by Mike Resnick
"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?"
"So your friend shoots people in the back?" said Dante.
"Not really, though I'm sure he'd have no serious objection to it." Virgil lit a smokeless cigar. "His job is killing people. He doesn't care if you subtract points for form."
"Where can we find him?" said Dante. "I'll want to talk to him before we agree to this."
"Not a good idea," said Virgil.
"Why not?"
"He doesn't like being hemmed in. Let me talk to him one-on- one."
"Not a chance," said Dante.
"Why not?"
"Not to put too fine a point on it, you're a moral dwarf compared to the Bandit. I don't want you telling anyone how we want the Bandit to behave."
"You really know how to hurt a guy, Rhymer," said Virgil with an obvious lack of sincerity. "Say that in public and someone might think you disapproved of my lifestyle or my ethics."
"There's nothing wrong with either that castration and a couple of decades in solitary confinement wouldn't cure," said Dante. "Now tell me where we can find this Black Death."
"He's not like the Tyrannosaur," replied Virgil. "He doesn't have his own world, and he doesn't stand out in a crowd—at least, not the way you'd think. He's a freelancer. It might take me a few days to track him down."
"Start."
"Start how? We're eight lightyears from the nearest inhabited planet."
"Get on the subspace radio. Ask your contacts. Pass the word that you've got a lucrative job for him."
"I'll ask around, but you don't want me to lie about a the paycheck. He might take it as an insult."
"Just get your ass over to the radio and do what you have to do," said Dante irritably.
Virgil started to say something, thought better of it, and went over to the subspace radio, where he tried to track down the Black Death.
"We can't just sit around and hope this works out," said Dante. "If I know Virgil, this Black Death is more likely to kill for the Bandit than persuade for us."
"So what do you want us to do?" asked Blossom, who had been silent for the past few minutes.
"I'm glad to see you're talking to me again," said Dante dryly. "And to answer your question: we'll keep looking."
"For what?"
"I wish I knew. Some way to educate or depose the Bandit." He stared at her for a long minute. "If we can't come up with something, maybe we'll send you back."
"He'll kill me!"
"What if you contacted him and convinced him that we made you leave against your will, that you believe in him and everything he's doing and you want to come back?"
"Which probably isn't too far from the truth," commented Matilda.
"He won't care about the truth," said Blossom. "You know how rigid he is. He's already said he'll kill us. He never changes his mind."
"Well, it's something to keep in reserve," said Dante.
"Fuck your reserve!" snapped Blossom. "I believed in him, and now you've fixed it so he'll kill me the next time he sees me! I want out. The next planet we touch down on, you go your way and I'm going mine."
"I can't stop you," said Dante.
"You're damned right you can't," she replied. "You're a fool, you know that? You've got a saint on Valhalla, and that's not good enough for you. You want a god."
"I just want Santiago."
"The real Santiagos were killers and thieves. You want yours to walk on water!" She got to her feet. "I'm going to my cabin. Leave me alone until we land."
She walked through the galley to the cabins and entered the nearest of them.
"Well, I handled that with my usual aplomb," said Dante bitterly. "Virgil, the Bandit, and her." He grimaced. "Sometimes I wish I'd never found that goddamned poem."
"Sometimes I wish I were Queen of the Universe," replied Matilda. "Tell me when you want to stop talking drivel and get back to business."
"I think you'd make a rather nice queen."
"You heard me."
"I heard you. I just don't see any viable options." He sighed deeply. "Maybe the kids were an aberration. Maybe he'll work out after all."
"Maybe he will."
"Except it wasn't just the kids," complained Dante. "It was all those people in the Maze. And the old lady at the bank, too—and the fact that he couldn't think his way out of it, couldn't come up with a lie that would allow him to let her live."
"I know," she agreed. "At first I thought he was right, but after I heard you explain how we could have avoided killing her, could even put her to use explaining that we all worked for Santiago, I knew he was wrong." She paused. "He's just not very quick on his mental feet."
"Most fanatics aren't," said Dante.
Suddenly Virgil stood up and turned to them. "It's all arranged," he announced. "Lay in a course for Tosca III."
"What's on Tosca?" asked Dante.
"The Black Death."
27.
The Black Death comes, the Black Death goes,
The Black Death can be bellicose.
So friend, be on your guard today—
His blood is up, he lives to slay.
As Dante became more comfortable with his epic, he began using poetic license here and there. The first time was when he wrote of the Black Death.
He was writing about heroes and villains so big they blotted out the stars, so memorable that children would be telling their stories decades after he wrote them, and once in a while he came across such an aberration that he felt free to embellish, or in this case, to out-and-out falsify.
Not that the Black Death wasn't every bit as deadly as Dante said. In point of fact, he was even deadlier. Not that he didn't deserve the three verses Dante gave him, or that he wasn't feared wherever he went—once he was recognized.
The interesting fact is that he was almost never recognized.
Until it was too late.
The name itself conjures up fantastic images. A tall, muscular black man clad in muted colors, plain blazers or screechers in worn holsters, shopworn shoes or boots.
Or perhaps a slender man, looking like Death itself, wearing a black frock coat, his clothes and his drawn skin absorbing all color and reflecting only the total absence of color.
You can picture an unforgiving, unsmiling face, cold lifeless eyes like those of a shark, a thin-lipped mouth that never smiles. Some kind of hat or headpiece so that the sun never illuminates that deathmask countenance.
Expensive gloves, that never slip off the handles of his weapons, that leave no fingerprints, that never expose his surprisingly delicate fingers to prying eyes.
That's the image of a man called the Black Death—and yet the only thing it had in common with the real Black Death was the gloves.
His name was Henry Marston, hardly a name to roll off frightened men's lips. And he wasn't black. He was a pale, chalky, sickly white; what pigment his skin had once possessed was almost totally gone.
He stood five feet seven inches, when he was strong enough to stand. His weight varied be
tween 110 and 125 pounds; it had never in his life been more than 136.
His clothes were nondescript, wrinkled, a bit faded. The left elbow was patched; the right cuff frayed. He wore no primary colors; everything was neutral, fading and blending into one another.
The only belt he wore held his loose-fitting pants up. It housed no weapon of any kind. There were no tell-tale bulges pinpointing hidden knives or pistols anywhere on his body. His boots were so old they were past the point of holding a polish, and the large toe of his left foot poked out through a crack in the inexpensive material it was made of.
And there were the gloves.
They went halfway up his forearms, totally functional, totally unstylish.
There was also the mask. It was transparent, and covered his face from the bridge of his nose down to his Adam's apple, then all the way around to the back of his head.
If there was ever a man who looked less than formidable, it was Henry Marston.
So it was probably God's little cosmic joke that he was the deadliest man alive, far more dangerous than Dimitrios or the One-Armed Bandit or Tyrannosaur Bailey, with a sobriquet that was more accurate than most.
"No matter what you think," Virgil told his companions as they waited patiently to pass through Customs at the Tosca III spaceport, "he's everything I've said he is."
"Why shouldn't we believe you?" asked Dante.
"Well, he doesn't make a good first impression," admitted Virgil. He paused thoughtfully. "Come to think of it, his second and third impressions aren't much of an improvement."
"We came here on your say-so," said Dante angrily. "If you've been wasting our time, maybe you'd better tell us right now."
"Everything I said about the Black Death is true," said Virgil. He spat on his hand and held it up, palm out. "I give you an Injun's solemn oath on that."
"There's something you're not telling us," continued Dante.
"It'll probably be better if you find out for yourself."
"Why?"
"Because if I tell you any more about him, you won't want to meet him."
"He's that ineffectual?" asked Matilda.
Virgil smiled. "I told you: he's the deadliest killer out here—at least the deadliest I've ever seen."
"Then why won't we want to meet him?"
"You'll be afraid to."
Dante glared at him. "Just how much seed have you been chewing today?"
"None," Virgil assured him. "I'm depressingly sober."
"Then shut up," Dante ordered him. "The more we talk, the angrier I'm getting with you. Just take us to meet this Black Death and let's get it over with."
"You're the boss," said Virgil. They passed through Customs without incident. "By the way," added Virgil as they walked to a hovering limo, "call him Henry."
"Why?"
"Because that's his name. And he hates being the Black Death."
"You mean being called the Black Death," Matilda corrected him.
"That, too," agreed Virgil.
The limo took them into Red Dust, the nearest of Tosca's three towns. The buildings showed the effects of the wind constantly blowing the dust against them, and two of the slidewalks were closed for repairs, also due to the omnipresent dust.
The limo announced that they had reached the municipality of Red Dust and asked for a specific destination.
"Take us to the Weeping Willow," said Virgil.
"Done, sir," replied the limo so promptly and formally that Dante decided that it must be frustrated at its inability to offer a snappy salute.
The Weeping Willow was a nondescript tavern. small and unimpressive, filled with second-hand and oft-repaired chairs and tables. There was no back room for gambling, no upstairs rooms for sex, nothing but a small selection of mediocre liquor from various points on the Inner Frontier, an unused alien dart game hanging on one wall, and a much-dented metal bar in addition to the tables.
Dante glanced around the tavern. A small, sickly-looking man sat at a table in the corner. Two oversized women, smoking alien cigarettes and drinking alien whiskey, sat at another, playing a complex game using hundreds of cards with unfamiliar markings. The only other person in the place was the tall, muscular bartender, who looked hopefully at them when they entered, then lost interest when he saw they weren't there to drink.
"Your information was wrong," said Dante. "He's not here."
"Yes he is," answered Virgil calmly.
Dante looked at the small man with the transparent mask and the long gloves. "Is this some kind of joke?" he demanded.
"Why don't we talk to him, and then you can tell me if it's a joke or not," said Virgil, approaching the small man's table.
Henry Marston looked up and tried to smile at Virgil. It was evidently too much of an effort, and the smile froze halfway across his face, then vanished a few seconds later.
"Hi, Henry. It's been a while."
"Hello, Virgil," said Henry, stifling a cough. "What brings you to a little dirtball like Tosca?"
"I'd like you to meet two friends of mine—Dante and Matilda."
"I hope you'll forgive me if I don't get up," said Henry in a weak, hoarse whisper.
"I heard you were on Tosca," said Virgil, pulling up a chair and motioning for his companions to do the same. "Got a job to do here?"
"It's done," said Henry.
"Then why are you still here?"
"I was paid to kill her," was the answer. "I have to stick around and make sure she died." Wonderful, thought Dante. The old man's such a lousy shot he doesn't know if his victim will live or die. What are we wasting our time here?
"Excuse me for interrupting," said Dante, frowning, "but are you really the man known as the Black Death?"
"It's not a name of my own choosing," said Henry.
"I mean no disrespect, but you look like you're half-dead yourself."
"I am."
Dante turned to Virgil. "And this is the guy you think can take out the Bandit?"
"If he has to," said Virgil. "But I thought the plan was for him to ride herd, to kind of redirect him."
"Ride herd?" repeated Dante. "No offense, Henry, if that's your name, but he can barely sit up in his chair. What the hell got into you?"
Virgil chuckled. "Nothing got into me. That's why I'm still alive."
"I think your friend deserves an explanation, Virgil," said Henry.
"Yeah, I suppose so," agreed Virgil. "Too bad. I just love to watch him when he's confused."
"Is one of you going to tell me what this is all about?" said Dante, trying to control his temper.
"It's him," said Matilda, nodding her head toward Henry.
Henry smiled. "You're very perceptive, my dear."
"I'm getting really annoyed!" growled Dante. He turned to Matilda. "What do you know that I don't know?"
"You're not the Black Death at all," said Matilda, staring at Henry. "That may be what they call you, but that's not what you are. You're its carrier."
"What are you talking about?" demanded Dante.
"Look at him," said Matilda. "That mask isn't there to protect him from unfiltered air. It's to protect us from him. Look at his gloves. You can't touch him and he can't touch you." She paused. "What disease are you carrying, Henry? Ybonia?"
"Ybonia takes weeks to act," replied Henry. "I'm a carrier for bharzia."
"How fast does it act?"
"If I touch you, you're dead within an hour. If I breathe on you, it could take up to two days. They are not days you would wish on anyone."
"I've heard about bharzia," said Dante. "There's no cure for it."
"Not yet," agreed Henry. "Maybe in another ten or twelve years."
"I thought it killed everyone that was infected," continued Dante. "That once it showed up on a planet it decimated the whole population. How come you're still alive?"
"No one knows," said Henry. "Genetic sport, probably. I haven't had a healthy day in two decades, but I don't die. There are days, oh, thousands of them, when I
wish I was dead, but it never happens."
"How did you decide to become the Black Death," asked Matilda.
"I figured that if God has such a vicious sense of humor that He'd leave me alive when all I wanted to do was die, the least I could do was even the score by killing men and women He wanted to live."
"An interesting philosophy," commented Dante.
"What do you do with your money?" asked Matilda.
"What can someone like me do?" responded Henry. "I spend some of it on moral lepers like Virgil, who allow me to vicariously experience some very out-of-the-ordinary things. And I donate millions to research. Without me, they'd be thirty years from a cure."
"It doesn't sound like much of a life."
"It's the only one I've got."
"Maybe you'd like to do something meaningful with it," said Dante.
"Are you suggesting that killing hundreds of men and women isn't meaningful?" said Henry sardonically.
"I'm being serious."
"All right, let's be serious," said Henry, staring back at him through watery eyes. "Who do you want me to kill?"
"Hopefully no one."
Henry looked amused. "My only skill is killing people. If you want me to let them live, that could run into real money."
Dante was silent for a long moment, studying the old man. Finally he spoke. "I'm sorry for wasting your time, Henry. You're not the man we want."
"I don't even know what the job is," complained Henry.
"It doesn't matter," said Dante. "It requires a man with a stronger moral compass than you possess."
"I resent your drawing moral and ethical judgments on my character before you've had a chance to know me," said Henry.
"Okay, you resent it," said Dante. "What are you going to do—take off your mask and breathe on me?"
"It's a possibility."
"That's why we can't use you," said Dante. "Killing the man in question was a last resort . . . but killing seems to be your only resort."
"You do what you're good at," replied Henry bitterly. "This is what I'm good at."
"I don't mind that it's what you're good at," said Dante. "I mind that it's all you're good at."
Henry stared at his gloved hands for a long moment. "Just out of curiosity, what would the job have paid?"
"I don't know."