The Dark Lady

asked for my help and I refused it.”
    “You should have gone with him when you had the chance,” said Abercrombie. “Now it's too late.”
    “I do not understand what you are saying, Mr. Abercrombie.”
    “Nobody double-crosses Malcolm Abercrombie! I paid you ten times what you're worth to help me get the only thing in the universe that I want, and the second you're out of my sight you start cozying up to that little wart Venzia. It serves me right for trusting an alien. That's one goddamned mistake I'll never make again.”
    “You are totally misinterpreting what I have said to you, Mr. Abercrombie.”
    “I'm properly interpreting what you haven't got the guts to say to me!”
    “If I could just speak to you in person... ” I pleaded.
    “I've seen more of you than I care to see,” he replied. “Now get the hell off my property.”
    “But this is just a misunderstanding!” I continued. “I implore you to give me the opportunity to explain!”
    “It's over,” he said. “I've already served notice to the Claiborne Galleries and the House of Crsthionn that I've terminated your employment because of your disloyalty. Now, unless you want me to report you to the police for trespassing, I think you'd better crawl off to whatever hole you came out of.”
    “You've told the House ?” I repeated, as the full impact of what he said struck me.
    “You heard me.”
    “The House ?” I said again, my limbs so numb I could barely keep my balance.
    There was no answer.
    “But why?” I asked, still stunned. “I have served you faithfully. I have obtained your portraits. I have not betrayed you. You have everything you could possibly want. Why would you do such a thing?”
    “Because I didn't get what I paid for.”
    “You did! I went to New Rhodesia and to— ”
    “I paid for your loyalty!”
    “You received it. You have been too long alone, and you see enemies everywhere, but you have none.”
    “I'll be the judge of that. And after I finish with that little bastard Venzia,” he promised, “you're going to wish you didn't have any enemies!”
    “But— ”
    “If you're still on my property in thirty seconds, I'm calling the police.”
    And so, humiliated and miserable, I returned to my barren room, more isolated than I had ever been in my life.
    Perhaps twenty times I began to write to my Pattern Mother, to explain the situation and Abercrombie's paranoid interpretation of it, but each time I got no more than two or three lines into the letter before I stopped. There was simply no way I could explain or excuse the fact of my termination. Personal dishonor would have been reprehensible enough, but I had dishonored the House, perhaps the entire race of Bjornn.
    Suicide seemed the only possible course of action, yet suicide at this moment might bring even greater dishonor upon the House of Crsthionn, since I was still officially on an exchange program with the Claiborne Galleries and I had commitments to keep. In truth, I needed the ethical guidance of my Pattern Mother, but since it was she whom I had dishonored, I could not bring myself to ask for it.
    I finally decided that I would tender my resignation when Tai Chong reopened the gallery the next morning, and the moment she accepted it I would return to my room and find the oblivion I now longed for.

PART 2

    The Man Who Stole It All

7.
    I went to the Claiborne galleries the next morning and asked for an audience with Tai Chong. While I was waiting to see her, I paced restlessly through the public display area, staring at the various pieces without really seeing them. After a few minutes had passed and she still had not called me into her office, I walked to the back of the gallery and sat down at my desk, glancing at the data that had accumulated in my computer file without reading it. A moment later Hector Rayburn approached me with an amused grin on his face.
    “I hear Abercrombie finally sacked you,” he said.
    “That is true, Friend Hector,” I replied.
    “Well, you stuck it out longer than any of us thought you would,” he continued. “Welcome back.”
    “I am only here to see Tai Chong.”
    “Oh? Are you going back to Bjornn?”
    “My world is Benitarus II,” I replied. “My people are the Bjornn.”
    “Same difference,” he said with a shrug. “Is that where you're going?”
    “No, Friend Hector,” I said truthfully, since the dishonored are not permitted burial within the Benitarus system.
    He seemed to lose interest