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

tripped him. He fell with a bone-jarring thud.
           Danny raced back to the table, took her hand, and began pulling her toward the door.
           "I didn't mean to do that!" she said, panic-stricken. "It was instinct! I just didn't want him to shoot you!"
           " I believe you!" said Danny urgently. " He never will! Come on! He's not going to stay down forever, and he's got a partner!"
           Suddenly Gibbs, the manacle hanging from his wrist, burst into the tavern.
           "Now!" said Danny urgently. The Duchess took a quick glance at Gibbs, screamed, and actually beat Danny out the door.
           "Left!" he whispered as he caught up with her. They reached the corner and had just turned out of the line of sight when the two policemen emerged, weapons in hand, from the tavern.
           "Now they're going to kill us!" whispered the Duchess, terrified.
           "They're never going to find us," answered Danny. "Just trust me and do what I say."
           They ran through the streets, turning frequently, never seeing any sign of their pursuers, always moving farther and farther from the center of the small city. After a few minutes the buildings took on new and different shapes: some were triangular, some trapezoidal, some seemed to follow no rational plan at all.
           "Where are we?" asked the Duchess, as Danny led her down narrow winding streets that seemed totally patternless.
           "The native quarter," he said. "They won't follow us here."
           "Is it dangerous?" she asked, looking around.
           "It is if they know you work for the Democracy. They'll leave us alone."
           "How do you know?"
           "I've spent a lot of time here," said Danny, nodding to an orange-skinned being who stared right through him as if he didn't exist. "They know I won't do them any harm."
           "You have alien friends?"
           "They're not aliens, they've natives," answered Danny. "And yes, I have friends here."
           She began looking panicky again. "I can't believe it! I'm a fugitive, and I'm hiding out in the alien quarter!"
           "Calm down," said Danny. "You're safe now."
           " You calm down!" she snapped. "Maybe you're used to having the police after you, but it's a new experience for me, and I don't like it very much!"
           "They won't come to the quarter," he said confidently.
           "Are we going to spend the night here?"
           He shook his head. "We'll give the police half an hour to figure out where I went, and another couple of minutes to decide it's not worth the effort to search for us here."
           "Then what?"
           He smiled. "Then we have our choice of 53 empty houses."
           She lit a smokeless cigarette. "So it's not enough that I helped a criminal escape capture," she said bitterly. "Now the police can add breaking and entering to the charges."
           "I'm grateful that you stopped my friend Commander Balsam from shooting me," said Danny, "but no one asked you to. It was your choice to hinder a police officer in the pursuit of a criminal, so don't blame me."
           "I told you: I wasn't thinking clearly," she said. "I was just reacting."
           "Believe me, no one's going to arrest you," Danny assured her. "Any red-blooded man who was at the tavern will swear that Balsam tripped over you."
           "Do you really think so?"
           "I do. Besides, if I don't know your real name, neither do they. If you choose to stay with me, all they know is they're after someone who called herself the Duchess. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'll give plenty of ten-to-one that that's not the name on your ID disk or your passport."
           "It isn't. I didn't like my name, so I changed it."
           "They do that on the Inner Frontier, not here on the Democracy worlds. How can the government keep tabs on you if they