Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future (18 page)

“I will,” said the Swagman. “And
thank you for bringing this innocent young woman up to my den of iniquity.”

Father William glowered at him,
then turned and made his way out of the room.

“Interesting man,” commented the
Swagman.

“I’m surprised you two aren’t at
each other’s throats all the time,” remarked Virtue.

“That would be bad for
both
our businesses,” said the Swagman with a chuckle.

“I don’t understand.”

“I allow him to set up shop on my
worlds, and give him occasional information about various killers who are also
in these parts. In exchange, he warns me whenever he hears of a bounty hunter
who isn’t as choosy about his targets as he himself is.”

“Speaking of killers, why did you
give three of them permission to hunt me down on Goldenrod?” demanded Virtue.

“It was strictly financial,”
replied the Swagman with no trace of remorse. “I allowed them to operate here
in exchange for twenty-five percent of their fees—and Dimitri Sokol is offering
a lot of money for you.”

“So you just let anyone kill
anyone on Goldenrod, as long as you get your cut of the action?” she said, her
anger rising.

“It depends on the situation.”

“What was it about
my
situation that made you decide I was expendable?”

“Oh, I knew that the Lance would
wait for you in the tent, and that Father William would spot him. As for the
other two—well, if you’re not good enough to protect yourself from Henry and
Martha, you’re certainly not good enough to go after Santiago.” He took a sip
of his wine. “So if you made it here, you were worth talking business with—and
if you didn’t, at least I had been recompensed.”

She stared at him, annoyed that
her fury was evaporating so rapidly in the face of his straightforward and
logical answer. Finally the last of it drained from her, and she shrugged.

“All right. Tell me about
Santiago.”

“Eventually,” he replied. “But
first of all, suppose you tell me about your interest in him—and your
partnership with Sebastian Cain.”

“My interest is strictly
professional,” said Virtue. “I’m a journalist, and I’ve been paid a hefty
advance to come up with a feature on him.” Her face suddenly became serious.
“And I mean to get that story, no matter what it takes.”

“Very well said,” responded the
Swagman. “I approve wholeheartedly. And what about Cain?”

“We decided to pool our resources
and our information,” answered Virtue. “Our interests are parallel, but not
identical. We both want Santiago, but he wants him for the reward and I want
him for the feature.” She paused, staring at him thoughtfully.

“Have you something to add?” he
suggested pleasantly.

“Just that nothing about our
agreement is written in stone,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “If I
were to meet someone who was better able to help me...” She let the sentence
hang.

“Wonderful!” laughed the Swagman.
“A woman after my own heart!”

“Do we have a deal?” asked Virtue.

He laughed again. “Of course
not—at least, not on those terms. If you’ll double-cross one partner, you’ll
double-cross others—and in your mind Cain must certainly be a more formidable
antagonist than I am. After all, he’s a bounty hunter, and I’m just a harmless
art collector.”

“That’s not the way I hear it.”

“One mustn’t believe every
scurrilous rumor one hears,” said the Swagman. “However, that’s neither here
nor there.” He smiled at her. “Not to worry, my dear. We seem to have another
case of parallel interests. I don’t want your story, and while I’d certainly
like the reward money, there are things I want even more.”

“Such as?”

“Such as one less competitor,”
said the Swagman. “Did you know that I used to work for him?”

“No.”

“I did—indirectly, for the most
part. I actually met him on only two occasions.”

“Why did you stop working for
him?” asked Virtue.

“We had a falling-out.”

“About what?”

“Methodology,” he said
noncommittally. “At any rate, although he himself is not a collector, and
indeed has no interest whatsoever in things esoteric, he has a number of
exquisite art objects in his possession on any given day. Should we reach an
accommodation, I would regard those pieces as mine, if our little enterprise
succeeds.”

“How many pieces are involved?”

“I really couldn’t say. But he has
warehouses and drops all over the Inner Frontier. I’m sure that I would be
satisfied with the spoils of conquest.” He shrugged. “Let greedy, immoral men
like Cain keep the blood money,” he concluded deprecatingly.

“You’d only take the pieces you
wanted to keep?” asked Virtue, suddenly aware of yet another source of income
above and beyond her fee for the feature.

He shook his head. “I’m afraid my
creditors have very expensive tastes, my dear. I keep the finest pieces that I
find, but all the rest go to support my life-style, and not incidentally to pay
for my menials. No, my fee for helping you is, as our friend Father William
might state it, all of Santiago’s temporal possessions. Take it or leave it.”

“Why haven’t you gone after him
before?” asked Virtue.

“I have—or rather, I’ve sent men
after him before,” answered the Swagman. “None of them got very close before
being eliminated. So now it appears that I’m going to have to take a more
active hand.”

“Why now?”

“Well, I suppose I should say that
I admire your resourcefulness, or that I wish to establish a romantic liaison
with you,” he answered. “But while both are definitely true, the simple fact of
the matter is that certain developments have convinced me that it might be
foolish to wait any longer.”

“What developments?”

“The Angel has moved to the Inner
Frontier.”

“Cain mentioned him,” said Virtue.

“Then doubtless Cain is aware of
his abilities,” said the Swagman. “I had an intermediary offer him the same
help I’m offering you, in return for the same considerations. He turned me down
flat. This would either imply that he’s as much of a loner as everyone says, or
that he’s getting so close to Santiago that he doesn’t need my help. Probably
it’s the former, but I really don’t think I can afford to take the chance.” He
paused. “So, have I entered into a joint arrangement with you and Cain, or
not?”

“As far as I’m concerned, you
have,” replied Virtue. “I’ll have to clear it with Cain after he finishes his
business on Altair, but I don’t imagine he’s interested in anything except the
reward. Besides,” she lied, “I don’t know why the subject of Santiago’s
personal possessions should ever arise.”

“Excellent!” He arose and walked
to a small cabinet. “This calls for a bottle of my best Alphard brandy.”

He returned with the bottle and
two crystal goblets.

“To your very good health and
prosperous future, my dear,” he said, clinking glasses with her after he had
filled them. He stared admiringly at her, wondering just how many fabulous
private art collections she had seen on the worlds of the Democracy, and how
many of them she could help him locate in the future.

“And to a successful partnership,”
replied Virtue, studying him carefully and mentally adding up the awards and
the money for the features he could help her obtain once they had established a
working relationship.

“Virtue, my dear,” he said,
flashing her his most charming smile, “we have a lot to talk about in the days
to come.”

“I have a feeling that you’re
right,” she replied with a predatory gleam in her eye.

He spent the next
hour showing her some of his major pieces. Then, with a minimal amount of
verbal thrust and parry, they went to bed together. Both of them found the
experience enjoyable; each pretended to find it ecstatic.

Along the road
to Mother Lode

Dwells the
Great Sioux Nation,

Which
justifies its crimes and lies

As predestination.

Black Orpheus didn’t have much use
for aliens. Not that he was biased or bigoted; he wasn’t. But he saw his
calling as the creation and perpetuation of a myth-poem about the race of Man.
In fact, the people who thought it was composed merely of unrelated four-line
songs about the outcasts and misfits who managed to make an impression on him
were dead wrong. By the time he died the poem was some 280,000 lines, most of
it in free verse or nonrhyming iambic pentameter, and for the most part it was
concerned with glorifying Man’s sweeping expansion through the Inner Frontier.
The little ballads about the outrageously colorful people were very little more
than footnotes and punctuation marks in his epic, though they were the only
parts of the poem that interested any of his contemporaries (except, of course,
for the academics, who loved him when he was opaque and practically deified him
on those rare occasions that he was obscure).

Anyway, while Orpheus wasn’t
especially interested in aliens, he had nothing against putting them in his
poem if they were really unique—not in physical terms, since
all
species are physically unique; but unique in their
relationship to Man. And in that regard, the Great Sioux Nation was a little
more unique than most.

It wasn’t really a nation at all.
It possessed only eighty-four members, and only twice since its inception had
all of them been on the same planet at the same time. They represented seven sentient
races, all oxygen-breathers, each of them from a world that had been militarily
conquered and economically subjugated either by the Republic or by the
Democracy that succeeded it.

Some races were so alien that
subjugation was meaningless to them; a goodly number of races resented it; but
only a tiny handful
learned
from it.

Such a handful was the Great Sioux
Nation.

They were outlaws and thieves,
cutthroats and smugglers, playing Man’s game on Man’s turf—the Inner Frontier.
But unlike their less enlightened brothers, they went directly to the source
for their indoctrination. Each of them had served time as a member of some
human band of desperadoes, and each had realized that if one was to play in
Man’s ballpark, he/she/it had better learn Man’s ground rules.

And while they were studying the
rule book, they studied the history books as well. They realized that before
Man had turned to conquering and exploiting the races he had found among the
stars, he had put in long centuries of practice back on his home planet. Their
leader, a gold-feathered humanoid from Morioth II, found that he felt a special
empathy toward the Amerinds, which had been methodically decimated on one of
Man’s last home-world frontiers. He took the name of Sitting Bull, though he was
physiologically incapable of sitting and had no idea what a bull was, gave
every member of his band an Indian name (oddly enough, Crazy Horse was the only
other one derived from the Sioux), adopted certain practices of the Plains
Indians, and named the group the Great Sioux Nation. Before long he had
instilled in them the conviction that it was their destiny to adjust the
balance of power on the Inner Frontier, while realizing a handsome profit in
the process. They would commit no crime against any race except Man; they would
accept no commission from any race except Man; and they would use no weapons
against Man except those he had created himself.

Once Orpheus had written them up,
neglecting to mention that they were aliens (though he revised it some years
later), most of his audience thought they were a band of fanatics bent on
revenge for injustices that had been perpetrated on the Amerinds in aeons past.
Others held that they were a group of misguided idealists out to redress an
imagined grievance on behalf of a small branch of humanity that had long since
been exterminated or assimilated. Only the handful of people who had actually
had dealings with them knew that they were simply alien outlaws and
opportunists, trying their best to fit into a frontier culture that they could
never fully comprehend.

But whatever the Great Sioux
Nation’s motivation, its efficiency was never in question. Sitting Bull’s
headquarters were on the mining world of Diamond Strike, some twenty-five miles
south of Mother Lode, the planet’s sole Tradertown. Through him, one could
purchase contracts for anything from human contraband to human life.

One could also purchase
information, which was why the Swagman had instructed Virtue MacKenzie’s
navigational computer to lay in a course for Diamond Strike.

Two days later Virtue set the ship
down at the tiny spaceport just outside of Mother Lode. It was midmorning, and
the distant sun glowed a dull orange through the heat-haze that blanketed the
area.

The Swagman promptly walked to a local
garage, where he spent the better part of ten minutes haggling with the
proprietor over the rental price of a very old landcar.

“Why didn’t you just pay him what
he wanted?” Virtue asked irritably, opening a window to let in some air as they
began driving the ancient vehicle down a narrow dirt road toward the Great
Sioux Nation’s headquarters. “Certainly we can afford it.”

“Of course we can, my dear,” he
agreed amiably. “But this is Sitting Bull’s world, just as Goldenrod is mine.
By now he already knows we’re here, and since he’s not in the business of
giving information away for free, it’s not a bad idea to let him know that we
don’t always agree to pay the first price that’s proposed to us.”

“Will he offer a second one?”

The Swagman nodded. “And a third,
and a fourth. He’s a wholehearted believer in the barter system.”

“He sounds like an interesting
character,” she commented, pulling out a handkerchief and wiping the sweat that
was already starting to roll down her face.