The Dark Lady (5 page)

“I have reason to believe that you might prove useful to me,” he replied.

“In what capacity?” I asked.

“Who's conducting this interview, you or me?” he said irritably.

“You are, Mr. Abercrombie.”

He took another puff of his cigarette, leaned forward until he could rest his elbows on his desk, and stared at me intently.

“How much do you think I'm worth?”

“I have no idea,” I said, surprised by his question.

“Close to 600 million credits,” he said, watching me carefully for a reaction. “If you do your job, you'll find that I'm not ungenerous, even to an alien.” He glared unblinkingly at me. “But I want you to know that if you ever try to take advantage of me, I'm the least forgiving sonofabitch you'll ever meet. You swipe a single ashtray and I'll spend every one of those 600 million credits hunting you down. Understand?”

It was fortunate for both of us that I was not using the Dialect of Peers, for my answer would have gravely offended him and his reaction to it would probably have caused me acute physical discomfort. I merely said: “The Bjornn do not steal, Mr. Abercrombie. It is contrary to civil and moral law.”

“So is war, but everybody keeps doing it,” he said. “I've spent forty years putting together my art collection, and before I give you free access to it, I want to know a little more about you.”

“If you have concern for the safety of your collection, there is no need for me to see it at all,” I said.

“Yes there is,” he responded.

“Surely you are protected by a security system,” I said, my color deepening with the anticipation of seeing a fabulous private collection.

“It wouldn't be the first time an alien beat a system that was designed to stop a Man.” He paused and frowned. “Why do you keep changing colors?”

“Only the intensity of my colors changes,” I explained. “Not the colors themselves.”

“Answer the question.”

“It is the involuntary expression of a Bjornn's emotional state.”

“And what does this particular expression mean?” he continued.

“That I am elated at the prospect of seeing your collection,” I replied. “I hope the intensification of my color has not disturbed you.”

“Anything I don't understand disturbs me,” he answered. “What about the stripes? Do they change too?”

“No,” I replied. “They, like the mark on my face that you referred to earlier, are essential elements of the Pattern of the House of Crsthionn.”

“You mean they're some kind of tattoo?”

“Yes,” I lied. After all, how does one explain the hereditary Pattern to a man who finds all colors and patterns inferior to his own?

“How old were you when you got your Pattern?” he asked with a show of curiosity.

“Very young,” I answered truthfully.

“They gave it to you after you joined the House of Crsthionn?”

“No, Mr. Abercrombie,” I said, trying to keep my answer simple and relatively truthful. “I became a member of the House of Crsthionn after I had my Pattern.”

“Kind of like an initiation ceremony?” he asked.

“Not really,” I said.

He decided to attack a parallel subject. “What about your wife? Does she have a Pattern, too?”

“Yes.”

“What does
her
Pattern look like?”

“Very much like mine, I suppose,” I responded. “I have never seen her.”

He blinked. “You've never seen your own wife?”

“No, Mr. Abercrombie.”

“Will you ever see her?”

“Of course,” I said. “How else would we propagate?”

“Beats the hell out of me,” he said. “Who knows how you aliens propagate?”

“I could explain it to you,” I offered.

“Spare me the details,” he said, distorting his facial features into a grimace.

“If you wish,” I replied. “I meant no offense. To a Bjornn, the act of propagation is a natural function, just like ingestion and excretion.”

“That's enough!” he snapped. “I didn't bring you here to tell me about your toilet habits.”

“Yes, Mr. Abercrombie.”

“It's disgusting and perverted.”

“I am sorry that you should think so,” I said. “Doubtless I have chosen the wrong mode of expression.”

He stared at me for a long moment.

“You haven't got a hell of a lot of spunk, have you?”

“I do not understand you, Mr. Abercrombie.”

“I wouldn't let anyone talk to
me
the way I've been talking to you. I'd spit in his eye and leave.”

“You have offered to pay the Claiborne Galleries for my services,” I explained. “I would bring shame to my House if I did not honor my commitment.”

“But you'd
like
to take a poke at me, wouldn't you?” he continued.

“No, Mr. Abercrombie. I do not believe I would enjoy it at all.”

“Jesus!” he muttered contemptuously. “At least the Canphorites went down fighting. What's the matter with you Bjornns?”

“Perhaps the answer is that, unlike Man and the inhabitants of Canphor VI and VII, the Bjornn do not descend from carnivores, and therefore lack your aggressive traits.”

He stared at me for a moment, then shrugged.

“All right,” he said. “Let's get down to business.”

“Then my answers have satisfied you?”

“Not especially. But they've convinced me that you haven't got the guts to rob me.” He got to his feet. “Follow me.”

“At what distance?” I asked, recalling his stricture about not approaching him.

“Just shut up and do it,” he growled, walking to a door. He opened it just as I reached him, and I followed him into a large, well-lit gallery, perhaps seventy feet long and twenty wide. Some fifty paintings and holograms hung on the dark wood walls, each by an acknowledged master.

“Exquisite!” I exclaimed, examining a Ramotti landscape from her Late Purple Period. “Such elegant brushwork!”

“Are you familiar with all the paintings?” he asked.

“No,” I admitted. “A number of them are unfamiliar to me.”

“But you know the artists?”

I looked again. “Yes.”

“Three of them are phony. Tell me which ones.”

“How much time have I?” I asked.

“As long as you want.” He paused. “You're glowing again.”

“I enjoy a challenge,” I said— and the intensity of my color vanished an instant later as I realized what a self-centered statement I had uttered.

I walked up and down the gallery, pausing before each painting and hologram, analyzing them as quickly as I could. Finally I returned to Abercrombie, being careful to stop some ten feet short of him.

“You tried to trick me, Mr. Abercrombie,” I said with a smile. “There are
four
fraudulent pieces.”

“The hell there are!” he snapped.

“The Skarlos portrait, the Ngoni still life, the Perkins hologram, and the Menke nude are all duplicates.”

“I spent 800,000 credits for the Ngoni!”

“Then you were deceived,” I said gently. “Ngoni lived on New Kenya five centuries ago, yet the paint is less than three centuries old.”

“How can you tell?” he demanded.

I tried to explain how a Bjornn can analyze the chemical composition of paints and the diverse textures of canvas, wood, and particle boards, but since human eyes cannot see as far into the infrared and ultraviolet spectrum, it was beyond his comprehension, nor were there any dialects that could incorporate the proper terms into their Terran equivalents, which did not in fact exist.

“All right,” he said. “I'll take your word for it.” He paused, lost in thought, then looked up. “I'll send it to Odysseus for an authentication certificate, and if it doesn't pass muster, my agent on New Kenya is going to wish he'd never been born.”

“Was I correct about the other three?”

He nodded his head.

“May I assume, then, that I am here to authenticate various purchases you have made or are considering making?”

“No,” he said. “But I wanted to see if you knew your stuff.” He paused, then added grudgingly: “You do.”

“Thank you, Mr. Abercrombie.”

“Come into the next room,” he said, opening a door at the end of the gallery. I followed him into a small room— small for
this
house, at least— and found myself in a windowless enclosure, the walls of which were covered by seventeen paintings and five holograms, as well as a pair of exquisitely crafted cameos and a small statue— and each of them featured a likeness of the woman in the Kilcullen painting.

“Well?” he said, after allowing me to briefly examine them.

“I am most impressed,” I said, the intensity of my color deepening once again. “I believe that four of the paintings were rendered prior to the Galactic Era.”

“They were,” he replied. “And the statue predates the birth of Christ.”

“What religion does she represent?” I asked.

“None.”

I felt confused. “But for the same woman to appear in artwork separated by so many thousands of years and trillions of miles would certainly imply that she is a formidable myth-figure in the history of your culture.”

“She has nothing to do with the history of my culture,” said Abercrombie adamantly.

“Then can there be some other explanation for why her likeness has appeared in so many diverse works of art?” I asked.

“I haven't got any idea,” he replied.

“It is most curious,” I said, standing back and comparing three of the nearer paintings. “It is obviously the same woman. She is always clad in black, and she possesses the same hauntingly sad expression in each rendering.”

“I hope you're not suggesting that she posed for each of the artists,” said Abercrombie irritably. “There's a seven-millennia span from the earliest to the latest. Men may be tough, but sooner or later we all die. Usually sooner.”

“I am merely suggesting that possibly there is a single source, an ancient painting or carving, and that all these are simply interpretations of it.”

“Maybe,” he said dubiously. “But I sure as hell haven't been able to find it.”

I walked slowly around the room once more, examining each piece in turn.

“They have another interesting feature in common,” I said.

“What?”

“Not a single one was rendered by an artist of stature,” I pointed out.

“You've never run across
any
of these artists before?” he asked, surprised.

“No,” I replied.

“What about Kilcullen?”

“His name was unknown to me prior to the auction.”

“Then how could you put a value of fifty thousand credits on the painting?” he asked sharply.

“By analyzing the painting's age, point of origin, general school, and quality, and then taking into account the artist's relative obscurity,” I replied.

He seemed to consider my answer for a moment, then nodded his head.

“Do they have anything else in common that you can see?” he asked.

“You are the only other link that binds them together,” I answered. I paused, aware of the possibility that he might take offense at my next question, but determined to ask it. “May I inquire about your interest in them, Mr. Abercrombie? The model's appearance in so many portraits is certainly an intriguing mystery, but I must point out that a number of them are relatively crude and amateurish.”

“I'm a collector,” he said with just a trace of pugnacity.

“Then she
does
have some meaning for you,” I said.

“I like her face,” he replied.

“It is a lovely face,” I agreed, “but surely you must have some further reason.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Two nights ago I saw you bid 375,000 credits for a painting that is demonstrably worth fifty thousand.”

“So what?”

“I simply infer that you must have some reason to bid so much money, above and beyond your admiration for her beauty.”

He stared at me for a moment, then spoke:

“I'm eighty-two years old, my health is deteriorating, my wife is dead, my two sons were killed in the Sett War, I haven't seen or spoken to my daughter in close to thirty years, I have one grandchild and I dislike her intensely, and I'm worth 600 million credits. What do
you
think I should do with my money— leave it to a woman I wouldn't recognize and another one that I can't stand the sight of?”

I moved a few feet farther away from him, stunned that he could so casually reject the concept and obligations of House and Family.

“Fifty thousand credits, 375,000 credits,” he continued, “what the hell's the difference? I'd have spent five million credits on the Kilcullen if I had to. I can afford to buy any damned thing I want, and none of my money will do me any good once I'm in the grave.” He paused. “That's where
you
come in.”

“Please explain, Mr. Abercrombie.”

“You said the other night that you had seen this model"— he gestured to one of the paintings—"twice before.”

“That is correct.”

“A painting and a hologram, you said.”

“Yes. The painting was from Patagonia IV, although it was purchased by a resident of New Rhodesia, and the hologram was from Binder X.”

“I want them— and any others you can hunt up.”

“I am not aware of any others, Mr. Abercrombie.”

“They're out there, all right,” he said with conviction. “I've been tracking them down for twenty-five years, and I wasn't aware of the two you saw.”

“I would not begin to know where to look for them,” I said.

“You know where to begin looking for two of them,” he replied. “You know where they were sold, and you can find out who bought them.”

“I suppose I can,” I admitted. “But that does not mean that their new owners will care to part with them.”

“They'll sell, all right,” promised Abercrombie. “You just find them for me, and I'll take it from there.” He set his jaw firmly. “Then we'll start hunting for the others.”

“I very much doubt that I will be able to find even the two works that I saw in a week's time, Mr. Abercrombie,” I said.

“Then you'll take a month,” he said. “So what?”

“You are only employing me for a period of one week,” I pointed out.

“I'm employing you for as long as I need you,” he responded sharply.

“But I have obligations to the Claiborne Galleries,” I protested.