by Mike Resnick
"Shut up and listen!" snapped Dante.
Again she stared at him. "Just what the hell did he do?"
"What would you say if I told you he killed 300 kids for no reason except that someday they'd grow up to be members of the Democracy?"
"Did he?"
"Yes. On Madras IV."
"He must have had some reason."
"I just gave it to you."
She frowned. "300 children?"
"In cold blood." Dante paused. "You and I can argue about whether he should have killed that crazy old lady back on Heliopolis. After all, she was a witness to a crime and could describe Santiago. But these were just kids. They never saw us, we never saw them."
"That doesn't seem like him."
"The hell it doesn't. He killed a couple of thousand people in the Blixtor Maze. This isn't the same guy we knew three months ago—or if it is, then we were terrible judges of character."
"Of course he's the same man. We didn't set out to select an angel."
"We don't want an angel," agreed Dante. "But we want someone who can discriminate between a Democracy officer or bureaucrat and a child who lives in the Democracy."
"Maybe we defined the parameters of the job wrong," suggested Matilda. "Maybe he thinks—"
"You're not paying attention," interrupted Dante. "Fuck the definitions. Do we want a Santiago who'll wipe out 300 kids for any reason at all?"
She sighed deeply. "No," she said at last. "No, we don't."
"Part of it is my fault. I told him to lose the 'sirs' and 'ma'ams', and never to apologize, that Santiago didn't do that. But he's gone overboard. I should have known it would happen before we ever set foot on Madras."
"How could you?"
"Virgil's helped me out of some tight spots, and introduced me to some people I wanted to meet . . . but let's be honest: he's a lying, drug-addicted killer who's probably sent half a hundred bedmates to the psycho ward. Whatever he is to me, he's nothing to Santiago—and yet thousands of men and aliens died in the Blixtor Maze just so the Bandit could set him free. That's not loyalty; that's out-and-out crazy."
"All right," said Matilda. "When you put it that way, I can't disagree with you."
"I don't know where it started going wrong," continued the poet. "I never met a more decent, more humble man than the One- Armed Bandit. He practically reeked with concern for his fellow man. How could just calling himself Santiago change him so much?"
"You can ponder that for the next few years," she answered. "The more immediate question is: what do we do about him?"
"I don't know," admitted Dante. "We certainly can't take him out by ourselves. I've seen him wipe out twenty hired guns without working up a sweat." He paused. "Besides, there probably aren't half a dozen men on the Frontier who can kill him. Do you want someone that formidable, that potentially uncontrollable, to become our Santiago? We'd just be replacing one problem with another."
"If we can't tolerate him and can't remove him, just what do you propose to do?" demanded Matilda.
"I don't know. That's why we're talking."
"I suppose we can wait until there's an opportunity . . ." began Matilda.
"To do what?"
"To kill him, of course," she replied. "He doesn't have any reason to suspect we're turning against him. Sooner or later he's got to drop his guard, relax, turn his back, do something to give us a chance."
"And then what?"
"Then we find another Santiago, or you go back to writing your poem without him and I go back to being the best thief on the Frontier." She stood up and began nervously pacing back and forth across the room. "Hell, I just wanted a Santiago so the Democracy would have a bigger target than me. If I can't have one, I can't have one. I was doing just fine before I met you, Rhymer; I can do fine again."
"It's more than my poem," said Dante. "The Inner Frontier needs Santiago. Hell, the human race needs him."
"Even if he kills 300 innocent children?"
"He's not Santiago."
"He is now. Just ask him. Or your ladyfriends from Snakepit. Or the survivor from Jackrabbit Willowby's little army. Like it or not, Santiago is abroad in the galaxy once more, all thanks to us."
"We created him," agreed Dante. "We have to find some way to un-create him."
"Short of finding an even better killer, I don't know what we can do," said Matilda. "We given him an organization. We've set him up in the drug trade, and robbed millions from a bank. We've supplied him with Wilbur's services, and that's probably doubled his money already. We've hired two dozen guns, and we've got a couple of ladies like Blossom who'll do anything, no matter how perverse, if it's for the good of the cause. We did more the create him; we made him successful."
"Some of them might leave if we give the word," said Dante with more conviction than he felt.
"Name one, besides Virgil," she challenged him.
He grimaced. "I can't."
"I know."
"Still, we have to do something. Somehow, in his mind, he's equated being against Santiago with being for the Democracy. The originals knew the difference. They didn't expect anyone to thank them, or to understand what they were doing. Santiago didn't get to be a myth that's lived for over a century by killing children and old ladies."
"You really feel you can't reason with him?"
"He's armored in his . . . I was about to say his ignorance, but that's not it. He's armored in his righteousness—and it's been my experience that there's nothing more difficult to reason with than a righteous man."
"So what do we do?"
"We keep in touch, we talk whenever we're alone, we try to keep him from doing any more harm until we can come up with a solution, and we hope we don't cause even more unnecessary deaths by waiting." He paused. "I know this started out as a way for me to add to my poem and you to get the heat off you—but it's much more than that now. He'd still be killing Unicorns back on Heliopolis if it wasn't for us. I don't even blame him; he can't help being what he is, and Lord knows he didn't apply for the job. It's our fault he's here, doing what he's doing, and we've got a moral obligation to put an end to it."
"I never thought I'd hear you argue in favor of moral obligations," she noted wryly.
"Neither did I," he admitted. "I certainly don't think of myself as a moral man. But we've unleashed something very dangerous, something uncontrollable, and I think it's our duty—mine, anyway—to do something about it."
At that moment the door burst open and three recently-hired men entered the room, burners in their hands.
"What the hell's going on?" demanded Matilda.
"He wants to talk to you," said one of the men. He turned to Dante. "To both of you."
"Who does?" asked Dante.
The man looked amused. "Guess."
Dante and Matilda walked out of her room, down the corridor to the living room, and then to the office. The Bandit was sitting at his desk.
"That will be all," he said to the three men. "You can leave now."
"Are you sure, Santiago?" asked the spokesman.
"I am quite capable of protecting myself," he said in a voice that brooked no opposition.
The three men left without another word, and the door slid shut behind them.
"What do you want?" asked Matilda.
"Yeah," said Dante. "We were just about to get romantic."
"Spare me your lies," said the Bandit.
"Who's lying?"
"Just how stupid do you think I am? I heard every word you said."
"What are you talking about?" said Matilda.
"I had both your rooms bugged."
"Why?"
"How can you ask that when I just told you I've been listening to you since Matilda entered her room?" said the Bandit irritably.
"All right, you heard us," said Dante, deciding that further denials were futile. "Now what?"
The Bandit looked from one to the other. "I thought you were more perceptive than you are," he said at last. "You have absol
utely no concept of what Santiago is, what I must do if I am to succeed. We don't live in a humanistic universe. There is absolute good and absolute evil abroad in it. The Democracy is the evil, and we can never compromise with it, can never appease it, can never show it any more mercy than it would show to us if it were given the opportunity."
"You're talking about the Democracy, and I was talking about the 300 kids you killed," said Dante. "How evil were they?"
"Can't you understand?" replied the Bandit. "That's 300 armed men who won't be coming after us in 15 years."
"That's 300 kids who might have grown up to be doctors, who might have saved a million lives, including some right here on the Frontier."
"They belonged to the Democracy. They would have been trained to be the enemy."
"That's a crock," Dante shot back. "For all you know, it was a religious school, training ministers to come out to the Frontier."
"No more word games," said the Bandit. "My problem is not what to do with members, however young, of the Democracy. It is what to do with you." He paused. "I should kill you, as you would kill me if you had the chance. That is the only logical course of action, do you agree?"
Dante and Matilda stared at him, but made no reply.
"Well, at least you don't disagree." The Bandit rubbed his chin thoughtfully with his real hand. "On the other hand, I wouldn't have become Santiago without you. I owe you something for that."
"If you can solve this moral problem, you can solve others," said Dante. "Maybe there's hope for you yet."
"Shut up," said the Bandit, making no attempt to hide his annoyance. Not anger, noted Dante. We're not important enough to arouse his anger. He's just annoyed, as if we were insects that were bothering him on a hot summer day.
The Bandit was lost in thought for another moment. Finally he looked up at Dante and Matilda. "I know I can never again trust you, that you will kill me if you are given the opportunity. By the same token, I can't trust anyone you recruited; I don't know where their loyalties lie. So this is my decision: I will give the two of you, as well as Blossom and Virgil, one Standard day to get off Valhalla. If you are still here when the day is over, I'll kill you. I will contact Wilbur and tell him to transmit all my money to an account of my choosing, and that if he doesn't do so within that same Standard day he's a walking dead man."
"Maybe he can't do it in a day," suggested Matilda.
"He'll find a way, or he'll wish he had." The Bandit got to his feet and faced them. "One day and one second from now, we are at hazard. If you don't act against me, I won't seek you out—but know that starting tomorrow, I will kill each and every one of you the next time we meet."
26.
They sat in their ship—Dante Alighieri, Waltzin' Matilda, Virgil Soaring Hawk, and the Flower of Samarkand—half a dozen lightyears from Valhalla, and discussed their situation.
"I don't believe you've told me everything," said Blossom angrily. "What did you do? Why has he turned against us?"
"He hasn't turned against us so much as he has turned against Santiago," said Dante.
"You keep saying that," protested Blossom. "How can he turn against Santiago? He is Santiago!"
"No," said Dante. "He's a man we've been calling Santiago. There's a difference."
"Maybe he had a point about those children," she said. "At least they won't be gunning for him in ten or twelve years."
"Are you saying that if he had the ability to kill every child in the Democracy, he should?" asked Matilda.
"No," said Blossom. "But there are billions, maybe hundreds of billions, of children. He killed 300. Is that any reason to turn against him?"
"If he'd killed one, that would be reason enough," said Dante.
"Didn't all the other Santiagos kill people?" she demanded. "Innocent people as well as guilty?"
"Yes, they all killed people," answered Dante. "And sometimes innocent bystanders were killed. That's the fortunes of the kind of war Santiago has to wage. But no Santiago ever went out of his way to kill innocent bystanders when it could be avoided."
"How old are you?" said Blossom. "30? 35? How do you know what Santiago did more than a century ago?"
"I know what he was."
"That's no answer!"
"It's the best you're going to get."
"Which is a roundabout way of saying that you don't know for a fact whether or not any Santiago killed innocent children."
"If they did," said Dante, "then we're going to improve upon the originals."
"Who made you the arbiter of what Santiago does and doesn't do?" continued Blossom. "You're just a poet."
"Not even a very good one," admitted Dante.
"So?"
"I'm carrying on the work of a very good one," said Dante. "In the cargo hold of this ship are thousands of pages of his manuscript. I've studied it until I damned near know it by heart, and that means I know what Santiago did and what he meant to the Frontier. The One-Armed Bandit is no Santiago."
"Where does it say that he has to be? That was your idea, not his."
"It's his now," said Dante. "But he doesn't understand the concept. He's made it too black and white. He's the good guy and all the members of the Democracy are the bad guys—but it's not that simple. It never has been. Most members of the Democracy are just men and women who are trying to get through each day without rocking the boat or hurting the people they love. Not only don't they have any interest in the Democracy's abuses, they don't even have any knowledge of them. As for the Democracy itself, we don't want to get rid of it; it's all that stands between us and a hostile galaxy. What we want to do is limit its abuses, and remind it who it's supposed to be protecting out here on the Frontier. The Bandit would destroy it; Santiago just wants to straighten it out. Neither will ever succeed, but the Bandit will kill more innocent people with each passing day, and eventually bring down destruction on all the people he's fighting for, because he's going to commit some abuses that the Democracy can't ignore."
"Santiago committed abuses," said Blossom. "That's why he was King of the Outlaws."
"Santiago committed crimes," said Dante. "That's why the Democracy put a price on his head and left it to the bounty hunters to find him. If he'd gone to war against innocent Democracy citizens, the whole goddamned Navy would have come out to the Frontier, two billion ships strong, and blown away every world they came to until they found him. That's what the Bandit's asking for."
Blossom sighed deeply. "All right. Maybe you're right, maybe you're not—but it's all academic now anyway, since he's banished us and plans to kill us on sight. So what do we do now?"
"I don't know," said Dante. "Find the true Santiago, I suppose."
"While this one's killing people right and left and telling everyone Santiago's to blame for it?" asked Virgil.
"What do you suggest?" said Dante.
"Kill him."
"Who's going to do it?" Dante shot back. "You? Me? Matilda? You've seen him in action. Even Dimitrios of the Three Burners wouldn't stand much chance against him."
"There must be someone out there."
"So you find a better killer," said Matilda. "Then what?"
"Then you hope he's more reasonable than the Bandit," replied Virgil.
"We're going about this all wrong," said Dante. "Santiago is more than merely a competent killer. We chose the Bandit not just because of his physical abilities, but because we thought he was a moral man."
"He is," answered Virgil. "Too moral. Sometimes that can be as much a fault as not being moral enough."
Dante turned to Matilda. "Have you got any suggestions?"
"He's not an evil man," she began.
"But he's done evil things, and he's almost certainly going to do more."
"Let me finish," she said. "He's not an evil man. He's wrong- headed in some respects, but he's willing to put his life on the line for the cause—as he perceives it—every day, he's willing to be hated and feared and mistrusted by all the people he's trying to d
efend, he's willing to do everything required of Santiago. The problem isn't that he's a shirker, but that, because of his misconceptions, he's willing to do too much, not too little."
"What's your point?" said Dante.
"I think it's more practical to educate him than replace him," she said. "After all, he's already set up shop as Santiago. Even if you found a way to kill him, there's no guarantee that the next one would be as moral, or as self-sacrificing."
"How are we going to educate him if he's going to shoot us on sight?" demanded Dante in exasperation.
"We aren't," said Matilda. "That much is obvious."
"So . . . ?"
"So we find someone who can."
"You're saying we get someone to join his organization and try to influence him?" asked Dante. "That strikes me as a pretty slim hope."
"Do you want to kill him?"
"You know we can't."
"Anyone can be ambushed. We're smarter than he is. It wouldn't be that hard—especially now, before he builds a truly formidable organization." She stared at him. "Now answer my question."
"No," he admitted. "No, I don't want to kill him."
"Then we have two choices: we can hope someone else kills him, or we can try—by proxy—to change the way he looks at things."
"Do you have anyone in mind?"
"Not yet."
"I don't want to cast a pall of gloom here," volunteered Virgil, who looked only too happy to do so, "but you're the guys who chose the Bandit in the first place. What makes you think you'll do any better this time around?"
"If we don't find a replacement, who will?" asked Dante.
"Me."
"You have a candidate in mind?"
"Yeah. I figure the easiest way to make the Bandit accept our candidate is to send him someone with a reputation, someone with bona fides, so to speak—but a freelancer, not someone who proposes to share his business out of the blue."
"All right," said Dante. "Who is it?"
"You ever hear of the Black Death?"
"He's a killer for hire?"
"Everyone's a killer for hire," said the Injun. "The difference is the he don't make any bones about it."
"And what makes you think he can influence the One-Armed Bandit?" asked Matilda.
