The Dueling Machine sw-3 Read online

  “There. Now I’m sure that we’re alone. That switch isolates the room completely. Not even my private secretary can listen to us now.”

  Leoh felt his eyebrows rising toward his scalp.

  “You have every right to look surprised, Professor. And I should look apologetic and humble. That’s why I had to make certain that this meeting is strictly private.”

  “This meeting?” Leoh echoed. “Then the meeting we just had, with the others and the newsmen…”

  Martine smiled broadly. “Kanus is not the only one who can put up a smoke screen.”

  “I see. Well, what did you want to tell me?”

  “First, please convey my apologies to Lieutenant Hector. He was not invited here for reasons that will be obvious in a moment. I realize that he wormed the truth out of Odal, although I’m not convinced that he knew what he was doing when he did it.”

  Leoh suppressed a chuckle. “Hector has his own way of doing things.”

  Nodding, Martine went on more soberly. “Now then, the real reason for my wanting to speak to you privately: I have been something of a stubborn fool. I realize that now. Kanus has not only outwitted me, but has actually penetrated deeply into my government. When I realized that Lal Ponte is a Kerak agent.…” The Prime Minister’s face was grim.

  “What are you going to do with him?”

  A shrug. “There’s nothing I can do. He has been implicated indirectly by Odal. There’s no evidence,” despite a thorough investigation. But I’m sure that if Kanus conquered the Acquataine Cluster, Ponte would expect to be named Prime Minister of the puppet government.”

  Leoh said nothing.

  “Ponte is not that much of a problem. He can be isolated. Anything that I want from his office I can get from men I know I can trust. Ponte can sit alone at his desk until the ceiling caves in on him.”

  “But he’s not your only problem.”

  “No. It’s the military problem that threatens us most directly. You and Spencer have been right all along. Kerak is building swiftly for an attack, and our defensive building is too far behind them to be of much use.”

  “Then the alliance with the Commonwealth.…”

  Shaking his head unhappily, Martine explained, “No, that’s still impossible. The political situation here is too unstable. I was voted into office by the barest margin… thanks to Ponte. To think that I was elected because Kanus wanted me to be! We’ve both been pawns, Professor.”

  “I know.”

  “But, you see, if Dulaq and Massan and all their predecessors never allied Acquatainia with the Commonwealth, then for me to attempt it would be an admission of weakness. There are strong pro-Kerak forces in the legislature, and many others who are still as blind and stubborn as I’ve been. I would be voted out of office in a week if I tried to make an alliance with the Terrans.”

  Leoh asked, “Then what can you do?”

  “I can do very little. But you can do much. I cannot call the Star Watch for help. But you can contact your friend, Sir Harold, and suggest that he ask me for permission to bring a Star Watch fleet through the Cluster. Any excuse will do… battle maneuvers, exploration, cultural exchange, anything.”

  Leoh shifted uneasily in his chair. “You want me to ask Harold to ask you…”

  “Yes, that’s it.” Martine nodded briskly. “And it must be a small Star Watch fleet, quite small. To the rest of Acquatainia, it must appear obvious that the Terran ships are not being sent here to help defend us against Kerak. But to Kanus, it must be equally obvious that he cannot attack Acquatainia without the risk of killing Watchmen and immediately involving the Commonwealth.”

  “I think I understand,” said Leoh, with a rueful smile. “Einstein was right: nuclear physics is much simpler than politics.”

  Martine laughed, but there was bitterness in it.

  2

  Kanus sat in brooding silence behind his immense desk, his thin, sallow face dark with displeasure. Sitting with him in the oversized office, either looking up at him at his cunningly elevated desk, or avoiding his sullen stare, were most of the members of his Inner Cabinet.

  At length, the Leader spoke. “We had the Acquataine Cluster in our grasp, and we allowed an old refugee from a university and a half-wit Watchman to snatch it away from us. Kor! You told me the plan was foolproof!”

  The Minister of Intelligence remained calm, except for a telltale glistening of perspiration on his bullet-shaped dome. “It was foolproof, until…”

  “Until? Until? I want the Acquataine Cluster, not excuses!”

  “And you shall have it,” Marshal Lugal promised. “As soon as the army is re-equipped and…”

  “As soon as! Until!” Kanus’ voice rose to a scream. “We had a plan of conquest and it failed. I should have the lot of you thrown to the dogs! And you, Kor; this was your operation, your plan. You picked this mind reader… Odal. He was to be the express instrument of my will. And he failed! You both failed. Twice! Can you give me any reason for allowing you to continue to pollute the air with your presence?”

  Kor replied evenly, “The Acquataine government is still very shaky and ripe for plucking. Men sympathetic to you, my Leader, have gained important posts in that government. Moreover, despite the failures of Major Odal, we are now on the verge of perfecting a new secret weapon, a weapon so powerful that…”

  “A secret weapon?” Kanus’ eyes lit up.

  Kor lowered his voice a notch. “It may be possible, our scientists believe, to use a telepath such as Odal and the dueling machine to transport objects from one place to another—over any distance, almost instantaneously.”

  Kanus sat silent for a moment, digesting the information. Then he asked: “Whole armies?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anywhere in the galaxy?”

  “Wherever there is a dueling machine.”

  Kanus rose slowly, dramatically, from his chair and stepped over to the huge star map that spanned one entire wall of the spacious room. He swept the whole map with an all-inclusive gesture and shouted:

  “Anywhere! I can strike anywhere. And they will never know what hit them!”

  He literally danced for joy, prancing back and forth before the map. “Nothing can stand in our way now! The Terran Commonwealth will fall before us. The galaxy is ours. We will make them tremble at the thought of us. We will make them cower at the mention of my name!”

  The men of the Inner Cabinet nodded and murmured agreement.

  Suddenly Kanus’ face hardened again and he whirled around to Kor. “Is this really a secret, or is someone else working on it too? What of this Leoh?”

  “It is possible,” Kor replied as blandly as he could, “that Professor Leoh is also working along the same lines. After all, the dueling machine is his invention. But he does not have the services of a trained telepath, such as Odal.”

  Kanus said, “I do not like the fact that you are depending on this failure, Odal.”

  Kor allowed a vicious smile to crack his face. “We are not depending on him, my Leader. We are using his brain. He is an experimental animal, nothing more.”

  Kanus smiled back at the Minister. “He is not enjoying his new duties, I trust.”

  “Hardly,” Kor said.

  “Good. Let me see tapes of his… ah, experiments.”

  “With pleasure, my Leader.”

  The door to the far end of the room opened and Romis, Minister of Foreign Affairs, stepped in. The room fell into a tense silence as his shoes clicked across the marble floor. Tall, spare, utterly precise, Romis walked straight to the Leader, holding a lengthy report in his hand. His patrician face was graven.

  “I have unpleasant news, Chancellor.”

  They stood confronting each other, and everyone in the room could see their mutual hatred. Kanus—short, spare, dark—glared up at the silver-haired aristocrat.

  “Our embassy in Acquatainia,” Romis continued icily, “reports that Sir Harold Spencer has requested permission to base a Star Watch
survey expedition temporarily on one of the frontier stars of the Acquataine Cluster. A star near our border, of course. Martine has agreed to it.”

  Kanus went white, then his face slowly turned red. He snatched the report from Romis’ hand, scanned it, crumpled it, and threw it to the floor. For a few moments he could not even speak. Then the tirade began.

  An hour and a half later, when the Leader was once again coherent enough to speak rationally, his ministers were assuring him:

  “The Terrans will only be there temporarily.”

  “It’s only a small fleet… no military value at all.”

  “It’s a feeble attempt by Martine and Spencer…”

  At the mention of Spencer’s name, Kanus broke into another half-hour of screaming tantrum. Finally, he abruptly stopped.

  “Romis! Stop staring out the window and give me your assessment of this situation.”

  The Foreign Minister turned slowly from the window and answered, “You must assume that the Terrans will remain in Acquatainia indefinitely. If they do not, all to the good. But your plans must be based on the assumption that they will. That means you cannot attack Acquatainia by military force…”

  “Why not?” Kanus demanded.

  Romis explained, “Because the Terrans will immediately become involved in the fighting. The entire Star Watch will be mobilized, under the pretext of saving their survey fleet from danger, as soon as we attack. The fleet is simply an excuse for the Terrans to step in against us.”

  But Kanus’ eyes began to glow. “I have the plan,” he announced. Turning to Kor:

  “You must push the development of this instantaneous transporter to the ultimate. I want a working device immediately. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, my Leader.”

  Rubbing his hands together joyfully, Kanus said, “We will have our army appear in the Acquatainian capital. We’ll conquer the Cluster from within! Wherever they have a dueling machine, we’ll appear and conquer with the swiftness of lightning! Let the Star Watch plant their hostages on the frontier… they’ll gather cobwebs there! We’ll have the whole Cluster in our fist before Spencer even realizes we’ve moved!”

  Kanus laughed uproariously, and all his aides laughed with him.

  All except Romis.

  3

  Professor Leoh slouched unhappily in a chair at the dueling machine’s main control desk. Hector sat uneasily on the first few centimeters of the desk edge.

  “We have adequate power,” Leoh said, “the circuits are correct, everything seems normal.” He looked up, puzzled, at Hector.

  The Watchman stammered, “I know… I just… well, I just can’t do it.”

  Shaking his head, Leoh said, “We’ve duplicated the conditions of your first jump. But now it doesn’t work. If the machine is exactly the same, then there must be something different about you.”

  Hector wormed his shoulders uncomfortably.

  “What is it, my boy? What’s bothering you? You haven’t been yourself since the night you caught Odal.” Hector didn’t reply.

  “Listen,” said Leoh. “Psychic phenomena are very difficult to pin down. For centuries men have known cases where people have apparently teleported, or used telepathy. There are thousands of cases on record of poltergeists#longdash#they were actually thought to be ghosts, ages ago. Now I’m sure that they’re really cases of telekinesis: the poltergeist was actually a fairly normal human being, under extraordinary stress, who threw objects around his house mentally without even knowing it himself.”

  “Just like when I jumped without knowing it,” Hector said.

  “Exactly. Now, it was my hope that the dueling machine would amplify the psychic talent in you. It did once, but it’s not doing it now.”

  “Maybe I don’t really have it.”

  “Maybe,” Leoh admitted. Then, leaning forward in his chair and pointing a stubby finger at the Watchman, he added, “Or maybe something’s upsetting you so much that your talent is buried, dormant, switched off.”

  “Yes… well, uh, that is…”

  “Is it Geri? I haven’t seen her around here lately. Perhaps if she could come… after all, she was one of the conditions of your original jump, wasn’t she?”

  “She won’t come here,” Hector said miserably.

  “Eh? Why not?”

  The Watchman blurted, “Because she wanted me to murder Odal and I wouldn’t, so she’s sore at me and won’t even talk to me on the view phone.”

  “What? What’s this? Take it slower, son.”

  Hector explained the whole story of Geri’s insistence that Odal be killed.

  Leaning back in the chair, fingers steepled on his broad girth, Leoh said, “Hmm. Natural enough, I suppose. The Acquatainians have that sort of outlook. But somehow I expected better of her.”

  “She won’t even talk to me,” Hector repeated.

  “But you did the right thing,” said Leoh. “At least, you were true to your upbringing and your Star Watch training. Vengeance is a paltry motive, and nothing except self-defense can possibly justify killing a man.”

  “Tell it to her.”

  “No, my boy,” Leoh said, pulling himself up and out of the chair. “You must tell her. And in no uncertain terms.”

  “But she won’t even see me…”

  “Nonsense. If you love her, you’ll get to her. Tell her where you stand and why. If she loves you, she’ll accept you for what you are, and be proud of you for it.”

  Hector looked uncertain. “And if she doesn’t love me?”

  “Well… knowing the Acquatainian temperament, she might start throwing things at you.”

  The Watchman remained sitting on the desk top and stared down at the floor.

  Leoh grasped his shoulder. “Listen to me, son. What you did took courage, real courage. It would have been easy to kill Odal and win her approval… everyone’s approval, as a matter of fact. But you did what you thought was right. Now, if you had the courage to do that, surely you have the courage to face an unarmed girl.”

  Hector looked up at him, his long face somber. “But suppose… suppose she never loved me. Suppose she was just… well, using me… until I killed Odal?”

  Then you’re well rid of her, Leoh thought. But he couldn’t say that to Hector.

  “I don’t think that’s the case at all,” he said softly.

  And he added to himself, At least I hope not.

  In his exhausted sleep, Odal did not hear the door opening. The sergeant stepped into the bare windowless cell and shined his lamp in Odal’s eyes. The Kerak major stirred and turned his face away from the light. The sergeant grabbed his shoulder and shook him sternly. Odal snapped awake, knocked the guard’s hand from his shoulder, and seized him by the throat. The guard dropped his lamp and tried to pry Odal’s single hand from his windpipe. For a second or two they remained locked in soundless fury, in the weird glow from the lamp on the floor—Odal sitting up on the cot, the sergeant slowly sinking to his knees.

  Then Odal released him. The sergeant fell to all fours, coughing; Odal swung his legs out of the cot and stood up.

  “When you rouse me, you will do it with courtesy,” he said. “I am not a common criminal, and I will not be’ treated as one by such as you. And even though my door is locked from the outside, you will knock on it before entering. Is that clear?”

  The sergeant climbed to his feet, rubbing his throat, his eyes a mixture of anger and fear.

  “I’m just following orders. Nobody told me to treat you special.…”

  “I am telling you,” Odal snapped. “And as long as I still have my rank, you will address me as sir!”

  “Yes, sir,” the sergeant muttered sullenly.

  Odal relaxed slightly, flexed his fingers.

  “You’re wanted at the dueling machine… sir.”

  “In the middle of the night? By whose orders?”

  The guard shrugged. “They didn’t say. Sir.”

  Odal smiled. “Very well. Step outside whi
le I put on my ‘uniform.’ ” He gestured to the shapeless fatigues draped over the end of the cot.

  A single meditech stood waiting for Odal beside the dueling machine, which bulked ominously in the dim night lighting. Odal recognized him as one of the inquisitors he had been facing for the past several weeks. Wordlessly, the man gestured Odal to his booth. The sergeant took up a post at the doorway to the large room as the meditech fitted Odal’s head and torso with the necessary neurocontacts. Then he stepped out of the compartment and firmly shut the door.

  For a few moments nothing happened. Then Odal felt a voice in his mind:

  “Major Odal?”

  “Of course,” he replied silently.

  “Yes… of course.”

  There was something puzzling. Something wrong. “You… you are not the…”

  “I am not the man who put you into the dueling machine. That is correct.” The voice seemed both pleased and worried. “That man is at the controls of the machine, while I am halfway across the planet. He has a miniature transceiver with him, and I am communicating with you through it. This means of communication is unorthodox, but it probably cannot be intercepted by Kor or his henchmen.”

  “But I know you,” Odal thought. “I have met you before.”

  “That is true.”

  “Romis! You are Minister Romis.”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you want with me?”

  “I learned only this morning of your situation. I was shocked at such treatment for a loyal soldier of Kerak.”

  Odal felt the words forming in his mind, yet he knew that Romis’ words were only a glossy surface, hiding a deeper meaning. He communicated nothing, and waited for the Minister to continue.

  “Are you being mistreated?”

  Odal smiled mirthlessly. “No more so than any laboratory animal. I suppose it’s no worse than having one’s intestines sliced open without anesthetics.”