The Dark Lady

the situation.
    “You leave Abercrombie to me,” she said with grim determination. She got to her feet and escorted me to the door. “Everything will work out for the best.” She placed a number of documents in my hand. “This,” she said, gesturing to one of them, “is your Employment Pass, which will give you access to all public buildings on Charlemagne. They're pretty sophisticated out there,” she added, “and I doubt that anyone will ask to see it. And this,” she said, pointing to another, “is your Class B Passport, which will allow you to travel within five hundred light-years of Charlemagne for a period of thirty days, in case the artist is on some nearby world. And since we don't have an office in that system, this is the code number for a line of credit I've established with the Charlemagne branch of the Trustees’ Bank. It's cued to your voiceprint, since your retinagram keeps confusing the security sensors. You can draw up to twenty thousand credits.” She paused. “That's just in case Abercrombie has second thoughts about honoring his commitment to you. I assume you have his account and credit numbers?”
    “Yes, Great Lady.”
    “This is a hologram of Valentine Heath, so you'll be able to recognize him at the spaceport.”
    “I should think it would be far easier for him to recognize a Bjornn disembarking from a human ship, Great Lady.”
    “Probably,” she agreed. “But just in case he's late, or tied up elsewhere, you'll find his address coded on the back of it, and you can contact him at his home.” She withdrew a small hologram. “And this,” she said, handing it to me, “is a print of the painting you'll be authenticating.”
    I studied it briefly. “It is the same woman,” I said.
    “I know,” she replied. “You don't forget that face once you've seen it.”
    I looked at the print again, and saw a strange script beneath it. It seemed almost legible, but the more I tried to make sense of it, the less I succeeded. Finally I handed it back to Tai Chong.
    “I cannot read the writing below it, Great Lady.”
    “That's one of the newer script fonts they've been using in some catalogs,” she explained. “It's called Antares Elegant, I believe. It looks lovely, but I can see why it might be difficult for you to read.” She stared at it. “It says that the artist's name is Sergio Mallachi. Have you ever heard of him?”
    “No,” I replied. “Does it also give the title of the painting?”
    “Yes,” said Tai Chong. She shrugged. “It's rather odd, and just a bit intriguing.”
    “What is it?” I asked.
    “The Dark Lady.”

8.
    The spaceport at Charlemagne made me realize just how minor a world Far London actually was.
    To begin with, we did not land on the planet itself, but docked instead at a huge orbiting hangar, where a public address system issued instructions to arriving passengers, directing them to connecting flights, customs inspections, orbital hotel accommodations, and shuttle flights to the planet's surface.
    Once I determined that Valentine Heath was not among the crush of people waiting at the dock, I went directly to the customs area, waited until my luggage had been subjected to a sensor scan, had my passport validated, and then took a very slow slidewalk to the shuttle departure dock. The next planetary shuttle was not due to leave for almost an hour, and since the food aboard the ship had been created with the human palate in mind, I began looking for a restaurant that catered to non-humans.
    To my surprise, I couldn't find any. Humans and non-humans alike mingled in a number of restaurants, and nobody seemed to find this at all unusual. I entered one of them, still half-expecting to be told that aliens, or at least Bjornns, were not welcome, and was immediately escorted to a small table along one of the walls. Just behind me were two Men, discussing some sporting event while drinking coffee, and to my left was a table housing two Teroni and a Lodinite. The Teroni were eating the slick, greasy meat that was the staple of their diet, while the Lodinite was munching on a nondescript mass of vegetable matter.
    The menu appeared— in Terran— on a small computer screen above the table, and although I could read it, I requested a Bjornn translation, just to see what would happen. After a moment I realized that this was a shocking breach of manners for a guest, but before I could cancel or countermand the order, the requested translation appeared,