Code Duello up-4

by Mack Reynolds

  “Right,” Jerry said, standing too. “With my luck, we’ll stumble right on the guy who…”

  “With your luck,” Helen snorted, “we’ll all break our legs, walking down stairs. Have you forgotten? That coin of yours isn’t flipping heads any more.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Remember betting the waiter five to one?”

  Jerry grinned. “That was lucky, wasn’t it?”

  “Lucky!” She glared at him.

  “Sure. I was all set to pick up that Great Marconi fellow, the agent provocateur, and bring him back to the hotel. If I’d been able to get away with not paying that check, we’d all have been in the soup. As it was, they stuck me in jail, and the Great Marconi disappeared.”

  Helen deflated. “I never thought of that.”

  “Which reminds me,” Jerry said to her. “You owe me a hundred interplanetary credits. Remember, you bet me that Zorro’d get killed in that duel.”

  “What!” Zorro yelped.

  “Come on, let’s get out of here,” Helen said to Horsten. “I’d never be able to explain that.”

  It was getting dark when Helen and Horsten left the Albergo Palazzo, her hand in his as she tripped along, Gertrude and a little tin box Dolly’s Nurse Kit in the other.

  She said from the side of her mouth, her voice low enough that the casual passerby couldn’t have heard, “Why didn’t you want Jerry and Zorro? I hate to admit it, but Jerry’s right. He’s got the damnedest luck.”

  “That he has,” Horsten said. “But sometimes it’s a little too left-handed for my satisfaction. I’m continually waiting for the roof to fall in and kill a fly that’s been bothering friend Jerry.”

  “Well… Zorro, then.”

  “For this job,” the big scientist said, “we need all the inconspicuous qualities we can muster. Zorro, cracking that overgrown whip of his, doesn’t quite fit in.”

  “All right,” Helen agreed. “So where is this Ministry of Anti-Subversion?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” her companion said. “We’ll have to ask.”

  “Ask?” Helen said bitterly. “And you talk about Zorro being conspicuous.”

  Dorn Horsten smiled fondly at her and chose that very moment to stop at the curbside where a uniformed Florentine was staring in despair at a small armored hovercar, embellished with the red letters, NATIONAL POLICE. The hood had been slid back to reveal the mechanism, but, on the face of it, the driver was stymied.

  “What’m I ever going to tell the sergente,” he muttered in suppressed rage. The scout car looked like nothing so much as a three-legged turtle, its tripod stilts supporting it some two feet off the surface of the street, in lieu of its now inoperative air cushion.

  For the moment, the street was clear of other passersby. The scientist came to a halt, Helen still held by his hand, and said pleasantly, “Ah, my good fellow, could you give me a bit of direction?”

  From the side of his mouth the police officer growled, “Dust off, Buster.”

  Horsten’s eyebrows went up. “I merely wished to ask…”

  The other turned and glowered at him. “Can’t you see I’m busy? This damned tin can flicked out on me. Go on, dust.” He turned back to contemplating his vehicle, muttering, “The sergente’ll have my neck.”

  Horsten puffed out his cheeks.

  Take it easy, you big ox,” Helen said lowly. “He’s a cop.”

  Her companion ignored her. “I said I wished to ask some directions.”

  The furious minion of Firenze law spun on him, his teeth tight. “And I said to dust off. Can’t you see I’m busy? I’ve got to cook up some explanation for my superior. He told me not to take this crate out. Anyway, dust. I haven’t any time…”

  Horsten had started off the conversation with a benign beam, that good-natured air attainable best by truly king-sized specimens of humanity. The beam was rapidly changing to a glare. “I shall give you exactly one more chance to tell me the location of the Ministry of Anti-Subversion,” he said.

  “Oh, you will, eh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Come on, come on, Daddy!” Helen began to pull on her colleague’s arm. Between her teeth she added, in a hiss, “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Or you’ll do just what?” the driver said.

  Dorn Horsten looked at the armored police scout car. It’s upper surface resembled the corrugated exterior of a hand grenade, or, perhaps, the shell of a turtle. The vehicle squatted there on its three sturdy metal stilts. It was a nasty looking little car.

  Very deliberately, Horsten reached his hand out and banged the top of it with his closed fist. The three legs buckled, the end one to the point of allowing the rear of the armored scout to touch the street.

  The driver looked at his vehicle for a long empty moment. Then he turned his eyes on the big scientist and looked at him. Finally, he looked down at Helen.

  Helen wrinkled her nose at him nastily.

  “You shoulda told my daddy,” she said.

  The policeman looked back at his car.

  Finally he said to Horsten, “What was it you wanted to know?”

  “Where is the Ministry of Anti-Subversion?”

  “Over there.” The other pointed. He looked back at the armored scout again, gloomily. “What’m I ever gonna tell the sergente?” he muttered.

  Horsten hustled Helen across the street in the direction the police officer had indicated.

  She looked at him bitterly. “Zorro’s whip is too conspicuous,” she said. “What’d you think is going to happen when that cop tells his sergeant what you just did? And why you did it. And where it was you wanted to go.”

  The algae specialist was all good nature again. He looked down at her. “If that man is stupid enough to tell his sergeant what happened, he’ll undoubtedly wind up behind bars for drinking whilst on duty, my dear girl.”

  “I surrender,” she muttered. “I give up.”

  They came to a halt and stared at the enormous building that confronted them.

  “Ministry of Anti-Subversion,” Horsten read with satisfaction.

  “Closed,” Helen said. “Look at the size of those bronze doors. The place looks like a cathedral.”

  “Um. However, someone should be here. Probably a night shift, or, at least, some guards.”

  “So we just knock?” Helen said hopefully, as he started off again, dragging her along.

  “Well, I doubt if that would be effective. If they expected evening callers, undoubtedly there would be some entry provided, but all seems quite closed up.”

  “I can see it coming,” Helen muttered glumly.

  They stood before the gigantic bronze doors which dwarfed ten-fold even the oversized Dorn Horsten.

  “There isn’t even an identity screen, a method of summoning the nightman,” Horsten said accusingly.

  “All right, all right, you don’t have to find excuses for me,” Helen said. “I’ve been through the equivalent of this before.” She looked back over her shoulder. There was a broad expanse of paved area before the building, and not a soul in sight. The vicinity of the Ministry of Anti-Subversion was evidently not sought out by the citizenry of Firenze, come the cool of evening.

  Horsten took the large bronze doorknob in hand. It was an enormous, elaborate thing. He shook it. “Locked,” he announced.

  “Come on, come on,” Helen said wearily.

  He pulled, seemingly gently. He looked down at the knob, now in his hand. “It came out,” he told her.

  Helen grunted.

  He put his huge paw against the door and shoved. Something inside the door groaned. He pushed a bit harder. Something rasped metallic complaint. Although his air seemed still one of gentle curiosity, his shoulders were now bunched.

  “I’ll be confounded,” he said. “Open all the time.”

  “You damned mastodon,” she said. “Come on. Inside, before somebody spots us.”

  They pushed their way in, the scientist closing the door behind. Th
ey looked about.

  “Looks like Grand Central Station,” Horsten muttered.

  “What’s that?” Helen said.

  “Confound if I know. An idiomatic saving that comes down from antiquity; a connotation of being large in interior.”

  “Well, what do we do now?”

  “I suppose we stroll about until we find someone.”

  “Oh, great. Or until somebody shoots us.”

  He looked down at her. “Now, who would shoot a nice little girl like you?”

  She snorted at him. “Somebody who figures that nice little girls don’t break into hush-hush government ministries.”

  Two massive stairways flanked a bank of a full dozen elevator shafts.

  “Elevators,” the big man said. “How anachronistic can you get? Have you noticed, my dear, they seem to go beyond the call of reason to maintain an air of yesteryear on this planet?”

  Helen said, “Let’s take the stairs. Then at least some stute won’t be able to trap us between floors.”

  She caught onto his belt, gracefully bounded up to his shoulder, to save herself the climb. On the second floor, they looked up and down the extensive corridor that seemingly stretched away into infinity.

  “All right,” Helen said. “Do we keep climbing, or what? How do we find the department devoted to the Engelists? This place obviously doesn’t run a night shift. And, for that matter, doesn’t seem to boast much in the way of night…”

  A voice behind them snapped, “Stand where you are!”

  Dorn Horsten turned—and turned on his good-natured beam. “Ah, here we are, he said jovially. “I knew we’d find somebody!”

  The other was a heavy-set, elaborately uniformed, suspicious looking officer who held a heavy scrambler in his right hand. He was about thirty feet from them and stood with his legs well parted and in a slight crouch: the stance of a fighting man.

  He was not to be cozened. His heavy, somewhat brutal face bore several scars, mementoes of duel or street fights, or perhaps of military combat.

  “Who are you?” he snapped.

  Horsten jiggled little Helen on his shoulders to reassure her, and beamed at the other. “The question is, who are you, my dear fellow?”

  Obviously the Florentine was confused by this confrontation, but was not to be put off his competent guard. “I’m Colonnello Fantonetti,” he said, the weapon not wavering a particle. “Now, very quickly, who are you and what are you doing on the second floor of this ministry after closing hours?”

  “I want down, Daddy!” Helen shrilled. “I’m afraid of that man.”

  Horsten said something and, ignoring the colonnello momentarily, slipped her to the floor, tucking Gertrude and the Dolly’s Nurse Kit under his arm. Then he turned back to the Florentine.

  “I came to inquire into the Engelists,” he said, in a tone that might have been disarming had the words been other.

  “The Engelists?” the armed man blurted. “You admit it?” Then, “How did you get in here?”

  “I walked in,” the big scientist said simply. He looked down at Helen, whose lower lip was trembling. “Now, now,” he said. “After a time, Daddy will play alez-oop with you.” He looked back at the anti-subversion officer. “So, you can tell me with whom I can get in touch in order to investigate thoroughly this Engelism program.”

  The other shook his head, as though unbelieving, but the gun didn’t waver. He said, “This whole ministry is devoted to fighting the Engelists. I am head of my department Luckily, I was working late tonight. You have explained nothing. You are under arrest.” His eyes went to an empty desk which stood before the rank of elevator doors. On it was an orderbox and various switches and burtons. Still keeping his eyes on Dorn Horsten, as well as the muzzle of his scrambler, he started in that direction.

  Helen said, “Allez-oop!”

  The massive scientist had been holding her by one hand. Now, he suddenly flipped her upward, spun her, and flung her toward a stone column which stood some ten feet before the elevators.

  The colonnello’s trigger finger had, at the first motion, tightened, but then he stood there, eyes bugging.

  In air, Helen seemed to become a ball then, at the last split moment, she turned, legs foremost, and struck the stone pillar. Seemingly, she bounced; somehow, upward. She seemed to spin in the air. A tiny human pin-wheel she turned and turned again. Hit the desk toward which the Florentine had been heading; caromed off in an impossible exhibition of tumbling; hit the metal door of one of the elevators, caromed off and struck immediately before the colonnello. She bounced high. His head reared back in alarm. She settled down, light as gauze, on his shoulder.

  “Oooo,” she said. “I musta slipped.” Her right arm was around the startled officer’s head, holding on tightly.

  But her little left hand had a secure grip on the scrambler which, a moment ago, had been in his own supposedly competent grasp—and the muzzle was boring into his left ear.

  Dorn Horsten was clucking as though in apology. “Now, dear,” he scolded her, “do be careful. You might blow the colonnello’s brains out.” He frowned slightly, as though in inner debate. “Assuming…” he added, but let the sentence dribble away.

  The Florentine was frozen.

  Horsten approached and took the gun from Helen’s hand and she dropped gracefully to the floor and smoothed out her pretty blue dress in an exaggerated little-girl gesture.

  The scientist said, and there was authority in his voice now. “Where’s your office?”

  Still dazed, the other indicated. “In there.”

  “All right, let’s all go in there.”

  Herding the colonnello before them, Horsten and his diminutive companion entered the office. It was large but standard, with the usual conglomeration of desks, files and office equipment, including orderboxes and vocotypers.

  Even as Helen, humming under her breath, put her Dolly’s Nurse Kit on the larger desk and began pulling play vials and hypo needles forth, the big scientist ushered the captive to a chair.

  The self-named Colonnello Fantonetti was not a coward. He grated, “What do you want? I warn you…”

  Horsten silenced him with a wave of the pistol. “Just as I told you, information about the Engelists.”

  “You’re obviously Engelists yourselves,” the other rasped.

  “To the contrary, my dear fellow.”

  It turned out that Helen’s play hypodermic needles were not exactly toys. She efficiently swabbed a section immediately above his wrist—not taking the time to have him remove his tunic, and roll up a sleeve—and pressed home a shot. She then returned her Dolly’s Nurse equipment to its box and bounded up into a chair very neatly.

  Horsten said to the victim, “Scop, you know. Sorry it’s necessary. But we’re quite keen about finding out all there is to know on the Engelists.”

  The other gritted his teeth. “You can’t escape,” he said, somewhat out of context with the subject.

  “Um,” Horsten said. He looked down at his wrist chronometer and made impatient tush, tush noises while he waited. Helen sat there quietly, smiling in childlike innocence at the colonnello until that worthy, in disgust, closed his eyes to escape.

  Horsten said finally, “What is your name?”

  The colonnello had blisters of cold sweat on his forehead and he tried desperately to hold his lips tight. However, finally they opened.

  “Salvador Marie Fantonetti.”

  “And your position?”

  “Colonnello, on the staff of His Eccellenza, Alberto Scialanga, the Third Signore.”

  “What are your duties?”

  “To combat the Engelists.”

  “Who are the Engelists?”

  “Subversives who wish to overthrow the government of the First Signore and the Free Democratic Commonwealth of Firenze.”

  Dom Horsten said, “How do they expect to accomplish this?”

  There was a slight hesitation in the drugged man’s voice. Finally, “I do not know.
”

  Horsten scowled. “Well, what methods do they use?”

  “They attempt to subvert the institutions of Firenze.”

  “Of course, but how?”

  “By… by speaking against the First Signore and his Council of Signori.”

  Helen said, “Do they have radio, Tri-Di, other broadcasting facilities?”

  “No.”

  “Well, do they have newspapers?” She was scowling in growing puzzlement as was her partner.

  The colonnello remained silent.

  She reworded it. “Do you think they have newspapers?”

  “No.”

  Dorn Horsten said impatiently, “Do they write books against the government?”

  The Florentine remained silent.

  “Do you think they write books against the government?”

  “I… I do not know.”

  “Do you know of any pamphlets, leaflets or other printed propaganda they have written against the government?”

  “No.”

  Helen said, a touch of disbelief in her voice, “What do they do in their attempts to overthrow the government?”

  “They attempt to recruit followers to their underground by speaking against the administration of the First Signore.”

  Helen and Dorn Horsten looked at each other.

  The scientist started on a new tack. “Have you ever captured any Engelists?”

  Their prisoner of the Scop drug remained silent.

  Frowning his growing bewilderment, Horsten demanded, “Have you ever captured any persons you suspected of being Engelists?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many of these did you prove were Engelists?”

  He remained silent.

  “Did you prove any of them were Engelists?” Helen said impatiently.

  “No.”

  The two stared at him.

  Finally Helen snapped, “Have you ever, in your whole career, seen a person that you absolutely knew was an Engelist?”

  The hesitation was there once more. Finally, “No.”

  Now they really goggled him. Helen snapped, “Look. How do you know there are any Engelists?”

  “They attempt to subvert the institutions of the Free Democracy of the Commonwealth of Firenze.”

  “That’s not what I asked you,” she snarled. She looked up at Horsten. “What in the hell’s going on?”