Still, he was known to editorialize a little, and there’s not much doubt that he felt Socrates was earmarked for the pits of hell. Oh, he’d said something like that about Halfpenny Terwilliger and a few others, but you got the feeling that he was joking—and he never said it at all about Schussler the Cyborg, who thought he was already in hell, nor even about Santiago himself. There was just something about Socrates that rubbed him the wrong way, and since most people on the Frontier were pretty much inclined to take Black Orpheus’ word about characters they hadn’t met, it’s probably just as well that Socrates didn’t survive too long after that verse was written.

Actually, nobody knows how he got the name Socrates, but it’s a pretty safe bet that Black Orpheus didn’t hang it on him. He was Whittaker Drum when he wrote his revolutionary tracts, he was Whittaker Drum when he took over the reins of Sylaria’s government, and he was still Whittaker Drum when they threw him out a few years later; then one day he showed up on Declan IV and suddenly he was Socrates. First he caught a particularly virulent venereal disease, and then he caught an equally strong case of religion, and neither of them stopped him from making a living as an entrepreneur who specialized in providing venture capital to what could be euphemistically termed high-risk businesses.

He probably didn’t know it, but he had a lot of company on Declan IV. Nobody knew what the planet’s attraction was, except perhaps that it was a last jumping-off point to the Inner Frontier, but during the seven years that Socrates lived there it was also the home of five exiled planetary presidents, two kings, and a ranking member of the navy who had resigned in black disgrace.