Santiago A Myth of the Far Future

1. Giles Sans Pitie is a spinning wheel, With the eye of a hawk and a fist made of steel. He'll drink a whole gallon while holding his breath, And wherever he goes his companion is Death. There never was a history written about the Inner Frontier, so Black Orpheus took it upon himself to set one to music. His name wasn't really Orpheus (though hewasblack). In fact, rumor had it that he had been an aquaculturist back in the Deluros system before he fell in love. The girl's name was Eurydice, and he followed her out to the stars, and since he had left all his property behind, he had nothing to give her but his music, so he took the name of Black Orpheus and spent most of his days composing love songs and sonnets to her. Then she died, and he decided to stay on the Inner Frontier, and he began writing an epic balled about the traders and hunters and outlaws and misfits that he came across. In fact, you didn't officially stop being a tenderfoot or a tourist until the day he added a stanza or two about you to the song. Anyway, Giles Sans Pitie made quite an impression on him, because he appears in nine different verses, which is an awful lot when you're being the Homer for five hundred worlds. Probably it was the steel hand that did it. No one knew how he'd lost his real one, but he showed up on the Frontier one day with a polished steel fist at the end of his left arm, announced that he was the best bounty hunter ever born, foaled, whelped, or hatched, and proceeded to prove that he wasn't too far from wrong. Like most bounty hunters, he only touched down on outpost worlds when he wasn't working and like most bounty hunters, he had a pretty regular route that he followed. Which was how he came to be on Keepsake, in the Tradertown of Moritat, in Gentry's Emporium, pounding on the long wooden bar with his steel fist and demanding service. Old Geronimo Gentry, who had spent thirty years prospecting the worlds of the Inner Frontier before he chucked it all and opened a tavern and whorehouse on Moritat, where he carefully sampled every product before offering, it to the public, walked over with a fresh bottle of Altairian rum, then held it back as Giles Sans Pitie reached for it. "Tab's gettin' pretty high," he commented meaningfully. The bounty hunter slapped a wad of bills down on the bar. "Maria Theresa dollars," noted Gentry, examining them approvingly and relinquishing the bottle. "Wherever'd you pick 'em up?" "The Corvus system." "Took care of a little business there, did you?" said Gentry, amused. Giles Sans Pitie smiled humorlessly. "A little." He reached inside his shirt and withdrew three Wanted posters of the Suliman brothers, which until that morning had been on the post office wall. Each poster had a large red X scratched across it. "All three of 'em?" The bounty hunter nodded. "You shoot 'em, or did you use that?" asked Gentry, pointing toward Giles Sans Pitie's steel fist. "Yes." "Yes,what?" Giles Sans Pitie help up his metal hand. "Yes, I shot them of I used this." Gentry shrugged. "Goin' out again soon?" "In the next few days." "Where to this time?" "That's nobody's business but mine," said the bounty hunter. "Just thought I might offer some friendly advice," said Gentry. &aResnick, Mike is the author of 'Santiago A Myth of the Far Future' with ISBN 9780812522563 and ISBN 0812522567.