"Just step into the shaft," explained Danny. "It'll sense your presence, and you'll stand on a cushion of air that'll take you up to the attic."
"You're sure? I've never seen one of these things before."
"They're all the rage on Deluros VIII and the bigger worlds," said Danny. "Give it another twenty years and they'll be just as popular here."
She looked skeptical, so he stepped into the shaft first. When she saw him standing on air she joined him, and they floated gently up to the attic.
"Lights," he ordered, and suddenly the attic was illuminated with soft, indirect lighting. As tidy as the house had been, the attic was that chaotic. Books, tapes, disks and cubes were stacked awkwardly on the floor, paintings were piled against a wall, each leaning on the other. Piles of old wrinkled clothes sat side by side with piles of unmarked plastic boxes.
"Take a look, Danny!" she enthused, staring out a window. "You can see the whole lake. It's gorgeous!"
"Just a minute," he replied, walking to another window. He knelt down, pushing a few plastic boxes aside. One of the ancient boxes literally cracked open and fell apart.
"Don't you just love the way the moonlight plays on the water?" said the Duchess.
"Oh, Jesus!" whispered Danny.
"I didn't hear you."
There was no answer, and she turned to him.
"I thought you were looking out the window," she said, 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 know what they've got . . ."
"It makes no difference. The bidders—well, the legitimate bidders, the ones I plan to avoid—will want to know how I got it. They'll want to take it away to authenticate it, and once it's out of my possession, I can't control what happens to it."
"So it'll be a private sale?"
"A very limited auction, let's call it," he corrected her. "Market value could be fifty million credits. I'll take twenty million and be happy with it."
"I hear a lot of I's," she said suddenly. "What happened to we?"
"I thought you didn't want to be a criminal."
"I'm already a criminal. I might as well be a rich one."
"I'll take care of you," promised Danny.
"I don't want to be taken care of," complained the Duchess. "I want to be a partner—an equal partner."
"I don't have equal partners," said Danny.
"You'd never have found it if I hadn't wanted a view of the lake," she persisted.
"And you still wouldn't know what it was if I hadn't told you," retorted Danny. "I said I'd take care of you and I will. Now get off my back and let me look at what we've got here."
"We should pack it up and leave Bailiwick tonight," said the Duchess.
He shook his head. "Too soon. They'll have men posted at the spaceport, and I don't own a private ship."
"What makes you think they won't still have men posted in another day or two?"
"Look, I embarrassed them, but it was a small-time crime. Pretty soon there'll be a nice juicy murder or two, and they'll decide to go after bigger fish."
"You'd better be right," she said.
"You're free to leave any time you want," said Danny. "But I stay here, and so"—he patted the boxes—"do these."