The Return of Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future Read Online Free PDF

heard a loud thump! in the middle of the night and went upstairs to see what had happened. Danny had been sitting on the floor, reading, and finally fell asleep. He had fallen over on his side, and now lay, snoring gently, a page still clutched in his hand. She figured he was out for the next twelve to sixteen hours, but when she checked on him again in the morning he was up and reading.
           "Danny!" she insisted. "Put it down for a few hours. You'll kill yourself!"
           "I didn't know you cared."
           "I don't want you dying before we sell the poem. I wouldn't begin to know how or where to do it."
           "You sure know how to flatter a guy," he said.
           "So are you going to get some sleep?" she said, ignoring his remark.
           "Not right away," he said. "I'm getting close."
           "Close to what? Finishing?"
           "To understanding."
           "What's to understand? They're all just four-line verses. There's nothing very difficult about them. In fact, I thought Black Orpheus would be a better poet. The things you've read to me sounded wimpy and literary and kind of lame."
           "It's what he says, and what he doesn't say, not how he says it," replied Danny. "This thing is nothing short of the secret history of the Inner Frontier up to a century ago."
           "Everything's a mystery," she said with no show of interest. "Why does it have to be a secret history? Why not a public one? After all, the public read it."
           "The men and women and aliens he wrote about were alive when he wrote these verses. Many of them had prices on their heads. Still more confided in him, told him of deeds, some good, some bad, that no one knew about. You have to understand: Black Orpheus was the Bard of the Inner Frontier. He was welcomed everywhere he went. No one ever turned away from him—but to earn that kind of trust, he couldn't openly say anything more than you might find on a Wanted poster." Danny paused, his eyes still bright with excitement. "So he found secret ways to say what he wanted to say. This manuscript is to the Inner Frontier what, oh, I don't know, what Homer was to the Trojan War. Except that Homer exaggerated like hell and told everything out in the open, and Orpheus is concealing things all over the place. Including something huge, right in the middle."
           "You said that yesterday. What is it?"
           "I don't know. I think I'm getting close to piecing it together, but I won't know what it is until I'm done. It's as if he were holding someone for ransom, and I had the money, and he wanted to make sure the police weren't tailing me, so he ran me all over the city to make sure I was clean." He emitted an exhausted sigh. "He's running me all over the history of the Inner Frontier before I can discover what he's hiding."
           "Maybe you're not supposed to find it."
           "That would make a mockery of the whole thing. No, it's there—but he didn't want it to be easy." Danny looked at her. "That means it's something big . Otherwise, he wouldn't have taken such trouble to hide it. I spotted Cain and some of the others right away, but this whatever-it-is is taking a lot more work. Still, another few hours, another day or two, and I'll have it."
           "Hey!" she shouted. "We're leaving today, remember?"
           "We'll see."
           "You promised!"
           "You wanted me to promise," answered Danny. "That's not the same thing."
           "Every day we stay here we increase our risk. A neighbor could report us. The police could find us. The owners could return early. We've been pushing our luck, Danny. Why can't we leave?"
           "I'm still piecing things together," he said. "I don't want to stop, not even for a day."
           "You act like it's some kind of treasure map."
           "I doubt it. Legend has it that Orpheus died broke on an uninhabited world