by Mike Resnick
"Why should he be willing rejoin the world?" asked Matilda curiously.
"Because I know him better than he knows himself," said Silvermane.
"I still don't see why you couldn't have just sent him a message to join us," said Dante.
"It's been years since he's seen any action," said Silvermane. "I want to make sure he's in good enough physical and emotional shape. A decade of seclusion and mourning can change a man beyond all recognition."
"Well, let's hope it didn't."
Silvermane got to his feet threw some Maria Theresa dollars on the table. "Let's go find out."
Dante and the others joined him, and a few moments later they were rapidly skimming a few inches above a dirt road in a sleek limo.
"Beautiful country," remarked Dante, looking out across the green fields.
"Dull country," said Silvermane. "Beautiful country has hills and mountains and valleys and makes lousy farmland. You need an expanse of flat characterless land like this to grow anything in quantity."
"I grew up surrounded by mountains and valleys," said Dante. "We paid a premium for the food we imported." He smiled wryly. "Maybe that's why I appreciate farmland."
"Take a look at that!" said Matilda, pointing to a huge cow that stood a good ten feet at the shoulder. Suddenly another enormous cow came into view, then a whole herd of them. "Aren't they remarkable?"
"Mutated," said Silvermane. "Cost a bundle to create them, but once they began breeding true they've more than paid back their cost."
"You sound like you've been here before," noted Matilda.
"Once, about eight years ago."
"You didn't get him to come with you back then. Why should this time be any different?"
"I didn't ask him to come with me then," answered Silvermane.
"What were you doing here?"
"I'd been wounded, and I needed a place to stay while I healed. The Rocker gave it to me."
"He sounds like a good friend."
"He was, once."
"Maybe he still is."
"We'll know soon enough," said Silvermane.
They rode the next half hour in silence, and then the limo came to a halt, hovered for a moment, and lowered itself gently to the ground.
"We have arrived at our destination," announced the navigational computer.
Silvermane climbed out of the limo, then helped Matilda out. When Dante and Virgil had also emerged, he turned and faced the farmhouse a short distance away.
The door irised and a burly man stepped through. He took one look at Silvermane and a broad smile crossed his sallow face.
"Joshua!" he called out. "How the hell are you?"
"Just fine this time," answered Silvermane, approaching him. The man trotted forward and threw his muscular arms around Silvermane.
"Damn, but it's good to see you!" He backed away a step. "Who are your friends?"
Silvermane introduced each by name. "And this is the notorious Plymouth Rocker," he concluded, indicating the man.
"It's been a long time since I was notorious," said the Rocker. Then: "Come on into the house. You must be thirsty after your trip out from the spaceport."
"One of us sure as hell is," volunteered Virgil, stepping forward.
The Rocker took them back to the farmhouse, and a moment later they were inside it. The walls of the foyer were covered with holos of a lovely woman, who Dante knew must be Priscilla. They passed to the living room, which had still more holos, plus a dozen little remembrances of her: a favorite book of poetry, a gold-handled hair brush, a crystal wine glass that had stood empty for more than a decade.
"It's like a goddamned shrine to her," Dante whispered to Matilda.
"It must be wonderful to be loved the way he loved her," she whispered back.
"Wonderful or stifling," whispered Danny. "Either way, it had to make losing her almost unbearable."
The Rocker brought out beer for everyone, then invited them to sit down on the various chairs and couches.
"So, what brings you to Bodini?" he asked Silvermane when they were all settled.
"You."
"I'm always glad to see you, Joshua," said the Rocker. "But I'm out of the business."
"What business?" asked Silvermane with mock innocence.
"Any business."
"You can't bury yourself here forever."
The Rocker pointed to an elegant urn with gold inlays that floated in an anti-grav field near his fireplace. "That's what remains of my Priscilla," he said. "When I die, I've left orders to cremate me and then mix our ashes together. I won't have it any other way." He paused. "I don't want to die on some other world and be separated from her forever."
"Whatever you say," said Silvermane.
"That's what I say."
"Still, it seems a shame."
"That I can't go killing bad guys with you?" said the Rocker with a smile. "You don't need me. You never did."
"It's a shame," continued Silvermane, as if the Rocker hadn't said a word, "that you can't avenge her death."
"What are you talking about?" demanded the Rocker, suddenly alert. "No one knows who killed her—you know that. How can I avenge her?"
"You've been looking at it all wrong. You don't know which individual killed her. But you know he worked for the Democracy, that he represented it."
"So what?" said the Rocker bitterly. "How do you go to war with the whole Democracy?"
"That's the easy part. You join me."
"Just you and me against the whole Democracy?"
"You and me—and them," said Silvermane, indicating his companions. "And the whole of Santiago's organization."
"How can Santiago have an organization?" said the Rocker in exasperated tones. "He's been dead for a couple of hundred years, if he ever really existed at all. You're not making any sense, Jushua."
"Santiago is alive," said Dante.
The Rocker turned to him. "Another quarter heard from."
"Santiago is more than a man," continued Dante. "He's an ideal, and he changes outfits just the way you and I do. Today he's wearing Joshua Silvermane."
"Well, I'm sure that's very interesting, but it doesn't make any sense," said the Rocker.
Dante was about to explain, but Silvermane cut him off. "It doesn't have to," he said. "All you have to know is that you can punish the Democracy for what they did to Priscilla, or you can stay here and mourn her and never do anything about it. It's your choice."
The Rocker stared at Silvermane for a long moment. Dante thought he was actually going to take a swing at him, but instead he finally got to his feet.
"I'll only come if I can take Priscilla with me," he said at last.
"If that's what you want."
"It's not negotiable. Wherever I die, she's got to be there or they'll never mingle our ashes."
"Have you considered living?" suggested Silvermane.
"Not lately," admitted the Rocker. "But now you've given me a reason to, even if we only last an hour—which, I might add, seems optimistic." He walked to a closet, pulled out a very old pulse gun, and tucked it in his belt. Then he went to the pedestal and gently, tenderly took the urn in his arms. "Okay, I'm ready. Let's go."
"Don't you want to take anything else?" asked Dante.
"Like what?" asked the Rocker.
Dante shrugged. "I don't know. Some clothes, maybe, or perhaps another weapon?"
"I'll buy 'em when I need 'em."
A few moments later they were racing back to the spaceport, as Dante and Silvermane took turns filling in the newest member of their organization.
32.
They didn't all leave Bodini II together, since they had come in a number of ships. Dante, Silvermane, and the Plymouth Rocker took off first and landed on Brandywine, a lovely little world in the Spinos system, where Silvermane had a mountain retreat. He hadn't visited it in close to three years, but it had a full-time staff—a husband-and-wife team, plus a groundskeeper—and it was in perfect repair. Dante left m
essages to Matilda and Virgil to meet them there. He wasn't sure how far he could trust Blossom, so he kept her out of the loop.
"Nice layout," commented the Plymouth Rocker, walking through the rustic retreat. "Build it yourself?"
"I appropriated it from someone who didn't need it any longer," replied Silvermane.
"Who was it?"
"Nobody very important," answered Silvermane in tones that made it clear the subject was closed.
"Well, Joshua, what's our next step?" asked the Rocker.
"We're about to decide—and call me Santiago."
"Sorry."
"I've been thinking about it," said Silvermane. "And it seems to me that there's no reason to build a new organization when it's so much easier to take over the One-Armed Bandit's. How many men does he have working for him now?"
"I'm not sure," answered Dante, settling down in an angular chair of alien design that was more comfortable than it looked. "He has people recruiting all over the Frontier. I would think he's got between 75 and 100 by now, maybe even more."
"That proves my point. It could take us months to get that many men—and then we'd have to go to war with his men. Much better to just take over what he's got."
"Won't the One-Armed Bandit have a little something to say about it?" asked the Rocker.
"Not if we work it right," said Silvermane.
"You're not talking about walking right in and killing him?" said Dante. "We don't have any idea what defenses he's installed since I left—not that he needs very many."
"No, I don't plan to confront him on his own world," replied Silvermane. "I may be brave, but I'm not suicidal."
"So the trick is to get him off Valhalla," said the Rocker.
"That's right."
"How?"
Silvermane turned to Dante. "I thought our resident poet might have an idea. It seems that he's never short of them."
"Are you being sarcastic," asked Dante, "or are you really asking for suggestions?"
"Both."
Dante lowered his head in thought for a moment, then reached into a pocket and pulled out a notebook and a stylus and began scribbling something.
"What's he doing?" asked the Rocker.
"I'm sure he'll tell us when he's done," said Silvermane, watching the young poet as he crossed out words, wrote in new ones, and stared off into space, obviously thinking. Finally he looked up.
"Here's how we do it," he announced, and then read aloud:
"Women scream and children shake,
Lawmen hide and strong men quake.
The world is turning upside down—
The One-Armed Bandit's come to town."
"What the hell does that have to do with anything," asked the Rocker.
Silvermane smiled. "You're on the right track, Rhymer."
"Would someone explain what's going on to me?" said the Rocker.
"Dante is the new Black Orpheus," said Silvermane. "He's the reason that Santiago is being resurrected in the first place. The One-Armed Bandit knows this. Do you start to follow?"
"Okay," replied the Rocker. "So the Bandit sees the poem, and he realizes that Dante is telling the Frontier that he's not the hero he's cracked up to be. So what? From what you tell me, he's already going to kill Dante the next time he sees him."
"He's calling himself Santiago these days," said Silvermane. "He's done everything he can to separate himself from his identity as the One-Armed Bandit. He's going to make enough enemies as Santiago; he doesn't need the ones who have reason to kill the Bandit."
"That's not enough," said the Rocker. "Are you telling me he's going to drop everything he's doing and come after Dante here just because he writes one lousy stanza calling the Bandit a villain?"
"Use your imagination," said Silvermane. "This is the opening shot, the Bandit's wake-up call." He turned to Dante. "Am I right?"
"You're right."
"Okay," said the Rocker. "What comes next?"
"I find a remote planet maybe 100,000 light-years from Valhalla," said Dante, "and I start printing poems in the classified section of its major newsdisc—and each poem is more explicit. I point out who he deals with, what he looks like, where he lives. I start naming his key people. Then we get a third party to transmit all this to the Bandit. How long do you think it'll be before he comes after me himself?"
"Why wouldn't he simply send one of his killers?" asked the Rocker.
"Because I know too much. He's got to be sure he shuts me up, and that means he'll do the job himself."
"And once we know he's left," concluded Silvermane, "you and I will pay a visit to Valhalla and take over the Santiago business."
The Rocker turned to Dante. "And then you come back from the planet before the Bandit can reach it?"
"I'm not going to it at all. I don't have to be there to put the ads in. We'll have to send somebody there, because he'll check to see if they were inserted locally, but I'm the only one he'll recognize, and I'm no more suicidal that Santiago here."
"Okay," said the Rocker. "Now that you've explained it, I don't see any reason why it shouldn't work." He paused. "I'm not stupid, no matter what you think. I'm just not used to dealing with a devious bastard like yourself."
"I'll take that as a high compliment," said Dante, forcing a smile.
He spent the next three days writing the verses that would convince the Bandit to leave his headquarters and travel halfway across the Frontier. In the meantime, Silvermane contacted a friend who owed him a favor and had him to go Hadrian II, a distant, isolated Frontier world that had a large enough population to support a hugely popular newsdisc.
Matilda showed up the day after Dante finished the poems, and Virgil arrived two days after that. Blossom radioed them that she had decided to return to Valhalla and beg the Bandit to take her back.
"Stupid," said Dante.
"Maybe he will take her," said Matilda.
"She's signed her own death warrant," said Dante. "If he doesn't kill her, we probably will. After all, there's no question now where her loyalties lie."
"You recruited her," said Matilda. "Can't you un-recruit her, just send her back to Heliopolis?"
"She practically worships the Bandit. Do you think she'll just pack up and leave peacefully if we kill him—or if we take over while he's gone and haven't killed him yet?"
"No," she admitted, "I suppose you're right. I'm just sorry about it."
"If I were you, I'd worry about how many more innocent bystanders the Bandit will kill before we depose him," said Dante. "At least Blossom knows the score and made an informed choice. Stupid, but informed."
Even at light speeds it took Silvermane's friend eight days to reach Hadrian. Dante could have sent the poems via subspace radio while the man was en route, but he couldn't be sure the man wouldn't just transmit them on, and the whole purpose was to make certain that if the Bandit or any of his people traced the poems to their source, there could be no doubt that they came from Hadrian II itself.
Finally the man landed on that distant world, the poems were transmitted, and within two days the first four had appeared on the newsdisc, which had a new edition every eight Standard hours.
Then came the question of how best to get the poems into the Bandit's hands.
"It's too obvious to send them directly to the Bandit," said Dante. "I mean, hell, if they come from an 'interested friend', he might try to find out who the friend is before he races off to Hadrian."
"What do you suggest?" asked Silvermane.
"I've been thinking about that," said Dante. "We'll use Wilbur Connaught."
"Santiago's accountant?" said Silvermane, surprised. "The one they call the Grand Finale?"
"That's the one."
"Why him?"
"Because I can give him a reason for reading the classified section of the Hadrian newsdisc," answered Dante. "He told me once that he used to work for Barioke, one of the major warlords out on the Rim. That was a long time ago. Barioke's probably dead by now
; he's certainly not a warlord any longer."
"So?"
"So we run a classified saying that Barioke needs to speak to Wilbur about a very private matter, and that since he's lost track of him he's trying classifieds all over the galaxy." Dante paused. "Then we put the same ad in 20 other newsdiscs, but we wait two days to insert it. Since Wilbur has to get into the Democracy now and then to keep an eye on Santiago's investments, he's still got a Democracy ID, which means all of Barioke's messages will be routed to his code no matter what computer he's using. But the one we want him to read will get there first—the others are just to convince him he's not being used—and we'll make sure that it appears right next to the poem. He'll see it, and bring it to the Bandit's attention. The Bandit may make sure the poem originated on Hadrian, but I don't think he'll check Barioke's message, or even read it."
"Sounds good to me," said Silvermane. He looked around. "Does anyone have any objections to it?"
No one did—until Matilda burst into Dante's room three days later, a worried expression on her face.
"What's up?" he asked, looking up from the stanza he was working on.
"You'd better get your ass out to Hadrian II quick!" she said. "The Bandit's probably got a half day's start on you. You have to beat him there!"
"What are you talking about?" said Dante. "I'm not going anywhere—and we want the Bandit to go to Hadrian."
"You don't understand!" snapped Matilda, tossing a computer cube across the room to him.
"What is it?" he asked.
"The Hadrian newsdisc," she replied.
"The ads are there?"
"Yes."
"Well, then?"
"That's all anyone else read," said Matilda. "But I read the whole damned thing. Do you know the name September Morn?"
"Sounds like a painting, if memory serves."
"Screw memory! She's the poet laureate of the Questada Cluster, and she lives on Hadrian."
"I didn't know they had a poet laureate."
"There are a lot of things you don't know," said Matilda. "For example, I'll bet you don't know that she's won an award for a poem about Santiago."
His eyes widened. "You're kidding!"
