Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future (16 page)

“The answer,” said Father William,
“is that we can’t and won’t do any of those things, because there aren’t any
halfway measures when it comes to the soul, my children. Your body is just a
suit that you wear for the flickering instant of your lives, but your soul is
an outfit you’re going to wear for all eternity, and you can’t afford to take
any chances with it. You can’t give it an antibiotic and prescribe two weeks of
bed rest for it, because it doesn’t have any bloodstream and it can’t lie
down—and besides, it’s too damned important to try to cure with halfway
measures.” His voice rose in volume and intensity. “Never forget this: There is
no such thing as a
minor
infection of the soul!
There’s no breaking it down into serious and trivial, into fatal and nonfatal.
There’s just infection, and when you see it you’ve got to cut it out with the
holy blade of the Lord!”

Suddenly Virtue felt the point of
a knife prodding her rib cage.

“Not a sound, not a movement!”
whispered the gaunt man.

Father William cleared his throat.
“Some of you want to know: How can such surgery make the soul well again? Well,
my children, it’s a damned good question—and you’re not going to like the
answer, for the answer is as harsh as the wrath of the Lord.” He paused for
effect. “
Nothing
can make an infected soul well
again.” He looked out at his audience, his eyes blazing. “You think you can
fool God with false contrition? Hah!” He bellowed the contemptuous laugh so
forcefully that the speaker system emitted an ear-splitting whine.

“So why do we cut it out?
Because—and here’s the gist of it, brethren—we’ve got to act fast to stop that
infection from spreading to other souls. We’ve got to stop the evil from
creeping like a cancer from one soul to the next!”

“I could yell for help,” whispered
Virtue.

“It might start as a yell,”
replied the gaunt man. “I guarantee it’ll end as a gurgle.”

“There’s nothing new about this,”
continued Father William. “What did the Lord do when the people of Sodom became
infected? He cut out the cancer. He didn’t sit up with his sick patient and
tend to its illness. He used the knife! What did He do when He saw that the
whole world was wicked? Did He go in and perform microsurgery? Hell, no! He
flooded it for forty days and forty nights!”

He paused and wiped the sweat from
his face with a black handkerchief.

“He’s due to take a break soon,”
whispered the gaunt man. “When he does, get up and walk out very slowly. I’ll
be right beside you.” He prodded her with the point of the knife for emphasis.

“Why should I?” she whispered
back. “You’re going to kill me anyway.”

“I can do it quick and easy, or I
can do it so you’ll be in pain for hours,” he replied emotionlessly. “That’s
all the choice you’ve got. It’s up to you.”

She considered making a break for
the door, but he seemed to read her mind and suddenly grabbed her arm. She
slumped back, her mind racing, searching for possibilities of escape but
finding none. She had already decided that she wasn’t leaving the tent like a
sheep going to slaughter, and that if worse came to worst, she’d make him kill
her in front of two thousand witnesses—but since he was operating with the
Swagman’s knowledge and consent, she couldn’t be sure that anyone would lift a
finger to stop him—and indeed, she suspected that they wouldn’t.

“You’d think some people would
learn their lesson by now, wouldn’t you?” demanded Father William, his voice
rising. “You’d think they’d learn that you can’t pull the wool over God’s eyes,
that you can’t hide an infection from His heavenly clinic!”

He glared out at the audience.

“That’s what you’d think—but some
people just never learn.”

Suddenly Father William’s face was
filled with fury.

“You’d think they’d at least have
the brains not to try to do Satan’s work in the house of the Lord!” he roared,
drawing a pistol and firing a blast in Virtue’s direction.

Several members of the audience
screamed, a few bellowed curses, and most of them—including Virtue—dove to the
floor.

There was total confusion for the
next thirty seconds. Then people began getting up, asking what had happened.
When Virtue regained her feet, she noticed that the gaunt man was dead, his
left eye socket burnt to a crisp.

“Don’t touch him!” thundered
Father William as other members of the congregation began noticing the victim.
“There’s paper on that man. He belongs to me and the Lord.”

The preacher looked out over the
audience.

“The Lord is my eyes and ears, and
there’s not a lot that escapes the two of us.” Father William paused. “The Lord
steadies my hand and aims my guns. Blessed is the name of the Lord!”

He replaced his pistol in its
holster.

“There’s an object lesson to be
learned here, my children—and that is that Good can come from Evil. Once I take
this sinner’s scalp and turn it in, he’ll have done a hell of a lot more for
the Lord by dying than he ever thought of doing while he was alive.” He lowered
his head. “Let’s say a brief, silent prayer for this poor sinful bastard’s
pitch-black soul, and wish Satan the best of luck with him.”

He continued his sermon for another
half hour, ignoring the dead body, bringing forth every reference he thought
mildly appropriate to the subject at hand, from the concept of an eye for an
eye to the Day of Judgment, which he promised was a lot closer at hand than
most people suspected.

Finally, when he finished,
explaining that he was cutting his preaching short out of respect for the
dead—and also because the Democracy’s post office would be closing soon—he had
a young boy from the Tradertown take his platinum poorbox up and down the
aisles, and he didn’t dismiss the congregation until everyone had made a
contribution.

“I’ll be seeing you all here
bright and early tomorrow morning,” said Father William, signaling them that it
was now permissable to rise and depart, “when the topic will be ‘Sex and Sin,’
for which I suggest you leave the children at home. Donations will be
appreciated, and if anyone would like to bring along a couple of chocolate
layer cakes with thick fudge frosting, I promise to put them to good use.”
Suddenly he pointed to Virtue. “You stick around, young lady. We’ve got some
serious talking to do.”

The young boy brought him the
poorbox and whispered something in his ear.

“Hold it!” he hollered, and those
people who hadn’t yet made it to the exit froze in their tracks.

“I don’t know who goes by the name
of the Spike, or even what sex you are, but I’ve been told on very good
authority that you tried passing off some Royal Yen in the poorbox. Now, as you
know, the Royal Yen isn’t acceptable currency anywhere but out on the Rim, and
I’ve got a gut feeling that the good Lord is going to take it as a personal
affront. So what I’m going to do is ask this handsome young man to move among
you again, and see if you can’t find it in your heart to come up with some coin
of the realm that’ll buy food and vaccines for the poor unfortunates on
Kellatra Four, which is my next port of call. As for this,” he added, holding
up the unacceptable currency, “I’ll just hang on to it in case I should run
into some God-fearing missionary whose call is leading him out to where he can
use it.”

The boy walked into the midst of
the crowd and emerged a moment later with two crisp fifty-dollar Maria Theresa
notes. Father William nodded his head in approval, and a moment later Virtue
found herself alone in the tent with him.

“I want to thank you,” she said,
approaching him and extending her hand. “I’d have been dead meat if you hadn’t
spotted him.”

“I couldn’t have done it if you
hadn’t come to hear my sermon,” he replied, clasping her hand between both of
his. “Which is just as it should be. You come to praise the Lord, and the Lord
provides for you. Looks to me like He thinks you’ve got mighty important
business somewhere up the line.”

“I do.”

“So important that a man with a
price on his head wanted to kill you?”

“He was hired by Dimitri Sokol.”

“Well, I’m sure Satan’s warming up
a special seat in hell for Mr. Sokol.” He paused. “By the way, he had two
accomplices. What happened to them?”

“They won’t be bothering me,” said
Virtue emphatically.

Father William nodded his head
approvingly. “Good. I’m glad to see you don’t need this kind of heavenly
protection all the time.” He released her hand, picked up his glass, and took
another swallow of his blue drink. “Why does Sokol want you dead?”

“I have no idea,” she said,
looking him full in the eye.

“You know,” he said with the hint
of an amused smile, “it’s a damned good thing that God’s got big plans for
you—because otherwise He’d strike you mute for lying inside His house.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking
about,” said Virtue.

“Come on, young lady,” said Father
William. “Dimitri Sokol’s a smuggler and swindler who thinks he’s worked out
his own special brand of contrition.” He laughed contemptuously. “As if he
thinks he can keep everything he did a secret while he pretends to be a humble,
churchgoing public servant!” He stared at her. “Let me suggest that you
blackmailed him, he paid you off, and now he’s trying to get his money back.”

“Close, but no cigar,” said Virtue.
“I blackmailed him, all right—”

“Perfectly acceptable,” he
interrupted her. “Sometimes you’ve got to hold the cancer up to the light
before you can cut it away.”

“But not for money,” she
continued. “For information.”

“Ah!” he said, his eyes lighting up.
“What kind of information?”

“I’m looking for Santiago.”

Father William seemed to find that
uproariously funny. “If I were you, young lady, I’d find out where he was and
run the other way. Now
that’s
some information
that’s freely given, and as such ought to count for more than anything Sokol
told you.”

“He told me to talk to the Jolly
Swagman.”

“Did he indeed? Well, I suppose he
was right. But you’re not very likely to find the Swagman attending any
sermons—and especially not when I’m doing the preaching.”

“Where
will
I find him?”

“Up in the hills, about ten miles
out of town. Anyone around here could have shown you the way.”

“They also tell me he’s a hard men
to see.”

“It all depends who you are and
what you want to talk about.”

“They say that
you
can get me in to see him,” she said bluntly.

“I imagine I can, at that,”
replied Father William.

“Will you?”

“That’s another story altogether,”
he said slowly.

“You mean you won’t?”

“I didn’t say that. I said it was
another story.” He looked around the room until his gaze fell on the killer’s
body. “That heathen came mighty close to getting you a personal meeting with
God,” he said. “
Mighty
close. It’s a damned good
thing the Lord was helping keep my eye sharp and my hand steady.”

“I’ve already thanked you. Do you
want me to do it again?”

“Well, young lady,” he said,
withdrawing his black handkerchief and polishing his poorbox meaningfully,
“there are thanks, and then there are thanks.”

She stared at him for a moment,
finally comprehending. “One thousand credits,” she said at last.

He smiled. “That’s hardly chapter
one of that other story we were talking about.”

“Just remember that it’s a story
and not a novel,” she replied. “Two thousand.”

He pursed his lips and considered
the offer.

“How’s your cooking?” he asked at
last.

“Terrible.”

“Pity.” He stared at her, then
shrugged. “What the hell. Between the bounty money and your generous donation,
we’re going to see to it that five thousand children on Kellatra Four never
come down with drypox or blue fever again.” He bent over, raised his left pants
leg, and withdrew a long hunting knife that he had strapped to his calf. “Let
me just collect the proof of the pudding for the local constabulary and we’ll
be off.” He turned to her. “You
do
have two thousand
credits, don’t you?”

She pulled the notes out of her
satchel. “Have we got a deal?” she asked.

He took the money
from her, put it in his poorbox, and grinned. “We sure as hell have, praise the
Lord!”

Up pops the
Swagman, out pops his gun,

Down comes the
money, away he does run;

There goes the
posse, seeking his den—

Then up pops the Swagman, at it again!

Considering that he ran his own
planet and had pretty much of a free hand on ten or fifteen others, you’d have
expected the Jolly Swagman to be backed up by a veritable army of outlaws and
cutthroats, but he wasn’t. He had informants, of course, and a lot of contacts
inside and outside the law, but for the most part he worked alone.

And considering that he worked
alone, you’d have expected him to be a giant of a man, sort of a Goldenrod
version of ManMountain Bates, but he wasn’t. He was an inch or two shorter than
normal and about twenty pounds overweight, and truth to tell he didn’t have a
single memorable physical feature, except maybe for his eyes, which were just
about colorless.

And considering that he wasn’t an
imposing physical specimen, you’d have to figure that he was at the very least
a sharpshooter or a demolitions expert or a master of disguise, but he wasn’t.
All he really had going for him were a pretty agile mind, an offbeat notion of
morality, and a hunger for things that weren’t his.

Now, all of that was enough to
bring him to Black Orpheus’ attention—but the thing that
really
interested the Bard of the Frontier was his accent.