The Dark Lady

fortune with the next mate who would be chosen for her. As sorry as I felt for myself, it was nothing compared to the regret I felt for my Pattern Mate, whose life, through no doing of her own, was to be recast at this late date. It could be years before the House found and approved the perfect complementary Pattern, and she would continue to be barren until that day arrived. (Or, worse still, the House in its wisdom could decide that she had wasted enough of her youth and young adulthood, and might pair her with a Pattern that did not properly complement her own. If they did so, sooner or later she might well produce a child with a Pattern that was not acceptable to the House, and thus would be forced to suffer not one but two outcasts in her blameless life.)
    It was with such somber thoughts as these on my mind that I sought once again to control my emotions and direct my thoughts back to the Dark Lady. Heath was asleep, but Venzia, who had been quietly reading a book from the computer's electronic library, noticed my agitation and the lightening of my hue.
    “Are you all right, Leonardo?” he asked.
    “Yes, Friend Reuben,” I replied.
    “Are you sure? You look distressed.”
    “I am better now.”
    “If you say so,” he said with a shrug. He paused. “Do you mind if I ask you a question about your friend Mr. Heath?”
    “No, Friend Reuben.”
    “Does he really intend to rob Abercrombie?”
    “I am quite certain of it, Friend Reuben.”
    “Too bad.”
    “I agree,” I said. “Robbery is contrary to moral and civil law.”
    Venzia smiled. “I meant that we could use him in our search for the Dark Lady, and if he tries to rob Abercrombie he's likely to end up in jail. I understand that Abercrombie's got a state-of-the-art security system in that mansion of his.”
    “I think Friend Valentine might surprise both you and Mr. Abercrombie,” I said.
    “Perhaps,” said Venzia, dismissing the subject. “I wonder why he remains so skeptical?”
    “Possibly because he did not see her under the same circumstances that you did,” I suggested.
    “Neither did you,” he pointed out, “but you seem to have no problem accepting her as she is.”
    “That is true,” I agreed.
    “He has the same facts at his disposal that you do,” said Venzia, puzzled. “Why can't he come to the same conclusion?”
    “Perhaps it is because he has always relied upon his own powers, and has no need for a belief in someone greater than himself.”
    “And you do?”
    “I was raised to believe in and rely upon people greater than myself,” I answered.
    “I wonder... ” mused Venzia.
    “About what, Friend Reuben?”
    “Almost every man she's ever taken up with was totally self-reliant. I wonder what they believed in?”
    “I suppose we shall have to ask the next one,” I replied.
    “If we can get to him in time,” said Venzia with a grimace.
    “You make her sound like a murderer,” I said, “and yet we both know she is not.”
    “I don't care what she is. I'm only interested in what she knows.”
    I thought of her face again.
    “I think that I am more interested in what she wants,” I replied.
    “What she wants?” he repeated. “Hell, what she wants is death.”
    “I do not think so, Friend Reuben.”
    “Why not?”
    “If the death of heroic men were what she craved, surely she would be sated by now.”
    “Some people are never sated,” said Venzia.
    “I keep remembering her eyes, the sadness of her face, the sense of longing that she radiates,” I replied. “I cannot help feeling that she is searching for something, and that she has not yet found it.”
    “Searching? For what?”
    “I do not know,” I answered truthfully.
    We spoke for a few more minutes in a desultory fashion. Then Venzia went off to our compartment to sleep, and as I remained alone in the cabin, contemplating the Dark Lady, I found myself hoping that someday she would finally find what she sought, and that the ageless sorrow would at last vanish from her face.

16.
    After we reached far London, I reported to the Claiborne Galleries, where Hector Rayburn informed me that Tai Chong had been arrested the previous weekend while participating in a nonviolent protest for alien rights on the nearby world of Kennicott VI. She had refused to pay bail, and was due to serve two more days before being released.
    “I offered to arrange for Claiborne to pay her bail,” he concluded, “but she wouldn't have any part of it. So there she