by Ben Bova
5
“I simply don’t understand what came over me,” Leoh said to Spencer and Hector. “I never let my temper get the better of me.”
They were standing in the former lecture hall that housed the grotesque bulk of the dueling machine. No one else had entered yet; the duel with Ponte was still an hour away.
“Come now, Albert,” said Spencer. “If that whining little politician had spoken to me the way he did to you, I’d have been tempted to hit him there and then.”
Leoh shrugged.
“These Acquatainians are an emotional lot,” Spencer went on. “Frankly, I’m glad to be leaving.”
“When will you go?”
“As soon as this silly duel is finished. It’s quite clear that Martine is unwilling to accept any support from the Commonwealth. My presence here is merely aggravating him and his people.”
Hector spoke for the first time. “That means there’ll be war between Acquatainia and Kerak.” He said it quietly, his eyes gazing off into space, as though he were talking to himself.
“Both sides want war,” Spencer said.
“Stupidity,” muttered Leoh.
“Pride,” Spencer corrected. “The same kind of pride that makes men fight duels.”
Startled, Leoh was about to answer until he saw the grin on Spencer’s leathery face.
The chamber filled slowly. The meditechs who operated the dueling machine came in, a few at a time, and started checking out the machine. There was a new man on the team, sitting at a new console. His equipment monitored the duels and made certain that neither of the duelists was getting telepathic help from outside.
Ponte and his group arrived precisely at the appointed time for the duel. Four newsmen appeared in the press gallery, high above. Leoh suppressed a frown. Surely a duel involving the machine’s inventor should warrant more attention from the networks.
They went through the medical checks, the instructions on using the machine (which Leoh had written), and the agreement that the challenged party would have the first choice of weapons.
“My weapon will be the elementary laws of physics,” Leoh said. “No special instructions will be necessary.”
Ponte’s eyes widened slightly with puzzlement. His seconds glanced at each other. Even the dueling machine’s meditechs looked uncertain. After a heartbeat’s silence, the chief meditech shrugged.
“If there are no objections,” he said, “let us proceed.”
Leoh sat patiently in his booth while the meditechs attached the neurocontacts to his head and torso. Strange, he thought. I’ve operated dueling machines hundreds of times. But this is the first time the other man in the machine is really angry at me. He wants to kill me.
The meditechs left and shut the booth. Leoh was alone now, staring into the screen and its subtly shifting colors. He tried to close his eyes, found that he couldn’t, tried again and succeeded.
When he opened them he was standing in the middle of a large, gymnasium-like room. There were windows high up near the lofty ceiling. Instead of being filled with athletic apparatus, this room was crammed with rope pulleys, inclined ramps, metal spheres of all sizes from a few centimeters to twice the height of a man. Leoh was standing on a slightly raised, circular platform, holding a small control box in his hand.
Lal Ponte stood across the room, his back to a wall, frowning at the jungle of unfamiliar equipment.
“This is a sort of elementary physics lab,” Leoh called out to him. “While none of the objects here are really weapons, many of them can be dangerous if you know how to use them. Or if you don’t know.”
Ponte began to object. “This is unreasonable…”
“Not really,” Leoh said pleasantly. “You’ll find that the equipment is spread around the room to form a sort of maze. Your job is to get through the maze to this platform, and to find something to use as a weapon on me. Now, there are traps in the maze. You’ll have to avoid them. And this platform is really a turntable… but we’ll talk about that later.”
Ponte looked around. “You are foolish.”
“Perhaps.”
The Acquatainian took a few steps to his right and lifted a slender metal rod. Hefting it in his hand, he started toward Leoh.
“That’s a lever,” the Professor said. “Of course, you can use it as a club if you wish.”
A tangle of ropes stood in Ponte’s way. Instead of detouring around them, he pushed his way through.
Leoh shook his head and touched a button on his control box. “A mistake, I’m afraid.”
The ropes—a pulley, actually—jerked into motion and heaved the flooring under Ponte’s feet upward. The Acquatainian toppled to his hands and knees and found himself on a platform suddenly ten meters in the air. Dropping the lever, he began grabbing at the ropes. One of them swung free and he jumped at it, curling his arms and legs around it.
“Pendulum,” Leoh called to him. “Watch your…”
Ponte’s rope, with him on it, swung out a little way, then swung back again toward the mid-air platform. He cracked his head nastily on the platform’s edge, let go of the rope, and thudded to the floor.
“The floor’s padded,” Leoh said, “but I forgot to pad the edge of the platform. Hope it didn’t hurt you too badly.”
Ponte sat up groggily, his head rolling. It took him three tries to stand up again. He staggered forward.
“On your right is an inclined plane of the sort Galileo used, only much larger. You’ll have to hurry to get past the ball.…”
At a touch of Leoh’s finger on the control box, an immense metal ball began rolling down the gangway-sized plane. Ponte heard its rumbling, turned to stare at it goggle-eyed, and barely managed to jump out of its way. The ball rolled across the floor, ponderously smashing everything in its way until it crashed against the far wall.
“Perhaps you’d better sit down for a few moments and gather your wits,” Leoh suggested.
Ponte was puffing hard. “You… you’re a devil… a smiling devil.”
He reached down for a small sphere at his feet. As he raised his hand to throw it, Leoh touched the control box again and the turntable platform began to rotate slowly. Ponte’s awkward toss missed him by a meter.
“I can adjust the turntable’s speed,” Leoh explained as Ponte threw several more spheres. All missed.
The Acquatainian, his once-bland face furiously red now, rushed toward the spinning platform and jumped onto it, on the side opposite Leoh. He still had two small spheres in his hand.
“Be careful,” Leoh warned as Ponte swayed and nearly fell off. “Centrifugal force can be tricky.…”
The two men stood unmoving for a moment: Leoh alertly watching, Ponte glaring. The room appeared to be swinging around them.
Ponte threw one of the spheres as hard as he could. It seemed to curve away from Leoh.
“The Coriolis force,” said Leoh, in a slightly lecturing tone, “is a natural phenomenon on rotating systems. It’s what makes the winds curve across a planet’s rotating surface.”
The second sphere whistled by, no closer than the first.
“I should also warn you that this platform is made of alternate sections of magnetic and nonmagnetic materials.” Leoh gestured toward the mosaic-colored floor. “Your shoes have metal in them. If you remain on the magnetized sections, the red ones, you should be able to move about without too much difficulty.”
He touched the control box again and the turntable speeded up considerably. The room seemed to whirl wildly around them now. Leoh hunched down and leaned inward.
“Of course,” he went on, “at the speed we’re going now, if you should step onto a nonmagnetized section.…”
Ponte started doggedly across the turntable, heading for Leoh, his eyes on the colored flooring. Leoh stepped carefully away from him, keeping as much distance between them as possible. Ponte was moving faster now, trying to keep one eye on Leoh and one on his feet. He stopped abruptly, started to move directly toward Leoh,
cutting in toward the center of the turntable.
“Be careful!”
Ponte’s feet slipped out from under him. He fell painfully on his back, skidded across the turntable out to the edge, and shot across the floor to slam feet first into a big metal block.
“My leg…” He groaned. “My leg is broken…”
Leoh stopped the turntable and stepped off. He walked over to the Acquatainian, whose face was twisted with pain.
“I could kill you fairly easily now,” he said softly. “But I really have no desire to. You’ve had enough, I think.”
The room began to fade out. Leoh found himself sitting in the dueling machine’s booth, blinking at the now dead screen in front of him.
The door popped open and Hector’s grinning face appeared. “You beat him!”
“Yes,” Leoh said, suddenly tired. “But I didn’t kill him. He can try again with his own choice of weapons, if he chooses to.”
Ponte was white-faced and trembling as they walked toward him. His followers were huddled around him, asking questions. The chief meditech was saying:
“You may continue, if you wish, or postpone the second half of the duel until tomorrow.”
Looking up at Leoh, Ponte shook his head. “No… no. I was defeated. I can’t… fight again.”
The chief meditech nodded. “The duel is concluded, then. Professor Leoh has won.”
Leoh extended his hand to the Acquatainian. Ponte’s grasp was soft and sweaty.
“I hope we can be friends now,” Leoh said.
Looking thoroughly miserable, Ponte mumbled, “Yes, of course. Thank you.”
6
Long after everyone else had left the dueling machine chamber, Leoh, Spencer, and Hector remained behind, pacing slowly across the tiled floor, speaking in low voices that echoed gloomily in the vast room.
“I must go now, Albert,” Spencer said. “My ship was scheduled to leave half an hour ago. My adjutant, outside, is probably eating tranquilizers by now. He’s a good man, but extremely nervous.”
“And there’s nothing you can do to convince Martine?” Leoh asked.
“Apparently not. But if you’re going to remain on the scene here, perhaps you can try.”
Leoh nodded. “I can speak to the scientists here at the university. Their voices should carry some weight with the government.”
Spencer looked skeptical. “What else will you be tinkering with? I know you won’t be content without some sort of research problem to puzzle over.”
“I’m trying to find a way of improving on the star ships. We’ve got to make interstellar travel easier.…”
“The star ships are highly efficient already.”
“I know. I mean a fundamental improvement. Perhaps a completely different way to travel through space… as different as the star ships are from the ancient rockets.”
Spencer held up a beefy hand. “Enough! In another minute you’ll start spouting metadimensional physics at me. Politics is hard enough for me to understand.”
Leoh chuckled.
Turning to Hector, Sir Harold said, “Lieutenant, keep a close eye on him as long as he’s in Acquatainia. Professor Leoh is a valuable man—and my friend. Understood?”
“Yessir.”
Odal stood rigidly at attention before Kor. The Intelligence Minister was leaning back in his padded desk chair, his hands playing over an ornate dagger that he used as a pointer.
“You don’t enjoy your duties here?” Kor was smiling coldly.
“I am an army officer,” Odal said carefully. “I find that interrogation work is… unpleasant.”
Kor tapped the dagger against his fingernails. “But you are one of the few men who can use the dueling machine for interrogation. And you are by far the best man we have for the purpose. The others are amateurs compared to you. You have talent!”
“It is difficult for me to interrogate fellow army officers.”
“I suppose so,” Kor admitted. “But you have done quite well. We now know exactly who in the army we can trust, and who is plotting against the Leader.”
“Then my work here is finished.”
“The plotting involves more than the army, Major. It goes far wider and deeper. The enemies of the Leader infest every part of our government. Marshal Lugal is involved, I’m sure.…”
“But there’s no evidence.…”
“I’m convinced he’s involved,” Kor snapped. “And Romis, too!”
Kanus wants control of the army, Odal knew, and you want to eliminate anyone who can compete with you for Kanus’ favor.
“Don’t look so sour, Major,” said Kor, his smile broader and somehow more chilling. “You have served your Leader—and me—very well in these weeks. Now then .… how would you like to return to Acquatainia?”
Odal felt a shock of surprise and strange elation.
“Spencer has left Acquatainia,” Kor explained, “and our plans are going well. But Leoh still remains there. He is still dangerous. You will destroy him.”
“And the Watchman too,” Odal said.
Kor jabbed the dagger toward Odal. “Not so fast. Leoh will be destroyed by his own dueling machine, but in a very special way. In fact, he has already taken the first step toward his own destruction, in a duel with a simple little man who thinks he will be Prime Minister of Acquatainia, once Kerak conquers the Cluster.”
Frowning, Odal said, “I don’t understand.”
“You will, Major. You probably won’t enjoy what you must do, any more than Lal Ponte did. But you will do your duty to Kerak and to the Leader, just as Ponte did what we told him to. You won’t become Prime Minister of Acquatainia, of course—but then, neither will Lal Ponte.”
Kor’s laugh was like a knife scraping on bone.
7
The night sky of Acquatainia was a blaze of stars twinkling, shimmering, dazzling so brightly that there was no real darkness in the city, only a silvery twilight brighter than full moonlight on Earth.
Hector sat at the controls of the skimmer and raced it down the river that cut through the city, heading toward the harbor and the open ocean. He could smell the salt air already. He glanced across the skimmer’s tiny cockpit at Geri, sitting in the swivel seat beside him and hunched slightly forward to keep the spray off her face. The sight of her almost made it impossible for him to concentrate on steering the high-speed skimmer.
He snaked the little vessel through the other pleasure boats on the river, trailing a plume of slightly luminous spray. Out in the harbor there were huge freighters anchored massively in the main channel. Hector ran the skimmer over to shallower water, between the channel and the docks, as Geri stared up at the vast ocean-going ships.
Finally they were out on the deep swells of the sea. Hector cut the engine and the skimmer slowed, dug its prow into an oncoming billow, and settled its hull in the water.
“The rocking isn’t going to… uh, bother you, is it?” he asked, turning to Geri.
Shaking her head, she said, “Oh no, I love it here on the sea.” Now that they were resting easily on the water, Geri reached up and unpinned her hair. It fell around her shoulders with a softness that made Hector quiver.
“The cooker should be finished by now,” she said. “Are you hungry?”
He nodded. They got up together, bumped slightly as they squeezed between the two swivel seats to get to the padded bench at the rear of the cockpit. Geri smiled at him and Hector plopped back in the pilot’s seat, content to savor her perfume and watch her. She sat on the bench and opened the cooker’s hatch. Out came steaming trays of food.
Hector came over to the bench, stumbling slightly, and sat beside her.
“The drinks are in the cooler,” she said, pointing to the other side of the bench.
After dinner they sat together on the bench, heads back to gaze at the stars, while the skimmer’s autopilot kept them from drifting too far from the harbor.
“This, uh… thing about Odal,” Hector said, very reluctantly
. “It’s not… well, it’s not the kind of thing that…”
“I know. It’s a terrible thing to ask you to do.” She put her hand in his. “But what else can I do? I’m only a girl; I can’t go out and kill him myself. I need a protector, a champion, someone who will avenge my father’s murder. You’re the only one I can turn to, Hector.”
“Yes, but… um… killing him, that’s…”
“It’ll be dangerous, I realize that. But you’re so brave. You’re not afraid of Odal, are you?”
“No, but…”
“And it won’t be anything more than a justifiable execution. He’s a murderer. You’ll be the sword of justice. My sword of justice.”
“Yes, but…”
She pulled away slightly. “Of course, Odal will probably never return to Acquatainia. But if he does, you can be sure it’s for one thing only.”
Hector blinked. “What’s that?”
“To murder Professor Leoh,” she said.
The Star Watchman slumped back on the bench. “You’re right. And I guess I’ve got to stop him from doing, that.”
Geri turned and grabbed him by the ears and kissed him. Hector felt his feet come off the deck. He held onto her and kissed back. Then she slid away from him. He reached for her, but she took his hand in hers.
“Let me catch my breath,” she said.
He eased over toward her, feeling his heart thumping louder than the slap of the waves against the skimmer’s hull.
“Of course,” Geri said coolly, “it seems that Professor Leoh can take care of himself in the dueling machine.”
“Uh-huh.” Hector edged closer to her.
“It was very surprising to hear that Lal Ponte had challenged the Professor,” she said, backing into the corner of the bench. “Ponte is such a… a nothing type of person. I never thought he’d have the courage to fight a duel.”
Leaning close to Geri and sliding an arm across the bench’s backrest and around her shoulders, Hector said nothing.
“I remember my father saying that if anyone in the legislature was working for Kerak, it would be Ponte.”