The Dueling Machine sw-3 Read online

  “What’s going on?” Kanus demanded. “Why have you awakened me?”

  “It has happened, my Leader,” Kor said quietly, unemotionally. “The traitors are making their move. I’ve been locked in one of my own cells…”

  “What?” Kanus sat rigidly upright in the bed.

  Kor smiled. “The fools think they can win by capturing me and holding the Intelligence Ministry. They overlooked a few details. For one, I have my pocket communicator. I’ve monitored their calls. Romis is no doubt on his way to your palace right now, intent on killing you.”

  “Romis! And you’re locked up!”

  Raising his hands in a gesture of calm, Kor went on.

  “No need to be overly alarmed, my Leader. They are merely exposing themselves, at last. We can crush them.”

  “I’ll call out the army,” Kanus said, his voice rising.

  “Some parts of the army may turn out to be disloyal to you,” Kor answered. “Your personal guards should be sufficient, however, to stop these traitors. If you could detach a division or so to recapture the Ministry building, and have your own dueling machine there guarded, that should take care of most of it. Romis is flying into your hands, so it should be a simple matter to deal with him when he arrives.

  “My dueling machine? They’re coming through my dueling machine?”

  “Only two of them: the traitor Odal, and the Watchman.”

  “I’ll have them killed by inches!” Kanus roared. “And Romis too!”

  “Yes, of course. But it will be important to recapture the Intelligence Ministry and free me. And also, you should be ready to deal with any elements of the army and space fleet that refuse to follow your orders.”

  ’Traitors! Traitors everywhere! I’ll have them all killed!”

  Kanus banged the control stud over his bed and the wall screen went dark. He began screaming orders to the cringing servant, still standing by the doorway. Within minutes he was robed and hurrying down the hallway toward the room where he had his own private dueling machine.

  A squad of guards met him at the door to the dueling machine room.

  “Keep that machine off!” Kanus ordered. “If anyone appears inside the machine, bring him to me at once.”

  The guard captain saluted.

  Another servant appeared at Kanus’ elbow. “Foreign Minister Romis has arrived, my Leader. He…”

  “Bring him to my office. At once!”

  Kanus strode angrily back to his office. Two guards, armed and helmeted, stood at the door. He brushed past them and stalked inside. Romis was already there, standing by the window alongside the elevated desk.

  “Traitor!” Kanus screamed at the sight of the diplomat. “Assassin! Guards, cut him down!”

  Startled, Romis reached for the gun at his waist. But the guards were already inside the office, guns drawn.

  Romis hesitated. Then the guards took off their helmets to reveal two blond heads, two lean, grinning faces.

  “We arrived at your dueling machine sooner than you thought we would,” Odal said to Kanus. “It was a simple matter to overpower the guards at the door and take their uniforms.”

  “We left when your squad of guards arrived,” Hector added, “and came here, just a few steps ahead of you.”

  Kanus’ knees boggled.

  Romis relaxed. His hands dropped to his sides. “It’s all over, Chancellor. You are deposed. My men have seized the Intelligence Ministry; most of the army is against you. You can avoid a good deal of bloodshed by surrendering yourself to me and ordering your guards not to fight their countrymen.”

  Kanus tried to shriek, but no sounds would come from his throat. Wild-eyed, he threw himself between Odal and Hector and dashed to the door.

  “Don’t shoot him!” Romis shouted. “We need him alive if we’re going to prevent a civil war!”

  Kanus raced blindly down the halls to the dueling machine. Without a word to the startled guards standing around the machine, he punched a half-dozen buttons on the control board and bolted into one of the booths. He slapped the neurocontacts to his head and chest and took a deep, long breath. His pounding heart slowed, steadied. His eyes slid shut. His body relaxed.

  He was sitting on a golden throne at the head of an enormously long hall. Throngs of people lined the richly tapestried walls, and the most beautiful women in the galaxy sat, bejeweled and leisurely, on the cushioned steps at his feet. At the bottom of the steps knelt Sir Harold Spencer, shackled, blinded, his once proud uniform grimy with blood and filth. No, not blind. Kanus wanted him to see, wanted to look into the Star Watch Commander’s eyes as he described in great detail how the old man would be slowly, slowly killed.

  And now he was floating through space, alone, unprotected from the vacuum and radiation but perfectly comfortable, perfectly at ease. Suns passed by him as he sailed majestically through the galaxy, his galaxy, his personal conquest. He saw a planet below him. It displeased him. He extended a hand toward it. Its cities burst into flames. He could hear the screams of their inhabitants, hear them begging him for mercy. Smiling, he let them roast.

  Mountains were chiseled away to become statues of Kanus the Conqueror, Kanus the All-Powerful. Throughout the galaxy men knelt in worship before him.

  They feared him. Yet more, they loved him. He was their Leader, and they loved him because he was all-powerful. His word was the law of nature. He could suspend gravity, eclipse stars, bestow life or take it.

  He stood before the kneeling multitudes, smiling at some, frowning at those who displeased him. They curled and writhed like leaves in flame. But there was one who was not kneeling. One tall, silver-haired man, straight and slim, walking purposively toward him.

  “You must give yourself up,” said Romis gravely.

  “Die!” Kanus shouted.

  But Romis kept advancing toward him. “Your guards have surrendered. You’ve been in the dueling machine for two hours now. Most of the army has refused to obey you. The Kerak Worlds have repudiated you. Kor has committed suicide. There is some fighting going on, however. You can end it by surrendering to me.”

  “I am the master of the universe! No one can stand before me!”

  “You are sick,” Romis said stiffly. “You need help.”

  “I’ll kill you!”

  “You cannot kill me. You are helpless…”

  Everything began to fade, shrink away, dim into darkness. There was nothing now but grayness, and Romis’ grave, uncompromising figure standing before him.

  “You need help. We will help you.”

  Kanus could feel tears filling his eyes. “I am alone,” he whimpered. “Alone… and afraid.”

  His face a mixture of distaste and pity, Romis extended his hand. “We will help you. Come with me.”

  11

  Professor Leoh squinted at his wrist screen and saw that it was four minutes before lift-off. The bright red sun of Acquatainia was near zenith. A warm breeze wafted across the spaceport.

  “I hope he can get here before we leave,” Geri was saying to Hector. “We owe him .… well, something.”

  Hector started to nod, then noticed a trim little air car circling overhead. It banked smartly against the cloud-puffed sky and glided to a landing not far from the gleaming shuttle craft that stood before them. Down from its cockpit clambered the lithe figure of Odal.

  Hector trotted out to meet him. The two men shook hands, both of them smiling.

  “I never realized before,” Leoh said to the girl, “how much they resemble each other. They look almost like brothers.”

  Odal was wearing his light-blue uniform again; Hector was in civilian tunic and shorts.

  “I’m sorry to be so late,” Odal said to Geri as he came toward her. “I wanted to bring you a wedding present, and had to hunt all over Kerak for one of these…”

  He handed Geri a small plastic box filled with earth. A single, thin bluish leaf had pushed up above the ground.

  “It’s an eon tree,” Odal explained to t
hem. “They’ve become very rare. It will take a century to reach maturity, but once grown it will be taller than any other tree known.”

  Geri smiled at him and took the present.

  “I wanted to give you a new life,” Odal went on, “in exchange for the new life you’ve given me.”

  Hector said, “We wanted to give you something, too. But with the wedding and everything we just haven’t had the time to breathe, practically. But we’ll send you something from Mars.”

  They chatted for a few more minutes, then the loudspeaker summoned Hector and Geri to the ship.

  Standing beside Leoh, watching the two of them walk arm in arm toward the ship, Odal asked, “You’re going to return to Carinae?”

  “Yes.” Leoh nodded. “Hector will join me there in a few months, he and Geri. We’ve got a lifetime of work ahead of us. It’s a shame you can’t work with us. Now that we know interstellar teleportation is possible, we’ve got to find out how it works and why. We’re going to open up the stars to real colonization, at last.”

  Looking wistfully at Geri as she rode the lift up to the shuttle’s hatch, Odal said, “I think it would be best for me to stay away from them. Besides, I have my own duties in Kerak. Romis is teaching me the arts of government…peaceful, law-abiding government, just as you have in the Commonwealth.”

  “That’s a big job,” Leoh admitted, “cleaning up after the mess Kanus made.”

  “You’d be interested to know that Kanus is being treated psychonically, in the dueling machine. Your invention is being turned into a therapeutic device.”

  “So I’ve heard,” the old man said. “Its use as a dueling machine is only one possible application for the machine. Look what it did to you and Hector. I never realized that two men could be so dramatically drawn together.”

  It was Odal’s turn to smile. “I learned a lot in that moment with Hector in the machine.”

  “So did he. And yet,” Leoh’s voice took on a hint of regret, “I almost wish he were the old Hector again. He’s so… so mature now. No more scatterbrain. He doesn’t even whistle any more. He’ll be a great man in a few years. Perhaps a Star Watch commander someday. He’s completely changed.”

  As they watched, Hector and Geri waved from the hatch of the shuttle craft. The hatch slid shut, but somehow Hector’s hand got caught still outside. A crewman had to reopen the hatch, glaring at the red-faced Watchman.

  Leoh began laughing. “Well, perhaps not completely changed after all,” he said with some relief.

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