with a pulse gun, was walking leisurely after the animal, obviously in no hurry to call it off. Dante raced to him, knocked him down just as the creature reached the Duchess. It took about ten seconds to wrestle the pulse gun away from the keeper and crack him across the head with it—and those were ten seconds the Duchess didn't have.

      
Dante whirled and fired at the animal, killing it instantly—but it fell across the Duchess's torn, lifeless body.

      
"Damn you!" yelled Dante at the senseless body by his feet. "She didn't do anything worth dying for!" He stared at the main terminal. "Damn you all!"

      
He knew he couldn't stay where he was or return to the hotel. A sweeping security camera or another beast and keeper would spot the Duchess in a matter of seconds. He tucked the gun into his belt and ran to McNeil's ship.

      
He followed the Duchess's instructions, claiming to be McNeil. That bought him enough time to reach the stratosphere. Then came all the warning messages, which meant they'd either found the Duchess or McNeil or both. He alternately lied and threatened for the next thirty seconds, spent another fifteen seconds admitting that he was Danny Briggs and promising to return to the spaceport—and while they were debating whether to shoot him down his ship passed through the stratosphere and reached light speeds.

      
And because he was Dante Alighieri and not one of the larger- than-life characters he planned to write about, he did not vow to avenge the Duchess.
Someone
would avenge her; that much he
did
promise himself. When he found the right person, he would tell him the story of the Duchess and point him toward Bailiwick, and he would enjoy the results every bit as much as if he had physically extracted his vengeance himself.

      
Then he was on his way to the Inner Frontier, where he would assume his new identity and his new career among legendary heroes and villains who, he suspected, couldn't be any more dangerous than the Democracy's finest.

      
      
      
      
      
      
4.

      
      
      
Hamlet MacBeth, a well-named rogue,

      
      
      
Loves the women, when in vogue.

      
      
      
Loves the gents when no one cares,

      
      
      
Gets rich off his perverse affairs.

      
That was the first poem that Dante Alighieri wrote once he reached the Inner Frontier. There was nothing very special about Hamlet MacBeth except his name, which fired Dante's imagination. He decided he couldn't leave anyone named Hamlet MacBeth out of his history, so he began finding out what he could about the man.

      
What he found out was a little embarrassing to both parties, because it turned out that what Hamlet MacBeth was was a gigolo who rented himself out to both sexes. The people of Nasrullah II, his home world, didn't much give a damn what MacBeth did as long as he didn't do it to or with them, but some of the men who were just passing through found that they were not only expected to pay for MacBeth's sexual skills, but also for his silence.

      
Nasrullah II was the first world that Dante touched down on. He stayed only long enough to trade in his stolen ship for another one and to have a drink in a local bar, which was where he heard about MacBeth. He didn't write the poem until he had landed on New Tangier IV in the neighboring system, where he proceeded to recite it in a couple of taverns.

      
He spent a couple of days on New Tangier, a dusty, ugly reddish world with nothing much to recommend it except one diamond mine about ten miles east of the planet's only Tradertown. There was one hotel—a boarding house, actually, since not enough people visited New Tangier to support a hotel; one casino, which was so obviously rigged that the humans gave it a wide berth and the only players were the Bextigians, the mole-like aliens that had been imported to work the mine; and the two taverns.

      
Dante was standing at the bar in the larger of the taverns, sipping a beer and idly wondering how Orpheus had been able to spot colorful people when they weren't doing colorful things, when a slender man with sunken cheeks, dark piercing eyes, and braided black hair sidled up to him. Everyone else instantly moved away.

      
"Hi," said the man, paying no attention to anyone but Dante.

      
"Hi," replied Dante.

      
"I heard your little poem yesterday. Have you written any others?"

      
"Some," lied Dante. "Why?"

      
"Just curious. I like poems. Especially erotic ones. You ever read anything by Tanblixt?"

      
"The Canphorite? No."

      
"You should. Now
there's
someone who truly understands the beauty of interspecies sex."

      
"If you say so."

      
"I also like epic poems of good and evil, especially if Satan himself is in them." He smiled. "It gives me someone to root for."

      
"You have interesting taste in poetry."

      
"I have interesting taste in everything." The man paused. "What's your name, poet?"

      
"Dante. But people call me the Rhymer."

      
"They do?"

      
"They will."

      
The man smiled. "I think I'll call you Dante. We were made for each other."

      
"Oh?"

      
"I'm Virgil Soaring Hawk." He paused, waiting for the connection to become apparent. "Dante and Virgil."

      
"Virgil Soaring Hawk—what kind of a name is that?"

      
"It's an Injun name."

      
"Okay, what's an Injun?"

      
"It takes too long to explain. But once, when we were still Earthbound, white men and Injuns were mortal enemies—or so they say."

      
Dante frowned. "White men? You mean albinos?"

      
"No," replied Virgil with a sigh. "The Injuns were redskins, except that our skins weren't really red. And the white men weren't really white, either—they ranged from pink to tan. But a lot of people died on both sides because of what they thought their color was."