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

staring at him as he fingered through a stack of ancient, crumbling papers. He paid no attention to her. "Danny!" she said irritably. "What's the matter with you?"
           Finally he looked up, the strangest expression on his face. "Who'd have guessed it?" he whispered. "I mean, this is just another house. Nothing special, nothing to indicate . . ." His voice trailed off.
           "What are you talking about?" she demanded.
           He held up a sheet of paper.
           "We just hit the mother lode," he said in awed tones.
     
     

     
                                              2.
     
                         Come if you dare, come but beware,
                         Come to the lair of Altair of Altair.
                         Offer a prayer to the men foul and fair,
                         Trapped in the snare of Altair of Altair.
     
           That was the first thing Danny read. Soon he was making his way through the thousands of verses.
           "They don't even know what they've got here!" he said excitedly. "If they did, it would be under lock and key in a vault, not out in the open in a plastic box that's falling apart."
           "What is it?" asked the Duchess.
           "Listen," said Danny. He picked up another page and read to her:
           "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."
           "Is that supposed to mean something to me?" she asked.
           "That's the Angel he's writing about!" enthused Danny. " The Angel! Haven't you heard of him?"
           She shrugged.
           "He was the greatest bounty hunter of them all! They say he killed more than two hundred men!"
           "So you found a poem about the Angel," said the Duchess, her interest fading. "So what?"
           "You don't understand!" said Danny. He held up a sheaf of papers with the same scrawl on all of them. "This isn't just any poem! This is Black Orpheus' original manuscript!"
           "Yeah?" she said, walking over to look at it. "What makes you think so?"
           "The verses themselves. They're all about the characters he met on the Frontier. And I've heard about these characters—Altair of Altair and the Angel. Heard about them, read about them. They've even made some videos about them."
           "But anyone could write a few verses."
           He opened three more ancient boxes, and pulled verse-covered pages from each. "A few verses, sure. Ten thousand verses, I don't think so. This is it !"
           "What's it worth?" asked the Duchess.
           "Who knows? Ten million, thirty million. What's history worth to a people who don't have any?"
           "I don't know what you're talking about," she said.
           "He was the Bard of the Inner Frontier. There's no law on the Frontier, no government, and there's sure as hell no historians. He was all they had, him and this poem. Bits and pieces have been printed here and there, but no one's ever seen the whole thing." He patted the pile of papers. "Until tonight."
           "Who would buy a bundle of crumbling old papers?"
           "Every museum and every library in the galaxy," answered Danny. "And probably every collector." He held up a long, thick feather. "This is the quill pen he wrote with. This alone ought to bring half a million."
           "You're kidding!"
           "The hell I am. All I have to do is check through the whole manuscript and make sure it's authentic."
           "And you can really auction it for that much?"
           "Not publicly," he said. "I'm stealing it, remember?"
           "Well, if the people who own this place don't