Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future

by Mike Resnick

"I'd just listen for the sound of a spine snapping," she said nastily.

  He winced. "Don't remind me."

  "All right," she said. "You're not spying. You're just here to sample Sunnybeach's delightful climate." She paused. "What else are you here for?"

  "To appraise the situation."

  "And what's your appraisal?"

  "That's pretty obvious," said Terwilliger. "You've jumped ship. You're working with the Angel now."

  "And you're going to run back and tell that to Cain?"

  "I don't have any choice."

  "Of course you do," said Virtue. "You can choose not to tell him."

  "And risk losing my ten percent of the reward?" said Terwilliger. "Not a chance."

  The waiter entered the room then and placed a glass and a container of beer in front of each of them.

  "Thank you," said Virtue, immediately filling her glass.

  "May I take your orders now?"

  "This is all we're having," said the gambler.

  "Allow me to point out that this is a restaurant, not a tavern," said the waiter officiously.

  Terwilliger pulled another hundred-credit note out of his pocket and handed it to the waiter. "Point it out again in another hour," he said.

  The waiter pocketed the money, picked up his tray, and pivoted toward the door in one graceful and well-practiced motion. A moment later they were alone again.

  Virtue drained her glass and turned back to the gambler. "How far has Cain gotten?"

  Terwilliger shrugged. "Who knows? I haven't been in touch with him since 1 left Altair Three."

  "The Angel mentioned his having obtained some information from a drug addict on Roosevelt Three."

  "It's news to me," said Terwilliger.

  "If you don't know where he is, how the hell are you supposed to contact him?"

  "Through Schussler."

  "Schussler?" repeated Virtue. "Who's he?"

  "Schussler's more of an it than a he," answered Terwilliger.

  "That cyborg ship I heard about?"

  He nodded.

  "Schussler belonged to Altair of Altair, didn't he?"

  "Yes."

  "So he'd probably have had access to any information in her computer banks?"

  "I don't know," said Terwilliger. "I suppose so."

  "Then that means that Cain's got still another source of information," she mused aloud. "He might be closer than we thought." Suddenly she turned to Terwilliger. "Why did the Swagman leave him?"

  "I didn't know that he did."

  "You're not exactly a fount of information," she said caustically.

  "I'm supposed to be gathering it, not dispensing it," replied the gambler.

  There was a momentary silence.

  "Maybe he threw him out," she suggested thoughtfully.

  "Maybe who threw who out?"

  "Cain," she said. "Maybe he decided he didn't need the Swagman any longer. Maybe he's come to the conclusion that this cyborg holds the key."

  The waiter entered the room again.

  "I thought I told you to leave us alone," said Terwilliger irritably.

  "I know, sir, but if you are Mr. Terwilliger, I have a message for you."

  The gambler's face turned pale. "Was it given to you personally?"

  "No, sir. It came from the spaceport."

  "Get out."

  "But the message, sir."

  "I don't want to hear it!" snapped Terwilliger.

  The waiter stared at him for a moment, then shrugged and left.

  "Damn!" muttered the gambler.

  "What was that all about?" asked Virtue.

  "ManMountain Bates," said Terwilliger. "He's landed on Sunnybeach—and he's got someone keeping tabs on me, or he wouldn't have known I was here."

  "Your friend Bates isn't very long on brainpower," commented Virtue, pouring her beer into a glass. "Why announce his presence if he's hunting for you?"

  "You haven't seen him." said Terwilliger unhappily. "There's no way he can hide his presence."

  "But calling ahead, for God's sake!" she snorted contemptuously.

  "He's just letting me know that he knows I'm here," said Terwilliger. "It's his idea of a joke. He thinks it'll terrify me." He paused and smiled wanly. "He's right."

  "What are you going to do about him?"

  He laughed nervously. "I'm going to have a couple of drinks, and then I'm going to run so fast it'll make your head spin."

  "Back to Cain?"

  "He's my guardian angel." He paused thoughtfully. "Unless..."

  "Unless what?"

  "Cain's a few thousand light-years from here, and you've got an angel of your own. I'll forget about my report if you'll get him to protect me."

  "For how long?" she asked.

  "Until I'm safely out of this system."

  "There's one condition."

  "What?" he asked suspiciously.

  "Before you leave, you contact Cain and tell him that I'm delaying and misleading the Angel, and that I'm still loyal to him," said Virtue.

  "Just in case he gets there first?" asked the gambler sardonically.

  "It's always a possibility."

  "I don't know," said Terwilliger dubiously. "If he finds out, I'll lost my piece of the action."

  "Bates is between you and your ship," she pointed out. "What's ten percent to a dead man?"

  He stared at the backs of his cards for a moment, then nodded. "It's a deal," he said at last. "You can get the Angel to protect me, can't you?"

  Virtue flashed him a confident smile.

  "He'll do anything I say," she assured him.

  17.

  He's bigger than big, he's taller than tall,

  He's meaner than mean, and that isn't all—

  He drinks straight from morning right through to the night,

  He's ManMountain Bates, and he's anxious to fight.

  * * * *

  His real name was Hiram Ezekial Bates. He was born on the colony planet of Hera, and when he was eight years old he stood six feet two inches tall.

  His parents consulted with numerous specialists. The incompetent among them suggested that he had merely done his growing early; the others knew he had a pituitary system gone berserk, but after subjecting him to countless examinations and tests could recommend nothing to stop it. Finally, when he was twelve years old—he stood seven feet three inches tall by then—they found a doctor who could arrest his growth.

  The problem was that nobody had asked Hiram his opinion, and the fact of the matter was that he relished the notion of being the biggest human being in the galaxy. When they finally took him to the doctor, he dislocated four vertebrae in the poor man's back, broke both of his legs, and quite literally tore his office apart.

  That was the day that he became ManMountain Bates.

  They put him in a home for disturbed juveniles. He battered down the brick wall with his bare hands and took off for points unknown, surfacing some five years later on the Inner Frontier. By then he had finally reached his full growth—eight feet seven inches, and close to 575 pounds of burly, rock-hard muscle—and he worked his way through a number of menial jobs before he chucked it all and became a gambler.

  He was close to thirty years old the first time that Black Orpheus saw him. He was sitting in a poker game in the back room of a bar on Binder X, surrounded by five rugged miners. He'd been losing pretty heavily, and he was none too happy about it. Finally he glared around the table and announced in a loud, belligerent voice that his luck had just changed and he intended to win the next few hands.

  The pot reached six thousand credits on the ensuing hand when Bates finally slammed his cards down on the table. He had a pair of sixes. Two of his opponents had flushes and one had a full house; all tossed their cards into the middle of the table, face down, and opined that they had nothing that could beat him. In a manner of speaking, they were right.

  Two more such displays followed, and when Bates had recouped his evening's losses he took his money a
nd left the game, heading deeper into the Frontier. It made a lasting impression on Black Orpheus.

  Their paths crossed once more, about five years later, on Barios IV. Orpheus was attracted by the sounds of a barroom brawl and upon arriving at the scene found that ManMountain Bates had challenged the entire clientele of a sleazy spaceport bar. They were a hard-living, hard-drinking lot, prospectors and cargo hands and traders, but Bates threw them around the barroom as if they were so many toothpicks, laughing all the while in his deep bass. One after another was tossed through windows or into walls, until only Bates and Orpheus remained standing.

  "Write that in your goddamned song!" he bellowed happily, tossing enough money on the bar to pay for the damages and walking off into the hazy night.

  Orpheus took him at his word and gave him six verses. He also tried to line up a fight between Bates and Skullcracker Murchison, who was the unofficial freehand heavyweight champion of the Inner Frontier, but Murchison did a little checking up and decided he wanted no part of ManMountain Bates.

  As he stood in the lobby of the Welcome Inn, staring apprehensively out into the street while Virtue Mackenzie registered at the front desk, Halfpenny Terwilliger found himself in complete agreement with Murchison.

  "All right," said Virtue, walking over to him. "I'm all set."

  "Good," replied the little gambler. "Let's go up to your room and wait for the Angel there."

  "He's supposed to meet me right here."

  "How soon?"

  "At sunset."

  "That's another two hours or more," complained Terwilliger. "Hell, Bates could walk here from the spaceport by then."

  "Nobody walks in this climate."

  "Damn it! You know what I mean!" He tried to regain his composure. "I'm not going to sit around this idiot hotel's idiot lobby for two hours. I might just as well stand out in the street with a bull's-eye painted on my forehead."

  "Okay," assented Virtue. "Send the message and you can hide in my room."

  "Message? What message?"

  "To Cain."

  "Right now?" he demanded.

  "Whenever you want to," replied Virtue sweetly. "But you can't go up to my room until you do it."

  Terwilliger glared at her, then uttered a sigh of resignation. "You win. Where do I send it from?"

  "I'm sure the hotel has a subspace tightbeam transmitter. Just ask at the desk."

  "What's your room number?"

  "Why?" asked Virtue suspiciously.

  "I'm going to have to bill it to your room."

  "The hell you are."

  "But I don't have any money."

  "Come on, you little rodent," said Virtue. "I saw you bribing the waiter back in the restaurant."

  "That was Cain's money," he said lamely.

  "I don't give a damn whose money you spend, as long as it isn't mine."

  "Are you sure you don't want to pay for it?" he persisted. "It seems kind of immoral to use his money to send him a phony message."

  "Not as immoral as lying to me about your finances," she said firmly. "Now reach into your pocket and dig."

  He shrugged, approached the desk, had the tightbeam booth pointed out to him, and began walking across the lobby to it.

  "I'm sure you don't mind if I come along," said Virtue, joining him.

  "You're very distrusting," said the gambler. "It'll turn you into a grouchy old lady."

  "A grouchy, rich old lady," she corrected him with a smile.

  It took him about two minutes to compose the message and another minute to issue routing and coding instructions so that Schussler would receive it. Then he paid his charges at the desk and turned to Virtue.

  "Are you satisfied now?" he asked. "Or would you rather I stood on the street with a bunch of signs pointing to me?"

  "Don't tempt me," she said, heading off toward the elevators. He followed her, and a minute later they were walking down the corridor of the fourth floor.

  "Here we are," she said, pressing her thumb up against the lock mechanism. It took less than a second to scan her print and check it through the front desk's computer, and the door receded into the wall.

  "Nice," commented Terwilliger, stepping into the room ahead of her. "Very nice."

  "Not bad," she agreed, entering the room and ordering the door to slide shut behind them.

  The room was large and airy, some twenty-five feet on a side, with a plush carpet, a king-sized bed, and a pair of very comfortable chairs. One wall housed a recessed cabinet which contained a holographic entertainment system that was currently displaying an assortment of paid advertisements for Sunnybeach's rather mundane night life. A small table between the chairs had instructions for expanding it into a gaming table, with boards for chess, backgammon, and jabob, an alien card game that was all the rage in the trendiest human gambling establishments.

  "I haven't stayed in a place like this since I made my second fortune!" exclaimed Terwilliger.

  "Your second fortune?" repeated Virtue. "What happened to it?"

  He grinned ruefully. "The same thing that happened to my first one."

  She looked at him, sighed, shook her head, and walked over to the closet.

  "Open," she muttered.

  Nothing happened.

  "Open," she repeated.

  Still nothing.

  "Damn! It's on the blink. If I had anything to put in it, I'd call the desk and complain."

  "Just a minute," said Terwilliger. "I've seen one of these before."

  He walked up to the ornate door and reached his hand straight through it.

  "What the hell did you do?" she asked.

  "Nothing," he answered. "There's no door here. It's a holographic projection." He smiled and pointed to a pair of well-camouflaged holo lenses. "It's cheaper than actually installing a hand-carved door like that, and once you get used to it it's more convenient, too. And," he added, "you get to redecorate for the cost of a couple of new image tapes."

  "How much else is fake, I wonder?" said Virtue, pacing around the room and touching various objects. "Just the closet door, I guess," she concluded.

  "Try the bathroom," he suggested.

  She walked to the door, tried to pass through it, and bounced off.

  "I didn't mean the door," he said, ordering it to open. "But I'll bet you credits to pebbles that those gold-spun curtains around the dryshower aren't really there."

  "A dryshower?" she said irritably. "Shit! I was planning to take a long hot bath tonight."

  "On a desert world?" he said. "Hell, I'll bet even their suites don't supply any water except from the drinking tap."

  "Oh, well," she said, returning to the bedroom and walking to one of the chairs. "We might as well relax and wait for the Angel."

  "Suits me," assented Terwilliger, sitting down opposite her. He pulled out his cards and began shuffling them on the table. "Care for a little game of chance?"

  "No, thanks."

  "You're sure?"

  "If you played games of chance instead of games with predetermined results, you wouldn't be hiding here right now," she replied.

  "You can deal," he offered.

  "Blackjack," she said promptly, taking the cards from him. "Ten credits a hand. Dealer wins all ties."

  "Fine—as long as you'll accept my IOUs if I lose."

  "You can play with Cain's money," she said. "After all, we're all partners, so we'll be keeping it in the family, so to speak."

  "What the hell," he said with a shrug. "Why not?"

  They played for almost two hours, during which time Terwilliger won four hundred credits without ever once being allowed to deal. Finally Virtue looked out the window, handed the deck back to him, pulled four hundred-credit notes out of her satchel, placed them on the table, and got to her feet.

  "It's just about time," she said.

  "Why don't you meet him and bring him back up here?" suggested Terwilliger nervously.

  "What if he's been delayed and I bump into your friend first?" she repli
ed. "Do you really want to be stuck up here in a room that has only one exit?"

  "You've got a point," he admitted begrudgingly, following her to the door.

  They descended to the lobby, which was considerably more crowded as dinnertime approached, and Virtue quickly scanned the faces that were assembled there.

  "Is he here yet?" asked the gambler.

  "No."

  "Then what do we do?"

  "We wait," she said.

  "What if somebody has killed him?" asked Terwilliger, a blind panic starting to overwhelm him.

  "If someone has killed the Angel, you'd better get down on your knees and start saying your prayers," said Virtue, "because I guarantee you that Judgment Day is at hand. Now stop shaking, and try not to wet your pants."

  Terwilliger was too busy peering through the lobby windows into the darkened street beyond to make any reply.

  "You can relax now," said Virtue a moment later as the Angel walked through the doorway. "He's arrived."

  Terwilliger exhaled loudly with relief, and she wondered idly just how long he had been holding his breath.

  "Did you learn anything useful?" she asked as the Angel crossed the lobby and approached her.

  "A bit," he said noncommittally. "I'll have to see one more man tomorrow." He paused. "Who's your friend?"

  "Halfpenny Terwilliger."

  "Is he the one I spotted at the spaceport?"

  "Yes. He works for Sebastian Cain."

  The Angel stared at Terwilliger and said nothing.

  "Well, actually, that's not an operative statement," said the gambler nervously. "My services are currently on the open market."

  "Good luck with them," said the Angel. "Now go away."

  "What?" demanded Terwilliger.

  "I know all about you. You're a crooked gambler who hooked up with Cain on Port étrange and left him on Altair Three. You have nothing that I want."

  Virtue turned to Terwilliger. "Sorry," she said.

  "Now just a minute!" he shouted, drawing stares from all over the lobby. "We had a deal! I kept my end of it. Now he's got to protect me!"

  "Any deal you made, you made with her," said the Angel in level tones.

  "No!" said Terwilliger desperately. "I need you!"

  The Angel stared at him silently.