The Dueling Machine sw-3 Page 14

  “I disagree,” Leoh said, shifting his bulk in the frail-looking web chair. “Kerak has made great strides in isolating Acquatainia diplomatically…”

  “But we never depended on our neighbors for our own defense,” a newsman said. “Those so-called allies of ours were more of a drain on our treasury than a help to us.”

  “But Kerak now has the industrial base of Szarno and outposts that flank Prime Minister Martine’s new defense line.”

  “Kerak would never dare attack us, and if they did, we’d beat them just as we did the last time.”

  “But an alliance with the Commonwealth…”

  “We don’t need it. Kanus is a paper tiger, believe me. All bluff, all dueling machine trickery, but no real strength. He’ll probably be deposed by his own people in another year or two.”

  Something made Hector shift his gaze from the semicircle of sonorous solons to the technical crews working the cameras and laser lights. Something made him squint into the pooled shadows far in the back of the studio, where a single tall, slim man stood. Hector couldn’t see his face, or what he was wearing, or the color of his hair. Only the knife-like outline of a figure that radiated danger: Odal.

  Without thinking twice about it, Hector pushed past the crowd in the control booth toward the door. He stepped on toes and elbowed technicians in the backs of their heads in his haste to get out into the studio, leaving a wake of muttering, sore-rubbing people behind him. He went right past Geri, who stepped back out of his way but refused to say anything to him or even look directly into his eyes.

  The door from the control booth led into a small entryway that had two more doors in it: one to the outside hallway and one to the studio. A uniformed guard stood before the studio door.

  “I’m sorry, sir, you can’t go in while the show’s in progress.”

  “But… I saw someone come in the back way… into the studio…”

  Shrugging, the guard said, “Must be a member of the camera crew. No one else allowed in.”

  Hector blinked once, then went to the hall door. The corridor outside circled the studio. At least, he thought it did. He followed it around. Sure enough, there was another door with a blinking red light atop it, labeled STUDIO C. Hector pushed the door open. Inside, in the focus of a circle of lights and cameras, a man and woman were locked in a wild embrace.

  “Hey, who opened the door?”

  “Cut! CUT! Get that clown out of here! Can’t even tape a simple scene without tourists wandering into the studio! Of all the…”

  Hector quickly shut the door, closing off a string of invective that would have made his old drillmaster back at the Star Watch Academy grin with appreciation.

  Which studio are they in?

  As if in answer, farther down the hall a door opened and Odal stepped out. He was not in uniform; instead he wore a simple dark tunic and slacks. But it was unmistakably Odal. He glanced directly at Hector, a sardonic smile on his lips, then started walking the other way. Hector chased after him, but Odal disappeared around a bend in the almost featureless corridor.

  A door was closing farther down the hall. Hector sprinted to it and yanked it open. The room was dark. He stepped in.

  In the faint light from the hallway, Hector saw row after row of life-sized tri-di viewscreens, each flanked by a desk of control and monitoring equipment. A tape viewing room, he reasoned. Or maybe an editing room.

  He walked hesitantly toward the center of the room. It was big, filled with the bulky screens and desks. Plenty of room to hide in. The door snapped shut behind him, plunging the room into total darkness.

  Hector froze rock-still. Odal was in here. He could feel it. Gradually his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. He turned slowly and began retracing his steps toward the door, only to bump into a chair and send it clattering into its desk.

  “You defeated me in the dueling machine,” Odal’s voice echoed calmly through the room. “Now let’s see if you can defeat me in real life. This room is soundproof. We are alone. No one will disturb us.”

  “Uh… I’m unarmed,” Hector said. It was hard to trace the source of Odal’s voice. The echoes spoiled any chance of locating him in the darkness.

  “I’m also unarmed. But we are both trained fighting men. You have no doubt had standard Star Watch hand-to-hand combat training.”

  The painful memory of fumbling through the rough-and-tumble courses at the Star Watch Academy surged through Hector’s mind. What he remembered most vividly was laying flat on his back with his instructor screaming, “No, no, no!” at him.

  Odal stepped out from behind a full-length view screen. “You seem less than eager to do battle with me. Perhaps you’re afraid that you’ll hurt me. Let me demonstrate my qualifications.”

  Odal’s foot lashed into one of the desk chairs, smashing its fragile frame against the tough plastic of the view screen. The chair disintegrated. Then he swung an edge-of-the-hand chop at the top of the nearby desk: the metal dented with a loud crunk!

  Hector backed away until he felt another desk pressing against his legs. He glanced behind him and saw that it was some sort of master control unit, long and filled with complicated switches’ and monitor screens. Several roller chairs lined its length.

  Odal was advancing on him. Something in the back of Hector’s mind was telling him to run away and hide, but then he heard the barking voice of his old instructor insisting, “The best defense is a fast, aggressive attack.” Hector took a deep breath, planted his feet solidly, and launched himself at Odal.

  Only to find himself twisted around, lifted off his feet, and thrown back against the desk, banging painfully against the switches.

  “LOOKING FOR THE IDEAL VACATION PARADISE?” a voice boomed at them. From behind Odal’s shoulder a girl in a see-through spacesuit did a free-fall somersault. Hector blinked at her, and Odal looked over his shoulder, momentarily amazed. The voice blared on, “JOIN THE FUN CROWD AT ORBIT HOUSE, ACQUATAINIA’S NEWEST ZERO-GRAVITY RESORT.…”

  Through his mind flashed another maxim from his old instructor: “Whenever possible, divert your opponent’s attention. Create confusion. Feint, maneuver!”

  Hector rolled off the desktop and ran along the master control unit, pounding every switch in sight.

  “TIRED OF BEING CALLED SHORTY?” A disgruntled young man, standing on tiptoes next to a gorgeous, statuesque redhead, appeared beside Odal. The Kerak major involuntarily stepped back.

  “THE IRRESISTIBLE PERFUME,” a seductive blonde materialized before his eyes, speaking smokily.

  “MODERN SCIENCE CAN CURE ANY DISEASE, BUT WHEN EMBARRASSING…” said a medic, radiating sincerity and concern.

  Odal was surrounded by solid-looking, life-sized, tri-di advertising pitches.

  “WHEN YOU’VE EATEN MORE THAN YOU SHOULD…”

  “THE NORMAL TENSIONS OF MODERN LIFE…

  “FOR THE ULTIMATE IN FEMININE…”

  Eyes goggling, Odal saw himself being pressed backward by a teenage dancer, an “average family” mother, a worried young husband, a nervous businessman, a smiling teen couple, a crowd of surfers, a chorus of animated vegetables. Suddenly bellowing with rage, Odal dived through the pleading, cajoling, urgent figures and threw himself at the long control desk.

  “You can’t hide from me!” he roared, and he started punching at the control switches, banging the desk panels with both fists.

  “Who’s hiding?” Hector yelled from behind him.

  Odal turned and swung heavily at the voice. Startled, he saw his fist whisk through the impalpable jaw of a lovely girl in a skimpy bathing suit. She smiled at him and continued selling. “… AND WHEN YOU’RE IN THE MOOD FOR SOMETHING REALLY REFRESHING…”

  Hector had ducked away. Odal turned and chased after the Watchman, trying to follow him as he flickered in and out among the dozens of tri-di images that were dancing, urging, laughing, drinking, eating, taking pills, worrying…

  “You coward!” Odal screamed over the babble of sale
s talk.

  “Why should I fight you?” Hector hollered back from somewhere across the room.

  Odal squinted, trying to see through the gyrating tri-di figures. “You tricked me in the dueling machine but now there’ll be no tricks. I’ll find you, and when I do, I’ll kill you!”

  The flash of a black-and-silver uniform among the fashion models, overweight women, underweight men, scientific demonstrations and new, new, new products. Odal headed in that direction.

  “And what about Leoh?” Hector’s voice cut through the taped noise. “He killed you without any tricks. But you’re afraid to go after him now, aren’t you?”

  Odal laughed. “Do you really believe that old man beat me? I could have destroyed him at any time I wished.”

  He ducked under the arm of a well-preserved matron who was saying, “WHY LET ADVANCING AGE WORRY YOU, WHEN A REJUVE.…” There was Hector, edging slowly toward the door.

  “You deliberately lost to Leoh?” Hector’s face, in the reflections of the tri-di images, looked more puzzled than frightened. “To make it seem…”

  “To make it seem that Leoh is a great hero, and that Kerak is populated by weaklings and cowards. All his duels were designed for that purpose. And while he lulls the Acquatainians with his tales of victory, we prepare to strike.”

  On the final word Odal leaped at Hector, hit him with satisfying solidity, shoulder in mid-section, and they both went down.

  A tangle of arms and legs, knees and elbows, gasps, two strong young bodies grappling. Somehow they rolled into one of the desk chairs, which toppled down on them. Odal felt Hector slipping out of his grasp. As the Kerak major started to get back to his feet, the chair slid into him again and he slipped against it and hit the floor face first.

  Swearing, he started to get up. But Hector was already on his feet. And then the door swung open, stabbing light from the hallway into the room. A girl stood there, with a gun in her trembling hand.

  “Hector! Here!” Geri said, and she tossed the gun to the Watchman.

  Hector grabbed it and pointed it at Odal. The Kerak major froze, on one knee, hands on the floor, head upturned, face a mask of rage turned to sudden fear. Hector stood equally immobile, arm outstretched with the gun aimed at Odal’s head.

  “Kill him!” Geri whispered harshly. “Quickly, they’re coming!”

  Hector let his arm relax. The gun dropped slightly away from Odal. “Get up,” he said. “And… don’t give me any excuses for using this thing.”

  Odal got slowly to his feet.

  “Kill him! You promised!” Geri insisted, half in tears.

  “I can’t… not like this…”

  “You mean you won’t!”

  Nodding without taking his eyes off Odal, Hector said, “That’s right, I won’t. Not even for you.”

  Odal’s voice was like a knife. “You’d better kill me, Watchman, while you have the chance. I’ll spend the rest of my life hunting you.”

  A trio of uniformed guards puffed up to the doorway; behind them were a half-dozen people from the tri-di show, and Leoh.

  “What’s going on? Who’s this? Are you…”

  “This is Major Odal,” Hector said, pointing with the gun. “He’s… uh, under the protection of diplomatic immunity. Please escort him back to the Kerak embassy.”

  His face expressionless, Odal nodded to the Star Watchman and went with the guards.

  13

  “You mean it all went out on the tri-di network? Every word?” asked Hector.

  He, Leoh, and Geri were sitting in the back of an automated Dulaq ground car as it threaded its way through the darkened city, heading for Geri’s home. The midnight rain was falling for its programed half-hour, so the car’s bubble top was up.

  Geri had not said a word since Odal was taken from the tri-di studio.

  But Leoh was chuckling. “When you hit all those switches and turned on the commercial tapes, you also turned on the sound system for every studio. We heard the bedlam, with you and Odal shouting at each other over it all. It came over the speakers right in the middle of our show. You should have seen the look on everyone’s face!

  And I understand that you ruined at least six other shows that were being taped at the time.”

  “Really?” Hector squirmed. “I… that is, I didn’t mean… well, I’m sorry about that.…”

  Waving a hand at him, Leoh said, “Relax, my boy. Your fight with Odal—the audio portion of it—was beamed into nearly every home on the planet. Everyone in Acquatainia knows what a fool I’ve been, and that Kerak is still as much of a threat as ever.”

  “You’re not a fool,” Hector said.

  “Yes, I’ve been one,” insisted Leoh. “Worse, I’ve been a dupe, letting my own glory get in the way of my judgment. But that’s over now. My place is in science, not politics, and certainly not show business! I’m going to concentrate on your ‘jump’ in the dueling machine. If that was a sample of teleportation, then the machine can amplify that talent, just as it amplified Odal’s telepathic abilities. Now, if we put enough power into the machine…”

  The car glided to a stop under the roofed driveway in front of the entrance to Geri’s house. Leoh stayed in the car while Hector walked her to her door. In the shadows, he couldn’t see her face too well. They stopped at the door.

  “Um… Geri, I… well, I just couldn’t kill him. Not… not like that. I wanted to please you… but, well, if you want an assassin… I guess it’s just not me that you’re interested in.”

  She said nothing. A gentle warm breeze brought the odor of wet leaves to them.

  Hector fidgeted.

  Finally he said, “Well, good night…”

  “Good-by, Hector,” Geri said flatly.

  Leoh was studiously looking the other way, watching the final few drops of ram splatter on the statuary alongside the driveway, when Hector returned to the car. The old scientist looked at the Watchman as he ducked into the car and slumped in the seat.

  “Why so glum, my boy? What’s the matter?”

  Shrugging, Hector said. “It’s a long story…”

  “Oh, I see. Well then. To get back to the teleportation idea. If we can boost the power of the machine…”

  PART III

  The Farthest Dream

  1

  It was ironic, thought Odal, that they were using the dueling machine to torture him. For it was torture, no matter what they called it or how they smiled when they were doing it.

  He sat there in the cramped cubicle, staring at its featureless walls, the blank view screen, waiting for them to begin.

  The price of failure was heavy, too heavy. Kanus had made Odal the glory of Kerak while he was a success, while he was killing the enemies of Kerak.

  Now they were killing him.

  Not that they caused him any physical harm. He was not even under arrest, technically. Merely assigned to experimentation at Kor’s headquarters, the Ministry of Intelligence: a huge, stone, hilltop castle, ancient and brooding from the outside; inside, a maze of pain and terror and Kor’s swelling lust for victims.

  In the dueling machine, the illusion of pain was no less agonizing than the real thing. Odal smiled sardonically. The men he had killed died first in their imaginations. But soon enough their hearts stopped beating.

  Now then, are you ready? It was a voice in his mind, put there by the machine’s circuitry through the neurocontacts circling his head.

  We are going to probe a bit deeper today, in an effort to find the source of your extrasensory talents. I advise you to relax and cooperate.

  There had been three of them working on him yesterday, from the other side of the machine. Today, Odal could tell, there were more. Six? Eight? A dozen, possibly.

  He felt them: foreign thoughts, alien personalities, in his own mind. His hands twitched uncontrollably and his body began to ache and heave.

  They were seizing his control centers, battering at sensory complexes. Muscles cramped spasmodically, nerves scr
eamed in anguish, body temperature soared, ears shrilled, eyes flashed flaming reds and unbearable star bursts. Now they were going deeper, beyond the physical effects, digging, clawing away through a lifetime of self-protective neural patterns, reaching down with a searing, white-hot, twelfth-power probe into the personality itself.

  Odal heard a terrified voice howling, They’re after ME. They’re trying to get ME. Hide! Hide!

  The voice was his own.

  Despite its spaciousness, Leoh thought, the Prime Minister’s office was a stuffy antique of a room, decorated in blue and gold, with the weight of outmoded traditions and useless memories hanging more heavily than the gilt draperies that bordered each door and window.

  The meeting had been small and unspectacular. Martine had invited Leoh for an informal chat; Hector was pointedly not invited. A dozen or so aides, politicians, and administrators clustered around the Prime Minister’s desk as he officially thanked Leoh for uncovering Kerak’s attempt to use the dueling machine as a smoke screen for their war preparations.

  “It was Star Watch Lieutenant Hector who actually uncovered the plot, not me,” Leoh insisted.

  Martine waved away the words impatiently. “The Watchman is merely your aide; you are the man that Kanus fears.”

  After about ten minutes of talking, Martine nodded to one of his aides, who went to a door and admitted a covey of news photographers. The Prime Minister stood up and walked around his desk to stand beside Leoh, towering proudly over the old man, while the newsmen took their pictures. Then the meeting broke up. The newsmen left and everyone else began to drift out of the office.

  “Professor Leoh.”

  He was nearly at the doorway when Martine called. Leoh turned back and saw the Prime Minister sitting at his tall desk chair. But instead of his usual icy aloofness, there was a warm, almost friendly smile on Martine’s face.

  “Please close the door and sit down with me for a few minutes more,” Martine said.

  Puzzled, Leoh did as the Prime Minister asked. As he took an armchair off to one side of the desk, he watched Martine carefully run a hand over the communications panel set into his desk top. Then the Prime Minister opened a drawer in the desk and Leoh heard the tiny click of a switch being turned.