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

“Depending on what?”

“On how long you’ve been alone,”
answered Terwilliger.

“You still haven’t told me what
they look like.”

Terwilliger grinned and ruffled
the cards. “Shall we up the stakes a little?”

Cain shook his head. “They’re not
worth more to me than Stern is.”

“They might be, when I tell you
what they do.”

“Hearsay?”

“Experience.”

Cain cocked an eyebrow. “I thought
you disapproved of them.”

“Anybody’s allowed to try
something new once or twice, just to get the feel of it,” explained
Terwilliger. “What I object to is addiction, not experimentation.”

“I don’t plan to be here long
enough to do either,” said Cain. “You can put the cards away.”

“Oh, we can always find a little
something to wager about,” said Terwilliger. “For fifty credits a hand, I could
tell you where to find the Suliman brothers.”

“You’re too late. They were taken
a week ago.”

“All three?”

Cain nodded.

“Damn!” said Terwilliger. “Well,
for a hundred, I might tell you about some competition that’s moved into the
area.”

“I know about the Angel.”

“News sure travels fast,”
commented Terwilliger ruefully.

“Tell you what,” said Cain. “I’ll
play for a thousand a hand if you have any information about Santiago.”

“You and five hundred other guys.”
The gambler shook his head. “It beats me how he can still be free after all
these years with so many people looking for him.”

Just then the bartender walked
across the room and came to a stop in front of their table.

“Are you Cain?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“He wants you.”

“Where do I find him?” asked Cain.

“I’ll show you the way,” offered
Terwilliger.

The bartender nodded and returned
to his duties.

“Follow me,” said the gambler,
getting to his feet.

Cain stood up and left a few bills
on the table.

They walked out through a side
door, across the dusty road that had once been a major thoroughfare, and into
the smaller of Port étrange’s two functioning hotels. Terwilliger led him
through a lobby that had once been quite elegant but was now showing the signs
of age and neglect: sleek chrome pillars were now tarnished, the ever-changing
choreopattern of colored lights was out of synch with the atonal music, the
front door remained dilated for almost a full minute after they passed through
it.

They approached a bank of
elevators and walked to the last one in line. Terwilliger summoned it with a
low command.

“This’ll take you right to him,”
he announced.

“Has he got a room number?”

“He’s got the whole damned floor.
Take one step out and you’re in the middle of his parlor.”

“Thanks,” said Cain, stepping into
the elevator as it arrived. As the doors closed behind him he realized that he
didn’t know the floor number, but then the elevator began ascending swiftly and
he decided that it only went to one floor.

When it came to a stop, he emerged
into a palatial pent-house. It was fully fifty feet by sixty, and filled to
overflowing with objets d’art gathered—or plundered—from all across the galaxy.
In the center of the room was a sunken circular tub with platinum fixtures, and
sitting in the steaming water was an emaciated man with sunken cheeks and dark,
watery eyes. His narrow arms were sprawled over the edges of the tub, and Cain
noticed that his fingers were covered by truly magnificent rings. He smoked a
large cigar that had somehow avoided becoming waterlogged.

Standing on each side of the tub
were a pair of humanoid aliens, both obviously female. Their skins, covered
with a slick secretion that may or may not have been natural, glistened under
the lights of the apartment. Their arms seemed supple and boneless, their legs
slender and strangely jointed. Each had a round, expressive face, with a
generous, very red triangular mouth and pink eyes that were little more than
angular slits. Both were nude and were devoid of any body hair. They had no
breasts, but their genitalia, thus exposed, seemed close to human. There was a
supple, alien grace to them, which Cain found fascinating and mildly repugnant.
Neither of them seemed to notice him at all.

“You’re staring, Mr. Cain,” said
the man in the tub.

“I’m sorry,” said Cain. “I had
heard about the
fali
, but I hadn’t seen them
before.”

“Nice, useful pets,” said the man,
reaching up and giving a friendly pat to a bare
fali
buttock. “About as bright as a potted plant, but
very
pleasant in their way.” He took a puff of his cigar. “I understand that you
wish to see me.”

“If you’re Stern.”

“Jonathan Jeremy Jacobar Stern, at
your service,” he said. “Is this going to take long?”

“I hope not.”

“What a shame,” he said with mock
regret. “If it was, I’d invite you to join me. There is absolutely nothing like
sitting in warm water to relax a man and help him shed the cares of the day.
I’ll be with you in just a moment.” He turned to one of the
fali
and extended his arm. “Give me a boost up, my
pretty.”

She reached down, grabbed his
hand, and pulled him to his feet, while her companion walked to a closet and
returned shortly with a robe.

“Thank you,” he said, slipping the
robe on. “Now I want both of you to stand over there and not bother us for a
while.” He pointed to a spot near the farthest wall, and both
fali
immediately walked over to it and stood motionless.

“They seem very obedient,”
remarked Cain as Stern led him to a grouping of chairs and couches.

“Obedient and docile,” agreed
Stern, sprawling on a couch and staring at them with unconcealed desire.

“That oil on their skins—is it
normal?”

“Why should you suppose that it
isn’t?”

Cain shrugged. “It just seems
rather unusual.”

“It is,” replied Stern, smiling at
the
fali
. “It smells like the finest perfume.” He
turned to Cain. “Go over and experience it for yourself.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“As you wish,” said Stern with a
shrug. “It
feels
exquisite, as well—soft and
sensual. Actually, I’m convinced that it’s a secondary sexual characteristic.
It doesn’t do much for Men, of course,” he added with marked insincerity, “but
I imagine it drives their boyfriends right out of their minds. Seductive odor,
sensual feel.” He stared admiringly at them again. “It makes them look like a
pair of alien mermaids emerging from the water.” Suddenly he tore his gaze away
from them and turned back to Cain. “So Geronimo Gentry sent you here?”

“Yes.”

“I thought he’d be dead by now.”

“Not quite,” said Cain, finally
taking a seat.

“How is he getting along?”

“He’s got a bar and whorehouse out
on Keepsake,” replied Cain. “I guess he’s doing all right. Talks too much,
though.”

“He always did.” Stern paused.
“Why did he send you here?”

“He told me that you might have
some information I need.”

“Very likely I do. I know an
inordinate number of things. Did he also tell you that I’m not a charitable
institution?”

“If he hadn’t, I would have
figured it out after seeing some of your trinkets,” said Cain, nodding toward a
number of alien artifacts that were prominently displayed.

“I’m a collector,” said Stern with
a broad smile.

“So I gathered.”

“You haven’t yet told me what
business you’re in, Mr. Cain.”

“I’m a collector, too,” replied
Cain.

“Really?” said Stern, suddenly
more interested. “And what is it that you collect?”

“People.”

“There’s a good market for them,”
said Stern. “But unlike
my
collection, they don’t
increase in value.”

“There’s one who does.”

“So you want to know about
Santiago.” It was not a question.

Cain nodded. “That’s what I’m here
for. You’re the only person who’s seen him.”

Stern laughed in amusement. “His
organization spans the entire galaxy. Don’t you think any of
them
ever see him?”

“Then let me amend my statement,”
said Cain. “You’re the only person
I
know who’s seen
him.”

“That’s probably true,” agreed
Stern pleasantly. His cigar went out and he snapped his fingers. One of the
fali
immediately came over with a lighter and relit it.
“That’s my girl,” he said, giving her boneless hand an affectionate squeeze.
She wriggled all over with delight like a puppy, then returned to her position
across the room. “A wonderful pet,” commented Stern. “Faithful, adoring, and
totally unable to utter a sound—three qualities I never found in any woman of
my acquaintance.” He paused and stared fondly at her. “What a sweet, mindless
little thing she is! But back to business, Mr. Cain. You wish to talk about
Santiago.”

“That’s right.”

“You are prepared to pay, of
course?”

Cain nodded.

“There is an old saying, Mr. Cain,
that talk is cheap. I hope you do not believe in it.”

“I believe in paying for value
received,” replied Cain.

“Excellent! You’re a man after my
own heart.”

“Really?” said Cain dryly. “I
would have been willing to bet that not a single thing in this apartment had
been paid for.”

“They have
all
been paid for, Mr. Cain,” said Stern with an amused smile. “Not with money,
perhaps, but with human grief and suffering and even human life. A much higher
price, wouldn’t you say?”

“It depends on who was doing the
paying,” replied Cain.

“Nobody very important,” said
Stern with a shrug. “Oh, they probably all had wives and husbands and children,
to be sure, but they were merely spear-carriers in my own saga, which is of
course the only one that matters to me. Certainly you must share my point of
view, since the taking of lives is your business.”

“I value the lives I take a little
more highly than you do,” said Cain. “So does the government.”

“And here we are, back to
discussing value and money once more,” said Stern. “I think I shall charge you
fifteen thousand credits to continue our conversation, Mr. Cain.”

“For that, I want more than a
physical description of a man you haven’t seen in fifteen or twenty years,”
replied Cain. “I want the name and location of the jail, I want to know when
you were incarcerated, and I want the name Santiago was using at the time.”

“But of course!” said Stern. “Do I
strike you as a man who would withhold information, Mr. Cain?”

“I don’t know,” said Cain. “Are
you?”

“Perish the thought,” said Stern.

“How comforting to know that.”

“I’m so glad that we understand
each other, Mr. Cain. May I first see, as we say in the trade, the color of
your money?”

Cain pulled out his wallet,
counted off the appropriate amount, and handed it over.

“I realize that absolutely no one
uses cash anymore in the heart of the Democracy,” said Stern, “but it has such
a nice feel to it that I’m glad we still indulge ourselves out here in the
extremities.” He quickly counted the bills, then signaled to a
fail
, who came over and took them from him.

“Hold these for me, my pretty,” he
said, then nodded his head and watched her as she walked back to her position
with an inhuman grace. “Lovely things!” he murmured. “Absolutely lovely!”

“We were talking about
Santiago....”

“Indeed we were,” said Stern,
turning reluctantly from the
fali
and facing Cain
once again. “I promise to give it my full attention. For fifteen thousand
credits, you deserve no less.”

“My feelings precisely.”

“Now, where shall I begin? At the
beginning, of course. I was serving a certain amount of time in durance vile on
the outpost world of Kalami Three for some imagined infringement of the local
laws or customs.”

“Robbery?” suggested Cain.

“Receiving stolen goods and
attempted murder, in point of fact,” replied Stern with no hint of regret. “At
any rate, the only other prisoner at the time was a man who went under the name
of Gregory William Penn. He was between forty and fifty years of age, he stood
about six feet four inches tall, he was heavyset without being fat, his hair
was black and his eyes brown, his face was clean-shaven. He spoke at least six
alien languages—or so he informed me. I, myself, speak none, nor”—he smiled at
the
fali—
”have I ever had any need to. On the back
of his right hand he bore an S-shaped scar some two inches long. He seemed,
overall, a pleasant and intelligent man. He didn’t speak about himself or his
past at all, but he proved to be an excellent chess player with a set that we
borrowed from our captors.”

“How do you know it was Santiago?”

“We had shared the hospitality of
the Kalami jail for eleven days when suddenly five armed men broke in, subdued
and bound the individual charged with our care, and set my fellow prisoner
free. They were very thorough about wiping the prison’s computer clean, and I
later found out they had done the same over in the courtroom. Then, just as
they were leaving, one of them called him Santiago.”

“If that’s your whole story, I
want my money back,” said Cain. “There’s probably a thousand petty crooks on
the Frontier who would like people to think they’re Santiago—and if the prison
records have been destroyed, you can’t even prove that this one existed, let
alone that he was who he said he was.”

“Be patient, Mr. Cain,” said Stern
easily. “There’s more.”

“There’d damned well better be.
How long ago did this little incident take place?”

“Seventeen Galactic Standard
years. I bribed my way out about six months later.”