"Ybonia takes weeks to act," replied Henry. "I'm a carrier for bharzia."
"How fast does it act?"
"If I touch you, you're dead within an hour. If I breathe on you, it could take up to two days. They are not days you would wish on anyone."
"I've heard about bharzia," said Dante. "There's no cure for it."
"Not yet," agreed Henry. "Maybe in another ten or twelve years."
"I thought it killed everyone that was infected," continued Dante. "That once it showed up on a planet it decimated the whole population. How come you're still alive?"
"No one knows," said Henry. "Genetic sport, probably. I haven't had a healthy day in two decades, but I don't die. There are days, oh, thousands of them, when I wish I was dead, but it never happens."
"How did you decide to become the Black Death," asked Matilda.
"I figured that if God has such a vicious sense of humor that He'd leave me alive when all I wanted to do was die, the least I could do was even the score by killing men and women He wanted to live."
"An interesting philosophy," commented Dante.
"What do you do with your money?" asked Matilda.
"What can someone like me do?" responded Henry. "I spend some of it on moral lepers like Virgil, who allow me to vicariously experience some very out-of-the-ordinary things. And I donate millions to research. Without me, they'd be thirty years from a cure."
"It doesn't sound like much of a life."
"It's the only one I've got."
"Maybe you'd like to do something meaningful with it," said Dante.
"Are you suggesting that killing hundreds of men and women isn't meaningful?" said Henry sardonically.
"I'm being serious."
"All right, let's be serious," said Henry, staring back at him through watery eyes. "Who do you want me to kill?"
"Hopefully no one."
Henry looked amused. "My only skill is killing people. If you want me to let them live, that could run into real money."
Dante was silent for a long moment, studying the old man. Finally he spoke. "I'm sorry for wasting your time, Henry. You're not the man we want."
"I don't even know what the job is," complained Henry.
"It doesn't matter," said Dante. "It requires a man with a stronger moral compass than you possess."
"I resent your drawing moral and ethical judgments on my character before you've had a chance to know me," said Henry.
"Okay, you resent it," said Dante. "What are you going to do—take off your mask and breathe on me?"
"It's a possibility."
"That's why we can't use you," said Dante. "Killing the man in question was a last resort . . . but killing seems to be your only resort."
"You do what you're good at," replied Henry bitterly. "This is what I'm good at."
"I don't mind that it's what you're good at," said Dante. "I mind that it's all you're good at."
Henry stared at his gloved hands for a long moment. "Just out of curiosity, what would the job have paid?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know?" repeated Henry unbelievingly.
"It's too complicated to explain. You'd have been working for someone else."
"The man you wanted me to kill?"
"The man I hoped you wouldn't have to kill."
"This is getting very complicated," said Henry. "I'm a simple man. Show me who you want dead and I'll kill them. Show me who you want to live and I'll leave them alone. Black and white makes sense to me. I don't like grays."
"That's the problem, all right," said Dante. "I'm sorry to have bothered you."
"No bother at all," said Henry. "Leave 200 credits at the bar."
"Why?"
"For my time. I didn't ask for this interview."
Dante considered it, then nodded his agreement. "Fair enough."
"If you ever decide what you really want, come on back and we'll talk some business," said Henry.
"If you're still alive," said Virgil with a smile.
"Oh, I'll be alive," Henry assured him. "If God wanted me dead, the son of a bitch would have taken me out 20 years ago."
"Well, I'll see you around," said Virgil, as the three of them got to their feet.
Henry was about to reply when a single gunshot rang out. The old man fell over backward in his chair, a bullet buried deep between his eyes.
Dante turned to the door to see who had fired the shot, then blinked his eyes very rapidly and shook his head. Maybe it was simply because Henry has been referring to the deity, but for just an instant it seemed to the poet that he was looking at God Himself.
28.
He's a master of each weapon, and he's got a lion's heart.
He turns mayhem into science, and then science into art.
He's Silvermane the hero, and there isn't any doubt
If you go and break the law he will surely call you out.
He was the most beautiful man Dante had ever seen. Not beautiful in a feminine way, but rather every feature perfect, the kind of beauty Michelangelo had striven for and never quite achieved.
He stood six feet eight inches tall, but so perfect were his proportions, so catlike the grace with which he moved, that he seemed smaller. His eyes were a clear and brilliant blue, his nose straight, his teeth perfect, his jaw firm without being overly square. His shoulders were broad, his waist and hips narrow, his legs long and lean.
His most distinctive feature was his hair. He had a huge thick shock of it, and it was silver in color—not black streaked with white to form a bright gray, but actual silver, every strand the purest color. It hung down his back, the longest section of it reaching his waist, and gave the impression of a huge, heavily-maned lion.
He wore a matched set of projectile pistols, and the belt that supported his holsters held perhaps a hundred bullets. A knife handle peeked out from the top of one of his polished boots. His clothes were black and silver, and fit him as they'd been designed by the finest tailor back on Deluros VIII. He wore no jewelry of any kind, not even a ring.
A thousand of the best commercial artists over the eons had tried to capture his likeness on the covers of adventure books and magazines, and had never succeeded. Heroic statues had always fallen short of the mark. Dante had a feeling that when women thought of their ideal man, they would have traded whatever their imaginations came up with for the man standing in the doorway of the tavern, putting his pistol in his holster.
The man stared at Dante and his two companions curiously, as if expecting a reaction.
"You know who that was?" said Dante at last.
"The Black Death," said the man in a strong, clear baritone.
"You meant to kill him?"
"I hit what I aim at."
Dante moved his chair away from Henry's corpse. "Well, you might as well pay the insurance."
"Pay the insurance?" repeated the man, frowning.