Fear that man

insanely large plastic ears, and popped out of sight just as an ebony and silver cloud passed with two naked acrobats performing a complicated series of head-, hand-, and shoulderstands.
        “Here,” Sam said, raising his voice above the music, and squinting through the perfumed clouds. He pulled out a chair for Lotus. She was wide-eyed, taking in the wonders of the bar. She had forced herself to recover-externally, at least-from Crazy’s death, and she seemed a bit more like her old self. If old selves can be resurrected from the ashes of pain and change. Sam and Coro sat down also.
        “What-” Coro began.
        “Drinks first,” Sam said, holding up his hand.
        “We only have two hours,” Coro said. “Less than two!”
        “And drinks will relax our nerves, which are, as you bear testimony to, nearly ready to snap.” He took their orders and punched the robotender for them, depositing the correct change. He also pressed the button requesting a human waiter’s attention. A few moments later, a thin man with eyes like those of an eagle and a long nose pointing to a longer chin, came to their table. “I would like you to find someone for me,” Sam said.
        “Sir?”
        “Buronto.”
        “Who is-”
        “Black Jack Buronto. Is he here?”
        “Yes,” the waiter said reluctantly, and suspiciously.
        “I’d like to see him. Would you tell him that, please?” He placed a bill on the table and shoved it toward the waiter.
        “Look, Buronto isn’t just a tourist attraction, mister. He’s-”
        “I know all about him. I once knocked him out in a fight.”
        The waiter drew back, started to say something, grabbed the bill, and scurried away through the crowd.
        “What was that all about?” Coro asked. “Who is this Buronto?”
        Sam explained the nature of the man they were after. There was no police force on Hope, no army, no navy, air force, or marines. No fighting force at all and absolutely no possibility of putting one together. But there was the masochist killer, Buronto. Wasn’t he their only chance?
        “And you knocked him out in a fight?” Lotus said. Her eyes pierced him as if they were electronic knives, cutting into his bone marrow, flipping through each cell of his mind.
        “I was… more or less… under hypnosis at the time. Delirious, really.”
        “And this is the killer,” Coro said, visibly shivering.
        Buronto was shoving his way through the crowded room, heedless of whether men fell off chairs when he passed or not. He was still the giant Sam remembered, eyes wild and flaming as they had been in the dream, huge jaw set grimly, hands constantly clenching and unclenching.
        “His voice,” Sam said swiftly, suddenly realizing these two knew nothing of the anachronism, not wanting a scene like the last one he could remember in the Inferno. “It’s… well, girlish. Don’t laugh. He’d just as soon kill you as let you laugh at him.”
        “Oh now, just for laughing-” Coro began.
        “I mean it. He would kill. The sooner you understand that, the better.”
        “You wanted to see me?” Buronto asked, stepping next to their table, fists balled and rammed against his hips. “What do you-” He paused, his eyes widening, his nostrils dilating. “I know you!” He coughed with rage, choking on his own gall. “You’re the damned punk who-”
        “Sit down. Sit down. That’s over and done with. I have a proposition for you now.”
        “You’re the squirt who-”
        “Sit down and talk this instant or I’ll kill you on the spot!” Sam hissed.
        The big man looked startled. It was a long gamble, but he didn’t know that Sam had been hypnotized. As far as Buronto was concerned, this was a killer, like himself, a man who fought back harder and better than he could. He sat.
        “That’s better,” Sam said. “Now, I’m going to ask you to do something for me.”
        Buronto laughed, still playing the role of the man who is too big to be bought, too powerful to want to bargain, too awesome to shove.
        “Shut up,” Sam said evenly. He had to impress Buronto with the arrangement of things the way he saw them. That was: Sam as the boss, Buronto as the loyal sidekick. Never for a single moment could the giant get the idea that he was more powerful than Sam. That would be dangerous. That would be deadly.
        “Now look here,” Buronto said, though