The Return of Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future (4 page)

      
"So it'll be a private sale?"

      
"A very limited auction, let's call it," he corrected her. "Market value could be fifty million credits. I'll take twenty million and be happy with it."

      
"I hear a lot of
I's
," she said suddenly. "What happened to
we
?"

      
"I thought you didn't want to be a criminal."

      
"I'm
already
a criminal. I might as well be a rich one."

      
"I'll take care of you," promised Danny.

      
"I don't want to be taken care of," complained the Duchess. "I want to be a partner—an
equal
partner."

      
"I don't have equal partners," said Danny.

      
"You'd never have found it if I hadn't wanted a view of the lake," she persisted.

      
"And you still wouldn't know what it was if I hadn't told you," retorted Danny. "I said I'd take care of you and I will. Now get off my back and let me look at what we've got here."

      
"We should pack it up and leave Bailiwick tonight," said the Duchess.

      
He shook his head. "Too soon. They'll have men posted at the spaceport, and I don't own a private ship."

      
"What makes you think they won't still have men posted in another day or two?"

      
"Look, I embarrassed them, but it was a small-time crime. Pretty soon there'll be a nice juicy murder or two, and they'll decide to go after bigger fish."

      
"You'd better be right," she said.

      
"You're free to leave any time you want," said Danny. "But I stay here, and so"—he patted the boxes—"do
these
."

      
She stared at him sullenly for a long moment, then walked to the air shaft. "I'm going down to the kitchen to see what kind of food they've got." She paused, then added reluctantly: "Do you want anything?"

      
"Yeah. Bring me back a beer if they have any."

      
She disappeared down the chute, and returned five minutes later with a pair of beers. She walked across the cluttered floor to hand one to Danny.

      
"Listen to this," he said excitedly:

      
"The Songbird stalks, the Singbird kills,

      
The Songbird works to pay his bills.

      
So, friend, beware the Songbird's glance:

      
If you're his prey, you'll have no chance."

      
Danny looked up, his face aglow with excitement. "You know what I think? I think he's writing about Sebastian Cain!"

      
"Never heard of him," said the bored Duchess.

      
"What kind of education have you had?" he said contemptuously.

      
"Math, science, computers, literature—the usual."

      
"Sadly lacking."

      
"Not everyone studies killers and cutthroats," she shot back.

      
"They should. They're much more interesting than vectors and angles."

      
"So who was the Songbird?"

      
"I told you: Sebastian Cain."

      
"That's what I meant: who was Sebastian Cain?"

      
"Another bounty hunter. And a revolutionary early in his life."

      
"Why is he the Songbird?" she asked. "And don't tell me something silly like he whistled whenever he killed a man."

      
"His full name was Sebastian Nightingale Cain. I think Orpheus took it from his middle name."

      
"And everyone knew him as the Songbird?"

      
Danny shook his head. "No, I don't know if anyone did." He paused and stared at the paper in his hand. "I could be wrong, but I'd bet the farm that the Songbird was Cain!"

      
"Why is that so important?"

      
"Cain was a major figure on the Frontier a century ago. There's nothing written about it here, but I've got a feeling he's the one who killed the Angel."

      
"You got all that from a few verses?" she asked skeptically.

      
"Like every kid, I grew up learning everything I could about the Inner Frontier.
That's
where the action was, where all the bigger-than-life heroes and villains lived and died. I'm just adding what I already knew to what I've read here." He paused. "Black Orpheus hid a lot of things inside those verses. It's like putting together a very complex jigsaw puzzle."

      
"Well, you play detective," said the Duchess, making no attempt to feign interest. "I'm going to find a bedroom."

      
"Fine, you do that," he said, never looking up from the manuscript.

      
When she woke up alone in the morning, she went up to the attic and found him still sitting there, pouring over the manuscript.

      
"I take it you haven't been to bed yet," she said.

      
He looked up, his face aglow with excitement. "Listen to this:

      
His name is Father William,

      
His aim is hard to ken:

      
His game is saving sinners;

      
His fame is killing men.

      
"Father William was a preacher. They say he tipped the scales at more than 400 pounds. According to legend, he was also a bounty hunter."

      
"It sounds like your friend Black Orpheus went to a bounty hunters' convention," she observed.

      
      
"That's all the law there was on the Inner Frontier," replied Danny. "All the law there is even today." He looked up from the papers. "I've been piecing things together all night, and you know what I think?"

      
"What?" she asked in bored tones.

      
"I think Father William actually worked for Santiago. In fact, I think he was a conduit for most of the money that Santiago stole."

      
"That doesn't make any sense," said the Duchess.

      
"Why not?"

      
"Santiago was the greatest outlaw in the galaxy, right? Why would he use this preacher as a conduit to move money he stole? Move it
where
? You don't steal money just to give it away again. You keep it, or else you spend it on yourself. So it makes no sense." She made no attempt to hide her annoyance.

      
"I've still got thousands of verses to read," said Danny, "but there's something very strange about this manuscript, and it has to do with Santiago. I'm not sure what, but I'll find out before I'm done."

      
"Well, at least you know now that Santiago existed."

      
"I always did."

      
"You took it on faith," she said.

      
"And now my faith has been rewarded."

      
"Good. Now let's pack up and get the hell off the planet and sell the damned thing."

      
"Too soon," said Danny. "We'll give Balsam and Gibbs another day to get tired of looking for us."

      
"Just one day, and then we go!"

      
"Probably."

      
"What's this 'probably' shit?" she demanded. "One day and we're out of here!"

      
"There's no rush," he replied. "The owners aren't coming home for two more weeks."

      
"I'm not staying here two weeks!"

      
"Just a day or two."

      
"
One
day. And even so, I don't like it."

      
"You're free to go any time you want," said Danny. "But the manuscript stays with me."

      
"Don't get so cocky," she warned him. "I might leave right now and turn you in for the reward."

      
Danny smiled. "You might, but you won't."

      
"Why not?"

      
"Because whatever the reward comes to, it's peanuts next to what I'll give you once we've sold the poem." His smile vanished. "Now leave me alone and let me get back to work."

      
He spent the day pouring over the manuscript. At sunset the Duchess insisted he come down to the kitchen for dinner. He ate quickly and unenthusiastically, then went back to the attic to continue reading.

      
She heard a loud
thump!
in the middle of the night and went upstairs to see what had happened. Danny had been sitting on the floor, reading, and finally fell asleep. He had fallen over on his side, and now lay, snoring gently, a page still clutched in his hand. She figured he was out for the next twelve to sixteen hours, but when she checked on him again in the morning he was up and reading.

      
"Danny!" she insisted. "Put it down for a few hours. You'll kill yourself!"

      
"I didn't know you cared."

      
"I don't want you dying before we sell the poem. I wouldn't begin to know how or where to do it."

      
"You sure know how to flatter a guy," he said.

      
"So are you going to get some sleep?" she said, ignoring his remark.

      
"Not right away," he said. "I'm getting close."

      
"Close to what? Finishing?"

      
"To understanding."

      
"What's to understand? They're all just four-line verses. There's nothing very difficult about them. In fact, I thought Black Orpheus would be a better poet. The things you've read to me sounded wimpy and literary and kind of lame."

      
"It's
what
he says, and what he
doesn't
say, not
how
he says it," replied Danny. "This thing is nothing short of the secret history of the Inner Frontier up to a century ago."

      
"Everything's a mystery," she said with no show of interest. "Why does it have to be a
secret
history? Why not a public one? After all, the public read it."

      
"The men and women and aliens he wrote about were alive when he wrote these verses. Many of them had prices on their heads. Still more confided in him, told him of deeds, some good, some bad, that no one knew about. You have to understand: Black Orpheus was the Bard of the Inner Frontier. He was welcomed everywhere he went. No one ever turned away from him—but to earn that kind of trust, he couldn't openly say anything more than you might find on a Wanted poster." Danny paused, his eyes still bright with excitement. "So he found secret ways to say what he wanted to say. This manuscript is to the Inner Frontier what, oh, I don't know, what Homer was to the Trojan War. Except that Homer exaggerated like hell and told everything out in the open, and Orpheus is concealing things all over the place. Including something huge, right in the middle."

      
"You said that yesterday. What is it?"

      
"I don't know. I think I'm getting close to piecing it together, but I won't know what it is until I'm done. It's as if he were holding someone for ransom, and I had the money, and he wanted to make sure the police weren't tailing me, so he ran me all over the city to make sure I was clean." He emitted an exhausted sigh. "He's running me all over the history of the Inner Frontier before I can discover what he's hiding."

      
"Maybe you're not supposed to find it."

      
"That would make a mockery of the whole thing. No, it's there—but he didn't want it to be easy." Danny looked at her. "That means it's something
big
. Otherwise, he wouldn't have taken such trouble to hide it. I spotted Cain and some of the others right away, but this whatever-it-is is taking a lot more work. Still, another few hours, another day or two, and I'll have it."

      
"Hey!" she shouted. "We're leaving today, remember?"

      
"We'll see."

      
"You promised!"

      
"You
wanted
me to promise," answered Danny. "That's not the same thing."

      
"Every day we stay here we increase our risk. A neighbor could report us. The police could find us. The owners could return early. We've been pushing our luck, Danny. Why can't we leave?"

      
"I'm still piecing things together," he said. "I don't want to stop, not even for a day."

      
"You act like it's some kind of treasure map."

      
"I doubt it. Legend has it that Orpheus died broke on an uninhabited world that he named after his dead wife, Eurydice."

      
"He doesn't sound all that brilliant to me," said the Duchess. "He writes little rhymes that anyone can do—"

      
"I
told
you—" Danny interrupted her.

      
"I know what you said. But you haven't discovered any deep dark secrets yet, so maybe there aren't any. He's famous all over the Frontier, all over the Democracy too, and he died penniless." She snorted contemptuously. "Some genius."

      
"Most poets die penniless," said Danny. "Anyway, I envy him."