by Ben Bova
“But I thought—”
“You thought I didn’t know,” Lorraine said to me. “Like anybody can keep a secret in this jungle gym for nerds.”
That hurt.
“I still think you two are acting like a couple of macho creeps,” she said. “But if you’re going to go through with this duel the least I can do is watch you making Looney Tunes of yourselves.”
The geek squad behind her and Kelso got a laugh out of that as they followed after us down to the VR lab. The word about our duel had well and truly leaked out.
“We’re going to have a great time in Aspen,” Kelso said to Lorraine.
She didn’t reply.
He was walking down the corridor at her side. I was on her other side, all three of us striding toward the VR lab like soldiers on parade. The rest of the onlookers shambled along behind us. I mean, techies aren’t the slickest-looking people. They looked like a collection of pudgy unwashed refugees and smelled like stale pepperoni pizza.
Lorraine finally spoke. “Just because you two heroes have decided to fight this duel over me doesn’t mean that I’ll go anywhere with either of you.”
My heart clutched beneath my ribs. She’s found out about the duel! If she backs out of this, what’s the sense of fighting it?
“You’ve got to!” I blurted.
“No I don’t,” she insisted. “This duel is between the two of you. You guys and your macho fantasies. Don’t include me in it.”
Kelso isn’t the sharpest pencil in the box, but he quickly said, “You’re right, Lorraine. This is between the Greek geek and me. The loser stops bothering you.” He looked down at me. “Right, Zepopolis?”
I looked at Lorraine. The expression on her face was unfathomable. I mean, she looked sort of irritated, intrigued, sad, and excited all at the same time. I can handle computer programming at its most arcane, but I couldn’t figure out what was going through Lorraine’s mind. I mean, if she didn’t want to have anything to do with our duel, why’d she come down to the VR lab with us?
Well, we got to the lab. While the rest of the guys leaned over my shoulder and made seventeen zillion suggestions on how to do it better, I powered up the simulation program and checked it out. Kelso stood off in a shadowy corner with Lorraine. No touchy games between them; she was watching me intently while Kelso fidgeted beside her.
It was time to enter the simulations chamber. Kelso marched in like a conquering hero and picked up the helmet waiting on his chair.
“Gloves first,” I said.
“Yeah. Right.”
So we wormed our hands into the sim gloves. Their insides were studded with sensors, and a slim optical fiber line trailed from them to the connectors built into the chamber wall. They felt fuzzy, tingly.
Then I pulled the helmet over my head, but kept the visor up. The helmet had its own power batteries and linked to the computer wirelessly.
I sat down. Kelso sat down. In a few minutes, I knew, we’d be seeing and feeling World War I fighter planes in combat over the Somme. I licked my lips. Nervous anticipation, big time.
“You ready?” I asked Kelso, raising my voice to hide the tremor that was quivering inside me.
“Ready,” he said, his voice muffled a bit by the helmet.
The computer was set for remote activation. Once I started the simulation program everything went automatically. I looked down at the armrests of my chair and leaned on the button that turned on the sim program. Then I slid my visor down over my eyes.
The computer’s voice sounded in my helmet earphones, “Simulation will begin in ten seconds … nine … eight…”
I couldn’t see a thing with the visor over my eyes. What if I goofed the programming? I suddenly thought, I should’ve gone to the bathroom before—
Abruptly the rattling roar of a 220-horsepower Hispano-Suiza engine shook my molars, and I was wedged into the cockpit of a Spad XIII bouncing along in the wake of three other Spads up ahead of me. The wind was blowing fiercely in my face. The altimeter on my rudimentary control panel flopped around between 4,000 and 4,200 feet. It should’ve been in meters, I know, but I had programmed it so I could understand it without dividing by 0.3048 every time I wanted to know how high I was.
The noise was shattering, and the engine was spitting a thin spray of castor oil over my windscreen and into my face. I wiped at my goggles with a gloved hand. The sim program couldn’t handle odors; good thing, the smell of castor oil would’ve started me retching, most likely.
I looked up over my left shoulder; the sky was clear blue and empty up there. Twisting in the other direction, my heart did a double-thump. There were eight Fokker triplanes above me, diving at us from out of the sun, led by one painted fire-engine red. Kelso.
I started waving frantically to the Spads up ahead of me, but they plowed on like lambs to the slaughter. No radio, of course. So I yanked back on the stick and pulled my nimble little fighter into a steep climb, rushing headfirst into the diving triplanes.
Their first pass wiped out my squadronmates. As I looped over and started diving, I could see all three of them spinning toward the shell-pocked ground, trailing smoke and flame. I was alone against Kelso and his whole squadron.
The other triplanes flew off; the Red Baron and I were alone in the sky. One on one. Mano a mano. I got on his tail, but before I could open up with my Vickers machine guns Kelso stood that goddam triplane on its tail and climbed toward heaven like a homesick angel. When I tried to climb after him it was like I was carrying an elephant on the Spad’s back.
Kelso flipped the triplane into an inside loop, and I lost him in the sun’s glare. I leveled off and kept squinting all around to spot him again. And there he was! Diving down behind me. I nosed over and dived away; the triplane could climb better than I could, but when it tried to dive it just sort of floated downward. My Spad went down like a stone with an anvil tied to it.
But I couldn’t dive forever, and when I pulled up, Kelso got right on my tail, shooting my plane to shreds. I twisted, banked, turned left and then right. He stayed right behind me, blazing away. My Spad was starting to look like Swiss cheese. That’s when I nosed over again and accidentally flipped the plane into a spin. And upchucked.
I couldn’t pull the Spad out of its spin. I was going to crash and burn, and it was all my own fault. Kelso didn’t have to shoot me down, I was going to screw myself into the ground. No parachute, either: the Royal Flying Corps wasn’t allowed to use them.
So I did the only thing I could think of. I twisted my body back toward where Kelso’s red triplane was circling above me, and I put my right hand to my brow. I who am about to die salute you.
I crashed. I burned. I died.
And just like that I was back in the sim chamber, with a gutful of stinking vomit smeared inside my helmet and dripping down my shirt. I almost upchucked again.
Kelso got up from his chair with a grin bright enough to light up Greater Los Angeles. He strode out of the chamber to the cheers of the geek squad waiting outside in the control room. Me, I pulled off the smelly helmet and looked around for something to clean up the mess I’d made.
It took quite a while to clean up. By the time I was finished the VR lab was dark and quiet. Good thing, too. I didn’t need anybody there to jeer at what a complete catastrophe I’d created for myself.
“Do you need some help?”
Lorraine’s voice! I turned and there she was, at the entrance to the sim chamber, with a mop and pail in her hands.
I just gaped at her. When I finally found my voice I asked her, “Where’s Kelso?”
She made a face. “Down at the nearest bar with the rest of the guys, celebrating his great victory.”
“You didn’t go with him?”
“I’m more interested in you,” she said.
In me!
Then she added, “This dueling idea of yours. Could you turn it into a package that could be sold retail?”
I blinked. “Yeah, I guess so. But—
”
She smiled at me. “We could market this, Tom. We could sell millions of them.”
“We?”
“We’ll have to raise some capital, form our own company. I know a few people who could help us.”
“Leave Kelso Electronics?”
“Of course. We’re going to get rich, Tom. You and me.”
I told you she was smart, as well as beautiful. We never did get to Aspen that weekend. We were too busy creating VR Duels, Inc.
But there were lots of other weekends, later on.
AFTERWORD TO
“DUEL IN THE SOMME”
This story was inspired by my novelette “The Perfect Warrior,” published in Analog in May 1963 and later incorporated into my 1969 novel, The Dueling Machine.
INTRODUCTION TO
“BLOODLESS VICTORY”
Exploring the frontier of virtual reality a little further, suppose VR systems got so good that people could fight duels to the death in them, without being harmed in the slightest?
Instead of taking someone to court over a dispute and waiting while the wheels of justice grind away (and the lawyers’ fees mount up), fight a duel against the person you’re at odds with. Swords, pistols, fighter planes, flamethrowers, custard pies—whatever the two parties agree on.
It would be much more satisfying than dragging a suit through the courts, even if you lose. At least it would be quick.
But how could you get a state legislature to agree to allow VR duels to be legally binding? After all, most of those legislators are lawyers themselves, aren’t they? To say nothing of the members of Congress.
How, indeed.
BLOODLESS VICTORY
FOUR LAWYERS SAT huddled around a table in the Men’s Bar of the Carleton Club.
Actually, one of them was a state supreme court justice, another a former psychologist, the third a patent attorney—which the judge disdained despite the man’s lofty assertion that he dealt with “intellectual properties.”
“Do you think it’s wise?” asked John Nottingham, the only man at the table whom the judge deemed to be a real lawyer; Nottingham practiced criminal law, dressed in properly conservative dark suits, and affected a bored Oxford accent.
“Fight a duel in a virtual reality machine,” mused Rick Gorton, the patent lawyer, “and have its results count just the same as a decision by a court of law.” Intellectual properties or not, Gorton shook his head in disbelief and took another gulp of his scotch. Gorton always wore a boyish grin on his round, florid face. And his suits always looked as if he’d slept in them.
“I think it’s the wave of the future,” said Herb Franklin, the ex-psychologist who was now an assistant district attorney.
Randolph Halpern was the judge, and he had always thought that Franklin had taken his law degree and passed the bar exam merely so that he could be accepted into the Carleton Club.
The Carleton was the capital city’s poshest and most exclusive of private clubs. Only lawyers and political officeholders were allowed membership. Since virtually every political officeholder also possessed a law degree, only the occasional outsider gained membership to the Carleton, and he was almost always encouraged to resign by subtle yet effective snubs and discourtesies.
Franklin was one of those outsiders, in Halpern’s view, and the judge was inwardly incensed that the man could sit beside him in the dark mahogany paneling of the Men’s Bar just as if he truly belonged here. Franklin was a round, jolly fellow with a snow-white beard that made him look like Santa Claus. But Justice Halpern still could not accept Franklin as an equal. The man was an outsider and always would be, in the judge’s view. A psychologist! And now he was advocating this ridiculous idea of letting virtual reality duels serve as valid legal suits!
“It’s never been done before!” protested Justice Halpern. “There’s no precedent for it. Absolutely none.”
Randolph Halpern was slim as a saber, his head shaved totally bald, although he wore the same pencil-thin moustache he had sported since his college days. His suit was impeccably tailored, dark gray. A solid maroon tie was knotted perfectly at his lean, wattled throat.
Gorton rubbed his reddish nose and said, “Well, by golly, it sounds like a fun idea to me.” He signaled to the Hispanic waiter for a refill of his scotch.
“Fun,” Halpern sneered, thinking, Of course an intellectual properties lawyer would favor this kind of gadgetry. And Franklin, sitting next to him and smiling like a benevolent Father Christmas. Psychologist. A lawyer should be a serious man, filled with gravitas. Yet Franklin sat there with that maddening grin on his bearded, chubby face and a mug of ale in his fist.
“I’ll grant you it could be exciting, Rick,” Franklin said to the patent attorney. “But it’s more serious than that. Court calendars all over the state are jammed so badly that it takes months, sometimes years, for a case to be heard. That’s a long time to wait for justice.”
“Lucrative, though,” observed Nottingham laconically. Halpern nodded at the man. He’s a real lawyer. He knows billable hours from balderdash.
“That’s another point,” said Franklin. “Lots of citizens can’t afford to take a case to court.”
“They’re too cheap to pay the piper,” Halpern countered.
Franklin shook his head. “They’re denied justice because it’s too expensive. And too slow. The dueling machine could allow them to obtain closure swiftly and at a reasonable cost.”
Gorton took another sip of scotch and mused, “You have a difference with somebody. Instead of suing the guy and having your case drag through the courts for God knows how long—”
Franklin interjected, “And paying through the nose for every phone call and trip to the men’s room that your attorney makes.”
Nodding amiably, Gorton went on, “Yeah. Instead of that, you go to one of VR Duels, Inc.’s facilities. You and your opponent agree on the setting for the duel and the weapons to be used, then you whack the hell out of each other in virtual reality. Nobody gets hurt and you abide by the results of the duel just as if it was legally binding.”
“It would be legally binding,” Nottingham pointed out, “if the state supreme court rules favorably on the matter.” He cast a questioning eye toward Justice Halpern.
Before the judge could say anything, Franklin added, “And it would be much more satisfying emotionally to the participants in the duel. Much more satisfying than having a judge or jury or court-appointed mediator decide on your case.”
Justice Halpern objected, “Now, really…”
“Yes, really,” Franklin insisted. “Psychological studies have shown that even the losers in a VR duel feel more satisfied with the results than they would with a verdict handed down by a court of law.”
“Those studies were funded by VR Duels, Inc., were they not?” Nottingham asked drily.
“It doesn’t matter,” Halpern said flatly. “The supreme court will not allow virtual reality duels to have the same legal standing as a court’s decision. Not if I have anything to do with it!”
Nottingham nodded as if satisfied. Gorton looked a trifle abashed. Franklin’s habitual smile faded for a moment but quickly returned to his bearded face once again.
Justice Halpern downed the last of his brandy and soda, then pushed away from the table.
“This dueling-machine business is one thing,” he said as he got to his feet. “But I have a really important problem to deal with.”
As the other three got up from their chairs, Franklin asked, “A really important problem?”
“Yes,” said Halpern. “The board’s been petitioned to open the Men’s Bar to female members.”
Gorton’s eyes went wide. “The Men’s Bar? But they can’t do that! Can they?”
His lean, austere face showing utter distaste, Justice Halpern said, “I knew we should never have allowed women to become members of the Club.”
“Had to, didn’t we?” Franklin asked. “It’s the law. Equal rights and all that.”
His expression going from distaste to outright disgust, Halpern said, “Yes, we had to, according to the law of the land. But we agreed to keep the Men’s Bar sacrosanct! They agreed to it! But now those aggressive, loud-mouthed feminists are going back on the agreement. They’ve petitioned the board to ‘liberate’ the Men’s Bar.”
“The board won’t go for that, will they?” Gorton asked, looking worried.
“They certainly shouldn’t,” said Nottingham, with some heat. “We need someplace on God’s green Earth where we can be away from them.”
Justice Halpern nodded. “The board’s appointed a committee to study the matter. We’re meeting in ten minutes to plot out our strategy and make a recommendation to the full board when it meets on the first of the month.” With that, he strode out of the Men’s Bar, leaving the other three standing at their table.
“He’s going to give himself a heart attack,” Gorton mused as he sat down again and reached for his drink.
Franklin shook his head. “No. The judge is the kind of man who doesn’t get a heart attack, he gives them.”
Nottingham chuckled. “But he seems dead set against this dueling-machine proposition.”
“And he’s the swing vote on the supreme court, from what I hear,” said Gorton.
Franklin beckoned to the waiter for another mug of ale, then hunched forward in his chair like a conspirator about to reveal his plans.
“About the dueling machine,” he said, his voice lowered.
“Yes?”
“You remember Martin Luther King’s famous line, ‘I have a dream?’”
“Yes.”
“Well, I have a scheme.”
Thus it was arranged that Rick Gorton, amiable Pooh-bear of a man, would challenge Justice Halpern to a duel. It was all done in a very friendly way, of course. The next afternoon, when the four men met again at the club, Halpern was in a smiling mood.
