Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future (11 page)

She can drink,
she can swear, can the Virgin Queen,

And she isn’t
a stranger to sin.

She knows what
she wants, doesn’t care where she’s been,

And she’ll do what she has to to win.

The name was Black Orpheus’ idea
of a joke, because while Virtue MacKenzie was a lot of things good and bad,
virginal wasn’t one of them.

He met her just once, out by the
Delphini system—which was as close to the worlds of the Democracy as he ever
tended to go—and she made quite an impression on him. She was drinking and
playing cards at the time, and she wasn’t even aware of his presence; but when
she accused a fellow journalist of cheating and backed it up with a couple of
swift kicks to his groin and a whiskey bottle slammed down on top of his head,
she guaranteed herself a couple of verses in his ongoing epic.

In point of fact, she didn’t even
know she’d been written up until some months later, and then she was furious
about the name he’d saddled her with—but after a couple of weeks she cooled
down, right about the time she decided that being in Black Orpheus’ song just
might open a couple of doors for her out on the Frontier.

It did, too. She had to wait until
the balladeer’s disciples and interpreters figured out that Virtue Mackenzie
and the Virgin Queen were the same woman and started disseminating the
information across the Inner Frontier, but once the word got out it helped her
get into a couple of previously inaccessible places on Terrazane, where she
found out about Socrates, and it got her Socrates’ address from a trader on
Jefferson III.

It hadn’t done her much good here
on Pegasus, but this was the Democracy, not the Frontier, and Black Orpheus
wasn’t much better known here than the outcasts and misfits that he sang about.
She and Cain had traded their information in Socrates’ apartment three weeks
ago, each holding back a couple of tidbits—at least, she assumed Cain had
withheld some information; she knew that
she
had—and
it was decided that Cain was better equipped to track down a professional
assassin like Altair of Altair, whereas Virtue knew her way around the
Democracy better than he did and would begin her hunt among the Democracy’s
older, more established worlds.

She had spent the better part of a
week searching for Salvatore Acosta, one of the four black marketeers who had
delivered Santiago’s goods to the Sargasso Rose, and had found out from her own
sources that he had been murdered on Pegasus two months earlier.

Pegasus was a former mining world,
rich in gold and fissionable materials, which was now a heavily populated
member of the Democracy. It had been named for the planet’s dominant herbivore,
a small horselike animal that possessed a pair of fleshy protuberances just
behind its withers. (They had never been used for anything other than balance,
but they looked remarkably like vestigial wings.)

The planet itself was one of those
odd scattered worlds that seemed Earth-like, but wasn’t truly habitable in the
normal sense. It possessed oxygen, nitrogen, and the various inert gases that
Men needed, but they existed in the wrong quantities, and twenty minutes’
exposure to the atmosphere left one breathless and panting; an hour could be
fatal to anyone with a respiratory problem; and even the healthiest settlers
couldn’t breathe the air for two hours.

But for some reason—possibly it
was the view, for Pegasus was a gorgeous world, with snow-capped mountains and
literally thousands of winding rivers, and was possessed of gold-and-brown
vegetation that made the landscape look perpetually crisp and autumnal; though
more likely it was the location, for it was midway between the Spica mining
worlds and the huge financial center on Daedalus II—the planet became a very
desirable piece of real estate. The original miners had lived underground,
artificially enriching their air while protecting themselves from the extremely
cold nights; but once the world started drawing crowds of permanent residents,
construction began on a domed city, then five more, and ultimately a seventh
that was almost as large as the first six combined. All of the cities bore
Greek names; the newest and largest of them was Hektor, named after the
supposedly mythical warrior who local historians had erroneously decided was
either the rider or trainer of the winged horse.

Upon reaching Pegasus and taking a
hotel room in Hektor, Virtue MacKenzie had immediately contacted Leander
Smythe, a newsman who owed her a favor and very begrudgingly allowed her to
access the raw data he possessed on Acosta’s murder from her room’s computer.
There wasn’t much information to be gleaned: Acosta had a long record of shady
dealings, and more than his share of enemies. His throat had been slit as he
was leaving the Pearl of the Sea, a restaurant and bar catering to the less
wholesome elements of Pegasan society, and he had died instantly. It was
assumed to be an underworld murder, if only because Acosta himself hadn’t
associated with any noncriminals in more than a decade.

Virtue then called up the shopping
and restaurant guide that every hotel possessed but couldn’t find any listing
for the Pearl of the Sea, invariably a signal that a local pub or restaurant
had a steady clientele and neither needed nor desired any new business. She
then accessed a video overview of the city and homed in on the area around the
restaurant. It seemed as sleek and shining and well kept as the rest of Hektor,
but she noticed that the police patrolled the area in pairs—which tended to
support her tentative decision that visiting it alone and asking pointed
questions wasn’t worth the risk involved.

Five minutes later she tied in to
the local police headquarters’ press department and quickly ascertained that
the authorities weren’t about to hand any information over to an offworld
journalist. She immediately called back, asked to speak to the homicide
department, identified herself as Acosta’s grieving half sister, and demanded
to know what progress had been made in apprehending his killer. The answer was
simple enough: There had been absolutely no progress, nor was there likely to
be. From the contemptuous way they spoke about Acosta, she got the distinct
impression that the only thing they would do if they actually found his
murderer would be shake his hand, and perhaps pin a medal on him.

Finally she had the computer check
her message drop—a dumb terminal in the city’s central post office—to see if
there was any word from Cain or Terwilliger, found nothing waiting for her, and
decided to spend a little more time investigating Acosta’s murder before going
after Khalythorpe, the methane-breathing smuggler who was next on the Sargasso
Rose’s list.

She asked the computer for a
running total on her expenses thus far, found that she had run up almost three
hundred credits in user and access fees, and told it to warn her when she
reached the five-hundred-credit mark.

She then opened a bottle of
Camorian vodka, filled a cup from the bathroom, pretended that there was an
olive in it, sipped it thoughtfully, and decided upon her next step, which was
to access the local library’s main computer. She had it scan the past five
years’ worth of news reports, keying on Acosta’s name, and came up absolutely empty.
She then tried to find some similarity between his murder and other killings
that had taken place in the same area, and discovered that of the thirty-nine
murders in Hektor during the past year, thirty-two of them had occurred within
a mile of where Acosta had been found, and nineteen were the result of
stabbings. It was quite possible, she concluded unhappily, that Acosta simply
had been in the wrong place at the wrong time; at any rate, there was no reason
to assume that he had died because of his association with Santiago.

Dead end followed dead end, and
finally she was faced with two alternatives: start questioning people who might
have known Acosta, or give up and go after the methane-breather. She made her
decision, then instructed the computer to patch in a visual connection to
Leander Smythe’s office.

A moment later a portly,
middle-aged man with a sightly uneven hair transplant appeared on the small
screen just above the speaker.

“I know I’m going to regret asking
this,” he said when he had recognized her, “but what can I do for you?”

“I’m up against a blank wall,
Leander,” she said.

“Who are you trying to kid,
Virtue?” replied Smythe. “You’ve only been on the damned planet for four
hours.”

“That’s all the time it takes to
know I’m not going to get what I want through normal channels.” She paused. “I
hate calling in favors,” she added insincerely, “but I need your help.”

“You already collected your favor
this morning,” he reminded her.

She smiled. “You owe me a bigger
one than that, Leander. Or would you like me to refresh your memory?”

“No!” he said quickly. “This isn’t
a secure channel.”

“Then invite me to lunch and we’ll
talk face to face.”

“I’m busy.”

“Fine.” She shrugged. “Then I’ll
just have to hunt up someone else from your network who’ll do me a favor in
exchange for a very interesting story about a local journalist.”

She reached out to sever the
connection.

“Wait!” he said urgently.

She withdrew her hand and grinned
triumphantly.

“There’s a restaurant on the top
of my building,” he said. “I’ll meet you there in half an hour.”

“Your treat,” she said. “I’m just
a poor working girl.”

She broke the connection,
ascertained that 493 credits for computer usage would be added to her hotel
tab, entered a request (without much hope) for a ten percent professional
discount, took the elevator down to the fourth floor of the hotel, walked out
on a platform, and caught the Hanging Tube—the inhabitants’ term for the
elevated monorail—to Smythe’s office building. She noticed in passing that a
thunderstorm was in full force outside the dome and that the noonday sky was
almost black, and wondered idly what the little herbivores for which the planet
had been named did to shield themselves from the weather, since she had seen
precious few natural shelters on her way from the spaceport to the city.

When she arrived at Smythe’s
building, she presented her credentials to a security guard at the door. The
man gave them a perfunctory glance, nodded, and passed her through to the upper
lobby, where she took an elevator to the roof.

The restaurant would have
impressed anyone who had been born on the Frontier, but Virtue found it just a
bit overdone: the tables were too small, the furniture too ornate, and there
were too many very self-assured waiters hovering around. She ascertained that
Smythe wasn’t there yet, found that he had reserved a table for two, allowed
the maitre d’ to escort her to a seat, and ordered a mixed drink from the bar.

Smythe arrived about five minutes
later, walked directly to the bar, ordered a drink for himself, and then joined
her at the table.

“It’s good to see you again after
all these years, Virtue,” he said, greeting her with an artificial smile.

“How nice of you to say so,” she
replied dryly. “And how well you lie.”

“Let’s at least maintain the
illusion of civility,” he said, unperturbed. “Until we’re through with lunch,
anyway.”

“Suits me.”

He picked up his menu, pretended
to study it for a moment, recommended a dish to Virtue, signaled for a waiter,
and ordered for both of them.

“It’s been a long time,” he said
when the waiter had gone off to the kitchen. “What is it now—five years?”

“Six.”

“I’ve seen your byline from time
to time, when some of your features have come up for syndication. That was a
very nice piece you did on the war with the Borgaves.”

“Ugly beasts, aren’t they?” she
commented.

“How did you manage to land with
the first invasion wave?” he asked. “That’s usually reserved for senior
correspondents.”

“I bribed a nice young major.”

“That figures,” he said with a
tinge of bitterness. “You always knew how to get what you wanted.”

“I still do,” she said, staring
directly at him.

He met her gaze for a moment, then
looked away uncomfortably. “Did you ever marry that fellow you used to live
with?”

“I’ve lived with a number of
people,” she replied. “I never married any of them.”

“Pity.” He pulled out a handsome
cigarette case and offered one to her.

“No, thanks.”

“They’re very good,” he said,
removing one and lighting it up. “Imported from the Kakkab Kastu system.”

“I prefer my own,” she said,
withdrawing a distinctive box.

“Don’t you find those kind of
harsh?” he asked.

“I’ve been smoking them since I’ve
been on the Frontier,” replied Virtue. “They grow on you after a while.”

“You’ve been on the Frontier?”

“For almost a year.”

“What were you doing out there?”

“The same thing I’m doing on
Pegasus: following up a story.” She paused. “I’ve also picked up a pretty
interesting partner.”

“I thought you always worked
alone,” said Smythe.

“This time I needed help.”

“Is it anyone I know?”

“Probably not,” Virtue replied.
“Ever hear of the Songbird?”

He shook his head. “Is that her
byline?”

“It’s a him.”

“I’ve never seen any of his
features.”

“That’s not surprising. He’s a
bounty hunter.”

“What the hell kind of story are
you working on?”

“If I tell you, we’re all through
exchanging pleasantries and we start talking business.”

He shifted his weight uneasily but
nodded in agreement. “We’re going to do it sooner or later. I suppose we ought
to get it over with.” He paused. “Salvatore Acosta was a small-time smuggler
who died broke. He wasn’t worth much more than a five-second obituary. So who
are you really after?”