The Astral Mirror

by Ben Bova

  He saw the young Watchman approaching the table, coming back from the phone. Hector bumped two waiters and stumbled over a chair before reaching the relative safety of his own seat.

  “What’s the verdict?” Leoh asked.

  Hector’s lean face was bleak. “They couldn’t revive him. Cerebral hemorrhage, the meditechs said... brought on by shock.”

  “Shock?”

  “That’s what they said. Something must’ve, um, overloaded his nervous system... I guess.”

  Leoh shook his head. “I just don’t understand any of this. I might as well admit it. I’m no closer to an answer now than when I arrived here. Perhaps I should have retired years ago, before the dueling machine was invented.”

  “No...”

  “I mean it,” said Leoh. “This is the first real intellectual problem I’ve had to contend with in years. Tinkering with machinery, that’s easy. You know what you want and all you need is to make the machinery perform properly. But this... I’m afraid I’m too old to handle a puzzle like this.”

  Hector scratched his nose thoughtfully. Then he answered, “If you can’t handle the problem, sir, then we’re going to have a war on our hands in a matter of months... or maybe just weeks. I mean, Kanus won’t be satisfied with swallowing the Szarno group. The Acquataine Cluster is next... and he’ll have to fight to get it.”

  “Then the Star Watch will step in,” Leoh said.

  Hunching forward in his chair in eagerness to make his point, Hector said, “But... look, it’ll take time to mobilize the Star Watch. Kanus can move a lot faster than we can. Sure, we could throw in a task force, I mean, a token group. Kerak’s army will chew them up pretty quick, though. I... I’m no politician, but I think what’ll happen is... well, Kerak will gobble up the Acquataine Cluster and wipe out a Star Watch force in the process. Then we’ll end up with the Commonwealth at war with Kerak. And that’ll be a big war, because Kanus’ll have Acquatainia’s, uh, resources to draw on.”

  Leoh began to answer, then stopped. His eyes were fixed on the far entrance of the dining room. Suddenly every murmur in the busy restaurant stopped dead. Waiters stood frozen between tables. Eating, drinking, conversation hung suspended.

  Hector turned in his chair and saw at the far entrance the slim, stiff, blue-uniformed figure of Odal.

  The moment of silence passed. Everyone turned to his own business and avoided looking at the Kerak major. Odal, with a faint smile on his thin face, made his way slowly to the table where Hector and Leoh were sitting.

  They rose to greet him and exchanged perfunctory salutations. Odal pulled up a chair and sat with them, unasked.

  “What do you want?” Leoh asked curtly.

  Before Odal could reply, the waiter assigned to the table walked up, took a position where his back would be to the Kerak major, and asked firmly, “Your dinner is ready, gentlemen. Shall I serve it now?”

  “Yes,” Hector said before Leoh could speak. “The major will be leaving shortly.”

  Again the tight grin pulled across Odal’s face. The waiter bowed and left.

  “I’ve been thinking about our conversation of last night,” Odal said to Leoh.

  “Yes?”

  “You accused me of cheating in my duels.”

  Leoh’s eyebrows arched. “I said someone was cheating...”

  “An accusation is an accusation.”

  Leoh said nothing.

  “Do you withdraw your words, or do you still accuse me of deliberate murder? I’m willing to allow you to apologize and leave Acquatainia in peace.”

  Hector cleared his throat noisily. “This is no place for an argument... besides, here comes our dinner.”

  Odal ignored the Watchman, kept his ice-blue eyes fastened on Leoh. “You heard me, Professor. Will you leave? Or do you...”

  Hector banged his fist on the table and jerked up out of his chair—just as the waiter arrived with a heavy tray of appetizers and soups. There was a loud crash. A tureen of soup, two bowls of salad, glasses, assorted rolls, cheeses, and other delicacies cascaded over Odal.

  The Kerak major leaped to his feet, swearing violently in his own language. The restaurant exploded with laughter.

  Sputtering back into basic Terran, Odal shouted, “You clumsy, stupid oaf! You maggot-brained misbegotten peasant-faced...”

  Hector calmly picked a salad leaf from the sleeve of his tunic, while Odal’s voice choked with rage.

  “I guess I am clumsy,” Hector said, grinning. “As for being stupid, and the rest of it, I resent that. In fact, I’m highly insulted.”

  A flash of recognition lighted Odal’s eyes. “I see. Of course. My quarrel is not with you. I apologize.” He turned back to Leoh, who was also standing now.

  “Not good enough,” Hector said. “I don’t, uh, like the tone of your apology... I mean...”

  Leoh raised a hand as if to warn Hector to be silent.

  “I apologized,” Odal said, his face red with anger. “That is enough.”

  Hector took a step toward Odal. “I guess I could call you names, or insult your glorious Leader, or something like that... but this seems more direct.” He took the water pitcher from the table and carefully poured it over Odal’s head.

  The people in the restaurant roared. Odal went absolutely white. “You are determined to die.” He wiped the dripping water from his eyes. “I’ll meet you before the week is out. And you’ve saved no one.” He turned and stalked out.

  Everyone else in the room stood up and applauded. Hector bobbed his head and grinned.

  Aghast, Leoh asked, “Do you realize what you’ve done?”

  “He was going to challenge you...”

  “He’ll still challenge me, after you’re dead.”

  Shrugging, Hector said, “Well, yes, maybe so. I guess you’re right. But at least we’ve gained a little more time.”

  “Four days.” Leoh shook his head. “Four days to the end of this week. All right, come on, we have work to do.”

  Hector was grinning broadly as they left the restaurant. He began to whistle.

  “What are you so happy about?” Leoh grumbled.

  “About you, sir. When we came in here, you were, well... almost beaten. Now you’re right back in the game again.”

  Leoh stared at him. “In your own odd way, my boy, you’re quite something... I think.”

  Their ground car glided from the parking building to the restaurant’s entrance ramp, at the radio call of the doorman. Within minutes, Hector and Leoh were cruising through the city in the deepening shadows of night.

  “There’s only one man,” Leoh mused, “who’s faced Odal and lived through it.”

  “Dulaq,” Hector said. “But... he might as well be dead, for all the information anybody can get from him.”

  “He’s still completely withdrawn?”

  Hector nodded. “The medicos think that... well, maybe with drugs and therapy and all that... maybe in a few months or so they might be able to bring him back.”

  “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 touc
hes 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 w
ith, 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.