by Various
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, does 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 ch
ief meditech rushed to the board and flipped a single switch.
One of the newsmen turned to his partner. "What's going on down there?"
"I think it's all over.... Yes, look, they're opening up the booths. Somebody must've scored a victory."
They watched intently while the other newsmen quickly filed back into the gallery.
"There's Odal. He looks happy."
"Guess that means--"
"Good Lord! Look at Dulaq!"
II
Dr. Leoh was lecturing at the Carinae Regional University when the news of Dulaq's duel reached him. An assistant professor perpetrated the unthinkable breach of interrupting the lecture to whisper the news in his ear.
Leoh nodded grimly, hurriedly finished his lecture, and them accompanied the assistant professor to the University president's office. They stood in silence as the slideway whisked them through the strolling students and blossoming greenery of the quietly-busy campus.
Leoh remained wrapped in his thoughts as they entered the administration building and rode the lift tube. Finally, as they stepped through the president's doorway, Leoh asked the assistant professor:
"You say he was in a state of catatonic shock when they removed him from the machine?"
"He still is," the president answered from his desk. "Completely withdrawn from the real world. Cannot speak, hear, or even see--a living vegetable."
Leoh plopped down in the nearest chair and ran a hand across his fleshy face. He was balding and jowly, but his face was creased from a smile that was almost habitual, and his eyes were active and alert.
"I don't understand it," he admitted. "Nothing like this has ever happened in a dueling machine before."
The university president shrugged. "I don't understand it either. But, this is your business." He put a slight emphasis on the last word, unconsciously perhaps.
"Well, at least this will not reflect on the university. That is why I formed Psychonics as a separate business enterprise." Then he added, with a grin, "The money was, of course, only a secondary consideration."
The president managed a smile. "Of course."
"I suppose the Acquatainians want to see me?" Leoh asked academically.
"They're on the tri-di now, waiting for you."
"They're holding a transmission frequency open over eight hundred parsecs?" Leoh looked impressed. "I must be an important man."
"You're the inventor of the dueling machine and the head of Psychonics, Inc. You're the only man who can tell them what went wrong."
"Well, I suppose I shouldn't keep them waiting."
"You can take the call here," the president said, starting to get up from his chair.
"No, no, stay there at your desk," Leoh insisted. "There's no reason for you to leave. Or you either," he said to the assistant professor.
The president touched a button on his desk communicator. The far wall of the office glowed momentarily, then seemed to dissolve. They were looking into another office, this one on Acquatainia. It was crowded with nervous-looking men in business clothes and military uniforms.
"Gentlemen," Dr. Leoh said.
Several of the Acquatainians tried to answer him at once. After a few seconds of talking together, they all looked toward one of their members--a tall, purposeful, shrewd-faced civilian who bore a neatly-trimmed black beard.
"I am Fernd Massan, the Acting Prime Minister of Acquatainia. You realize, of course, the crisis that has been precipitated in my Government because of this duel?"
Leoh blinked. "I realize that apparently there has been some difficulty with the dueling machine installed on the governing planet of your star cluster. Political crises are not in my field."
"But your dueling machine has incapacitated the Prime Minister," one of the generals bellowed.
"And at this particular moment," the defense minister added, "in the midst of our difficulties with the Kerak Worlds."
"If the Prime Minister is not--"
"Gentlemen!" Leoh objected. "I cannot make sense of your story if you all speak at once."
Massan gestured them to silence.
"The dueling machine," Leoh said, adopting a slightly professorial tone, "is nothing more than a psychonic device for alleviating human aggressions and hostilities. It allows for two men to share a dream world created by one of them. There is a nearly-complete feedback between the two. Within certain limits, two men can do anything they wish within their dream world. This allows men to settle grievances with violence--in the safety of their own imaginations. If the machine is operated properly, no physical or mental harm can be done to the participants. They can alleviate their tensions safely--without damage of any sort to anyone, and without hurting society.
"Your own Government tested one of the machines and approved its use on Acquatainia more than three years ago. I see several of you who were among those to whom I personally demonstrated the device. Duelling machines are in use through wide portions of the galaxy, and I am certain that many of you have used the machine. You have, general, I'm sure."
The general blustered. "That has nothing to do with the matter at hand!"
"Admittedly," Leoh conceded. "But I do not understand how a therapeutic machine can possibly become entangled in a political crisis."
Massan said: "Allow me to explain. Our Government has been conducting extremely delicate negotiations with the stellar governments of our neighboring territories. These negotiations concern the rearmaments of the Kerak Worlds. You have heard of Kanus of Kerak?"
"I recall the name vaguely," Leoh said. "He's a political leader of some sort."
"Of the worst sort. He has acquired complete dictatorship of the Kerak Worlds, and is now attempting to rearm them for war. This is in direct countervention of the Treaty of Acquatainia, signed only thirty Terran years ago."
"I see. The treaty was signed at the end of the Acquataine-Kerak war, wasn't it?"
"A war that we won," the general pointed out.
"And now the Kerak Worlds want to rearm and try again," Leoh said.
"Precisely."
Leoh shrugged. "Why not call in the Star Watch? This is their type of police activity. And what has all this to do with the dueling machine?"
* * * * *
Massan explained patiently, "The Acquataine Cluster has never become a full-fledged member of the Terran Commonwealth. Our neighboring territories are likewise unaffiliated. Therefore the Star Watch can intervene only if all parties concerned agree to intervention. Unless, of course, there is an actual military emergency. The Kerak Worlds, of course, are completely isolationist--unbound by any laws except those of force."
Leoh shook his head.
"As for the dueling machine," Massan went on, "Kanus of Kerak has turned it into a political weapon--"
"But that's impossible. Your government passed strict laws concerning the use of the machine; I recommended them and I was in your Council chambers when the laws were passed. The machine may be used only for personal grievances. It is strictly outside the realm of politics."
Massan shook his head sadly. "Sir, laws are one thing--people are another. And politics consists of people, not words on paper."
"I don't understand," Leoh said.
Massan explained, "A little more than one Terran year ago, Kanus picked a quarrel with a neighboring star-group--the Safad Federation. He wanted an especially favorable trade agreement with them. Their minister of trade objected most strenuously. One of the Kerak negotiators--a certain Major Odal--got into a personal argument with the minister. Before anyone knew what had happened, they had challenged each other to a duel. Odal won the duel, and the minister resigned his post. He said that he could no longer effectively fight against the will of Odal and his group ... he was psychologically incapable of it. Two weeks later he was dead--apparently a suicide, although I have doubts."
"That's ... extremely interesting," Leoh said.
"Three days ago," Massan continued, "the same Major Odal engaged Prime Minister Dulaq in a
bitter personal argument. Odal is now a military attaché of the Kerak Embassy here. He accused the Prime Minister of cowardice, before a large group of an Embassy party. The Prime Minister had no alternative but to challenge him. And now--"
"And now Dulaq is in a state of shock, and your government is tottering."
Massan's back stiffened. "Our Government shall not fall, nor shall the Acquataine Cluster acquiesce to the rearmament of the Kerak Worlds. But"--his voice lowered--"without Dulaq, I fear that our neighboring governments will give in to Kanus' demands and allow him to rearm. Alone, we are powerless to stop him."
"Rearmament itself might not be so bad," Leoh mused, "if you can keep the Kerak Worlds from using their weapons. Perhaps the Star Watch might--"
"Kanus could strike a blow and conquer a star system before the Star Watch could be summoned and arrive to stop him. Once Kerak is armed, this entire area of the galaxy is in peril. In fact, the entire galaxy is endangered."
"And he's using the dueling machine to further his ambitions," Leoh said. "Well, gentlemen, it seems I have no alternative but to travel to the Acquataine Cluster. The dueling machine is my responsibility, and if there is something wrong with it, or the use of it, I will do my best to correct the situation."
"That is all we ask," Massan said. "Thank you."
The Acquatainian scene faded away, and the three men in the university president's office found themselves looking at a solid wall once again.
"Well," Dr. Leoh said, turning to the president, "it seems that I must request an indefinite leave of absence."
The president frowned. "And it seems that I must grant your request--even though the year is only half-finished."
"I regret the necessity," Leoh said; then, with a broad grin, he added, "My assistant professor, here, can handle my courses for the remainder of the year very easily. Perhaps he will even be able to deliver his lectures without being interrupted."
