Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future by Mike Resnick

Author:Mike Resnick [Resnick, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, Western, Fantasy
ISBN: 9780812522563
Google: seWFkCNNO74C
Amazon: 0812522567
Goodreads: 293291
Publisher: Tor Science Fiction
Published: 1986-02-28T11:00:00+00:00

Part 4

The Angel’s Book

15.

They call him the Angel, the Angel of Death,

If ever you’ve seen him, you’ve drawn your last breath.

He’s got cold lifeless eyes, he’s got brains, he’s got skill,

He’s got weapons galore, and a yearning to kill.

Nobody knew where he came from. It was rumored that he had been born on Earth itself, but he never spoke about it.

Nobody knew where he got his start, or why he chose his particular occupation. Some people say that he had been married once, that his wife had been raped and murdered, and that he took his revenge on the whole galaxy. Some were sure that he had been a mercenary who had gone berserk during a particularly bloody action—but no one who ever met him and lived to tell about it thought him crazy; in fact, it was his absolute sanity that made him so frightening. Others thought that, like Cain, he was simply a disillusioned revolutionary.

Nobody knew his true name, or even how he came to be called the Angel.

Nobody knew why he chose to work the Outer Frontier, out on the Galactic Rim, when there were so many more worlds within the Democracy where he could ply his bloody trade.

But there was one thing everybody knew: once the Angel chose his quarry, that quarry’s days were numbered.

In a profession where reputations could be made by a single kill—Sebastian Cain, Giles Sans Pitié, and Peacemaker MacDougal actually had a combined total of less than seventy, and Johnny One-Note was still looking for his sixth—the Angel had hunted down more than one hundred fugitives. In a profession where anonymity went hand in glove with success, the Angel was known on a thousand worlds. In a profession where each practitioner carved out his own territory and allowed no trespassing, the Angel went where he pleased.

Orpheus met him only once, out by Barbizon, the gateway to the Inner Frontier, three weeks before he killed Giles Sans Pitié. They spoke for only ten minutes, which was more than enough for Orpheus. His audience had expected him to give the Angel no less than a dozen verses—after all, he had given three to Cain and nine to Giles Sans Pitié—but with the insight that had established him as the Bard of the Inner Frontier, Orpheus wrote only a single stanza. When asked for an explanation, he simply smiled and replied that those four lines said everything there was to say about the Angel.

Virtue Mackenzie wished he had written a little more, if only so she’d have a better idea of what to expect if she ever caught up with the Angel. She had reached the Lambda Karos system two days after he had departed, and missed him again on Questados IV. She arrived on New Ecuador three days later, checked for word of his whereabouts at the local news offices, received only negative answers, and finally returned to her hotel, where she took a brief nap, showered, changed her clothes, and went down to the main floor restaurant for dinner.

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