The Second Science Fiction Megapack

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  I looked at my husband. Great sadness struck me. I still loved him. Just the sight of him made me soft and fond, even here in the apartment where he had taken another woman in the way he had promised he would only take me.

  I did not put the other three knots into my work. There was always time for that if I needed it.

  “Nuala, what are you doing?” Hugh asked, an uneasy edge to his voice. He gripped Jacy’s shoulder.

  “I am choosing a future for us, my love.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I looked at the knotwork I held, the complex and the simple parts, a diagram of my husband, by necessity flat where he had depths, no true image of all there was about him, but true enough that I could capture him in it.

  “By betraying me, you have set me free. I don’t know what I want from this freedom. I will discover it.”

  “Honey—”

  “Don’t call me by the same name you use for her.”

  He glanced down, saw that he had his hand on Jacy’s shoulder, that she glared up at him. He sucked air in and released her.

  Jacy rose and came to sit beside me on the couch. “You told me she didn’t care anymore, Hugh,” she said. “You lied.”

  “Do you care?” Hugh sat in the chair Jacy had left.

  I said, “I do. I would never have left you as long as you lived.”

  “But we had nothing left.”

  “We had everything. Some parts of it were asleep. Why didn’t you tell me you wanted to wake them?”

  “Didn’t I? All those nights I reached for you, and you turned your back.”

  Had he reached for me? I remembered his touch on my shoulder, on my back. I had cherished that touch, but hadn’t thought it meant anything more. Had it been a request? We were speaking different languages with our bodies, after those years when we had known without words what would please the other and ourselves. When had we lost our language?

  “I thought you just wanted to touch my back. I didn’t know it was a request for something else. Why didn’t you say something?”

  “I thought you were telling me it was over.”

  “That’s so strange,” Jacy said. “You don’t talk with words?”

  “Everything with him is a dance,” I said. “He approaches what he wants, but he never says it out loud. This is not my first or second or even third language. Sometimes I know what he wants, and sometimes I get tired of trying to figure it out and give up.”

  “I can’t talk about these things,” Hugh said.

  I looked at the knotwork in my hands. There was the knot I had put on his speech. If I twisted it one way, words would spill out of him. If I kinked it with skill, they would be words I was interested in hearing.

  “Do you know what she’s holding?” Jacy asked Hugh.

  “Knitting?” Hugh guessed.

  Jacy reached into my hand and stroked the knotwork. Hugh jerked, clapped a hand to his side. Jacy pressed a different place, and Hugh clapped his knees together. “What are you doing?” he asked in a choked voice.

  “You don’t know what you’re touching,” I told Jacy.

  “Yes, but this is fun.” She touched the knot for speech.

  “I am so confused and scared,” Hugh said. “I wanted something to happen, but I didn’t know how to direct it, so I flailed around and tried things, and this is what happened, but what is it? I don’t understand it, and I’m terrified.”

  Jacy lifted her finger and looked at me, then frowned at Hugh. “What do you feel for Nuala?” she asked, and touched the speech knot again.

  “She frightens me and I love her. I know she has a secret life she will never share, and I’m jealous. I think she’s leaving me. I think she’s found someone else. I think she no longer likes me. I want to hurt her. I want to wake her up and make her remember what she’s losing. I want her to come back. I want her to notice that I’ve left. I don’t know what’s going on in her head.”

  “Why don’t you ask her?”

  “I can’t ask questions like that. I’ll get smacked.”

  “Smacked by who?”

  “My mother will hit me if I ask for anything. She always says no questions, no wishes. Every answer is a smack.” Hugh writhed in the chair, covered his mouth with his hands. Sweat beaded on his forehead.

  Jacy jerked her finger off the knot.

  Hugh collapsed, breathing hard. “What are you doing to me?”

  I closed my hand around my knotwork, then opened my hand again and stroked lines. Hugh settled back. His breathing eased.

  “Whatever I want,” I whispered.

  After a moment he opened his eyes. A tear ran across his cheek. “Nuala, what is this?”

  “Ah, husband, this is my secret side, the side I gave up to be with you, but since you left me, I reclaimed it.”

  “I haven’t left you.”

  “You broke our vows. You left me.”

  “I wanted to stir things up. I wanted things to change between us.”

  “You got your wish.” I glanced at Jacy, who had been used like an instrument. My husband had made her an object and a weapon, just as I had made him. Once you make a person an object, everything changes between you. The climb back up to person is much harder than the first climb.

  Jacy had made that climb.

  I studied the knotwork. I could use it to bend Hugh any way I liked.

  If I bent Hugh, would I want to go home with him? If all that he was was what I chose—I could choose good things. I could tie knots to make him trustworthy and loyal. But I would always know that I chose it, and in time I would not be able to tell what was left of who he had really been.

  “Nuala,” he said.

  “Hugh. Now that you’ve changed everything, what do you want?”

  He groaned. “I want to go back to when things were good between us.”

  I glanced at Jacy. She frowned.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  She slumped back against the couch and sighed. “It doesn’t matter,” she said.

  Cupping Hugh’s knotwork in my left hand, I sketched another Jacy with my right. She straightened as she watched. Her tongue darted out to lick her upper lip.

  I charged the work with both hands to encompass her complexity.

  “What do you want?” I asked her again.

  “Not to be lonely,” she whispered, and then, “I want to learn what you know.”

  Happiness heated my chest. I began to see work I could do, a direction I could go; stay here, keep Hugh, learn new things. The old vows were gone. I was through playing fair.

  I set aside the knotwork of Jacy. “Watch carefully,” I told her. She bent her head over my hands as I manipulated Hugh’s knotwork. “This is the knot for power over another’s heart. This is how you stroke it when you want him to be true.” We both studied what I had done, then looked across the table at Hugh.

  Heat had kindled in his eyes. He leaned forward, his gaze fixed on my face, and I felt my own heat rise within. He wanted me, and that excited me.

  We couldn’t go back, but we could go forward into a second love. I could add Jacy into the mix, and make Hugh like it.

  I would bend him in increments. I might lose who he had been, it was true; but who he had been had chosen to betray me.

  I could always bend him back.

  THE DUELING MACHINE, by Ben Bova & Myron R. Lewis

  CHAPTER I

  Dulaq rode the slide to the upper pedestrian level, stepped off and walked over to the railing. The city stretched out all around him—broad avenues thronged with busy people, pedestrian walks, vehicle thoroughfares, aircars gliding between the gleaming, towering buildings.

  And somewhere in this vast city was the man he must kill. The man who would kill him, perhaps.

  It all seemed so real! The noise of the streets, the odors of the perfumed trees lining the walks, even the warmth of the reddish sun on his back as he scanned the scene before him.

  It is an illusion, Dulaq reminded him
self, a clever man-made hallucination. A figment of my own imagination amplified by a machine.

  But it seemed so very real.

  Real or not, he had to find Odal before the sun set. Find him and kill him. Those were the terms of the duel. He fingered the stubby cylinderical stat-wind in his tunic pocket. That was the weapon he had chosen, his weapon, his own invention. And this was the environment he had picked: his city, busy, noisy, crowded, the metropolis Dulaq had known and loved since childhood.

  Dulaq turned and glanced at the sun. It was halfway down toward the horizon, he judged. He had about three hours to find Odal. When he did—kill or be killed.

  Of course no one is actually hurt. That is the beauty of the machine. It allows one to settle a score, to work out aggressive feelings, without either mental or physical harm.

  Dulaq shrugged. He was a roundish figure, moon-faced, slightly stooped shoulders. He had work to do. Unpleasant work for a civilized man, but the future of the Acquataine Cluster and the entire alliance of neighboring star systems could well depend on the outcome of this electronically synthesized dream.

  He turned and walked down the elevated avenue, marveling at the sharp sensation of hardness that met each footstep on the paving. Children dashed by and rushed up to a toyshop window. Men of commerce strode along purposefully, but without missing a chance to eye the girls sauntering by.

  I must have a marvelous imagination, Dulaq thought smiling to himself.

  Then he thought of Odal, the blond, icy professional he was pitted against. Odal was an expert at all the weapons, a man of strength and cool precision, an emotionless tool in the hands of a ruthless politician. But how expert could he be with a stat-wand, when the first time he saw one was the moment before the duel began? And how well acquainted could he be with the metropolis, when he had spent most of his life in the military camps on the dreary planets of Kerak, sixty light-years from Acquatainia?

  No, Odal would be lost and helpless in this situation. He would attempt to hide among the throngs of people. All Dulaq had to do was to find him.

  The terms of the duel restricted both men to the pedestrian walks of the commercial quarter of the city. Dulaq knew the area intimately, and he began a methodical hunt through the crowds for the tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed Odal.

  And he saw him! After only a few minutes of walking down the major thoroughfare, he spotted his opponent, strolling calmly along a crosswalk, at the level below.

  Dulaq hurried down the next ramp, worked his way through the crowd, and saw the man again. Tall and blond, unmistakable. Dulaq edged along behind him quietly, easily. No disturbance. No pushing. Plenty of time. They walked along the street for a quarter hour while the distance between them slowly shrank from fifty feet to five.

  Finally Dulaq was directly behind him, within arm’s reach. He grasped the stat-wand and pulled it from his tunic. With one quick motion he touched it to the base of the man’s skull and started to thumb the button that would release the killing bolt of energy…

  The man turned suddenly. It wasn’t Odal!

  Dulaq jerked back in surprise. It couldn’t be. He had seen his face. It was Odal—and yet this man was definitely a stranger.

  He stared at Dulaq as the duelist backed away a few steps, then turned and walked quickly from the place.

  A mistake, Dulaq told himself. You were overanxious. A good thing this is an hallucination, or else the auto-police would be taking you in by now.

  And yet…he had been so certain that it was Odal. A chill shuddered through him. He looked up, and there was his antagonist, on the thoroughfare above, at the precise spot where he himself had been a few minutes earlier. Their eyes met, and Odal’s lips parted in a cold smile.

  Dulaq hurried up the ramp. Odal was gone by the time he reached the upper level. He could not have gotten far, Dulaq reasoned. Slowly, but very surely, Dulaq’s hallucination turned into a nightmare. He spotted Odal in the crowd, only to have him melt away. He saw him again, lolling in a small park, but when he got closer, the man turned out to be another stranger. He felt the chill of the duelist’s ice-blue eyes on him again and again, but when he turned to find his antagonist, no one was there but the impersonal crowd.

  Odal’s face appeared again and again. Dulaq struggled through the throngs to find his opponent, only to have him vanish. The crowd seemed to be filled with tall, blond men crisscrossing before Dulaq’s dismayed eyes.

  The shadows lengthened. The sun was setting. Dulaq could feel his heart pounding within him and perspiration pouring from every square inch of his skin.

  There he is! Definitely, positively him! Dulaq pushed through the homeward-bound crowds toward the figure of a tall, blond man leaning against the safety railing of the city’s main thoroughfare. It was Odal, the damned smiling confident Odal.

  Dulaq pulled the wand from his tunic and battled across the surging crowd to the spot where Odal stood motionless, hands in pockets, watching him.

  Dulaq came within arm’s reach…

  “TIME, GENTLEMEN. TIME IS UP, THE DUEL IS ENDED.”

  * * * *

  High above the floor of the antiseptic-white chamber that housed the dueling machine was a narrow gallery. Before the machine had been installed, the chamber had been a lecture hall in Acquatainia’s largest university. Now the rows of students’ seats, the lecturer’s dais and rostrum were gone. The chamber held only the machine, the grotesque collection of consoles, control desks, power units, association circuits, and booths where the two antagonists sat.

  In the gallery—empty during ordinary duels—sat a privileged handful of newsmen.

  “Time limit is up,” one of them said. “Dulaq didn’t get him.”

  “Yes, but he didn’t get Dulaq, either.”

  The first one shrugged. “The important thing is that now Dulaq has to fight Odal on his terms. Dulaq couldn’t win with his own choice of weapons and situation, so—”

  “Wait, they’re coming out.”

  Down on the floor below, Dulaq and his opponent emerged from their enclosed booths.

  One of the newsmen whistled softly. “Look at Dulaq’s face…it’s positively gray.”

  “I’ve never seen the Prime Minister so shaken.”

  “And take a look at Kanus’ hired assassin.” The newsmen turned toward Odal, who stood before his booth, quietly chatting with his seconds.

  “Hm-m-m. There’s a bucket of frozen ammonia for you.”

  “He’s enjoying this.”

  One of the newsmen stood up. “I’ve got a deadline to meet. Save my seat.”

  He made his way past the guarded door, down the rampway circling the outer walls of the building, to the portable tri-di transmitting unit that the Acquatainian government had permitted for the newsmen on the campus grounds outside the former lecture hall.

  The newsman huddled with his technicians for a few minutes, then stepped before the transmitter.

  “Emile Dulaq, Prime Minister of the Acquataine Cluster and acknowledged leader of the coalition against Chancellor Kanus of the Kerak Worlds, has failed in the first part of his psychonic duel against Major Par Odal of Kerak. The two antagonists are now undergoing the routine medical and psychological checks before renewing their duel.”

  By the time the newsman returned to his gallery seat, the duel was almost ready to begin again.

  Dulaq stood in the midst of a group of advisors before the looming impersonality of the machine.

  “You need not go through with the next phase of the duel immediately,” his Minister of Defense was saying. “Wait until tomorrow. Rest and calm yourself.”

  Dulaq’s round face puckered into a frown. He cocked an eye at the chief meditech, hovering at the edge of the little group.

  The meditech, one of the staff that ran the dueling machine, pointed out, “The Prime Minister has passed the examinations. He is capable, within the agreed-upon rules of the contest, of resuming.”

  “But he has the option of retiring for the day, do
es he not?”

  “If Major Odal agrees.”

  Dulaq shook his head impatiently. “No. I shall go through with it. Now.”

  “But—”

  The prime minister’s face suddenly hardened; his advisors lapsed into a respectful silence. The chief meditech ushered Dulaq back into his booth. On the other side of the room, Odal glanced at the Acquatainians, grinned humorlessly, and strode to his own booth.

  Dulaq sat and tried to blank out his mind while the meditechs adjusted the neurocontacts to his head and torso. They finished at last and withdrew. He was alone in the booth now, looking at the dead-white walls, completely bare except for the viewscreen before his eyes. The screen finally began to glow slightly, then brightened into a series of shifting colors. The colors merged and changed, swirled across his field of view. Dulaq felt himself being drawn into them gradually, compellingly, completely immersed in them.

  * * * *

  The mists slowly vanished, and Dulaq found himself standing on 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 disturbingly harsh yellow sky. He looked down and at his feet saw the weapon that Odal had chosen.

  A primitive club.

  With a sense of dread, Dulaq picked up the club and hefted it in his hand. He scanned the plain. Nothing. No hills or trees or bushes to hide in. No place to run to.

  And off on the horizon he could see a tall, lithe figure holding a similar club walking slowly and deliberately toward him.

  * * * *

  The press gallery was practically empty. The duel had more than an hour to run, and most of the newsmen were outside, broadcasting their hastily-drawn guesses about Dulaq’s failure to win with his own choice of weapon and environment.

  Then a curious thing happened.

  On the master control panel of the dueling machine, a single light flashed red. The meditech blinked at it in surprise, then pressed a series of buttons on his board. More red lights appeared. The chief meditech rushed to the board and flipped a single switch.

  One of the newsmen turned to his partner. “What’s going on down there?”