"I know what he was."
"That's no answer!"
"It's the best you're going to get."
"Which is a roundabout way of saying that you don't know for a fact whether or not any Santiago killed innocent children."
"If they did," said Dante, "then we're going to improve upon the originals."
"Who made you the arbiter of what Santiago does and doesn't do?" continued Blossom. "You're just a poet."
"Not even a very good one," admitted Dante.
"So?"
"I'm carrying on the work of a very good one," said Dante. "In the cargo hold of this ship are thousands of pages of his manuscript. I've studied it until I damned near know it by heart, and that means I know what Santiago did and what he meant to the Frontier. The One-Armed Bandit is no Santiago."
"Where does it say that he has to be? That was your idea, not his."
"It's his now," said Dante. "But he doesn't understand the concept. He's made it too black and white. He's the good guy and all the members of the Democracy are the bad guys—but it's not that simple. It never has been. Most members of the Democracy are just men and women who are trying to get through each day without rocking the boat or hurting the people they love. Not only don't they have any interest in the Democracy's abuses, they don't even have any knowledge of them. As for the Democracy itself, we don't want to get rid of it; it's all that stands between us and a hostile galaxy. What we want to do is limit its abuses, and remind it who it's supposed to be protecting out here on the Frontier. The Bandit would destroy it; Santiago just wants to straighten it out. Neither will ever succeed, but the Bandit will kill more innocent people with each passing day, and eventually bring down destruction on all the people he's fighting for, because he's going to commit some abuses that the Democracy can't ignore."
"Santiago committed abuses," said Blossom. "That's why he was King of the Outlaws."
"Santiago committed crimes," said Dante. "That's why the Democracy put a price on his head and left it to the bounty hunters to find him. If he'd gone to war against innocent Democracy citizens, the whole goddamned Navy would have come out to the Frontier, two billion ships strong, and blown away every world they came to until they found him. That's what the Bandit's asking for."
Blossom sighed deeply. "All right. Maybe you're right, maybe you're not—but it's all academic now anyway, since he's banished us and plans to kill us on sight. So what do we do now?"
"I don't know," said Dante. "Find the true Santiago, I suppose."
"While this one's killing people right and left and telling everyone Santiago's to blame for it?" asked Virgil.
"What do you suggest?" said Dante.
"Kill him."
"Who's going to do it?" Dante shot back. "You? Me? Matilda? You've seen him in action. Even Dimitrios of the Three Burners wouldn't stand much chance against him."
"There must be someone out there."
"So you find a better killer," said Matilda. "Then what?"
"Then you hope he's more reasonable than the Bandit," replied Virgil.
"We're going about this all wrong," said Dante. "Santiago is more than merely a competent killer. We chose the Bandit not just because of his physical abilities, but because we thought he was a moral man."
"He is," answered Virgil. "Too moral. Sometimes that can be as much a fault as not being moral enough."
Dante turned to Matilda. "Have you got any suggestions?"
"He's not an evil man," she began.
"But he's done evil things, and he's almost certainly going to do more."
"Let me finish," she said. "He's not an evil man. He's wrong- headed in some respects, but he's willing to put his life on the line for the cause—as he perceives it—every day, he's willing to be hated and feared and mistrusted by all the people he's trying to defend, he's willing to do everything required of Santiago. The problem isn't that he's a shirker, but that, because of his misconceptions, he's willing to do too much, not too little."
"What's your point?" said Dante.
"I think it's more practical to educate him than replace him," she said. "After all, he's already set up shop as Santiago. Even if you found a way to kill him, there's no guarantee that the next one would be as moral, or as self-sacrificing."
"How are we going to educate him if he's going to shoot us on sight?" demanded Dante in exasperation.
"We aren't," said Matilda. "That much is obvious."
"So . . . ?"
"So we find someone who can."
"You're saying we get someone to join his organization and try to influence him?" asked Dante. "That strikes me as a pretty slim hope."
"Do you want to kill him?"
"You know we can't."
"Anyone can be ambushed. We're smarter than he is. It wouldn't be that hard—especially now, before he builds a truly formidable organization." She stared at him. "Now answer my question."
"No," he admitted. "No, I don't want to kill him."
"Then we have two choices: we can hope someone else kills him, or we can try—by proxy—to change the way he looks at things."
"Do you have anyone in mind?"
"Not yet."
"I don't want to cast a pall of gloom here," volunteered Virgil, who looked only too happy to do so, "but you're the guys who chose the Bandit in the first place. What makes you think you'll do any better this time around?"
"If we don't find a replacement, who will?" asked Dante.
"Me."
"You have a candidate in mind?"
"Yeah. I figure the easiest way to make the Bandit accept our candidate is to send him someone with a reputation, someone with bona fides, so to speak—but a freelancer, not someone who proposes to share his business out of the blue."
"All right," said Dante. "Who is it?"
"You ever hear of the Black Death?"
"He's a killer for hire?"
"Everyone's a killer for hire," said the Injun. "The difference is the he don't make any bones about it."
"And what makes you think he can influence the One-Armed Bandit?" asked Matilda.
"He owes me a couple of favors."
"Sexual, of course," said Dante distastefully.
"Personal, anyway," said Virgil noncommittally.
"Can you trust him?"
"Probably."
"Just 'probably'?" asked Matilda, frowning.
"'Probably' is as high a rating as I'd give the Rhymer here," retorted Virgil, "and he and I are connected at the soul."
"The hell we are!" snapped Dante.
Virgil grinned. "You see? My closest friend in the galaxy, and he's pissed that I cherish our friendship. One of these days he'll sell me out for thirty pieces of silver."
"Two pieces of lead alloy would do it," muttered Dante.
"Get back to the point," said Matilda. "Can we trust the Black Death?"
"As much as you can trust anyone," answered Virgil.
"Can he kill the Bandit if he has to?"
"Hell, I can kill him when he's back's turned. How many times did he turn his back on you in the past month? A hundred? A thousand?"