The Dark Lady

two years of my life researching her, tracing her appearances as best I could. She's a very beautiful woman, and many of the men she's known have tried to capture her on canvas or in holograms— but even more of them haven't.”
    “How did you know that she is called the Dark Lady?” I asked. “Only Sergio Mallachi's painting bears that title, and you have never seen it.”
    He smiled. “She has many names, some of which I gave to you back on Far London. It just so happens that ‘the Dark Lady’ is the one that has been used the most often.”
    “But where?” I persisted. “I know of no other portrait entitled the Dark Lady.”
    “In 1827 A.D., Jonas McPherson had her likeness carved on the prow of his whaling vessel, which he named the Dark Lady. In 203 G.E., Hans Venable made mention of the Dark Lady in his log, which was jettisoned in a records pod just before his ship was sucked into a black hole that he was charting for the Department of Cartography. In 2822 G.E., she was photographed with a prizefighter named Jimmy McSwain, who told the photographer that she was known as the Dark Lady. Shall I continue?”
    “Please do,” said Heath, leaning forward.
    “All right,” said Venzia. “In 3701 G.E., she was holographed in the company of an assassin known only as the Rake when he walked into a police ambush. She survived the attack, but vanished before they could question her. The Rake, with his dying breath, asked to see the Dark Lady once more. Just one year later she was at the side of a bounty hunter named Peacemaker MacDougal; there are no remaining holograms of him, but two of her survived, and in both of them she is identified as the Dark Lady.”
    Venzia took a deep breath and then continued. “There is yet another reference to her in 4402 G.E., but while the descriptions match, there are no holograms, photographs, or paintings.” He paused for effect. “In every case, she appeared within a month of her companion's death, and without exception she was gone less than a day after it.”
    “It sounds like the same woman,” admitted Heath.
    “There's no question about it. I found her under perhaps twenty other names as well, and her appearances always presaged a death.”
    “And yet you didn't die,” I pointed out.
    “No,” replied Venzia. “I didn't die.”
    “I assume you have an explanation?” said Heath.
    “I believe so,” said Venzia. He paused, ordering his thoughts. “What I saw was not the Dark Lady herself. I mean, how could it possibly have been her in the flesh? I was buried under tons of rubble. Even if there was enough light for me to see— which there wasn't— how could she have actually appeared beneath all that debris?”
    “So we're back to it having been an hallucination,” said Heath.
    Venzia shook his head vigorously. “No.”
    “Then what did you see?”
    “Call it a vision.”
    “You call it what you want and I'll call it what I want,” said Heath skeptically.
    “It was a vision!” insisted Venzia. “And once I realized what it was, I visited a large hospital with a hologram of her that I had duplicated from the police files on the Rake. I received permission to visit the terminal ward, and showed it to every patient that I was allowed to see, asking each if they had ever seen her before.”
    “And?” said Heath.
    “More than three hundred of them responded in the negative. One man thought he remembered her beckoning to him in a dream. He died a week later.”
    “How many of the other patients died?” I asked.
    “Most of them,” replied Venzia. “In fact, five of them died the next day.” He paused. “I asked a nurse for the details concerning the man who thought he remembered the Dark Lady. He had taken his daughter for a walk, they had stopped to look at a construction site, she had unknowingly walked in front of a robotic bulldozer, and he had managed to shove her to safety, although he himself was terribly mangled in the process. He had actually been legally dead for about ninety seconds before they revived him, and although the hospital kept him alive for another week, they finally lost him.”
    “Had any of the other patients been pronounced dead and then revived?” I asked.
    “Three of them,” said Venzia. “Two drowning victims, and a woman who had been electrocuted.” He paused. “And in answer to your next question, I have no idea if I was legally dead or not when they found me.”
    “Then why did he and he alone see