by Mike Resnick
They reached the street and walked out of the hotel, turned right, and headed to Rex's, which was the name Tyrannosaur Bailey had chosen for his establishment.
"Anything else I should know?" asked Dante as they reached the door to the casino.
"Yeah," said Virgil. "No dinosaur jokes."
"I don't know any."
"Good. You'll live longer that way."
They entered, and Dante was surprised at the level of luxury that confronted him. From outside, Rex's seemed like every other nondescript Tradertown building. Inside it was a haven of taste and money. The floors gripped his feet, then released him as he took another step, and another. The gaming tables were made of the finest alien hardwood, meticulously carved by some unknown race, while the matching chairs hovered a few inches above the floor, changing their shapes to fit each player's form—and the players were not merely men, but giant Torquals, tripodal beings from Hesporite III, Canphorites and Lodinites and a couple of races that Dante had never seen before.
Atonal but seductive alien music filtered into the casino, and nubile young men and women dressed in shimmering metallic outfits ran the tables.
Sitting alone in the farthest corner was a huge man, easily seven feet tall, muscled like an athlete. His hair was the color of desert sand, and tumbled down to his shoulders. His nose had been broken at least twice, maybe more, and looked irregular from every angle. One ear was cauliflower; the lobe of the other was stretched enough that it was able to hold an unwrapped cigar that had been placed in an exceptionally large hole there. When he smiled, he displayed a mouthful of ruby and sapphire teeth, all carefully filed to dangerous-looking points.
His shirt was loose-fitting, which added to the impression of enormous size. Dante couldn't see his legs or feet, but he managed to glimpse the tops of three or four weapons stuck in the man's belt.
The man looked up, saw Virgil, and smiled a red-and-blue smile.
"Virgil, you corpse-fucking old bastard, how the hell are you?"
"Hi, Tyrannosaur. I've got a friend who'd like to meet you."
Tyrannosaur Bailey studied Dante for a long moment. "You're the one that Wait-a-bit Bennett is after?"
"How did you know that?" asked Dante.
"This is my world," answered Bailey. "Not much goes on here that I don't know."
"Then you know who I am and why I want to see you," suggested Dante.
"I know who both of you are," laughed Bailey. "You're Danny Briggs, a thief from the Democracy, and you're Dante Alighieri, the self-proclaimed successor to Black Orpheus." He gestured to a pair of chairs. "Have a seat. You too, Virgil."
"He's the one who wants to speak with you," replied Virgil. "I could go spend a little money at your gaming tables, if you wish."
"You don't want to gamble," said Bailey.
"I don't?"
Bailey shook his head. "No, you don't. What you want is to get my Stelargan bar girl into the sack while I'm paying attention to your friend."
"What a thing to suggest!" said Virgil with mock outrage.
"Virgil, the last time you were here, two of my human girls and one of my Tilarbians had to seek psychiatric help to get over the experience. Next time it happens, you pay the bill."
"It was worth it."
"That's it!" snapped Tyrannosaur. "You sit here or you wait outside. There's no third way."
"I thought we were friends."
"We are—but we're not close friends. Now make your choice."
"I think I'll get a breath of air," said Virgil with all the dignity he could muster. He turned and slowly walked out into the street.
"Have a seat, poet," said Tyrannosaur after Virgil had left the casino.
"Thank you," said Dante, sitting down opposite the huge man.
"I approve of what you're doing," continued Bailey. "That poem is all the history we've got—and there's tens of millions of us out here. It's time someone added to it. I'm just as loyal to the Frontier as all those people we left behind are to the Democracy."
Dante didn't quite know what to say except to thank him again, so he remained silent.
"Interesting friend you've picked up," continued Bailey. "They're going to have to write two or three books just to cover the new perversions he's invented." He paused. "How many verses did you give him?"
"One."
Bailey nodded thoughtfully. "Who else have you written up?"
"Not too many," said Dante noncommittally. "I'm still getting my feet wet, so to speak."
"Well, assuming you live past tomorrow, you should find it a pretty easy job."
"Being the only historian for a third of the galaxy isn't all that easy. I suspect it can be quite a burden from time to time."
"I'm sure it was a burden for Orpheus," agreed Tyrannosaur. "But that's because someone had to be first. He paved the way. It should be a cakewalk for you."
"It'll be harder for me."
"Don't have the talent, huh?"
"I don't know. That's for others to judge. But Orpheus had a unifying theme."
"What theme was that?" asked Bailey.
"He had Santiago."
"Santiago wasn't a theme. He was a man."
"He was both. Everyone in the poem is valued based on how he related to Santiago."
"What are you talking about?" said Bailey. "I grew up on that poem! I can quote whole sections of it to you, and we both know that most of them never even knew Santiago!"
"The outlaws were compared to him, never very favorably. The bounty hunters and lawmen were measured based on how close they got to him. Preachers, thieves, aliens, even an itinerant barmaid, they all formed a kind of nebula around him. They were caught in the field generated by his strength and his charisma; Orpheus knew it, even if they didn't."
"So who's your Santiago?" asked Bailey.
"I don't have one . . . yet." The poet sighed. "That's why my job's harder."
"And you may not live past noon tomorrow."
Dante smiled ruefully. "That's another reason why my job's harder."
"So what's your name—Danny or Dante?"
"Dante Alighieri—but they call me the Rhymer."
"Who does?"
Dante made a grand gesture that encompassed half the universe. "Them."
"Them?"
"Well, they will someday."
"We'll see," said Bailey dubiously.
"What makes you an expert on poetry?" demanded Dante.
"I'm not," answered Bailey. "I'm an expert on survival." He stared at Dante. "You've already made a lot of mistakes. You're lucky you're still alive."
"What mistakes?"
"You hooked up with my friend Virgil, who attracts outraged moralists everywhere he goes. You made some kind of mistake at the spaceport, or Wait-a-bit Bennett would never have spotted you. You made a third mistake by sticking around after he made you that offer. He probably has a confederate watching your ship, but by tonight he'll be there himself, and I guarantee he's more dangerous than anyone he might hire." He paused. "How long have you been on the Frontier, poet? A week? Ten days? And you've already made three fatal blunders. Tomorrow you'll probably make a fourth."
"I don't know what I can do about it," said Dante. "I can't raise 50,000 credits by tomorrow morning."
"Sell your ship."
"Uh . . . it's not exactly my ship," said Dante.
"Make that four fatal blunders. The spaceport's got to have reported the registration back to the Democracy. You'll have another warrant out on you by dinnertime, and you've almost certainly got a squad of soldiers already flying out here to reclaim the ship—after they kill you for putting them to the trouble."
"So what do you think I should do?"
"I thought you'd never ask," said Tyrannosaur with a grin. "What you should do is hire a protector, someone who can stomp on Wait-a-bit Bennett as easily as you stomp on an insect."
"If I can't afford to buy him off, I can't afford to pay you to protect me," explained Dante.
"I
don't want your money."
"What do you want?"
Bailey learned forward. "How many verses did you give Bennett? I want the truth, now."
"Three," said Dante.
"Then the man who kills him ought to get at least four, right?"
"Maybe five," agreed Dante.
Tyrannosaur extended an enormous hand. "You've got yourself a deal, poet."
Dante shook the giant's hand. "Call me Rhymer," he said with a smile.
"Rhymer it is!" said Bailey, gesturing to the purple-skinned Stelargan barmaid. "This calls for a drink!"
This calls for more than that. It calls for some serious thought. Here I am, the objective observer, the non-participant, the man who reports history but doesn't make it, and I've just commissioned a man's death. Sure, it's a man who's planning to kill me, but that's his job, and he did offer me a way out.
And then: I'm the only historian out here, as well as the only poet. What I write will become future generations' truth. Is Tyrannosaur Bailey worth five verses? Was Bennett worth three? What criteria do I apply—who saves me and who threatens me? Is that the way history really gets created?
And because he was nothing if not a realist, he had one last thought:
What the hell. Orpheus didn't leave any guidelines for the job, either. I'll just have to play it by ear and do the best I can—and how can I serve history or art if I die tomorrow at noon?
"Here you are, Rhymer," said Tyrannosaur, taking a drink in his massive paw and handing another to Dante.
"Thanks."
"Here's to five verses!"
"You've got 'em, even if he runs."
"Bennett?" asked Tyrannosaur. "He won't run."
"But he can't beat you." Suddenly Dante frowned. "Can he?"
"Not a chance."
"Well, then?"
"A man in his profession can't run," said Bailey. "He's got to believe he's invincible, that nothing can kill him, even when he knows better. Otherwise he'll never be able to face a wanted killer again. He'll flinch, he'll hesitate, he'll back down, he'll run, he'll do something to fuck it up."
"But if he wants to back down, if it's his last day as a bounty hunter, let him walk," said Dante. "You'll get your verses anyway."
"Whatever you say," agreed Tyrannosaur. "But he won't back down."
"Against a monster like you?" said Dante, then quickly added: "Meaning no offense."
"None taken," said Bailey. "But size isn't everything. They say the guy who killed Conrad Bland wasn't much bigger than you are. And I know the Angel was supposed to be normal in size, maybe even a little undernourished. Men have developed more than two hundred different martial arts, and we've picked up dozens more from aliens. Those are great equalizers." He uttered a sigh of regret. "Size just isn't what it used to be."
"Then why does everyone come here to live under your protection?"
"Because I've mastered seventy-two of those martial arts, and I'm the best shot you ever saw with a burner or a screecher."
"Yeah, those are good reasons," agreed Dante. "And the fact that half the guys you fight can't reach your head probably doesn't hurt either."
"Neither does spreading the word."
"I beg your pardon?"
"When I was a young man, I was an adventurer," answered Bailey. "I wanted to pit my skills against the best opponents I could find. I was a mercenary, and for two years I was the freehand heavyweight champion of the Albion Cluster, and I even put in some time as a lawman out in the Roosevelt system. But eventually a man wants to settle down."
"What does that have to do with spreading the word?" asked Dante, confused.
"I still needed an income, so I passed the word that anyone who was willing to tithe me ten percent of their income and their holdings could live here under my protection. My reputation drew more than a thousand immigrants to Tusculum II and kept an awful lot of bill collectors and bounty hunters away."
"I see."
"You're a man of letters," continued Bailey, "so let me ask you your professional opinion about something."
"Shoot."
"I think Tusculum II is a really dull name for a world. I'm thinking of changing it."
"To what?"
"I don't know. Tyrannosaur's World, maybe." He looked across the table. "You don't like it."
"It's a little too, well, egomaniacal."
"I'm open to suggestions."
"How many planets are there in the system?"
"Six."
"Okay," said Dante. "As long as you're a Tyrannosaur, name them after periods in Earth's prehistory."
"I like that. What are the periods?"
"Damned if I know—but there were dozens of them. Have you got a pocket computer?"
"Sure. Don't you?"
"No."
"How do you write?"
"With a quill pen, just like Orpheus."
Bailey withdrew his computer and slid it across the table to Dante, who instructed it to list the various prehistoric eras.
"All right, this should work," announced Dante. "Call the first planet Cambria. This world is Devonia. The next four, in order, are Permia, Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous. If any of them have moons, name the moons after the animals that existed in their eras."
"You've got a head on you, Rhymer!" enthused Bailey. "It would have been a shame to let Wait-a-bit Bennett remove it from your shoulders." He paused. "What'll we call the star?"
"Well, it's on all the charts as Tusculum, but that shouldn't matter. All the planets are Tusculum I through VI, but if you're giving them names that appeal to you, there's no reason why you can't do the same to the star. How about Dinosaur, since that's the idea that gave birth to all the names?"
"Sounds good to me," said Bailey. "Tomorrow I'll have the spaceport computer start signaling ships that we're Dinosaur."
"Make sure it adds that you were formerly Tusculum or you'll drive 'em all crazy."
"Right. I'm sure glad I ran into you, Rhymer."
"Not half as glad as I am," said Dante as Wait-a-bit Bennett entered the casino.
Bennett saw Dante and walked over to him.
"Got my 50,000 credits yet, Danny?" he asked pleasantly.
"No."
"Well, you've got a little over half a day left. I'm sure a bright young lad like you can come up with the money." Bennett paused. "But until that happy moment occurs, I'm not letting you out of my sight."
"You've made two mistakes, Wait-a-bit Bennett," said Tyrannosaur.
"Oh?"
"First, his name's Rhymer, not Danny, And second, no one's laying a finger on him as long as he stays on Devonia."
"Where the hell's Devonia?" asked Bennett.
"You're standing on it."
"You don't have to stand up for him, Tyrannosaur," said Bennett. "The kid's not worth it."
"This is my world!" bellowed Bailey, getting to his feet. "I'm the only one who decides who lives and who dies!"
"I have nothing against you," persisted Bennett. "My business is with Danny Briggs and no one else."
"You have no business on Devonia."
"Like I say, my business is with Danny here . . . but if you try to hinder me in the pursuit of my legal livelihood, I'll have to kill you too."
Tyrannosaur smiled. "Is that a threat?"
"You may consider it such," acknowledged Bennett.
His hand moved slowly down toward his burner, but before he could reach it Tyrannosaur's hands shot out with blinding swiftness, one grabbing him by the neck, the other holding his hand away from his weapon.
Bailey lifted Bennett straight up two, then three, then four feet above the ground. The bounty hunter struggled to free himself. His free hand chopped at Tyrannosaur's massive arm. He landed a pair of devastating kicks in his attacker's stomach. Bailey merely frowned and began squeezing.
Soon Bennett was gasping for air. He landed two more kicks, and poked a thumb at Bailey's right eye, but Bailey simply lowered his head, and Dante could hear the bounty hu
nter's thumb break with a loud cracking sound at it collided with Bailey's skull.
Bennett's struggles became more desperate, and finally Bailey released his grip on Bennett's arm, used both hands to lift the bounty hunter above his head, and hurled him into the wall. There was a strange, undefinable sound as all the air left Bennett's lungs, and he dropped to the floor, where he lay motionless.
Suddenly a cheer went up from the assembled gamblers and drinkers.
"What the hell are they applauding?" asked Dante, staring at the dead bounty hunter.
"They're paying for my protection, remember?" said Bailey, who wasn't even panting from his efforts. "They're cheering because I've just shown them they're getting their money's worth. Bennett came after you, but he could have been any bounty hunter coming after any of them."
Virgil stuck his head in the door in response to the cheering, and gazed impassively at Bennett's corpse.
"Couldn't wait til tomorrow, huh?" he said.
"Out!" ordered Bailey, and Virgil removed himself from the doorway. Tyrannosaur then ordered two of the men on his staff to remove the body and dispose of it.
"The usual method, sir?" asked one of the men.
"Unless you've got a better way," answered Bailey. He turned back to Dante, who was staring at him intently. "I thought I just solved your problem. Suddenly you look like you've got another one?"
"No." Just a question.
"Good. And don't forget our bargain: I get five verses."
"At the very least," said Dante. Who knows? You may get a hundred or more. It's become clear to me that I can't be an Orpheus without a Santiago. Could I possibly have found you this soon?
7.
Tyrannosaur, Tyrannosaur,
Whatever you give him, he wants more,
The world is his oyster, the stars are his sea;
He fishes for souls, a man on a spree.
That was about as political as the Rhymer ever got to be.
The first three verses were about Bailey's size, his strength, his mastery of martial arts and martial weapons. It glorified his fighting abilities, and in time it made his name a household word.
But it was the fourth verse, the one you see above, that was written with a purpose, for the new Orpheus sought a new Santiago, and the mythic proportions he drew—"the stars are his sea" and "He fishes for souls"—were written expressly to get Tyrannosaur Bailey thinking along those lines, to consider himself as something unique and special, a man not so much on a spree as on a holy mission.
