Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future Read Online Free PDF Page B

him?”
    “Then let me amend my statement,”
said Cain. “You’re the only person I know who’s seen
him.”
    “That’s probably true,” agreed
Stern pleasantly. His cigar went out and he snapped his fingers. One of the fali immediately came over with a lighter and relit it.
“That’s my girl,” he said, giving her boneless hand an affectionate squeeze.
She wriggled all over with delight like a puppy, then returned to her position
across the room. “A wonderful pet,” commented Stern. “Faithful, adoring, and
totally unable to utter a sound—three qualities I never found in any woman of
my acquaintance.” He paused and stared fondly at her. “What a sweet, mindless
little thing she is! But back to business, Mr. Cain. You wish to talk about
Santiago.”
    “That’s right.”
    “You are prepared to pay, of
course?”
    Cain nodded.
    “There is an old saying, Mr. Cain,
that talk is cheap. I hope you do not believe in it.”
    “I believe in paying for value
received,” replied Cain.
    “Excellent! You’re a man after my
own heart.”
    “Really?” said Cain dryly. “I
would have been willing to bet that not a single thing in this apartment had
been paid for.”
    “They have all been paid for, Mr. Cain,” said Stern with an amused smile. “Not with money,
perhaps, but with human grief and suffering and even human life. A much higher
price, wouldn’t you say?”
    “It depends on who was doing the
paying,” replied Cain.
    “Nobody very important,” said
Stern with a shrug. “Oh, they probably all had wives and husbands and children,
to be sure, but they were merely spear-carriers in my own saga, which is of
course the only one that matters to me. Certainly you must share my point of
view, since the taking of lives is your business.”
    “I value the lives I take a little
more highly than you do,” said Cain. “So does the government.”
    “And here we are, back to
discussing value and money once more,” said Stern. “I think I shall charge you
fifteen thousand credits to continue our conversation, Mr. Cain.”
    “For that, I want more than a
physical description of a man you haven’t seen in fifteen or twenty years,”
replied Cain. “I want the name and location of the jail, I want to know when
you were incarcerated, and I want the name Santiago was using at the time.”
    “But of course!” said Stern. “Do I
strike you as a man who would withhold information, Mr. Cain?”
    “I don’t know,” said Cain. “Are
you?”
    “Perish the thought,” said Stern.
    “How comforting to know that.”
    “I’m so glad that we understand
each other, Mr. Cain. May I first see, as we say in the trade, the color of
your money?”
    Cain pulled out his wallet,
counted off the appropriate amount, and handed it over.
    “I realize that absolutely no one
uses cash anymore in the heart of the Democracy,” said Stern, “but it has such
a nice feel to it that I’m glad we still indulge ourselves out here in the
extremities.” He quickly counted the bills, then signaled to a fail , who came over and took them from him.
    “Hold these for me, my pretty,” he
said, then nodded his head and watched her as she walked back to her position
with an inhuman grace. “Lovely things!” he murmured. “Absolutely lovely!”
    “We were talking about
Santiago....”
    “Indeed we were,” said Stern,
turning reluctantly from the fali and facing Cain
once again. “I promise to give it my full attention. For fifteen thousand
credits, you deserve no less.”
    “My feelings precisely.”
    “Now, where shall I begin? At the
beginning, of course. I was serving a certain amount of time in durance vile on
the outpost world of Kalami Three for some imagined infringement of the local
laws or customs.”
    “Robbery?” suggested Cain.
    “Receiving stolen goods and
attempted murder, in point of fact,” replied Stern with no hint of regret. “At
any rate, the only other prisoner at the time was a man who went under the