by Mike Resnick
“An hallucination,” said Heath.
“That's what I thought,” agreed Venzia.
“What changed your mind?” I asked.
“I saw her a year later.”
“Where?” asked Heath.
“On Declan IV— my home world. I was still recuperating, and I was getting tired of reading books and watching holovids, so when the circus stopped off for a week, I decided that I was fit enough and bored enough to buy a ticket.” He closed his eyes briefly, recalling the experience. “They had an animal tamer there who was absolutely brilliant. This guy worked with Demoncats from Kilarstra, and nobody's ever been able to train one of them— and he also had a Blue Dragon in his act.”
“A Blue Dragon?” repeated Heath. “I've never heard of it.”
“It's a reptile the size of a small house from somewhere out on the Rim— and he actually climbed right into its mouth! I mean, the goddamned thing could have swallowed him whole! I never saw anything like it in my life.” He paused for a moment, and opened his eyes again. “When the show was over, I waited around to tell him how much I enjoyed his act. Evidently I wasn't the only one, because the police had cordoned off a walkway for him from the tent to his vehicle, and when he finally came out, he had her on his arm.”
“The Dark Lady?” asked Heath.
Venzia nodded. “I was flabbergasted. I mean, here was the flesh and blood embodiment of what I had thought was an hallucination. She was identical in every detail.”
“Did you speak to her?” I asked.
“The police wouldn't let me get near them.” He looked up suddenly. “I'll have another drink now, if you don't mind.”
“Now?” demanded Heath, obviously annoyed that Venzia's story had come to a halt.
“Yes, please.”
Heath grimaced, got up, walked to the bar, quickly mixed the drink, and returned with it. The entire process took perhaps forty seconds.
“Okay, go on with it,” said Heath. “When did you finally get to speak to her?”
“Never,” said Venzia.
“That's it?” exclaimed Heath unbelievingly. “That's the whole story?”
“That's just the beginning,” answered Venzia. “I didn't know who or what she was then.”
“And now you do?”
“Yes,” said Venzia. “I went back the next night in the hope of meeting her. It wasn't romantic or obsessive or anything like that. I just wanted to relate my experience to her.” He shrugged helplessly. “I don't even know why.”
“So you went back the next night... ” prompted Heath.
Venzia nodded. “I went back the next night,” he repeated, his face twitching again, “and the animal tamer climbed into the Blue Dragon's mouth, and the Blue Dragon closed it, just like he'd done the night before— but this time there was a terrible crunching sound, and when the Dragon opened its mouth again, it was empty.” Venzia stopped speaking and drained his glass.
“It sounds horrible!” I said.
“It was horrible,” he agreed. “I stayed after the show to offer my sympathies to the woman, but I couldn't find her. I asked around the next day, and no one had seen her since the end of the performance.” He paused. “She never showed up again, and when the circus left Declan IV, it left without her. I still believed that people didn't just vanish into thin air, and since I knew she hadn't left Declan, I hired a detective agency to find her. They never did.”
“I believe she vanished from my ship, but you shouldn't have,” said Heath. “Not based on what you've told us so far. It would have made more sense to assume she simply left the planet before you hired the detective. Declan IV's a pretty busy world; there must be ships coming and going every few minutes.”
“That's precisely what I assumed,” answered Venzia. “I thought it was an odd coincidence, and that her disappearance was a little strange, but that was all.” He exhaled deeply. “Until I saw a painting of her go up for sale in an estate auction.” He turned to me. “Malcolm Abercrombie bought it. It's the one by Justin Craig.”
“That must have surprised you,” I said.
“Why?” asked Heath sharply.
“Because Justin Craig died in the Battle of Genovaith IV almost thirteen hundred years ago,” I replied.
“I found three biographies of him,” continued Venzia. “Two made no mention of any woman in his life, but the third one mentioned a dark-haired woman who seemed to be his constant companion during the last two weeks of his life, and vanished mysteriously as soon as he was killed.” He paused. “Just as she had done with the animal tamer,” he added meaningfully.
“But he didn't paint her,” noted Heath.
“Why should he?” asked Venzia. “He didn't know the first damned thing about painting.”
“Excuse me, Friend Reuben,” I said. “But are you telling us that not everyone who has seen her has painted her?”
“Of course they haven't,” replied Venzia. “Hell, did everyone who saw her on Acheron run right out and buy a paintbrush and easel?”
“No,” I answered, surprised that I had overlooked so obvious a fact. “No, they didn't.”
“Anyway, I spent the next two years of my life researching her, tracing her appearances as best I could. She's a very beautiful woman, and many of the men she's known have tried to capture her on canvas or in holograms— but even more of them haven't.”
“How did you know that she is called the Dark Lady?” I asked. “Only Sergio Mallachi's painting bears that title, and you have never seen it.”
He smiled. “She has many names, some of which I gave to you back on Far London. It just so happens that ‘the Dark Lady’ is the one that has been used the most often.”
“But where?” I persisted. “I know of no other portrait entitled the Dark Lady.”
“In 1827 A.D., Jonas McPherson had her likeness carved on the prow of his whaling vessel, which he named the Dark Lady. In 203 G.E., Hans Venable made mention of the Dark Lady in his log, which was jettisoned in a records pod just before his ship was sucked into a black hole that he was charting for the Department of Cartography. In 2822 G.E., she was photographed with a prizefighter named Jimmy McSwain, who told the photographer that she was known as the Dark Lady. Shall I continue?”
“Please do,” said Heath, leaning forward.
“All right,” said Venzia. “In 3701 G.E., she was holographed in the company of an assassin known only as the Rake when he walked into a police ambush. She survived the attack, but vanished before they could question her. The Rake, with his dying breath, asked to see the Dark Lady once more. Just one year later she was at the side of a bounty hunter named Peacemaker MacDougal; there are no remaining holograms of him, but two of her survived, and in both of them she is identified as the Dark Lady.”
Venzia took a deep breath and then continued. “There is yet another reference to her in 4402 G.E., but while the descriptions match, there are no holograms, photographs, or paintings.” He paused for effect. “In every case, she appeared within a month of her companion's death, and without exception she was gone less than a day after it.”
“It sounds like the same woman,” admitted Heath.
“There's no question about it. I found her under perhaps twenty other names as well, and her appearances always presaged a death.”
“And yet you didn't die,” I pointed out.
“No,” replied Venzia. “I didn't die.”
“I assume you have an explanation?” said Heath.
“I believe so,” said Venzia. He paused, ordering his thoughts. “What I saw was not the Dark Lady herself. I mean, how could it possibly have been her in the flesh? I was buried under tons of rubble. Even if there was enough light for me to see— which there wasn't— how could she have actually appeared beneath all that debris?”
“So we're back to it having been an hallucination,” said Heath.
Venzia shook his head vigorously. “No.”
“Then what did you see?”
“Call i
t a vision.”
“You call it what you want and I'll call it what I want,” said Heath skeptically.
“It was a vision!” insisted Venzia. “And once I realized what it was, I visited a large hospital with a hologram of her that I had duplicated from the police files on the Rake. I received permission to visit the terminal ward, and showed it to every patient that I was allowed to see, asking each if they had ever seen her before.”
“And?” said Heath.
“More than three hundred of them responded in the negative. One man thought he remembered her beckoning to him in a dream. He died a week later.”
“How many of the other patients died?” I asked.
“Most of them,” replied Venzia. “In fact, five of them died the next day.” He paused. “I asked a nurse for the details concerning the man who thought he remembered the Dark Lady. He had taken his daughter for a walk, they had stopped to look at a construction site, she had unknowingly walked in front of a robotic bulldozer, and he had managed to shove her to safety, although he himself was terribly mangled in the process. He had actually been legally dead for about ninety seconds before they revived him, and although the hospital kept him alive for another week, they finally lost him.”
“Had any of the other patients been pronounced dead and then revived?” I asked.
“Three of them,” said Venzia. “Two drowning victims, and a woman who had been electrocuted.” He paused. “And in answer to your next question, I have no idea if I was legally dead or not when they found me.”
“Then why did he and he alone see her?” asked Heath in frustration. “And what do you and he have in common? You got caught in a cave-in and he was run over by a bulldozer. You were in a war and he was taking his daughter for a walk. You didn't die, and he did. What's the connection?”
As I listened to Heath and considered the problem, Venzia had been staring at me with a curious smile. “I believe Leonardo has figured it out,” he said.
“I see the connection,” I said. “That is not the same thing.”
“That's more than I see,” complained Heath.
“I see it,” I repeated slowly, “but that cannot be the solution.”
“Why?” prodded Venzia.
“Because the Dark Lady cannot be Death,” I replied. “Otherwise at least three other patients would have seen her.”
“I agree,” said Venzia.
“Then what is she?” I asked him.
“Will somebody please tell me what's going on here?” demanded Heath.
“Friend Valentine,” I said, turning to Heath, “the connection is not the nature of their disasters, but the manner in which the disasters were incurred.”
Heath lowered his head in thought. “Venzia was trying to save an injured woman. The patient was trying to save his daughter.” He looked up. “She only appears to heroes?” He considered what he had said, then shook his head vigorously. “That can't be the answer! Look at Mallachi— there's nothing heroic about getting shot in a bar over a woman.”
“It was not that Friend Reuben and the little girl's father were heroic, Friend Valentine,” I said. “It was, rather, that each of them courted disaster.”
Heath frowned. “What's the difference?”
“In these two instances, nothing,” I said. “But there is a difference.”
“I don't suppose you'd care to explain it?” asked Heath.
“Take the animal tamer,” I said. “He was not heroic, and yet he courted disaster every time he performed.”
“So she appears to people who court disaster?”
“Let us be more precise,” interjected Venzia. “She appears to people who court death.”
“Why does she live with some of them, and just appear for a microsecond to others?” asked Heath.
And suddenly I knew the answer to the riddle of the Dark Lady.
“Some, like Friend Reuben, court death only once, as a completely spontaneous act,” I said. “Others, like Mallachi and the Kid and the animal tamer, spend their lives courting death.”
“Now you've got it,” said Venzia.
“That was the factor I could never determine,” I replied. “My original supposition was that each artist had been involved in some military action, but I see now that that was much too narrow a criterion. The circus daredevil, Brian McGinnis in the jungles of Earth, the man who charted black holes— each of them courted death as assiduously as the soldiers and warriors.”
“But she's not Death,” said Heath, confused. “As you said, if she were, everyone who was about to die would have seen her.”
“That's correct,” agreed Venzia.
“Then what the hell is she?” asked Heath.
“She is the Dark Lady,” answered Venzia.
“What is the Dark Lady?”
Venzia sighed heavily. “I don't know.”
“This is becoming a very frustrating conversation,” complained Heath.
“I don't know what she is,” repeated Venzia. “All I know is that she has appeared to men for almost eight thousand years. And I mean that literally: She appears only to men, never to women. I know that she takes substance when a man leads a life that continually invites death, and that she never remains after the man is dead. I know that she has occasionally gone a century or more between appearances. I know that she appears as if in a vision to those men who court her just once.”
“Court her or court death?” asked Heath sharply.
“I'm not sure there's a difference,” replied Venzia.
“I thought you said she wasn't Death.”
“I don't believe she is— but there's no question that she is somehow linked with death. I don't think she actually kills anyone, but she certainly encourages them to take the kinds of chances that result in their deaths.”
“Encourages them?” repeated Heath dubiously. “Did she encourage you?”
“I misspoke myself,” said Venzia. “Let's say, rather, that she seems irresistibly drawn to them.”
“Does she appear to everyone who courts death?” asked Heath.
“I don't know,” answered Venzia. “Most of them don't survive the experience.”
“What about aliens? Does she appear to them?”
“I can find no record of any alien ever mentioning her or painting her portrait.”
“Why didn't she vanish after the Kid was killed on Acheron?”
Venzia considered his answer for a moment. “She has never actually disappeared in front of anyone,” he said at last. “Usually, she is simply reported missing.” He paused. “Tai Chong told me what happened on Acheron. From her description of the planet, there's no way the Dark Lady could have disappeared from the jail, or even from the planet's surface, without alerting the populace to her abilities.”
Heath shook his head. “It's a nice theory, but it doesn't hold water.”
“Oh?” said Venzia. “Why not?”
“If she doesn't want anyone to know what she can do, why did she vanish from my ship?”
Venzia smiled. “Because she wasn't revealing any secrets. Leonardo knew who she was.”
“Leonardo just figured out who she was five minutes ago!” retorted Heath.
“But I knew that she was called the Dark Lady, Friend Valentine,” I said. “And I asked her about Brian McGinnis and Christopher Kilcullen.”
“So you did,” admitted Heath.
The three of us fell silent for a number of minutes. Finally Heath uttered a chuckle. “My God,” he said. “I've just spent an hour talking about the Dark Lady as if she's really something other than a beautiful woman or a fascinating alien who has mastered the art of teleportation. I'm going to wake up tomorrow and none of this will have happened.”
“It is happening right now,” said Venzia. “And you know in your heart that she is not an alien.”
“What do you think she is?” asked Heath.
“I don't know,” answered Venzia.
“Leonardo?” asked Heath.
&nb
sp; “I am tempted to say that she is the Mother of All Things,” I confessed, “but that would be blasphemous.”
“Who or what is the Mother of All Things?” asked Venzia.
“She whom we worship, as you worship your God,” I replied. “But, while I do not wish to offend you, I cannot believe that the Mother of All Things is a member of an alien race.”
“Perhaps she appears to Bjornns in a different form,” suggested Heath.
“No Bjornn performs acts that would attract the Dark Lady,” I said. “My race cherishes life.”
“So does ours, for the most part,” said Venzia. “But there she is, nonetheless.”
“You revere courage,” I pointed out. “We do not. In fact, there is no word for hero in the Bjornn language. The concept does not exist among my people.”
“Even herd animals are capable of heroism,” commented Heath. “Take the herd bull that faces a carnivore while the rest scamper to safety.”
“The herd bull acts from blind, unreasoning instinct, not heroism, Friend Valentine,” I replied. “Presented with a conscious choice, he would never willingly face a carnivore, and the Dark Lady seems to visit only those men who court her as a matter of choice.”
“Just a minute!” said Heath suddenly. “Your people perform ritual suicide. Wouldn't that constitute the kind of behavior that would attract her?”
“There is nothing heroic about ending one's own life to avoid continued disgrace, Friend Valentine,” I noted.
“We're getting off the subject,” interjected Venzia. “She visits men. That's enough for us to know.”
“All right,” said Heath. “We know she visits men. Now what?”
“Now we find her,” said Venzia with quiet intensity.
Heath chuckled. “It's a big galaxy, Mr. Venzia— and she might not even be in it.”
“Then we figure out where she'll appear next, and we wait for her.”
“For what purpose, Friend Reuben?” I asked.
“Poor Leonardo,” said Venzia with genuine compassion. “You've put together all the pieces, and you still haven't solved the puzzle.”
“I beg your pardon?” I said.
“We sit her down and talk to her,” said Venzia.