by Mike Resnick
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.
4.
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.
Deadly Nightshade wasn't much to look at by the time Cain and Terwilliger arrived. Its hull was pockmarked by small, hastily repaired meteor holes, one of its docks had be
en damaged beyond repair by an errant tug, and it had come into contact with enough cosmic dust and debris so that the entire exterior needed refurbishing.
Still, it wasn't Deadly Nightshade that they had come to see, but rather the woman who owned it, so Cain carefully maneuvered his ship up to a dock, waited for an enclosed mobile walkway to be attached to his airlock, and followed Terwilliger to the interior of the station.
The floor curved gently away from them in both directions, and a narrow mat of indeterminate properties seemed to grab hold of their feet.
"You didn't tell me it was zero gravity in here," commented Cain.
"Just make sure one foot is always on the mat," replied Terwilliger. "You won't float away."
"I've been on G-mats before," replied Cain irritably. "I just don't like null-gravity situations too soon after a meal."
"You should have told me."
Cain was about to reply that he hadn't known that there was no gravity inside the station but decided that he didn't feel like repeating the entire conversation again.
Suddenly a humanoid being with a large cranium, deep-set golden eyes, and orange, reticulated skin began approaching them.
"What the hell is that?" asked Cain.
"An Orange Monkey," replied Terwilliger. "The Rose uses them as security guards."
"I never saw one before," said Cain. "Where is it from?"
"Varien Four," said the gambler. "They call themselves Hagibens; we call 'em Orange Monkeys. It fits them better. They work cheap, they learn the language pretty fast, and they love zero gravity. It's a hard combination to beat—especially when you consider how many alien races won't work at all and couldn't care less about money."
The Orange Monkey stopped in front of them.
"Your business, please?" it said in a lilting voice that sounded more like song than speech.
"We're here to see the Sargasso Rose," replied Terwilliger.
"The Sargasso Rose prefers not to deal personally with our customers," replied the alien. "If you will tell me what you need, I will direct you to the proper areas."
"She'll deal personally with us," said Terwilliger. "I'm an old friend."
The Orange Monkey looked at him. "You are Halfpenny Terwilliger, who was forcibly removed from Deadly Nightshade for cheating various staff members in a card game." It paused. "I was among those who escorted you to your ship."
"You were?" asked Terwilliger, surprised but unembarrassed.
"I was."
"Sorry I didn't recognize you, but all you Orange Monkeys look alike to me."
"That is perfectly understandable," said the alien. "We are all quite beautiful."
"Well, as long as we're old friends, how about telling the Rose we're here?"
"I will tell her, Halfpenny Terwilliger, but she prefers not to deal directly with the customers."
Cain stepped forward. "Do it anyway," he said in very level tones. "Tell her our business concerns a mutual friend."
The Orange Monkey stared at him for a moment, then turned and headed off to another area of the space station after summoning a companion to keep watch on them. It returned a few minutes later and walked up to Cain.
"The Sargasso Rose has instructed me to take you to her," it said in its placid, singsong voice. If it was surprised or disappointed, it kept its feelings well hidden.
Cain and Terwilliger followed it through a trio of large storage rooms and up to a small door.
"She is in here, said the Orange Monkey.
"Thanks," said Cain. He opened the door and stepped into a cluttered office, followed by Terwilliger.
Sitting behind a chrome desk that no longer gleamed, wearing a metallic gold outfit that no longer glistened, was a rather plain woman. Her hair was a dull brown, her eyes a lackluster green, her nose prominent, her chin weak. She was neither fat nor thin, but if she had ever possessed an attractive figure, that time had long since passed. Attached to her hair was a small white rose, which Cain took to be artificial.
She stared directly at the bounty hunter.
"You wished to see me, Mr. Cain?"
"You know my name?"
She smiled. "I know many things about you, Sebastian Nightingale Cain. What I don't know is who referred you to me."
"A man called Stern, back on Port étrange."
"Jonathan Jeremy Jacobar Stern," she said. "Now that's a name I haven't heard in years." She gestured to a pair of chairs. "Please be seated." She turned to Terwilliger. "I understand ManMountain Bates is looking for you."
"You have excellent sources," replied the gambler uneasily.
"Indeed I do," she agreed. "Not much goes on in this part of the Frontier that I don't know about."
"Then I assume you know why I'm here," said Cain.
"I know you're a bounty hunter," she said, "and you've told me that Stern sent you, so I can make a pretty good guess as to why you're here." She paused. "But Stern wouldn't send you to me. He would have told you to hunt up Duncan Black." She turned back to Terwilliger. "You told Mr. Cain to come here, of course. Stern doesn't know Duncan is dead, but you do."
"Well, there wasn't much sense trying to have a conversation with Duncan, rest his soul," explained Terwilliger defensively.
"And doubtless he has promised to protect you from ManMountain Bates in exchange for this information." She scrutinized Cain for a moment. "You made a poor trade, Mr. Cain. You should have stayed on Keepsake."
"What makes you think I come from Keepsake?" he asked.
She smiled again. "I've known your ship's registration number since I started tracking you two days ago. In the intervening forty-eight hours I've found out things about you that even you may have forgotten. I know the date and planet of your birth, I know why you left the more populated worlds of the Democracy, I know how many men you have killed and who they were—and here you are, practically denying that you work out of Keepsake. If you want my honesty, I should think the least you can do is offer me your own."
"I apologize," said Cain.
"There's no need to," she replied. "Deceit is no more than I expect from a member of your sex."
"Will you help me?" asked Cain, ignoring her comment.
"You're wasting your time."
"I've got plenty to waste," he said. "And I can pay for yours."
"I didn't say you would be wasting my time," said the Sargasso Rose. "I have every intention of selling you the information you need."
"I'm not sure I understand the distinction."
"I'm quite prepared to tell you what you want to know, but it won't do you any good. The Angel has moved to the Inner Frontier."
"I'm getting a little tired of hearing about him," said Cain with a trace of irritation.
"So, I suspect, is every fugitive within ten thousand light-years," she replied. "Mr. Terwilliger, I think it is time for you to leave the room. What I have to say to Mr. Cain is for his ears alone."
"Why?" asked the gambler.
"For the same reason that you are denied free access to the goods in my warehouse: I don't want you selling something that's mine to the first qualified buyer who comes along."
"I resent that," said Terwilliger, trying to muster a show of sincerity and not quite succeeding.
"You are welcome to resent it to your heart's content," said the Sargasso Rose. "What you are not welcome to do is remain in my office."
Terwilliger seemed about to protest, thought better of it, and walked to the door.
"I'll be right outside," he told Cain. "Yell out if you need me."
Cain stared at him in amusement, and a moment later the door slid shut behind the little gambler.
"If you plan to hunt Santiago, you really should choose your traveling companions more carefully, Mr. Cain," said the Sargasso Rose, leaning back in her chair.
"Perhaps." replied Cain. "But on his behalf, I should point out that he brought me to you. Otherwise I'd be wasting my time hunting for Duncan Black, or else I'd be heading back for Port étrange to be
at my money out of Jonathan Stern."
"True," she admitted with a shrug. "May I offer you a drink?"
"Why not?" he said agreeably.
She pressed a button on her computer console, and a small, furry red alien, definitely not humanoid, entered by a different door and set a bottle and two glasses down on her desk.
"Do you have any Men at all on Deadly Nightshade?" asked Cain as the alien left the office.
"The race or the gender?" asked the Sargasso Rose. "In either case, the answer is no. Both tend to desert you when you need them the most—especially the gender."
"It must get lonely up here," commented Cain.
"Eventually one gets used to it." She filled the two glasses, and Cain stepped over and took one.
"Thank you," he said after returning to his chair and taking a sip. Suddenly he laughed in self-deprecation.
"What is it, Mr. Cain?"
He held up the glass. "I just realized that there's normal gravity in this room," he replied. "Some observant hunter I am! If I hadn't noticed that this stuff didn't float away, I would never have known."
"The Orange Monkeys like zero gravity. I find continued exposure to it a bit upsetting, so I tailor my office to my own needs."
"It must cost a fortune," he commented.
"It does. Thankfully, I've got a fortune to spare."
He took another sip. "This is pretty good stuff."
"It ought to be," she said. "It comes straight from Deluros Eight."
"You handle merchandise from that far away?"
"You'd be surprised at what passes through Deadly Nightshade, Mr. Cain," she replied. "Or perhaps you wouldn't. Exactly how much did Stern tell you about Duncan Black?"
"Only that Black handled stolen goods, and that he was a middleman between Stern and Santiago," replied Cain. "I know he had access to some of the gold that Santiago picked up in the Epsilon Eridani raid."
"Now that was a cargo!" she said with a smile. "Six hundred million credits' worth of pure bullion!"
"I got the impression from Terwilliger that you decided to follow in Black's footsteps."
"Terwilliger talks too much."
"Most people do," agreed Cain.