The Dark Lady

world. Its northern continent is composed almost entirely of heavily forested mountains, but its two southern continents, flat and crisscrossed by hundreds of rivers, are ideal for farming. It has a unique trade arrangement with its sister world, New Zimbabwe, which is some seven light-years distant, and supplies it with all of its metals and fissionable materials in exchange for grains and meats. Furthermore, the two worlds have pooled their resources to form an economic cooperative when trading with all other worlds of the Oligarchy.
    The Lodinite ambassador met me at the spaceport (only Lodin XI, Canphor VI and VII, and Galaheen IX, of all the non-human worlds, have embassies on New Rhodesia). With his help it took less than an hour to locate the owner of the painting I sought, as New Rhodesia, being primarily an agricultural world, is far less populated than New Zimbabwe, where almost eighty percent of the people from this unique economic cooperative reside. The ambassador warned me that the New Rhodesians were more xenophobic than was common for a Frontier world, and even with his intervention on my behalf, I spent a full day working my way through an inordinate number of restrictions and petty statutes before I was allowed to leave the spaceport and proceed to my destination.
    The man I sought was Orestes Minneola, a retired dietary chemist who lived in a luxurious apartment in Salisbury, a bustling city about two hundred miles west of the spaceport. He invited me into his main room and treated me with civility, but I could tell that my presence made him uncomfortable. When he learned the purpose of my visit, he allowed me to examine the painting, which he had hanging in another room, but he stated that it was not for sale as it possessed a certain sentimental value to him. I explained that Mr. Abercrombie would pay him considerably more than he himself had paid for it, but he remained adamant.
    Finally, when he had convinced me that he was not merely assuming an aggressive bargaining position but indeed had no intention of parting with the painting, I asked him what particular attachment he had to the painting. He replied that Rafael Jamal, the artist, was one of his heroes, and had supposedly spent the last few years of his life working on the painting.
    This seemed to confirm my conviction that the subject was indeed derived from an ancient war myth, and I inquired whether Jamal had fought for the Navy or for some independent force. Mr. Minneola seemed confused, and finally admitted that he had no knowledge whatsoever of Jamal's military record.
    It was my turn to be confused, for I had never heard of a Man referred to as a hero unless he had excelled in military action. My host explained that I was mistaken, departed the room for a moment, and returned with a scrapbook of circus posters from all over the galaxy, explaining that he was an enthusiastic patron of circuses and a student of their history. He thumbed through the book until he came to a colorful if poorly rendered poster of a very young, athletic-looking man in skintight, sequin-covered garments, swinging on a device called a trapeze. This was Jamal, and according to Mr. Minneola he was a famed circus entertainer whose specialty was a quintuple somersault from one trapeze to another without benefit of a net. His career had ended with a tragic accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down, and he had died some four years later.
    I thanked Mr. Minneola for his time and courtesy, began the search for a hotel (a number of them had vacancies, but non-humans were not permitted inside them), finally found a dilapidated hostelry on the outskirts of what the colonists termed the Native Quarter (although there were no sentient natives on New Rhodesia, and indeed it was simply a euphemism for ghetto), and reported to Mr. Abercrombie that I had located the painting but that the owner refused to part with it for any price. Far from seeming discouraged, the news seemed to excite him; like most Men, he seemed to cherish only those things for which he had to fight.
    On the return flight, I was supposed to transfer ships at the orbiting hangar at Pellinath IV, but at the last moment we had to divert to Pico II, as the Bellum, Pellinath's only sentient race, were resisting incorporation into the Oligarchy's economic system, and the Navy had moved in to forcibly convince them to reconsider. No citizens or associate members of the Oligarchy were allowed in the