Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future (19 page)

“He’s a
dangerous
character.” the Swagman corrected her. “In fact I think it would be best if I
did the talking and the negotiating for us.”

“What makes you any better at it
than me?” she demanded. “If you’d have let me bargain for the landcar, I’d have
gotten us one with air-conditioning—or at least something with better shock
absorbers.”

“This was the only one available.”

“You didn’t answer my question:
What makes you think you’re better qualified than me?”

“Because he’s an alien,” said the
Swagman.

“So what?”

“I was raised by aliens. I know
how his mind works.”

“Are you trying to tell me you
were raised by members of Sitting Bull’s race?” she said skeptically.

“No.”

“Then what difference does it
make?”

“I’m used to dealing with aliens.”

“Apples and oranges,” she replied.
“That’s like saying that since you’re used to firing pistols, you’d be good
with a saber.” She grunted as the vehicle swerved to avoid an enormous pothole,
then turned to him. “How the hell did you ever wind up living with aliens in
the first place?”

“When I was three years old, my
family was aboard a colony ship that crashed on Pellinath Four. There were only
two survivors, and the other one died a couple of days later. The Bellum took
care of me until I was seventeen.”

“The Bellum?” repeated Virtue.
“I’ve never heard of them.”

“Most people haven’t,” replied the
Swagman. “They keep pretty much to themselves.”

“Why didn’t they notify the
Democracy that they had you?”

“Strange as it may seem to you,
they didn’t even know the Democracy existed. So I stayed there until a team
from the Pioneer Corps landed and started charting the planet, and then they
took me back with them.”

“What was it like, growing up
without any other members of your own race?” she asked curiously.

“Not that bad, all things
considered. I think it was harder on the Bellum than on me.”

“Oh? Why?”

“They were a dedicated communal
society, and the concept of individual ownership wasn’t very popular with
them.” He grinned. “Needless to say, this was a worldview that I didn’t exactly
share. I’ve been gone for close to thirty years now, and I’ll bet some portions
of their economy still haven’t recovered.”

“I would have thought they got you
young enough to properly indoctrinate you.” commented Virtue.

“That’s what
they
thought,” he said with an amused laugh. “But give a two-year-old child a rag
doll and tell him that it’s
his
, and he’s got an
understanding of property that even a planet filled with Bellum isn’t going to
shake.” He paused. “Anyway, I’ve never been very good at taking orders, so when
they told me that no right-thinking entity would ever want to possess any
material goods, I immediately began accumulating things at a phenomenal rate!”
He grinned again. “I guess it carried over into adulthood.”

“Interesting,” she said, deciding
that the heat was preferable to the dust and closing her window. “But I don’t
see that any of this makes you more qualified than me to speak to Sitting
Bull.”

“He’s an alien who’s trying to act
like a human,” said the Swagman. “That’s much the same position
I
was in three decades ago.” He paused. “Also, I’ve dealt
with him once before, so I know the form.”

“Form? What form?”

“He’s very big on Amerind rituals.
I suspect most of them never existed, but he’s read a lot of books and tapes by
a lot of half-baked anthropologists.”

“And
that’s
what interested Black Orpheus enough to write him up?” said Virtue, obviously
unimpressed.

“He’s written up less colorful
characters,” replied the Swagman. “You and me, for instance.”

“This may come as a surprise to
you, but I didn’t even know I was
in
his damned song
until after my verse appeared.” She snorted contemptuously. “I still don’t know
when and where he saw me, and I don’t think I’ll
ever
know where he got that Virgin Queen crap.”

“So you’re not a virgin and you’re
not a queen,” said the Swagman easily. “
I
was never
chased by a posse, either, no matter what the song says. But Black Orpheus
never lets facts get in the way of truth. After all, he’s a myth-maker, not an
historian.”

“He’s not a myth-maker
or
an historian.” said Virtue. “He’s just a ballad-writer,
and not a very good one, at that.”

The Swagman shook his head. “He
may put his story in ballad form, but he’s not one to let meter interfere with
what he wants to say. The last time he visited me I pointed out that the meter
was all wrong in his songs about Socrates and Altair of Altair and One-Time
Charlie, and he just smiled and said that he’d rather have his songs ring true
than scan properly.”

“The man’s a fool.”

“If he is, then he’s a very
popular fool.”

“You think so?” she said. “You
ought to hear Cain’s opinion about being dubbed the Songbird.”

“Instead of complaining about it,
he ought to be pleased,” said the Swagman. “Orpheus has made him famous.” He
paused. “Hell, he’s made
all
of us famous.”

“You know,” she said thoughtfully,
wiping her forehead again, “maybe we’re missing a bet here.”

“In what way?”

“Maybe we ought to hunt Orpheus up
and ask
him
where we can find Santiago.”

“He doesn’t know,” said the
Swagman. “He’s been hunting for him for the past ten years.”

“But he wrote him up!” protested
Virtue. “I thought he never did that until he’d met his subject.”

“Santiago’s a special case. After
all, an epic about the Inner Frontier that doesn’t mention him just doesn’t
make much sense. Besides, Orpheus is like every other artist I’ve ever met: the
further along he gets on a piece of work, the more frightened he becomes that
he’s going to die before it’s finished and that some total incompetent will
complete it for him. He wanted to make sure that the Santiago verses were done
before that happened; I imagine they’ll be rewritten if he ever finds him.”

“Who commissioned this damned
song, anyway?” asked Virtue.

“No one. He does it because he
wants to.”

“Then I was right the first time,”
she said decisively. “He’s a fool.”

“For doing something that makes
him happy?”

“For giving it away for free.”

“Maybe he’s got enough money,”
suggested the Swagman.

She turned and stared at him. “Do
you know
anyone
who’s got enough money?”

The Swagman smiled. “Maybe he’s a
fool,” he said at last.

The road suddenly dipped through a
wooded hollow, and the Swagman began slowing down.

“What’s the matter?” asked Virtue.

“We’re almost there,” he replied,
pulling off to the side of the road just after it climbed out of the hollow and
ran across a narrow ridge. “See that clearing about half a mile ahead?”

“What are those weird-looking
structures in the middle of it?” asked Virtue, peering through the trees.

“Wigwams,” replied the Swagman.

“What’s a wigwam?”

“A kind of tent that Amerinds used
to live in—or so Sitting Bull tells me. Personally, I doubt that anyone ever
slept in anything like that. It looks much too inefficient, and it certainly
doesn’t afford any protection against your enemies.” He shrugged. “Still, it’s
hardly worth arguing the point; I’ve got better things to do than go around
researching aborigines.”

He turned off the ignition.

“What now?” asked Virtue.

“Now we get out and walk,” he
continued, opening his door as she followed suit.

“Why? We’re still almost half a
mile away.”

“Because Sitting Bull likes his
supplicants to approach on foot. I can’t really say that I blame him; there are
a goodly number of ways to rig some pretty powerful weaponry to a motor
vehicle, and he does have more than his fair share of enemies.” He paused.
“Besides, this way he gets to show off.”

“I don’t follow you,” said Virtue.

“If the last time I came here was
at all typical, we’ll pick up some company along the way and march into his
camp under armed guard. I imagine it makes him feel as if he’s in control of
the situation.”

As if on cue, four aliens stepped
out from behind trees and bushes. Or rather, three—tall, bald, emaciated blue
beings, each carrying a multitude of weapons—
stepped
out; the fourth, which resembled a shaggy yellow caterpillar, merely
slithered
. All four aliens wore war paint and headbands.
The Swagman thought they looked absolutely ludicrous, but Virtue found them
interesting enough to capture with a miniaturized holographic camera that she
had built into her belt buckle.

Finally one of the blue aliens,
who identified himself as Cochise, pointed a sonic rifle at them. They stood
motionless while the caterpillar literally sniffed out their weapons,
appropriated the Swagman’s two concealed pistols, and turned them over to
another of the blue aliens. Finally Cochise jerked his head in the direction of
the camp, and the two humans began walking toward it once again.

When they arrived, Cochise ushered
them to the site of a campfire that had died sometime during the night, told
them to sit down, and left them in the care of another blue alien.

“Anything out of the ordinary
yet?” whispered Virtue.

“Just standard operating procedure
so far,” said the Swagman reassuringly.

Then the flaps of a nearby teepee
were thrust apart, and Sitting Bull stepped out as Virtue surreptitiously
activated her belt-buckle camera and a hidden recording device.

The first thing she noticed about
him was the gold feathers. Initially she thought they were part of his costume,
like the huge ceremonial headdress he wore, but she quickly saw that they were
part and parcel of Sitting Bull himself.

He stood about five feet tall and
was almost as broad as he was high. He covered his genitalia so inadequately
with a beaded loincloth that she knew at a glance that he
was
a he and not an it; and he waddled on thick, muscular legs that were jointed so
strangely that she couldn’t imagine how he could possibly sit down, or even
squat on his haunches.

His face, like those of the other
aliens, was covered by a painted design, but seemed, if not human, at least
very expressive. Virtue couldn’t imagine any being with so many feathers not
having a beak to go along with them, but Sitting Bull possessed a broad, flat
nose and a narrow, puckered mouth. His eyes were umber, his pupils mere
vertical slits. If he had ears, she couldn’t spot them, but she decided that
they may very well have been covered by the substantial headdress.

“Hello, Sitting Bull,” said the
Swagman, starting to get to his feet. “It’s good to see you again.”

“Remain seated,” replied Sitting
Bull in a harsh, croaking voice that grated on Virtue’s ears; it seemed so out
of place that she felt he was purposely deepening it to impress them. The
Swagman sat back down and re-crossed his legs. “Who is your companion?”

“Virtue MacKenzie,” said Virtue,
wondering whether to extend her hand and deciding not to. “I’m a journalist.”

Sitting Bull stared at her
expressionlessly for a moment, then turned back to the Swagman and cleared his
throat, a grating noise that sounded like metal rubbing against metal and
caused Virtue to conclude that she was hearing his normal voice after all.

“What favor do you seek from the
Great Sioux Nation?”

“Information,” responded the
Swagman promptly.

“Will the acquisition of this
information bring harm to one or more Men?” asked Sitting Bull.

“It will,” said the Swagman.

The feathered alien made a sudden
awkward jerking motion with his head, which Virtue took to be a nod of
approval.

“Will the acquisition of this
information bring harm to one or more members of any other race?”

“Absolutely not,” the Swagman
assured him.

“Are you aware of the penalty for
lying?”

“Let us say that I can hazard a
remarkably accurate guess.”

“Do not guess, Jolly Swagman.”
Sitting Bull leaned forward and stared intently at him, and suddenly Virtue
decided that he looked a lot more like an alien than an Indian. “Should any
harm befall anyone other than a Man as a result of the information that you
seek, you and Virtue MacKenzie will be found no matter where you try to hide.
You will be brought back to Diamond Strike, you will be tortured, and
eventually you will be tethered to a stake and burned to death. Is that
understood?”

“Perfectly.”

“Then you may make your request.”

“We’re looking for Santiago. Do
you know where he is?”

“Yes.”

There was a long silence.

“Well?” demanded Virtue.

“This I will not tell you.”

“Will not or cannot?” asked the
Swagman.

“I said what I said,” replied
Sitting Bull stoically.

“I didn’t realize you were afraid
of him,” said the Swagman condescendingly.

“I fear no one.”

“Then why won’t you tell us what
we want to know?”

“Because he makes war against Men.
Because he brings grief to Men. Because he brings chaos to Men. Because he is
Santiago.”

“Cut the crap and name your
price,” said Virtue irritably.

Sitting Bull turned to her, his
pupils dilating and contracting as he breathed. “Women do not speak in
council.”

“Women with money do,” she
replied. “How much do you want?”

“You are very irritating, even for
a member of your race,” said the alien. “I begin to understand why Dimitri
Sokol wants you dead.” He stared coldly at her. “There is no price. I will not
tell you.”