by Ben Bova
The Dueling Machine
( Star Watch - 3 )
Ben Bova
Here are the deadliest warriors in the universe—awesome gladiators caught in the ultimate one-on-one battles of all eternity. These explosive tales of future combat are collected here for the first time—featuring today’s acclaimed masters of science fiction.
Ben Bova
The Dueling Machine
PART I
The Perfect Warrior
1
Dulaq rode the slide to the upper pedestrian level, stepped off, and walked over to the railing. The city stretched out all around him—broad avenues thronged with busy people, pedestrian walks, vehicle thoroughfares, air cars gliding between the gleaming, towering buildings.
And somewhere in this vast city was the man he must kill. The man who would kill him, perhaps. It all seemed so real! The noise of the streets, the odors of the perfumed trees lining the walks, even the warmth of the reddish sun on his back as he scanned the scene before him.
It is an illusion, Dulaq reminded himself. A clever, man-made hallucination. A figment of my own imagination amplified by a machine.
But it seemed so very real.
Real or not, he had to find Odal before the sun set. Find him and kill him. Those were the terms of the duel. He fingered the stubby, cylindrical stat-wand in his tunic pocket. That was the weapon that he had chosen, his weapon, his own invention. And this was the environment he had picked: his city, busy, noisy, crowded. The metropolis Dulaq had known and loved since childhood.
Dulaq turned, and glanced at the sun. It was halfway down toward the horizon. He had about three hours to find Odal. And when he did—kill or be killed.
Of course no one is actually hurt. That is the beauty of the machine. It allows one to settle a score, to work out aggressive feelings, without either mental or physical harm.
Dulaq shrugged. He was a roundish figure, moon-faced, slightly stoop-shouldered. He had work to do. Unpleasant work for a civilized man, but the future of the Acquataine Cluster and the entire alliance of neighboring star systems could well depend on the outcome of this electronically synthesized dream.
He turned and walked down the elevated avenue, marveling at the sharp sensation of solidity that met each footstep on the paving. Children dashed by and rushed up to a toyshop window. Men of commerce strode along purposefully, but without missing a chance to eye the girls sauntering by.
I must have a marvelous imagination. Dulaq smiled to himself.
Then he thought of Odal, the blond, icy professional he was pitted against. Odal was an expert at all the weapons, a man of strength and cool precision, an emotionless tool in the hands of a ruthless politician. But how expert could he be with a stat-wand, when the first time he saw one was the moment before the duel began? And how well acquainted could he be with the metropolis, when he had spent most of his life in the military camps on the dreary planets of Kerak, sixty light-years from Acquatainia?
No, Odal would be helpless and lost in this situation. He would attempt to hide among the throngs of people. All Dulaq had to do was to find him.
The terms of the duel limited both men to the pedestrian walks of the commercial quarter of the city. Dulaq knew this area intimately, and he began a methodical search through the crowds for the tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed Odal.
And he saw him! After only a few minutes of walking down the major thoroughfare, he spotted his opponent, strolling calmly along a crosswalk, at the level below. Dulaq hurried down the ramp, worked his way through the crowd, and saw the man again, tall and blond, unmistakable. Dulaq edged along behind him quietly, easily. No disturbance. No pushing. Plenty of time. They walked down the street for a quarter-hour while the distance between them slowly shrank from fifty meters to five.
Finally Dulaq was directly behind him, within arm’s reach. He grasped the stat-wand and pulled it from his tunic. With one quick motion he touched it to the base of the man’s skull and started to thumb the button that would release a killing bolt of energy.
The man turned suddenly. It wasn’t Odal!
Dulaq jerked back in surprise. It couldn’t be. He had seen his face. It was Odal… and yet this man was a stranger. Dulaq felt the man’s eyes on him as he turned and walked away quickly.
A mistake, he told himself. You were overanxious. A good thing this is a hallucination, or the autopolice would be taking you in by now.
And yet… he had been so certain that it was Odal. A chill shuddered through him. He looked up, and there was his antagonist, on the thoroughfare above, at the precise spot where he himself had been a few minutes earlier.
Their eyes met, and Odal’s lips parted in a cold smile.
Dulaq hurried up the ramp. Odal was gone by the time he reached the upper level. He couldn’t have gotten far.
Slowly, but very surely, Dulaq’s hallucination crumbled into a nightmare. He’d spot Odal in the crowd, only to have him melt away. He’d find him again, but when he’d get closer, it would turn out to be another stranger. He felt the chill of the duelist’s ice-blue eyes on him again and again, but when he turned there was no one there except the impersonal crowd.
Odal’s face appeared again and again. Dulaq struggled through the throngs to find his opponent, only to have him vanish. The crowd seemed to be filled with tall blond men crisscrossing before Dulaq’s dismayed eyes:
The shadows lengthened. The sun was setting. Dulaq could feel his heart pounding within him, and perspiration pouring from every square centimeter of his skin.
There he is! Yes, that is him. Definitely, positively him! Dulaq pushed through the homeward-bound crowds toward the figure of a tall blond man leaning casually against the safety railing of the city’s main thoroughfare. It was Odal, the damned smiling confident Odal.
Dulaq pulled the wand from his tunic and battled across the surging crowd to the spot where Odal stood motionless, hands in pockets, watching him dispassionately. Dulaq came within arm’s reach…
“TIME, GENTLEMEN. TIME IS UP. THE DUEL IS ENDED.”
The Acquataine Cluster was a rich jewel box of some three hundred stars, just outside the borders of the Terran Commonwealth. More than a thousand inhabited planets circled those stars. The capital planet—Acquatainia—held the Cluster’s largest city. In this city was the Cluster’s oldest university. And in the university stood the dueling machine.
High above the floor of the antiseptic-white chamber that housed the dueling machine was a narrow gallery. Before the machine had been installed, the chamber had been a lecture hall in the university. Now the rows of students’ seats, the lecturer’s dais and rostrum were gone. The room held only the machine, a grotesque collection of consoles, control desks, power units, association circuits, and the two booths where the duelists sat.
In the gallery—empty during ordinary duels—sat a privileged handful of newsmen.
“Time limit’s up,” one of them said. “Dulaq didn’t get him.”
“Yeah, but he didn’t get Dulaq either.”
The first one shrugged. “Now he’ll have to fight Odal on his terms.”
“Wait, they’re coming out.”
Down on the floor below, Dulaq and his opponent emerged from their enclosed booths.
One of the newsmen whistled softly. “Look at Dulaq’s face… it’s positively gray.”
“I’ve never seen the Prime Minister so shaken.”
“And take a look at Kanus’ hired assassin.” The newsmen turned toward Odal, who stood before his booth, quietly chatting with his seconds.
“Hmp. There’s a bucket of frozen ammonia for you.”
“He’s enjoying this.”
One of the newsmen stood up. “I’ve got a deadline to me
et. Save my seat.”
He made his way past the guarded door, down the rampway circling the outer wall of the building, to the portable tri-di camera unit that the Acquatainian government had permitted for the newsmen to make their reports.
The newsman huddled with his technicians for a few minutes, then stepped before the camera.
“Emile Dulaq, Prime Minister of the Acquataine Cluster and acknowledged leader of the coalition against Chancellor Kanus of the Kerak Worlds, has failed in the first part of his psychonic duel against Major Par Odal of Kerak. The two antagonists are now undergoing the routine medical and psychological checks before renewing their duel…”
By the time the newsman returned to his gallery seat, the duel was almost ready to begin again.
Dulaq stood in the midst of his group of advisers before the looming impersonality of the machine. Across the way, Odal remained with his two seconds.
“You needn’t go through with the next phase of the duel immediately,” one of the Prime Minister’s advisers was saying. “Wait until tomorrow. Rest and calm yourself.”
Dulaq’s round face puckered into a frown. He cocked an eye at the chief meditech, hovering on the edge of the little group.
The meditech, one of the staff that ran the dueling machine, pointed out, “The Prime Minister has passed the examinations. He is capable, within the rules of the duel, of resuming.”
“But he has the option of retiring for the day, doesn’t he?”
“If Major Odal agrees.”
Dulaq shook his head impatiently. “No. I shall go through with it. Now.”
“But…”
The Prime Minister’s expression hardened. His advisers lapsed into a respectful silence. The chief meditech ushered Dulaq back into his booth. On the other side of the machine, Odal glanced at the Acquatainians, grinned humorlessly, and strode into his own booth.
Dulaq sat and tried to blank out his mind while the meditechs adjusted the neurocontacts to his head and torso. They finished and withdrew. He was alone in the booth now, looking at the dead-white walls, completely bare except for the large view screen before his eyes. The screen began to glow slightly, then brightened into a series of shifting colors. The colors merged and changed, swirling across his field of view. Dulaq felt himself being drawn into them, gradually, compellingly, completely immersed in them…
The mists slowly vanished and Dulaq found himself standing on an immense and totally barren plain. Not a tree, not a blade of grass; nothing but bare, rocky ground stretching in all directions to the horizon and a disturbingly harsh yellow sky. He looked down at his feet and saw the weapon that Odal had chosen. A primitive club.
With a sense of dread, Dulaq picked up the club and hefted it in his hand. He scanned the plain. Nothing. No hills or trees or bushes to hide in. No place to run to.
And off on the horizon he could see a tall, lithe figure holding a similar club walking slowly and deliberately toward him.
The press gallery was practically empty. The duel had more than an hour to run, and most of the newsmen were outside, broadcasting their hastily drawn guesses about Dulaq’s failure to win with his own choice of weapons and environment.
Then a curious thing happened.
On the master control panel of the dueling machine, a single light flashed red. The chief meditech blinked at it in surprise, then pressed a series of buttons on his board. More red lights appeared. The chief meditech reached out and flipped a single switch.
One of the newsmen turned to his partner. “What’s going on down there?”
“I think it’s all over… Yeah, look, they’re opening up the booths. Somebody’s scored a win.”
“But who?”
They watched intently while the other newsmen quickly filed back into the gallery.
“There’s Odal. He looks happy.”
“Guess that means…”
“Good lord! Look at Dulaq!”
2
More than two thousand light-years from Acquatainia was the star cluster called Cannae. Although it was an even greater distance away from Earth, Carinae was still well within the confines of the mammoth Terran Commonwealth. Dr. Leoh, inventor of the dueling machine, was lecturing at the Carinae University when the news of Dulaq’s duel reached him. An assistant professor perpetrated the unthinkable breach of interrupting the lecture to whisper the news in his ear.
Leoh nodded grimly, hurriedly finished his lecture, and then accompanied the assistant professor to the university president’s office. They stood in silence as the slideway whisked them through the strolling students and blossoming greenery of the quietly busy campus.
Leoh was balding and jowly, the oldest man at the university. The oldest man anyone in the university knew, for that matter. But his face was creased from a smile that was almost habitual, and his eyes were active and alert. He wasn’t smiling, though, as they left the slideway and entered the administration building.
They rode the lift tube to the president’s office. Leoh asked the assistant professor as they stepped through the president’s open doorway, “You say he was in a state of catatonic shock when they removed him from the machine?”
“He still is,” the president answered from his desk. “Completely withdrawn from the real world. Cannot speak, hear, or even see. A living vegetable.”
Leoh plopped down in the nearest chair and ran a hand across his fleshy face. “I don’t understand it. Nothing like this has ever happened in a dueling machine before.”
The president said, “I don’t understand it either. But, this is your business.” He put a slight emphasis on the last word, unconsciously perhaps.
“Well, at least this won’t reflect on the university. That’s why I formed Psychonics as a separate business enterprise.” Then Leoh grinned and added, “The money, of course, was only a secondary consideration.”
The president managed a smile. “Of course.”
“I suppose the Acquatainians want to talk to me?” Leoh asked academically.
“They’re on tri-di now, waiting for you.”
“They’re holding a transmission frequency open over two thousand light-years?” Leoh looked impressed.
“You’re the inventor of the dueling machine and the head of Psychonics, Incorporated. You’re the only man who can tell them what went wrong.”
“Well, I suppose I shouldn’t keep them waiting.”
“You can take the call here,” the president said, starting to get up from his chair.
“No, no, stay at your desk,” Leoh insisted. “There’s no need for you to leave. Or you either,” he added to the assistant professor.
The president touched a button on his desk communicator. The far wall of the office glowed momentarily, then seemed to dissolve. They were looking into another office, this one in distant Acquatainia. It was crowded with nervous-looking men in business clothes and military uniforms.
“Gentlemen,” Dr. Leoh said.
Several of the Acquatainians tried to answer him at once. After a few seconds of talking simultaneously, they all looked toward one of their members—a tall, determined, shrewd—looking civilian who bore a neatly trimmed black beard.
“I am Fernd Massan, the Acting Prime Minister of Acquatainia. You realize, of course, the crisis that has been precipitated in my government because of this duel?”
Leoh blinked. “I realize that there’s apparently been some difficulty with one of the dueling machines installed in your cluster. Political crises are not in my field.”
“But your dueling machine has incapacitated the Prime Minister,” one of the generals bellowed.
“And at this particular moment,” a minister added, “in the midst of our difficulties with the Kerak Worlds.”
Massan gestured them to silence.
“The dueling machine,” Leoh said calmly, “is nothing more than a psychonic device… it’s no more dangerous than a tri-di communicator. It merely allows two men to share a dream world that they create togeth
er. They can do anything they want to in their dream world-settle an argument as violently as they wish, and neither of them is physically hurt any more than a normal dream can hurt you physically. Men can use the dueling machine as an outlet for their aggressive feelings, for their tensions and hatreds, without hurting themselves or their society.
“Your own government tested one of the machines and approved its use on Acquatainia more than three years ago. I see several of you who were among those to whom I personally demonstrated the machine. Dueling machines are becoming commonplace through wide portions of the Terran Commonwealth, and neighboring nations such as Acquatainia. I’m sure that many of you have used the machine yourselves. You have, General, I’m certain.”
The general flustered. “That has nothing to do with the matter at hand!”
“Admittedly,” Leoh conceded. “But I don’t understand how a therapeutic machine can possibly become entangled in a political crisis.”
Massan said, “Allow me to explain. Our government has been conducting extremely delicate negotiations with the governments of our neighboring star-nations. These negotiations concern the rearmament of the Kerak Worlds. You have heard of Kanus of Kerak?”
“Vaguely,” Leoh said. “He’s a political leader of some sort.”
“Of the worst sort. He has acquired complete dictatorship of the Kerak Worlds and is now attempting to rearm them for war. This is in direct contravention of the Treaty of Acquatainia, signed only thirty Terran years ago.”
“I see. The treaty was signed at the end of the Acquataine-Kerak War, wasn’t it?”
“A war that we won,” the general pointed out.
“And now the Kerak Worlds want to rearm and try again,” Leoh said.
“Precisely.”
Leoh shrugged. “Why not call in the Star Watch? This is their type of police activity. And what has all this to do with the dueling machine?”
“Let me explain,” Massan said patiently. He gestured to an aide, and on the wall behind him a huge tri-di star map glowed into life.