Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future (35 page)

“Sokol passed the word that she
travels with bounty hunters—first the Songbird, then Father William, and now
you. That meant if I tried for a hit out in the open, I’d have to go for you,
too, and I didn’t like the odds. So I figured the safest way to go about it was
to damage your ship and kill her when she came back here. Believe me, Angel,”
he said sincerely, “I never intended to kill you. I did everything I could to
keep you out of the way while I went about my business.”

“You make it sound as if killing
me
is perfectly acceptable!” snapped Virtue.

“Well, you must have done
something
to him, or he wouldn’t have ordered the hit,”
said Simon.

“What I did is between him and
me,” said Virtue.

“Not anymore, obviously,”
commented the Angel. He turned to Simple Simon. “I’ve got one last question to
ask you: How much did Sokol offer?”

“Fifty thousand credits.”

“That much?” said Virtue,
impressed.

“Virtue, I want you to remember
that figure,” said the Angel. “All right, Simon. It’s time for that dryshower.”

“But I didn’t try to kill you!”
said Simon desperately.

“You’re a wanted man, with a price
on your head.”

“Dead or alive!” protested Simon.
“Contact the police and turn me over to them!”

“The dryshower,” said the Angel
emotionlessly.

“But why? I’m worth the same to
you either way!”

“I’m in a race, and you cost me
three days.”

“And you’re going to kill me for
that? This is crazy!”

The Angel pointed his weapon at
Simple Simon. “Start walking or I’ll kill you right where you’re sitting.”

Simon, very real tears of fear
streaming down his face, reluctantly got to his feet and walked into the
bathroom. The Angel followed him, and a moment later Virtue heard a single
shriek of utter agony. Then the Angel emerged.

“Good riddance,” said Virtue.
“Imagine! The son of a bitch didn’t see anything wrong with killing me!”

“After I collect the reward, I
think I’ll inform your friend Sokol that I expect him to pay for the repairs to
my ship.”

“He’ll never do it.”

“I have ways of encouraging him,”
said the Angel dryly. “Now I want you to take a look at Simple Simon.”

“Why?”

“Because I said to.”

She shrugged and walked into the
bathroom. Simple Simon lay on his back, his face and part of his torso burned
away by the hundreds of tiny laser beams that had struck him when the Angel
activated the dryshower. There was a smell of cooking flesh, and thin streams
of black smoke rose from a number of his wounds.

Virtue resisted the urge to vomit
and staggered back into the bedroom.

“God, he looks horrible!” she
admitted.

“He died a horrible death,”
replied the Angel calmly.

“Couldn’t you have turned him over
to the police?” she asked. “Nobody deserves to die like that.”

“I could have.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

“Because you needed an object
lesson.”

“
He
died because you wanted to give
me
an object
lesson?” she said incredulously.

“He was always going to die,
whether I killed him or the government did,” replied the Angel. “Don’t waste
too many tears on him. He murdered more than twenty-five men and women, and the
death he died was meant for you.”

“What am I suppose to have learned
from all this?” asked Virtue.

“You are a reasonably courageous
and resourceful woman,” began the Angel.

“Thank you,” she said
sardonically.

“But you are also completely
unimaginative,” he continued. “You act rashly, without any thought of
consequences. I wanted you to see Simon’s corpse, because I want you to know
that you’re associating with people for whom this is not an exciting adventure
but a deadly serious business.”

“I already know that.”

“I wanted to reinforce that
knowledge,” said the Angel, “before I told you what I have to say next.”

“And what is that?” she asked
apprehensively.

“I have had to kill two men in the
past twenty-four hours. Neither of them had any argument with
me.
”

“Bates didn’t have any argument
with
me,
either,” she interrupted. “He was after
Terwilliger.”

“Who in turn was here to see you,”
said the Angel. “You have caused me a great deal of inconvenience, and have
cost me three days in my pursuit of Santiago.”

“What are you leading up to?”

“Up until now I was perfectly
willing to let you go your own way whenever you wanted,” he said. “But after
our stay on Sunnybeach, you
owe
me, and when we
reach Santiago’s planet you’re going to pay off.”

“How?”

“I’ll let you know when we get
there. But if you try to leave me before then, or disobey my orders once we’re
there, then I promise you that I’ll accept Dimitri Sokol’s commission and kill
you myself.”

As she looked into
his cold, lifeless eyes, she knew that he was telling her the truth, and that
knowledge terrified her more than anything Sokol or even Santiago could ever
threaten to do to her.

Moonripple’s Book

Moonripple,
Moonripple, touring the stars,

Has polished
the wax on a thousand bars,

Has trod on
the soil of a hundred worlds,

Has found only pebbles while searching for pearls.

Beneath the grease stains and the
tattered clothes, she was actually, quite a pretty girl. She had blue eyes that
had seen too many things and shed too many tears, square shoulders that had
borne too many burdens, slender fingers that would have been soft and white in
a gentler life.

If she had any name other than
Moonripple, she couldn’t remember it. If she had ever called any world home,
she couldn’t remember
it,
either.

She was nineteen years old, and
she had already met Black Orpheus four times. He even began joking that he’d
wander into the least likely bar on the least likely planet he could think of,
and there would be Moonripple, scrubbing floors, cleaning tables, or washing
dishes. The highlight of her brief life was the single verse he created about
her one evening on Voorhite XIV, when he was playing his lute and singing his
ballad to keep his mind off the storm that was raging through the chlorine
atmosphere just beyond the human colony’s domed enclosure.

She fascinated him, this waif with
a future that seemed no more promising than her past. Where did she come from?
How many worlds had she been to? What was she searching for? Had she no higher
aspiration than to be a barmaid to the galaxy? She tried to help him, but she
truly didn’t know any of the answers.

The last time he saw her was on
Trefoil III. She was waiting on some twenty-five tables by herself and falling
increasingly behind. When her employer began yelling at her and threatening to
beat her if her performance didn’t improve, Orpheus stepped forward and stated
that since she couldn’t remember when she had been born, he was officially
declaring this to be her seventeenth birthday and was taking her out to dinner.
The crowd was thirsty and ill tempered, and probably not even Sebastian Cain or
Peacemaker MacDougal could have taken the tavern’s only barmaid away and
emerged unscathed, but because he was Black Orpheus they let him lead her out
of the bar without a word of protest.

He fed her, and bought her new
clothes, and even offered to take her with him until he could find her a
permanent job on some other world. She replied with disarming sincerity that
she bore her employer no ill will and had no desire for any other type of work.
Orpheus got the feeling that she was afraid to form any bond, either emotional
or financial, that might tie her down to a particular world until she finally
found the as-yet-undefined thing she was searching for. They talked far into
the morning, the Bard who took such pleasure in the endless variety of Men and
worlds he visited, completely unable to understand the wanderlust of one who
seemed to take no pleasure in anything.

Finally, when it was time for him
to leave, he offered her a few hundred credits, enough to book passage to
another planet with another tavern, but she refused, explaining that it rarely
took her more than a month or two to save enough money to move on to the next
world, and that she would feel guilty about taking money from a man who had
already done so much for her.

As Orpheus left for his next port
of call, he was convinced that he would regularly encounter her every couple of
years—but they never met again, for while he continued his aimless journey,
immortalizing men and events, Moonripple finally came, after many false starts
and digressions, to the colony world of Safe Harbor, which was where Cain first
encountered her.

He wandered into the Barleycorn,
the larger of the two local taverns, shortly after Schussler landed in late
afternoon. It was totally empty. He checked the sign on the door, which proclaimed
“We Never Close,” shrugged, and sat down at a table.

“I’ll be with you in just a
moment, sir,” said Moonripple, coming out of the kitchen with a huge pitcher of
beer, which she carried over to a large table across the room.

She smiled at him, disappeared
again, and returned half a minute later carrying an enormous roast, which she
set down next to the pitcher.

“That looks like real meat,”
remarked Cain.

“It is,” she said proudly. “We
grow our own beef on Safe Harbor.” She approached Cain’s table. “May I help
you, sir?”

“It’s a possibility,” he replied.
“I’m looking for someone.”

“Who?”

“Billy Three-Eyes. Ever hear of
him?”

She nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Do you happen to know where he
is?”

“He’s dead, sir.”

Cain frowned. “You’re sure?”

She nodded again.

“When and where?”

“He was killed right out there,”
she said, indicating the street, “by a man called MacDougal.”

“
Peacemaker
MacDougal?” asked Cain.

“Yes, sir. That was his name.”

“Shit!” muttered Cain. He looked
up at the girl. “Did he have any friends here?”

“Mr. MacDougal?”

“Billy Three-Eyes.”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Everybody
liked Billy.”

“We must not be talking about the
same man.”

“I’m sure we are, sir,” said
Moonripple. “After all, how many men could have been called Billy Three-Eyes?”

“He had a big scar on his
forehead?”

“Right above the bridge of his
nose. Yes, sir.”

“And everybody
liked
him?” continued Cain, surprised.

“Yes, sir,” replied Moonripple.
“He was always telling funny stories. I was very sorry when he died.”

“Who would you say was his closest
friend on Safe Harbor?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know, sir.
I only saw him when he was in here.”

“Did he usually come alone?”

“Yes, sir. But once he got here,
he talked to everybody.”

“I see,” said Cain. He sighed.
“Well, I might as well stick around and talk to some of the people
he
talked to. Bring me a beer, will you?”

“Yes, sir,” said Moonripple. She
walked to the bar, held a glass under a tap, and returned to him.

“Thanks,” said Cain.

“I should tell you, sir, that
hardly anybody will show up for another three or four hours.”

“How about the group that’s coming
by for dinner?” asked Cain, pointing toward the roast.

She smiled. “Oh, that’s not a
group. It’s just for one man.”

“There’s got to be four or five
pounds of meat there,” said Cain. “Do you mean to tell me that one man is going
to eat it all?”

Moonripple nodded. “Oh, yes, sir.
And the chocolate cake that’s in the oven.”

Cain stared at the roast again.
“Is he doing it on some kind of a bet?” he asked, curious.

“No, sir,” answered Moonripple. “He
has the same meal every day.”

“He wouldn’t happen to be eleven
feet three inches tall, with orange hair, would he?” asked Cain, only half
joking.

The girl laughed. “No, sir. He’s
only a man.”

“If he can pack that much food
away, there’s nothing
only
about him,” replied Cain.
He paused. “By the way, how long has Billy Three-Eyes been dead?”

“Four or five months, sir.” She
paused. “Oh!” she said suddenly. “I forgot the potatoes!”

“You ought to change your sign out
front,” commented Cain. “I thought this place was just a tavern.”

“It is.”

“But you’re serving food,” he
observed.

“Only to Father William. He’s kind
of a special customer.”

She turned to go to the kitchen,
but Cain grabbed her arm.

“Father William’s on Safe Harbor?”
he demanded.

“Yes, sir. He’ll be by in just a
few minutes.”

“How long has he been here?”

“I’m not sure, sir,” said
Moonripple. “Maybe a week.”

“I didn’t see his tent on my way
into town.”

“Tent, sir?”

“He’s a preacher.”

“I know, sir, but he says he’s on
vacation.”

Cain frowned. “Did he ask about
Billy Three-Eyes, too?”

“No, sir.” She looked
uncomfortable. “You’re hurting my arm, sir.”

“I’m sorry,” said Cain, releasing
the girl. “You’re sure he didn’t say anything about Billy Three-Eyes?”

“Not to me, sir.” She began
walking to the kitchen. “Excuse me, but I have to get his potatoes.”

“Did he mention Santiago?” asked
Cain.

“Why should he do that?” asked
Moonripple, stopping a few feet short of the kitchen door.

“Because he’s a bounty hunter as
well as a preacher.”