Authors: Ben Bova
“Not soon enough. We’ve only got four days.”
“I know.”
Leoh was silent for several minutes. Then, “Who is Dulaq’s closest living relative? Does he have a wife?”
“Umm, I think his wife’s dead. Has a daughter, though. Pretty girl. I bumped into her in the hospital once or twice...”
Leoh smiled in the darkness. Hector’s term, “bumped into,” was probably completely literal.
“There might be a way to make Dulaq tell us what happened during his duel,” Leoh said. “But it’s a very dangerous way. Perhaps a fatal way.”
Hector didn’t reply.
“Come on, my boy,” Leoh said. “Let’s find that daughter and talk to her.”
“Tonight?”
“Now.”
She certainly is a pretty girl,
Leoh thought as he explained very carefully to Geri Dulaq what he proposed to do. She sat quietly and politely in the spacious living room of the Dulaq residence. The glittering chandelier cast touches of fire on her chestnut hair. Her slim body was slightly rigid with tension, her hands were clasped tightly in her lap. Her face, which looked as though it could be very expressive, was completely serious now.
“And that’s the sum of it,” Leoh concluded. “I believe that it will be possible to use the dueling machine itself to examine your father’s thoughts and determine what took place during his duel against Major Odal. It might even help to break him out of his coma.”
She asked softly, “But it might also be such a shock to him that he could die?”
Leoh nodded wordlessly.
“Then I’m very sorry, Professor, but I must say no.” Firmly.
“I understand your feelings,” Leoh replied, “but I hope you realize that unless we can stop Odal immediately, we may very well be faced with war, and millions will die.”
She nodded. “I know. But we’re speaking of my father’s life. Kanus will have his war in any event, no matter what I do.”
“Perhaps,” Leoh admitted. “Perhaps.”
Hector and Leoh drove back to the university campus and their quarters in the dueling machine building. Neither of them slept well that night.
The next morning, after an unenthusiastic breakfast, they found themselves in the antiseptic-white chamber, before the looming impersonal intricacy of the machine.
“Would you like to practice with it?” Leoh asked.
Hector shook his head gloomily. “Maybe later.”
The phone chimed in Leoh’s office. They both went in. Geri Dulaq’s face took form on the view screen.
“I just heard the news,” she said a little breathlessly. “I didn’t know, last night, that Lieutenant Hector had challenged Odal.”
“He challenged Odal,” Leoh answered, “to prevent the assassin from challenging me.”
“Oh.” Her face was a mixture of concern and reluctance. “You’re a brave man, Lieutenant.”
Hector’s expression went through a dozen contortions, all of them speechless.
“Won’t you reconsider your decision?” Leoh asked. “Hector’s life may depend on it.”
She closed her eyes briefly, then said, “I can’t. My father’s life is my first responsibility. I’m sorry.” There was real torment in her voice.
They exchanged a few meaningless trivialities—with Hector still thoroughly tongue-tied—and ended the conversation on a polite but strained note.
Leoh rubbed his thumb across the phone switch for a moment, then turned to Hector. “My boy, I think it would be a good idea for you to go straight to the hospital and check on Dulaq’s condition.”
“But... why...”
“Don’t argue, son. This could be vitally important. Check on Dulaq. In person, no phone calls.”
Hector shrugged and left the office. Leoh sat down at his desk and waited. There was nothing else he could do. After a while he got up and paced out to the big chamber, through the main doors, and out onto the campus. He walked past a dozen buildings, turned and strode as far as the decorative fence that marked the end of the main campus, ignoring students and faculty alike. He walked all around the campus, like a picket, trading nervous energy for time.
As he approached the dueling machine building again he spotted Hector walking dazedly toward him. For once, the Watchman was not whistling. Leoh cut across some lawn to get to him.
“Well?” he asked.
Hector shook his head, as if to clear away an inner fog. “How did you know she’d be at the hospital?”
“The wisdom of age. What happened?”
“She kissed me. Right there in the hallway of the...”
“Spare me the geography,” Leoh cut in. “What did she say?”
“I bumped into her in the hallway. We, uh, started talking... sort of. She seemed, well... worried about me. She got upset. Emotional. You know? I guess I looked pretty down... I mean, I’m not that brave... I’m scared and it must have shown.”
“You aroused her maternal instinct.”
“I... I don’t think it was that... exactly. Well, anyway, she said that if I’m willing to risk my life to save yours, she couldn’t protect her father any more. Said she was doing it out of selfishness, really, since he’s her only living relative.... I don’t believe she meant it, but she said it anyway.”
They had reached the building by now. Leoh grabbed Hector’s arm and steered him clear of a collision with the half-open door.
“She’s agreed to let us put Dulaq in the dueling machine?”
“Sort of.”
“Eh?”
“The medical staff doesn’t want him moved... especially not back here. She agrees with them.”
Leoh snorted. “All right. In fact, so much the better. I’d rather not have the Kerak people see us bring Dulaq to the dueling machine. Instead, we’ll smuggle the dueling machine into the hospital!”
They plunged to work immediately. Leoh preferred not to inform the regular staff of the dueling machine about their plan, so he and Hector had to work through the night and most of the next morning. Hector barely understood what he was doing, but with Leoh’s supervision he managed to dismantle part of the machine’s central network, insert a few additional black electronics boxes that the Professor had conjured up from the spare-parts bins in the basement, and then reconstruct the machine so that it looked exactly the same as before they had started.
In between his frequent trips to oversee Hector’s work, Leoh had jury-rigged a rather bulky headset and a hand-sized override control circuit. The late morning sun was streaming through the hall when Leoh finally explained it all to Hector.
“A simple matter of technological improvisation,” he told the puzzled Watchman. “You’ve installed a short-range transceiver into the machine, and this headset is a portable transceiver for Dulaq. Now he can sit in his hospital bed and still be ‘in’ the dueling machine.”
Only the three most trusted members of the hospital staff were taken into Leoh’s confidence, and they were hardly enthusiastic about the plan.
“It is a waste of time,” said the chief psychotechnician, shaking his white-maned head vigorously. “You cannot expect a patient who has shown no positive response to drugs and therapy to respond to your machine.”
Leoh argued, and Geri Dulaq firmly insisted that they go through with it. Finally the doctors agreed. With only two days remaining before Hector’s duel with Odal, they began to probe Dulaq’s mind. Geri remained by her father’s bedside while the three doctors fitted the cumbersome transceiver to his head and attached the electrodes for the hospital equipment that monitored his physical condition. Hector and Leoh remained at the dueling machine, communicating with the hospital by phone.
Leoh made a final check of the controls and circuitry, then put in the last call to the tense little group in Dulaq’s room. All was ready.
He walked out to the machine with Hector beside him. Their footsteps echoed hollowly in the sepulchral chamber. Leoh stopped at the nearer booth.
“Now remember,” he said carefully, “I’ll be holding the emergency control unit in my hand. It will stop the duel the instant I set it off. However, if something goes wrong, you must be prepared to act quickly. Keep a close watch on my physical condition; I’ve shown you which instruments to check on the control board.”
“Yes, sir.”
Leoh nodded and took a deep breath. “Very well, then.”
He stepped into the booth and sat down. Hector helped to attach the neurocontacts, and then left him alone. Leoh leaned back and waited for the semihypnotic effect to take hold. Dulaq’s choice of the city and the stat-wand were known. But beyond that, everything was sealed in his uncommunicating mind. Could the machine reach past that seal?
Slowly, lullingly, the dueling machine’s imaginary yet very real mists enveloped Leoh. When they cleared, he was standing on the upper pedestrian level of the main commercial street of the city. For a long moment, everything was still.
Have I made contact? Whose eyes am I seeing with, my own or Dulaq’s?
And then he sensed it—an amused, somewhat astonished marveling at the reality of the illusion. Dulaq’s thoughts!
Make your mind a blank,
Leoh told himself
. Watch. Listen. Be passive.
He became a spectator, seeing and hearing the world through Dulaq’s eyes and ears as the Acquatainian Prime Minister advanced through his nightmarish ordeal. He felt the confusion, frustration, apprehension, and growing terror as, time and again, Odal appeared in the crowd—only to melt into someone else and escape.
The first part of the duel ended, and Leoh was suddenly buffeted by a jumble of thoughts and impressions. Then the thoughts slowly cleared and steadied.
Leoh saw 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. At his feet was the weapon Odal had chosen. A primitive club.
He shared Dulaq’s sense of dread as he picked up the club and hefted it. Off on the horizon he could see the tall lithe figure holding a similar club and walking toward him.
Despite himself, Leoh could feel his own excitement. He had broken through the shock-created armor that Dulaq’s mind had erected! Dulaq was reliving the part of the duel that had caused the shock.
Reluctantly, he advanced to meet Odal. But as they drew closer together, the one figure of his opponent seemed to split apart. Now there were two, four, six of them. Six Odals, six mirror images, all armed with massive, evil clubs, advancing steadily on him. Six tall, lean, blond assassins with six cold smiles on their intent faces.
Horrified, completely panicked, he scrambled away, trying to evade the six opponents with the half-dozen clubs raised and poised to strike.
Their young legs easily outdistanced him. A smash on his back sent him sprawling. One of them kicked his weapon away.
They stood over him for a malevolent, gloating second. Then six strong arms flashed down, again and again, mercilessly. Pain and blood, screaming agony, punctuated by the awful thudding of solid clubs hitting fragile flesh and bone, over and over again, endlessly, endlessly...
Everything went blank.
Leoh opened his eyes and saw Hector bending over him.
“Are you all right, sir?”
“I... I think so.”
“The controls hit the danger mark all at once. You were... well, you were screaming.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Leoh said.
They walked, with Leoh leaning on Hector’s arm, from the dueling machine to the office.
“That was... an experience,” Leoh said, easing himself onto the couch.
“What happened? What did Odal do? What made Dulaq go into shock? How does...”
The old man silenced Hector with a wave of his hand. “One question at a time, please.”
Leoh leaned back on the deep couch and told Hector every detail of both parts of the duel.
“Six Odals,” Hector muttered soberly, leaning against the doorframe. “Six against one.”
“That’s what he did. It’s easy to see how a man expecting a polite, formal duel can be completely shattered by the viciousness of such an attack. And the machine amplifies every impulse, every sensation.” Leoh shuddered.
“But how does he do it?” Hector’s voice was suddenly demanding.
“I’ve been asking myself the same question. We’ve checked the dueling machine time and again. There’s no possible way for Odal to plug in five helpers... unless...”
“Unless?”
Leoh hesitated, seemingly debating with himself. Finally he nodded sharply and answered, “Unless Odal is a telepath.”
“Telepath? But...”
“I know it sounds farfetched, but there have been well-documented cases of telepathy.”
Frowning, Hector said, “Sure, everybody’s heard about it... natural telepaths, I mean... but they’re so unpredictable... I mean, how can...”
Leoh leaned forward on the couch and clasped his hands in front of his chin. “The Terran races have never developed telepathy, or any extrasensory talents, beyond the occasional wild talent. They never had to, not with tri-di communications and star ships. But perhaps the Kerak people are different...”
“They’re human, just like we are,” Hector said. “Besides, if they had, uh, telepathic abilities... well, wouldn’t they use them all the time? Why just in the dueling machine?”
“Of course!” Leoh exclaimed. “Odal’s shown telepathic ability only in the dueling machine!”
Hector blinked.
Excitedly, Leoh explained, “Suppose Odal’s a natural telepath... the same as dozens of Terrans have been proven to be. He has an erratic, difficult-to-control talent. A talent that doesn’t really amount to much. Then he gets into the dueling machine. The machine amplifies his thoughts. It also amplifies his talents!”
“Ohhh.”
“You see? Outside the machine, he’s no better than any wandering fortuneteller. But the dueling machine gives his natural abilities the amplification and reproducibility that they could never attain unaided.”
“I get it.”
“So it’s a fairly straightforward matter for him to have five associates in the Kerak embassy sit in on the duel, so to speak. Possibly they’re natural telepaths, too, but they needn’t be.”
“They just, uh, pool their minds with his? Six men show up in the duel... pretty nasty.” Hector dropped into the desk chair. “So what do we do now?”