Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future (6 page)

“I’ve had enough for a while.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’ve played more cards during the
past five days than in the twenty years preceding them,” said Cain. “Let’s
knock off for a few hours.”

“Just trying to keep you amused,”
said Terwilliger, shuffling the deck and putting it back in the pocket of his
brightly colored tunic. “Where do we stand?”

“You owe me a little over
twenty-two hundred credits.”

“I don’t suppose you’d take a
marker?” asked Terwilliger.

Cain smiled. “Not very likely.”

“Mind if I mix up another pot of
that coffee we broke open this afternoon?” asked the gambler, heading off for
the galley. “Just as well you don’t bring ‘em back alive,” he muttered as he
searched for the coffee in the cramped confines of the galley. “This ship sure
as hell wasn’t built with an extra passenger in mind.” He uttered a grunt of
triumph as he finally found the coffee in amongst a stack of condensed rations.

“Go a little easy on that stuff,”
said Cain. “It’s expensive.”

“It
tastes
expensive. Where’s it from—Belore or Canphor?”

“Brazil.”

“Never heard of it.”

“It’s a country back on Earth.”

“You mean I’ve been drinking
coffee from Earth itself?” said Terwilliger. “I’m impressed! You do right well
by a guest, Songbird.”

“Thanks—and I keep telling you: my
name’s Cain.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask you
about that. You don’t sound like you’ve got much of a singing voice, so how
come he dubbed you the Songbird?”

“Because my name’s Sebastian
Nightingale Cain. He fell in love with my middle name, and I told him he
couldn’t use it.” Cain grimaced. “I should have been more explicit.”

“Come to think of it, Black
Orpheus does a
lot
of dumb things,” said
Terwilliger. “Like that line about me being a martinet. I’m the sweetest,
friendliest guy in the galaxy. He just used it to make a rhyme.”

“I notice you don’t object to the
part about pawning your soul,” noted Cain.

Terwilliger laughed. “Hell, that’s
the first thing a man gets rid of when he comes to the Frontier. Excess
baggage, nothing more.”

“Losing at cards seems to make you
cynical,” said Cain.

“It’s got nothing to do with
cards,” replied the little gambler. “It’s an obvious fact. You kill men for a
living; where would
you
be with a soul?”

“Back on Sylaria, I suppose,” said
Cain thoughtfully.

“That’s the world where you were a
revolutionary?”

“One of them.”

“You should have known better,”
said Terwilliger. “No matter what kind of promises a man who’s looking for
power makes, he’s not going to turn out to be any different from the one he
replaces.”

“I was very young,” said Cain.

“It’s hard to imagine you as a
callow youth.”

Cain chuckled. “I wasn’t so much
callow as idealistic.”

“Well, cheer up—the Frontier is
filled with men who were going to make the galaxy a better place to live.”

“So are the seats of power,” said
Cain wryly. “You’d think
some
body would know how.”

“You keep talking like that and
you’re going to convince me you still believe in all that idealistic nonsense.”

“Don’t worry about it,” replied
Cain, leaning back and propping a foot up against a bulkhead. “That was a long,
long time ago.”

The gambler walked over to a
sensor terminal, as he had done every few hours since leaving Port étrange, and
satisfied himself that there was still no sign of pursuit by ManMountain Bates.

“You know,” said Terwilliger,
finally pouring himself some coffee and handing a cup over to Cain, “you never
did tell me why you became a bounty hunter.”

“I’d been a terrorist for twelve
years. The only thing I knew how to do really well was kill people.”

“How about that?” said the gambler
with mock regret. “And here I thought it was because you believed in justice.”

Cain patted the weapon at his
side. “I learned to use this gun because I believed in truth and honor and
freedom and a lot of other fine-sounding things. I spent twelve years fighting
for them and then took a good look at the results.” He paused. “Now all I
believe in is the gun.”

“Well, I’ve met disillusioned
revolutionaries before, but you’re the first one who ever fought on a
free-lance basis.”

“Nobody paid me for what I did.”

“What I meant was that you seemed
to go from one war to another.”

“When the first man I thought
could put things right turned out to have feet of clay, I looked around for
another. It took me three revolutions before I finally realized just how much
clay God put into the universe.” He smiled ruefully. “I was a slow learner.”

“At least you fought the good
fight,” said Terwilliger.

“I fought three stupid fights,”
Cain corrected him. “I’m not especially proud of any of them.”

“You must have been a very serious
young man.”

“Actually, I used to laugh a lot
more than I do now.” He shrugged. “That was when I thought one moral man could
make a difference. The only thing I find
really
funny these days is the fact that so many people still believe it.”

“I had a feeling the first time I
saw you that you weren’t just your run-of-the-mill headhunter,” said
Terwilliger. “Like I told you, I’ve got this knack for reading faces.”

“Well, if it comes to that, I had
a feeling the first time I saw you that you were a lousy cardplayer.”

“I’m the best damned cardplayer
you’ll
ever meet.”

“I thought I beat you rather
handily,” remarked Cain.

“I
let
you win.”

“Sure you did.”

“You don’t believe me?” said the
gambler. “Then watch
this
.”

He pulled out the cards, shuffled
them thoroughly, and dealt out two five-card hands on the tiny chrome table.

“Got anything worth betting?” he
asked.

Cain picked up his cards, fanned
them out slowly, and found himself holding four kings and a jack.

“It’s possible,” he answered
cautiously.

“How about twenty-two hundred credits?”

“Let’s make it one hundred.”

“You’re sure?”

“That’s my limit.”

Terwilliger laid his hand down on
the table. It contained four aces and a queen.

“Then why did you let me win any
hands at all the first time we met?” asked Cain.

“Because professional cardplayers
are very careful about cheating professional killers,” replied Terwilliger.
“Besides, I was lonely. Once word got out that I was broke, none of the
amateurs would play with me—and you can’t use tricks like that on the pros.”

“And why have you let me win at
gin since we took off from Port étrange?” continued Cain.

“It was just my way of keeping you
in a good mood, and thanking you for saving my life.” He grinned. “Besides,
it’s not as if I have any money to pay you with.”

“Well, I’ll be damned!” said Cain
with a laugh. “So
that’s
why you wouldn’t let the
computer give us random hands! All right, you little bastard. Your debt’s wiped
clean.”

“I’d rather owe it to you.”

“Why?”

“I have my reasons,” said
Terwilliger.

“Suit yourself,” said Cain. “I’ve
got another question.”

“Ask away.”

“How the hell did someone like you
manage to go two hundred thousand credits in the hole to ManMountain Bates?”

“Do you know what the odds are of
a man drawing a straight flush against you when you’re sitting with four aces?”
asked Terwilliger.

“Not long enough, I’d guess,” said
Cain.

“You’re damned right! You know, if
you play cards every day, it might happen five times before you die of old age.
It was just my stupid luck that the first time it happened was against the backbreaker.”

“How did you get out with your
back unbroken?”

“I waited until Bates answered a
call of nature, told a couple of the other players that I was going to my room
to get my bankroll so I could redeem my marker, and got the hell off the planet
before anyone knew I was gone.” Terwilliger frowned. “I’d love to see that
guy’s bladder preserved for science. He must have drunk six quarts before he
got up!”

“Pardon an unethical question, but
now that I’ve seen what you can do with a deck of cards, why didn’t you do it
to him—exercising due caution, of course?”

“Have you ever seen ManMountain
Bates?” said Terwilliger with a bitter laugh.

“No.”

“Well, he’s not the kind of guy
you’d want to chance having mad at you, especially if he was within arm’s
reach.”

“Not even for two hundred thousand
credits?”

“It wasn’t worth the risk. It’d be
as dangerous as you poaching on the Angel’s territory.”

“From what I hear, he’s about to
start poaching on mine,” commented Cain.

“That’s different.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s the Angel.”
Terwilliger walked over to the coffeepot and poured himself another cup.
“Besides, everybody knows he’s just here for Santiago. You can hardly call it
poaching if nobody knows where Santiago is hiding. Which brings up another
subject,” he added carefully. “You came a pretty fair distance just to talk to
Jonathan Stern. Usually a bounty hunter doesn’t go that far beyond his own
territory unless he thinks he can get a lead on Santiago. So my question is: Is
there some tie-in between Duncan Black and Santiago, or not?”

“I don’t see that it’s any of your
business,” said Cain.

“Look at me,” said the little
gambler. “Do I look like a goddamned rival?”

“No,” said Cain. “You look like a
goddamned salesman.”

“Just answer my question. I
promise you I won’t sell it to anyone else.”

“Somehow, I get the distinct
impression that your promises aren’t exactly coin of the realm.”

“Damn it, Cain—it’s important!”

“To who?”

“To both of us.”

Cain stared at him for a long
minute, then nodded. “Yes, he’s a link to Santiago.”

“Good!” breathed Terwilliger with
a sigh of relief.

“Why is that good?”

“Well, first I want you to
remember that I still owe you a debt of twenty-one hundred credits, and that I
can’t pay it off if I’m dead.”

“Get to the point.”

The little gambler took a deep
breath.

“The reason I know where to find
Duncan Black is because I know where he’s buried.” Terwilliger held up his hand
quickly, as if to fight off any possible interruption. “I should have told you
back on Port étrange, I know that. It was absolutely, positively wrong. But if
I had, you wouldn’t have taken me, and ManMountain Bates would be having me for
dinner right about now.”

“I may just take you back there
and turn you over to him,” said Cain.

“But everything’s all right now!”
said Terwilliger quickly. “Everything’s all right,” he repeated. “That’s why I
had to know if Black was a link.”

“Explain,” said Cain ominously.

“You see, if he had owed you money
or something like that, you were out of luck and I was in big trouble. I mean,
hell, the poor bastard has been dead for almost three years now.” He paused for
breath. “But now that I know what you needed him for, I can still help you
out.”

“How?”

“There was this woman he used to
live with,” said Terwilliger. “She handled a lot of his business for him. She
probably knows everyone
he
knew, and can tell you
what his connection was with each of them.”

“And she’s still alive?” asked
Cain.

“She was two months ago.”

“Where can I find her?”

“Right where we’re heading—the
Clovis system.”

“On Bella Donna?”

“Not exactly,”
answered Terwilliger.

She lives in a
graveyard of shattered ships.

She floats
through the void with her broken dreams;

But though she
may long for a lover’s lips,

The Sargasso Rose isn’t what she seems.

Black Orpheus took one look at the
Sargasso Rose and knew there was more to her than met the eye.

How he found her in the first
place is a mystery, since he wasn’t likely to have had any business up there,
six thousand miles above Bella Donna. Probably it was the ships that attracted
him, strung out in space like glittering fish on a line, some dying and some
already dead. He named the station, too: he hated names like Station Number 14,
and so he called it Deadly Nightshade, which was a fitting sobriquet for a
graveyard of spaceships, especially one that circled Bella Donna.

He spent a couple of days up
there, talking to the Sargasso Rose, jotting down her story the way he did with
everyone he met. Some people say he even slept with her, but they were wrong;
Black Orpheus never slept with
anyone
after his
Eurydice died. Besides, the Sargasso Rose wasn’t the type of woman who’d jump
into bed with just anybody.

In fact, that may have been one of
her problems. She was forty years old, and she had had only three lovers. The
first two had left her for other women, and Duncan Black had left her to start
working in the pits of hell a few years ahead of schedule. She’d always fought
a lot with him, but she’d loved him as much as she would let herself love
anyone after her first two experiences, and when his heart finally gave out it
came pretty close to breaking hers as well.

She was still grieving a year
later, when Black Orpheus stopped by—but she took the trouble to show Deadly
Nightshade off to him just the same. He went deep into the bellies of the metal
leviathans and spent almost a full day there, scribbling down notes as her crew
gutted them and set them adrift, then watching with childlike enthusiasm as
space tugs dragged new corpses up to the station’s docks. He even found time to
name Bella Donna’s three tiny moons—Banewort, Foxglove, and Hellebore—before he
left for his next port of call.