by Mike Resnick
"Dimitrios of the Three Burners."
"Lawman?"
"Bounty hunter."
"I suppose you have your reasons."
Dimitrios nodded his head. "Valid ones."
Tchanga turned to Matilda. "And you are?"
"Matilda."
"Got a last name?"
"Got a couple of dozen of them," she said.
He smiled. "You're no lawman or bounty hunter."
"No, sir, I'm not."
"All right, now we know who we are," said Tchanga. "Why have you sought me out?"
"I want to see if you're the man I'm looking for," said Matilda.
"If you're looking for Wilson Tchanga, I'm him." He smiled grimly. "If you're looking for the Rough Rider, I used to be him."
She shook her head. "I'm looking for Santiago."
He stared at her curiously. "Santiago's been dead for a century or more—if he ever really existed in the first place."
"He was my great-great-grandfather," said Matilda.
"I know I've aged," said Tchanga, "but do I look like anyone's great-great-grandfather?"
"No," interjected Dimitrios. "But you might look like Santiago."
Tchanga frowned. "I think I'm missing something here."
"Santiago is more than a name or a person," continued Dimitrios. "It's an idea, a concept, maybe even a job description. And the job has been open for a century. We're looking for someone to fill it."
"He was the King of the Outlaws," said Tchanga. "I was an honest lawman. I may not be much these days, but I'm still honest."
"We wouldn't be speaking to you if you weren't," said Dimitrios.
"Then I'm still missing something."
"You're missing a lot," said Matilda. "Sit back, relax, and make yourself comfortable, because I'm going to spend an hour or more filling you in."
Dimitrios studied Tchanga intently as Matilda explained who and what Santiago really was, what he had done, how he had hidden his true purpose from the Democracy, and why the string of Santiagos had ended the day the Navy "pacified" Safe Harbor.
"It's time to call him forth again," concluded Matilda. "The time is ripe for him to return. The Democracy is abusing and plundering the Inner Frontier again, colonists have almost no rights, aliens have even less. The Navy goes where it wants and takes what it wants. It protects us from a hostile galaxy, but there's no one to protect us from it."
There was a long silence. Finally Tchanga spoke.
"I'm more honored than you can imagine that you came to me. But I'm an used-up old man whose time is past. I'm no hero, no leader of men. I'm still holding a pulse gun, but if either of you made a sudden motion, I'd be more likely to duck than to fire it." He paused. "There was a time when I might have been the man you seek, but that time is long gone."
"You don't have to be a hero," said Dimitrios. "There's no holograph or video of Santiago anywhere in the Democracy's records. He didn't go out on raids, or face Democracy soldiers himself. He ordered his men to do those things."
Tchanga shook his head. "That may be so, but he might have gone with them from time to time. He could have. I can't. And I can't order men to do things I myself won't do."
"Generals don't fight in the front lines," said Dimitrios.
"They also don't run and hide when the shooting starts," replied Tchanga. "You need a Santiago who commands respect, and I am no longer that man. I wonder if I ever was."
"You were," said Dimitrios with certainty. "And you can be again. You can redeem your life and your reputation through the single act of becoming Santiago."
"I appreciate your words," said Tchanga, "but Santiago is too big. He blots out the stars. The ground trembles when he walks. He does not exist for me to redeem myself. You belittle him by suggesting that."
Dimitrios turned to Matilda. "Aren't you going to say anything?"
"What is there to say?" she replied. "I agree with him."
"Perhaps Santiago isn't a man at all," suggested Tchanga. "Perhaps Santiago is a woman."
"It's possible," she agreed. "But not this woman. I'm just someone who needs a little more protection from the Democracy than I've been getting."
"I hope you find your Santiago and get your protection," said Tchanga. He got to his feet and walked to the door. "You'd better be going. If he's as hard to find as I think he'll be, you haven't any time to waste."
They arose and walked out the door.
Dimitrios pointed to the pulse gun. "Is that thing even charged?"
Tchanga looked out across the vast field of mutated corn. "You see that scarecrow?"
Dimitrios squinted into the distance. "That one about 500 yards off to the left?"
Tchanga nodded. "That's the one." In a single motion the old man spun, aimed his pulse gun, and fired. The scarecrow burst into a ball of flame.
"My God!" exclaimed Dimitrios. "That was more than a quarter mile away! I couldn't do that on the best day I ever had!" He turned to the old man. "Can you hit it every time?"
"Just about," said Tchanga. He paused, and a look of infinite sadness crossed his face. "Unless I thought it might fire back at me."
"Jesus!" said Dimitrios as he and Matilda walked toward their vehicle. "What he must have been as a young man!"
"He still is."
Dimitrios shook his head. "No. Like he said, he's all used up."
"Don't look so sad for him," she said. "He'll be all right."
"I was feeling sad for me, not for him," Dimitrios corrected her.
"For you? Why?"
"Because that's my fate, probably the fate or every bounty hunter, if we live long enough." He paused. "I hope I don't."
"Don't what?"
"Live long enough."
They reached their vehicle, and neither of them saw the tear that rolled down the Rough Rider's withered face as he tried unsuccessfully to remember what it felt like to face an armed man with no more fear than he felt when facing a scarecrow.
13.
Alien face and alien ways,
Alien thoughts and tribal lays.
Alien appetites, strange and cold,
Blue Peter's sins are manifold.
The Rhymer actually met Blue Peter before Matilda did.
He was on Bowman 17, which was actually the third planet circling its star but the 17th opened up by a member of the Pioneer Corps named Nate Bowman, who exercised his Pioneer's privilege of naming it after himself. It was an outpost world, with a single Tradertown consisting of a bar, a brothel, a weapon shop, an assay office, and a jail. That last was unusual for any Frontier world, especially one as underpopulated as Bowman 17.
Dante Alighieri was sitting in the bar, relaxing with a drink, when Virgil Soaring Hawk approached him and asked for a loan.
"What for?" replied Dante. "There's nothing to spend it on."
"I have to make a friend's bail."
"You've got a friend locked up on Bowman 17?"
"Yes."
"Who is it?"
"He's more of a what than a who," answered Virgil.
"Worth a verse?" queried Dante, suddenly interested.
"Maybe two or three."
"Santiago material?"
Virgil chuckled. "Not unless the job description has changed in the last couple of minutes."
"All right," said Dante. "Tell me about him."
"You ever hear of Blue Peter?"
"No."
"He an alien," said Virgil. "I have no idea where his home world is. He's the only member of his race I've ever met."
"He's blue?"
"Skin, hair, eyes, teeth, probably even his tongue."
"How did you meet him?"
"It'll just embarrass you," said Virgil.
"Jesus!" muttered Dante. "Is there anyone on the Frontier that you haven't slept with?"
"You."
"Thank heaven for small favors." Dante finished his drink and lit up a smokeless cigar. "What's your friend in jail for?"
"Unspecified crimes against Natu
re," answered Virgil.
"What does he do when he's not assaulting Nature?"
"You mean for a living?"
"He's got to pay to feed himself, and to get from one world to another. How does he make his money?"
"He does whatever anyone pays him to do."
"Outside of being a rather twisted gigolo, what does that entail?"
"Robbery. Extortion. Murder. Things like that."
"Sounds to me like he's right where he belongs," said Dante.
"You won't loan me the money?"
Dante shook his head. "We have no use for him."
"I do."
"I don't want to hear about the use you'll put him to."
"You really mean it?"
"I really mean it."
Suddenly Virgil smiled and picked up a chair. "Well, if you can't bring Mohammed to the mountain . . ."
He hurled the chair through a window, then threw two more out into the street before the Tradertown's solitary lawman came over from the jail, trained a screecher on him, and escorted him to the jail. Dante had seen Virgil in action before, and never doubted for an instant that the Injun could disarm the lawman any time he wanted—but of course he didn't want to.
Dante made a very happy Virgil's bail the next morning, spent a few minutes visiting with Blue Peter, and left the jail feeling uncomfortable that something like Blue Peter would soon be free. He wrote the poem that afternoon, and never saw Blue Peter again.
But Matilda did.
It was on Gandhi III, which wasn't as peaceable a world as its name implied. Dimitrios was there on business—another ladykiller with a price on his head—and Matilda had accompanied him. She had no reason to be there . . . but then, she had no reason to be anywhere in particular. She was looking for a perhaps- nonexistent man who embodied a complex concept, and there was no more reason to search for him anywhere else than here, and at least here she was under the protection of Dimitrios of the Three Burners.
Dimitrios spent the day gathering information about Mikhail Mikva, the man he was after, while Matilda stayed in her room watching the holo and catching up on the galaxy's news. The Democracy had opened up nineteen new worlds. The Navy had been forced to pacify the native population of Wajima II, which had been renamed Grundheidt II after the commander of the 6th Fleet. Contact had been made with four new species of sentient life; three had joined the Democracy, and the fourth was learning just how effective an quadrant-wide economic embargo could be. The Democracy had moved the planetary populations of Kubalic IV and V and their attendant flora and fauna to new worlds before the star Kubalic went nova. Lodin XI had voted to withdraw from the Democracy, but its resignation had not been accepted and the 15th Fleet was on its way to Lodin to "peacefully discuss our differences". Five new cross-species diseases had been discovered; medical science announced that they would have vaccines and antidotes for all five within one hundred days.
She deactivated the holo at twilight, wondering why she ever bothered with the news. All it did was reinforce her decision never to visit the Democracy again.
The door opened and Dimitrios entered.
"Any luck?" she asked.
"If he's here, he's well-disguised. No one's seen him."
"Could they be lying to you?"
He stared at her.
"No, of course not," she said. She got to her feet. "Shall we go out for dinner?"
"Yeah. I won't start searching the bars and drug dens for another couple of hours."
They left the hotel and went to one of the small city's half-dozen restaurants, one that advertised real meat rather than soya products (though it didn't say what kind of animals supplied the meat).
They sat down, ordered, and began chatting about the news from the Democracy when they became aware of a blue alien standing outside and staring at them through the window.
"You'd think he'd never seen a Man before," grumbled Dimitrios when the alien kept watching them.
"That can't be it," said Matilda. "There are thousands of Men on Gandhi."
"Then what's his problem?"
"I think he's about to tell you," replied Matilda as the alien suddenly walked to the door of the restaurant, entered, and began approaching their table.
The blue alien stopped a few feet from them.
"May I join you?" he asked.
"Do you know Mikhail Mikva's whereabouts?" asked Dimitrios.
"No."
"Then no, you may not join us."
"But you are Dimitrios of the Three Burners, are you not?"
Dimitrios stared at him. "What's it to you?"
"We are in the same poem."
"Do you know the Rhymer?" asked Matilda suddenly.
"I know Dante Alighieri, who calls himself the Rhymer. It is he who put me in his poem."
"Sit down," said Matilda, ignoring Dimitrios' obvious annoyance.
The alien pulled up a chair and sat on it.
"Who are you?" asked Matilda.
"My name when I walk among Men is Blue Peter. And who are you?"
"My name is Matilda."
Blue Peter stared at her. "Waltzin' Matilda?"
"Sometimes."
"How very interesting that three of us from what is, after all, an obscure little poem so new almost no one has encountered it, should find ourselves on the same planet."
"Dimitrios is here on business. May I ask why you are here?"
"I was requested to leave Bowman 17, and since most of your spaceliners will not carry non-Men, I booked passage on a cargo ship. This was as far as my money took me."
"So you're stuck here?" asked Matilda.
"Until I obtain more money."
"How will you do that?"
"There are ways," said Blue Peter. He turned to Dimitrios. "I am pleased to make your acquaintance."
Dimitrios stared at the alien with an expression of distaste, then got to his feet. He turned to Matilda. "I'm going back to the hotel for a couple of hours before I make my rounds."
He walked out of the restaurant.
"He does not like me," said Blue Peter.
"He doesn't like most aliens."
"He has much in common with the rest of your race."
There was a momentary silence.
"I hope you're not waiting for me to apologize for him," said Matilda at last.
"No. I am wondering why you are here, since none of the establishments has advertised the presence of a dancer."
She looked at him, then shrugged. "What the hell, why not tell you? I'm looking for someone."
"You have become a bounty hunter too?"
She shook her head. "No."
"Who do you seek?"
"I don't know."
Blue Peter stared at her expressionlessly, his deep blue alien eyes unblinking. "That does make it harder," he said.
"You've seen many men on the Frontier," she began.
"That is true."
"Which of them is the most dangerous?"
"I am not sure I understand," said Blue Peter.
"The most deadly. The one man you would fear to fight more than any other."
"I fear to fight all men," said Blue Peter with an obvious lack of sincerity. "I fear Dimitrios. I fear Tyrannosaur Bailey. I fear Trader Hawke. I fear Mongasso Taylor. I fear Jimmy the Nail."
She sighed deeply. "Forget it. I'm sorry I asked."
"I fear the Plymouth Rocker. I fear Deuteronomy Pierce."
"You can stop now," said Matilda.
"But above all others," continued Blue Peter, "I fear the One-Armed Bandit."
"Oh?"
"Yes. He is the most terrifying of all Men."
"Why do you think so?"
"Because he is the deadliest."
"Tell me about him."
"I just did," said Blue Peter.
"Do you know where he is?"
"I know where he is when he is not elsewhere."
She frowned. "You mean his headquarters—his home planet?"
"His headquarter
s," agreed Blue Peter. "I do not think anyone except the One-Armed Bandit himself knows his home planet."
"And of all the men and women you've seen on the Inner Frontier, you consider him the most dangerous?"
"Yes."
"Even more dangerous than Dimitrios?"
"There is no comparison. If Dimitrios is your friend, pray that he never has to face the One-Armed Bandit in combat."
"He sounds interesting," said Matilda.
"He is deadly."
"The man I'm looking for must be deadly."
"You are already traveling with a deadly man," noted Blue Peter.
"Still, I'd like to meet this One-Armed Bandit."
"I will give you the location of his headquarters," said the alien. "I will not accompany you there. He has promised to kill me the next time he sees me."
"Why?"
"I did something to Galpos that he disapproved of."
"Galpos? Who's he?"
"Galpos is a world," said Blue Peter. "Or, rather, it was."
She stared at expressionless alien and decided she didn't want to know the details. "Where can I find him?"
"If he is not elsewhere, he will be on Heliopolis II."
"Thank you, Blue Peter. Can I buy you a drink?"
"My metabolism cannot cope with human intoxicants." He got to his feet. "There is a tavern that caters to non-Men. I was on my way there when I recognized Dimitrios of the Three Burners."
"I'm sorry you have to go alone," said Matilda.
"I will not be alone for long," Blue Peter assured her.
He stood up and walked to the door. Matilda was about to follow him out when she realized that she'd been left with the check. She placed her thumb on the table's computer, waited for it to okay her credit and transfer payment, and then returned to the hotel.
Dimitrios was sitting in the lobby when she arrived. She walked over and stood in front of him.
"What did the little blue bastard want?" asked the bounty hunter.
"He just wanted to meet us," she replied. "He's all alone here."
"Don't go feeling too sorry for him. He was kicked off Bowman 17, in case that got by you."
"I know." She paused.
"And he had two, maybe three, screechers hidden under that baggy outfit he was wearing."
"I know. I spotted them all."
"Five'll get you ten there's a price on his head."
"Probably," agreed Matilda. She paused. "What if you don't find Mikva tonight?"