by Mike Resnick
A gaunt man with a handlebar mustache and thick, bushy sideburns entered the tent, looked around for a seat, and finally approached Virtue.
"Do you mind moving over just a bit?" he whispered.
She moved to her left, making room for him.
"I meant to get here sooner, but one of my harvesters broke down," he added apologetically. "Have I missed much?"
She shook her head and placed a finger to her lips.
"Sorry," he muttered, turning his attention to Father William.
"Now, if the body gets a mild infection, what do we do?" The preacher glared out at his audience, as if daring them to answer. Nobody said a word. "We give it antibiotics. And if it gets a major infection, we give it other drugs." He gripped the edges of the podium with his massive hands. "And when it gets infected by a cancer, what do we do?" He made a slashing motion with his right hand. "We cut it out!" he shouted.
He paused and drew a deep breath, releasing it slowly. "But what about the soul? What do we do when it becomes infected? How do we inject an antibiotic into its bloodstream? How do we amputate a piece of the soul before the infection can spread?"
"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!"
9.
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.
It was the first one he'd ever heard.
Men had had accents when they were still Earthbound, and they would have them again in the future, thousands of years after the Inner and Outer Frontiers had been totally settled and civilized. But during the eras of the Republic and the Democracy and even the early Oligarchy, which spanned almost six millennia between them, every Man grew up knowing two tongues: that of his native world and Terran (and more often than not, the tongue of his native world was Terran). Out on the Frontier, where Men changed worlds the way their brothers back on Earth and Deluros VIII changed shirts, Terran was all anybody spoke: it had been carefully devised over a period of decades to be the kind of language any Man could pick up with ease, a language that was well-nigh impossible to speak with an accent.
So when Black Orpheus hunted up the Swagman and sat down to talk with him, the conversation wasn't half a minute old before Orpheus knew that he'd been raised by aliens.
The Swagman never denied it, but he wouldn't be coaxed into giving out any of the details. He liked the creatures who'd brought him up too much to want them to be studied and exploited by the creatures of his own race, and he knew that that was exactly what would happen if Black Orpheus incorporated them into his song.
At any rate, the balladeer was absolutely captivated by the outlaw's explosive g's and sibilant sh's. He stayed on Goldenrod for a week or two, and some people say that the Swagman even took Orpheus on a raid with him, just to show him what it was like. They became friends, because in spite of his penchant for lawbreaking, the Swagman was a pretty friendly person. He saw Black Orpheus a few years later and didn't even mention that Orpheus had hurt h
is feelings by giving him only a single verse; and Black Orpheus was so impressed that he was still on the loose that, without the Swagman's requesting it, he sat right down and added another couple of stanzas, including one about the bandit's fortress (which he insisted on calling a schloss in order to create a rhyme).
Schloss or fortress, Virtue decided as she and Father William stood at the massive front door, it was one hell of a structure. In a less technical age its bulk alone could have withstood an army; now its incredibly sophisticated defense systems could repel attacks from above, below, or straight ahead.
Finally the huge portal swung open with a slight humming noise, revealing the Swagman, who stood in the entry foyer, hands on hips, staring at Virtue with an amused curiosity.
Whatever it was she had expected in a bandit chief, he wasn't it. His uncallused white fingers had been meticulously manicured; his blond hair had been painstakingly styled in the latest Deluros fashion; his face was unmarked and clean-shaven; and his clothing, from the elegant velvet tunic to the sleek lizardskin half boots, seemed to anticipate the coming fashion among the Democracy's trendsetters, rather than echoing the current one.
"Ah!" he said with a smile of greeting. "The enigmatic Virtue MacKenzie, I presume?"
"And you're the Swagman?" replied Virtue.
"The one and only," he answered. "Good evening, Father William. How's the salvation business?"
"The same as always," replied the preacher. "Satan is a full-time opponent."
"I understand that you had him down for the count this afternoon," said the Swagman in his unmistakable accent. "But where are my manners? Do come in."
They followed him down a short corridor as the door swung shut behind them, and from there into a massive great hall, complete with a floor-to-ceiling fireplace wall, a number of rugs that had been hand-made on Boriga II and Kalamakii, a set of four exquisitely crafted chairs from far Antares, and numerous hardwood shelving units that housed art treasures from literally hundreds of worlds across the galaxy.
