Complete Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by Fox B. Holden

  That was where he must break the pattern. That was when the hopeless, foolish race would begin.

  And inwardly, Doug smiled an ironic, tight little smile. So funny, so tragically funny. A down-to-Earth, practical man like Congressman Douglas Blair, running for his life from a fantasy that could not possibly exist! As the people of Hiroshima had run on the day of the atomic bomb . . .

  Their cloaks started to whip in the slipstreams of the waiting aircraft. Another ten strides and he would have been aboard the plane.

  But before he had taken five of them, the speeding surface-vehicle had drawn up beside them and stopped scant feet short of the plane’s opening port. Cadremen leapt from it, swords drawn. And behind them came the Director himself.

  The formation halted as though it had suddenly struck an invisible wall.

  As he walked between his flanks of guards, the hulking Gundar Tayne drew his own sword. And Doug knew what the gesture meant.

  “Senior Quadrate Blair, as lawful husband of Madame Lisa Blair, who was taken into custody by the S-Council of Earth at 1300 hours Earth Standard Time today, I hereby place you under official arrest. Guards! Disarm this man.”

  CHAPTER XVI

  DOUG stood motionless as his dress sword was whipped from its scabbard, snapped across the bent knee of one of the Director’s guards, and cast at his feet. A second denuded him of the wide belt and narrow scabbard which had held it.

  “Sir, unless you are able to cite well-founded charges for this outrageous action, I can assure you it will be reported to the Prelate General at once!” Doug bit the words out knowing that as a defensive threat they were hopelessly impotent, but he had to know what they had done to Dot. He had to know that even if they were to kill him within the next second. He sensed Tayne’s presence behind him, could all but feel his sword-point at his back. The cadets, a moment before formed as a guard of honor, were suddenly in a bristling ring about him as though from some melodrama from the pages of Roman history. Their faces were impassive, their feet widespread, their swords hip-high, and pointed unwaveringly at him.

  And the sneer in the Director’s voice was only carelessly concealed.

  “This is hardly the time for jests, Quadrate. I hardly think I need quote the Commandment subsection setting forth the law concerning the status of husband and wife when either is found guilty of heresy. Your rank permits you to deny your wife’s collusion if you wish, but—unfortunately, Madame Blair has been unquestionably linked with one of the pitiful but vicious little underground groups of men and women whose constant and sole aim is not only to abolish the war games, but to accomplish the eventual destruction of our sacred government. She—as well as yourself, I might add—has been under painstaking scrutiny for almost a year. I am informed that a carefully guarded but all too unwise series of telecalls to your home has at last established the necessary link. Ever hear of the Saint Napoleon Culture Society, Quadrate? No? No, of course you haven’t! Quadrate Tayne!”

  “Yes, your Very Grand Excellence!”

  “I’m putting this man in your custody for the trip to Earth. Your orders are to deliver him in person to the S-Council—you’ll take off immediately. The games will be under my personal supervision until you return. Any questions?”

  “I am to deliver this man in person to the S-Council. No questions, sir.”

  “Carry on, then.” He returned Tayne’s salute with a perfunctory dip of his sword point, then sheathed the weapon and followed Doug into the waiting vehicle.

  TAKE-OFF black-out was but momentary and wore off quickly. Escaping Venus’ lesser gravity was noticeably easier, and the fog-shrouded planet still filled the viewscreen when Doug got to his feet. He was half surprised to discover that there were no steel cuffs at his wrists, and that he had not been bound other than by the safety belts to the acceleration hammock. But it was logical enough. A robot-guided ship in Space was quite efficiently escape-proof. It had been an effective trap before, and now it was an equally effective prison. And Tayne, who had already opened trajectory compensation communications with Venus headquarters, was the one who had the sword.

  Tayne’s back was to him. A sudden leap—

  No. With Tayne unconscious or dead, it would make little difference. His presence aboard the ship was apparently only for the satisfaction of protocol. Placed aboard it alone, Doug reasoned, he would have been as well secured a prisoner as had he been accompanied by a guard of one hundred men. It was not Tayne, but the autorobot guiding the ship that was his jailer. Yet, Tayne had not removed his sword . . .

  Doug watched the white mass of Venus as it receded with torturing slowness in the screen, let it half-hypnotize him. There was something stirring uneasily somewhere far back in his brain—something, something—but it did not matter. Nothing at all mattered now. The race—the great, hopeless race he had planned for freedom had never even begun!

  They had denied him even that satisfaction. Yes, he could attack, Tayne, and Tayne would kill him. But that would not be a fight. It would be simply the choice of suicide, at the hands of the man who would derive the most satisfaction from being its prime instrument. The man who already signed the death warrants for Mike and Terry.

  And Dot. Dot, after some awful agony would see him again perhaps, but she would see with uncomprehending eyes, hear with unrecognizing ears. If she lived through what they did to her, she would no longer be Dot at all.

  Dully, he could hear Tayne’s words in a background that was a thousand miles away. “Reconciled and steady as she blasts. This is QT to Control, C-Limit check—trajectory secure. Out.”

  And again, there was something far back in Doug’s brain, struggling harder . . .

  Then even as Tayne turned toward him from the dial consoles, it burst into the forefront of his mind like a flare in the darkness. Twelve hundred Kemps at three hundred milliamperes, sir . . . Genemotor, type A-26-F modified . . . Sergeant! The neuro-tablets at once . . . Commandments Four, Part 3, Subsection 12 as amended . . . all space craft shall be robot-controlled and shall fly predetermined trajectories, save (1) when bearing members of the Science Council and/or their certified representatives, to whom manual operation and navigation at will is singularly permissible, or (2) when insurmountable emergency shall occur . . .

  And suddenly, Doug’s brain vaulted from the lethargy of hopelessness and it was again at his command, a sharp, poised weapon of battle. For Tayne knew! Yet he would die before he would tell—unless, somehow . . .

  “Such confidence, Quadrate Tayne! Admirable! But you would look so much more fit for your role with your sword in your hand, not in your scabbard!”

  Tayne reddened. “If it were not for my orders, Blair—”

  “Why, such a lack of conditioning, Quadrate! Don’t you know killing me is supposed to be so repulsive to you that you couldn’t even stomach the thought of it? Tell me, don’t I make you sick, Quadrate?”

  TAYNE’S hand went to the hilt of his weapon. He half-drew it, slammed it back in its scabbard.

  “Blair, we have twenty hours aboard this ship together. We can be at each other’s throats like children. Or not, as you please.” Doug sat down on the edge of the acceleration hammock. Perhaps it would not be so difficult. Carefully, he entered the role further. He must have just the right kind of smile.

  “Ah, but think of all the trouble I can get you in if I make you lose your temper and kill me! And you have got to admit, where I’m going, it doesn’t make much difference—to me, I mean.”

  Tayne turned back to the instrument panel as though to signify that he had suddenly become a deaf man. And Doug kept talking, as though to signify a complete lack of interest in whether Tayne was a deaf man or not.

  “As the matter stands, they took my sword away. So you’d never get anywhere with a self-defense alibi. Lord, how they’d make you sweat! By Saint Napoleon’s mother I like the thought of that! And, after all, since this is going to be my last flight, I really think I’m entitled to a little amusement.”


  Silence.

  “You know, Quadrate,” Doug kept on relentlessly, “I don’t imagine you expected even me to act like this, did you? No, of course not. Not very much the officer and gentleman. But that makes us more or less even. You don’t know what a gentleman is. You’re so stupid you don’t even know who the next President of the United States is going to be!—Oh, sorry. I keep forgetting—I don’t think I ever told you that I’m not the real Senior Quadrate Blair, and that I’m not from your universe at all, did I, Tayne? Ever hear of the World Series? Oh, there I—”

  Tayne turned his head.

  “Easy does it! I imagine you must think I’ve gone mad. Don’t blame you. I don’t act at all like the Blair you know. Of course if I am mad, you’d better be careful. And if I am from another universe, you’d better be even more careful. As a matter of fact, at the moment, Quadrate, your life may not be worth very much.”

  Doug rubbed his fingernails on his tunic, inspected their new sheen. Then he looked up at Tayne.

  Tayne stood, face mottled, an uneasy little thread of uncertainty deep under the surface of his eyes.

  “Very well, just to make it easy for you, Mr. Tayne, we shall say I am mad, because that’s easy to believe, and I can see you’re quite sure of it already. Yet just the same I can outwit you, Quadrate.

  That is, I think that in the twenty hours of our flight together I can reduce you to a gibbering idiot, far worse off than myself! Why, I may even have you mumbling that you’re Saint Napoleon himself! Now wouldn’t that be a picture!” Blair slapped his right hand to his tunic-front.

  And Tayne drew his sword.

  “If you killed me, Quadrate, you would have no proof of my madness for the others—and I’m sure that our standing enmity would be reasoned as the far more credible motive. Reasonable people, yours. Very. So much so that they’re all above making a rather ridiculous harangue like this. Face the S-Council rather stoically, I should imagine. Quietly, as befits their dignity. Right?”

  Tayne almost jumped clear of the deck.

  “By jingo, you’re nervous, man! Sweating, too. And twenty more hours. Let’s see—what’ll we talk about?”

  Tayne was tense, immobile, undisguisedly confused.

  “I bet you’re thinking that if you could get me in a state of—shall we say, unconsciousness, your troubles would be over. But you’d have to get close to me to do that. And we both know that sword of yours is no threat. Besides, I’m a madman. Either mad, or from another universe—ha!—and then I might be able to kill you with a glance! Of course, you can suppose this is all just an act, but even if I told you it was you wouldn’t be exactly sure, would you? Would you, now?”

  TAYNE sheathed the sword. And slowly, as though he had reached some desperate decision, he turned to the control panels. But not to the ones at which he’d stood before. He touched one of a row of white studs above which were the words S-C ONLY. And a rectangle of metal hardly more than a foot in length and half as much in width slid back beneath his fingertips, exposing a compact console of control keys.

  Or (2) when an insurmountable emergency should occur . . .

  Tayne was pressing buttons, and Doug knew that the trajectory had been broken, and that the ship was free of its autorobot and under Tayne’s sole command.

  The manual control console. Tayne had had enough! Were he an Earthman as Doug was an Earthman—but he was not! He was a creature of pattern, and there was only the pattern to follow. And an ‘insurmountable emergency’ had indeed arisen. Flight with a madman who spoke of other universes, and who, by definition of orders, dare not be killed.

  Doug, still seated, braced his feet on the hammock’s bottom edge, and checked his spring even with his muscles tensed.

  For Tayne turned suddenly. And the fear, the confusion were gone!

  “Thank you, Quadrate Blair!” he said. “Madman, I am convinced—yet brilliant to the last! I admit, I may not have thought of our personal enmity as a motive for my actions—as a motive, I mean, that would justify them!”

  Something turned to ice in Doug’s stomach. It was going wrong, somehow.

  Tayne drew the sword slowly. “I shall kill you now. You see, you hated me so much that I am afraid your hatred broke its bounds. And you not only attacked me but—but I’m afraid you also attempted to take over manual control of the ship in your madness. And for that of course—”

  The sword was descending even as Doug launched his body from the hammock.

  They went down then, and the sword clattered from Tayne’s grasp. The blade-edge was speckled with red, and there was a searing pain across Doug’s back. But his hands were on Tayne’s throat, and they were closing.

  And then they opened. The whistle of air into Tayne’s lungs as he fought for breath and for consciousness told Doug he had only seconds before there was full life in the Quadrate’s body again.

  But the seconds were enough, for within them, he had the sword’s hilt firmly in his own hand. And then he had its tip at the Quadrate’s swollen, pulsing throat.

  “You damn near threw me off schedule, Grand Imperial Wizard. Come on get up.”

  Doug felt little rivulets of blood trickle down his spine. The wound still stung, but it was not deep.

  Slowly, Tayne rose, the sword-point beneath his chin.

  “Don’t make me nervous,” Doug said. “Sudden moves get me all jittery, and sometimes when I’m jittery I kill stuffed shirts just to ease the tension. Back up. Now around—slow, Noble Grand Knight, or you’ll fall down without your head.” The sword point traced a thin line of red half-way around Tayne’s neck as the man turned. “Now we’re going to have some fun—only wish you were a tax-writer and I’d get a bigger kick out of this. Venus, James. And at the first peculiar maneuver—such as maybe cutting out the pseudograv or dumping us on the carpet without enough backblast and your nice uniform will get all gooked up. Blood, you know.” He dug the point deeper into Tayne’s flesh until some of it was red, the rest white with pain.

  And again, there was nothing to do but play the gamble out. How brave, Doug wondered, was a creature of pattern?

  VENUS filled the viewscreen, the white sea of the planet’s sky stretching unruffled beneath them.

  “Northern land mass, Tayne. Your Quadrant. Thirtieth Division, Second Regiment, First Battalion, Company ‘A’.”

  Tayne still said nothing. Doug kept the steady pressure on the sword point.

  The round, black buttons were arranged like an inverted T. Beneath them were three square, flush-set dials. One was easily recognizable as an artificial horizon-ecliptic indicator. The second, Doug thought, indicated both plus and minus acceleration. And the third, simple velocity and altitude.

  Tayne’s fingers had not punched the buttons, but had played them almost as though they were the keys of a musical instrument. The horizontal row was for change of direction to either left or right. The vertical, change in axial thrust, for either upward accelerations or forward, depending upon flight attitude. A slow turn executed by pressing the buttons of desired intensity of power in both horizontal and vertical columns simultaneously, with turn sharpness simply a matter of coordinated button selection.

  The top button was for full thrust—full speed in level flight, blast-off from take-off position, or full deceleration in landing attitude. Those below it were for power in progressively lesser amounts. A twist of a fingertip would lock any of the buttons at any degree of power output desired. With practiced co-ordination, simple enough. Yet—what about climb or dip from the horizontal? Or inversion for landing? That was something for which he must wait.

  The cut across his back throbbed now, and he dared not brush his hands across his eyes to smear the sweat from them.

  And suddenly, Tayne’s voice grated, “You had better drop the sword, Blair.” There was the tightness of pain in his words, but they were clear. “I refuse to invert the ship. If we are to land, it must be inverted in sixty seconds. If you kill me, you. kill yourself, for y
ou do not know how to operate the panel beyond what you have seen—and you have not seen the operation for inversion. If you give me the sword, you will land alive.”

  “You’re out of your head, Mr. Tayne! I’m Senior Quadrate Blair, remember? I know how to operate the panel as well or better than you do. Get going!” He dug the tip deeper, and fresh blood started.

  But, Tayne’s fingers remained immobile.

  “Mad or sane, Senior Quadrate Blair or—or something else, if you knew how to use the panel, you would not have taken the risk of forcing me to do it! I would already be dead—”

  There was a sudden, empty space in Doug’s stomach.

  “Thirty seconds, Blair.”

  The white mass of the sky was scant miles below them. He would need all of the thirty seconds, and there was no time to think—only time to realize that if he were to live, he must kill Tayne. It was like that time so long ago on the beaches of Normandy . . .

  With all his strength he plunged the sword through Tayne’s neck. And his own hands were at the control panel before Tayne’s gurgling corpse had slumped to the deck. The life-blood seeped from it far more slowly than the seconds slipped beneath Doug’s taut fingers.

  Not the buttons, not the dials, for he had seen them. But part of the panel itself—it had to be!

  The panel itself!

  He pressed one side, the other. Nothing. Ten seconds perhaps . . .

  The bottom or the top next. But which? If it moved on a lateral axis—that would be it, for elevation or depression from the horizontal! But to accomplish what would amount to a half-loop . . .