The Dark Lady

wanted to know, Mr. Venzia,” said Heath. “Now it's your turn.”
    Venzia stared searchingly into each of our faces in turn, then sighed again and nodded his head.
    “All right,” he assented. “Our interests don't coincide.”
    “I want her, you want her,” said Heath. “I'd say they were the same.”
    “All I want to do is speak with her,” said Venzia. “ You want to kidnap her and sell her to Abercrombie.”
    “I just want to introduce her to him,” Heath corrected him. “I am not, after all, a practitioner of white slavery.”
    “Define it any way you like. It makes no difference.” Venzia allowed himself the luxury of a tiny smile. “If I were a betting man, Mr. Heath, I would wager everything I owned that you'll never get the two of them together unless she wants to meet him. You still don't have any idea of what you're dealing with.”
    “What am I dealing with?”
    “If I told you outright, you wouldn't believe me.”
    “Perhaps not, but why don't you tell me and let me make up my own mind?”
    Venzia shook his head. “No. For it to make any sense, I'd better begin at the beginning.” He took a deep breath, and then continued. “Six years ago I had some business to transact on Pyrex III. Have either of you ever heard of it?”
    “Never,” said Heath.
    “Yes,” I said. “There was a major insurrection there against the Oligarchy.”
    “Right,” said Venzia. “It wasn't the native population: I don't think to this day that the Kaarn even understand what the Oligarchy is, or would give a damn if they knew. All they want to do is sit in the sun and create those ridiculous eleven-syllable poems of theirs. But the human colonists were another matter: They thought the Oligarchy was exacting too high a tax on their trade, and they finally declared independence.”
    “What does all this have to do with the Dark Lady?” asked Heath.
    “I'm coming to that,” replied Venzia. “I happened to be on Pyrex III when they revolted. There was no way they were ever going to win— the Navy arrived three days later and decimated them— but it was pretty bloody while it lasted. Like most of the other off-worlders, I claimed asylum in one of the embassies and decided to wait it out.” His facial muscles began twitching at the memory. “I was in the Sirius V embassy when a bomb hit it. I could feel the structure starting to go, but I thought I had time to help a rescue team move a couple of wounded people out through a window. We'd gotten the first one out, and were just moving the second when the building collapsed and I was buried under a couple of tons of rubble.” He paused briefly as he recalled the incident. “I don't know how long I remained unconscious. I remember waking up and trying to dig my way out, and realizing that both of my arms were broken. I could barely breathe, and I began choking on my own blood. I could hear rescue workers calling my name as they dug through the ruins, but I was too weak to answer them. Finally there came a point when I knew I had breathed my last breath and would be dead in another second.” He paused again, staring off into space as he must have stared into the darkness on that long-gone day. “And then I saw her.”
    “Her?” repeated Heath. “You mean the Dark Lady?”
    Venzia nodded. “She was standing there, her arms reaching out, beckoning to me. I tried to get up, but I couldn't move.”
    “Then what happened?” asked Heath.
    “I woke up in the hospital,” said Venzia, his face still a mask of conflicting emotions. “They must have reached me a minute or two later. They tell me that I wasn't breathing, but that I still had a pulse, and that the paramedics got me going again. I don't remember any of it. All I remember is the Dark Lady, reaching out her hands to me, calling me to join her.”
    “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