The Return of Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future by Mike Resnick Page A

looked for a weapon, even something as primitive as a club, as he ran, but the spaceport was neat as a pin, and he couldn't see anything he could use. Then he saw another motion out of the corner of his eye—the animal's keeper.
           It made sense. Someone had to be able to control it, or it might savage someone with a legitimate reason for being there. The keeper, armed with a pulse gun, was walking leisurely after the animal, obviously in no hurry to call it off. Dante raced to him, knocked him down just as the creature reached the Duchess. It took about ten seconds to wrestle the pulse gun away from the keeper and crack him across the head with it—and those were ten seconds the Duchess didn't have.
           Dante whirled and fired at the animal, killing it instantly—but it fell across the Duchess's torn, lifeless body.
           "Damn you!" yelled Dante at the senseless body by his feet. "She didn't do anything worth dying for!" He stared at the main terminal. "Damn you all!"
           He knew he couldn't stay where he was or return to the hotel. A sweeping security camera or another beast and keeper would spot the Duchess in a matter of seconds. He tucked the gun into his belt and ran to McNeil's ship.
           He followed the Duchess's instructions, claiming to be McNeil. That bought him enough time to reach the stratosphere. Then came all the warning messages, which meant they'd either found the Duchess or McNeil or both. He alternately lied and threatened for the next thirty seconds, spent another fifteen seconds admitting that he was Danny Briggs and promising to return to the spaceport—and while they were debating whether to shoot him down his ship passed through the stratosphere and reached light speeds.
           And because he was Dante Alighieri and not one of the larger- than-life characters he planned to write about, he did not vow to avenge the Duchess. Someone would avenge her; that much he did promise himself. When he found the right person, he would tell him the story of the Duchess and point him toward Bailiwick, and he would enjoy the results every bit as much as if he had physically extracted his vengeance himself.
           Then he was on his way to the Inner Frontier, where he would assume his new identity and his new career among legendary heroes and villains who, he suspected, couldn't be any more dangerous than the Democracy's finest.
     
     

     
                                              4.
     
                         Hamlet MacBeth, a well-named rogue,
                         Loves the women, when in vogue.
                         Loves the gents when no one cares,
                         Gets rich off his perverse affairs.
     
           That was the first poem that Dante Alighieri wrote once he reached the Inner Frontier. There was nothing very special about Hamlet MacBeth except his name, which fired Dante's imagination. He decided he couldn't leave anyone named Hamlet MacBeth out of his history, so he began finding out what he could about the man.
           What he found out was a little embarrassing to both parties, because it turned out that what Hamlet MacBeth was was a gigolo who rented himself out to both sexes. The people of Nasrullah II, his home world, didn't much give a damn what MacBeth did as long as he didn't do it to or with them, but some of the men who were just passing through found that they were not only expected to pay for MacBeth's sexual skills, but also for his silence.
           Nasrullah II was the first world that Dante touched down on. He stayed only long enough to trade in his stolen ship for another one and to have a drink in a local bar, which was where he heard about MacBeth. He didn't write the poem until he had landed on New Tangier IV in the neighboring system, where he proceeded to recite it in a couple of