The Astral Mirror (26 page)

Hector shook his head ruefully. “Neither do I, sir.”

The next week was an enervatingly slow one for Leoh, evenly divided between a tedious checking of each component of the dueling machine, and shameless ruses to keep Hector as far away from the machine as possible.

The Star Watchman certainly wanted to help, and he actually was little short of brilliant in handling intricate mathematics completely in his head. But he was also, Leoh found, a clumsy, chattering, whistling, scatter-brained, inexperienced bundle of noise and nerves. It was impossible to do constructive work with him nearby.

Perhaps you're judging him too harshly,
Leoh warned himself
. You might be letting your frustrations with the machine get the better of your sense of balance.

The professor was sitting in the office that the Acquatainians had given him in one end of the former lecture hall that now held the dueling machine. Leoh could see its impassive metal hulk through the open office door. The room he was sitting in had been one of a suite of offices used by the permanent staff of the machine. But they had moved out of the building completely, in deference (or was it jealousy) to Leoh, and the Acquatainian government had turned the cubbyhole offices into living quarters for Leoh and the Star Watchman.

Leoh slouched back in his desk chair and cast a weary eye on the stack of papers that recorded the latest performance of the machine. Earlier that day he had taken the electroencephalographic records of clinical cases of catatonia and run them through the machine’s input circuits. The machine immediately rejected them, refused to process them through the amplification units and association circuits. In other words, the machine had recognized the EEG traces as something harmful to human beings.

Then how did it happen to Dulaq?
Leoh asked himself for the thousandth time. It couldn’t have been the machine’s fault; it must have been something in Odal’s mind that overpowered Dulaq’s.

“Overpowered?” That’s a terribly unscientific term,
Leoh argued against himself.

Before he could carry the debate any further, he heard the main door of the big chamber slide open and bang shut, and Hector’s off-key whistle shrilled and echoed through the high-vaulted room.

Leoh sighed and put his self-contained argument off to the back of his mind. Trying to think logically near Hector was a hopeless prospect.

“Are you in, Professor?” the Star Watchman’s voice rang out.

“In here.”

Hector ducked in through the doorway and plopped his rangy frame on the couch.

“Everything going well, sir?”

Leoh shrugged. “Not very well, I’m afraid. I can’t find anything wrong with the dueling machine. I can’t even
force
it to malfunction.”

“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” Hector chirped happily.

“In a sense,” Leoh admitted, feeling slightly nettled at the youth’s boundless, pointless optimism. “But, you see, it means that Kanus’ people can do things with the machine that I can’t.”

Hector considered the problem. “Hmm... yes, I guess that’s right too, isn’t it?”

“Did you see the girl back to her ship safely?” Leoh asked.

“Yessir,” Hector replied, bobbing his head vigorously. “She’s on her way back to the communications booth at the space station. She said to tell you thanks and she enjoyed the visit a lot.”

“Good. It was very good of you to escort her around the campus. It kept her out of my hair... what’s left of it, that is.”

Hector grinned. “Oh, I liked taking her around and all that... and, well, it sort of kept
me
out of your hair too, didn’t it?”

Leoh’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.

Laughing, Hector said, “Professor, I may be clumsy, and I’m sure no scientist... but I’m not completely brainless.”

“I’m sorry if I gave you that impression.”

“Oh no... don’t be sorry. I didn’t mean that to sound... well, the way it sounded... That is, I know I’m just in your way...” He started to get up.

Leoh waved him back to the couch. “Relax, my boy, relax. You know, I’ve been sitting here all afternoon wondering what to do next. Somehow, just now, I’ve come to a conclusion.”

“Yes?”

“I’m going to leave the Acquataine Cluster and return to Carinae.”

“What? But you can’t! I mean...”

“Why not? I’m not accomplishing anything here. Whatever it is that this Odal and Kanus have been doing, it’s basically a political problem, not a scientific one. The professional staff of the machine here will catch up to their tricks, sooner or later.”

“But, sir, if you can’t find the answer, how can they?”

“Frankly, I don’t know. But, as I said, this is a political problem more than a scientific one. I’m tired and frustrated and I’m feeling my years. I want to return to Carinae and spend the next few months considering beautifully abstract problems such as instantaneous transportation devices. Let Massan and the Star Watch worry about Kanus.”

“Oh! That’s what I came to tell you. Massan has been challenged to a duel by Odal.”

“What?”

“This afternoon. Odal went to the Capital building and picked an argument with Massan right in the main corridor and challenged him.”

“Massan accepted?” Leoh asked.

Hector nodded.

Leoh leaned across his desk and reached for the phone. It took a few minutes and a few levels of secretaries and assistants, but finally Massan’s dark, bearded face appeared on the screen above the desk.

“You’ve accepted Odal’s challenge?” Leoh asked, without preliminaries.

“We meet next week,” Massan replied gravely.

“You should have refused.”

“On what pretext?”

“No pretext. A flat refusal, based on the certainty that Odal or someone else from Kerak is tampering with the dueling machine.”

Massan shook his head sadly. “My dear learned sir, you do not comprehend the political situation. The government of Acquatainia is much closer to dissolution than I dare to admit publicly. The coalition of star-nations that Dulaq had constructed to keep Kerak neutralized has broken apart completely. Kerak is already arming. This morning, Kanus announced he would annex Szarno, with its enormous armaments industry. This afternoon, Odal challenges me.”

“I think I see...”

“Of course. The Acquataine government is paralyzed now, until the outcome of the duel is known. We cannot effectively intervene in the Szarno crisis until we know who will be heading the government next week. And, frankly, more than a few members of the Cabinet are now openly favoring Kanus and arguing that we should establish friendly relations with him before it is too late.”

“But that’s all the more reason for refusing the duel,” Leoh insisted.

“And be accused of cowardice in my own Cabinet meetings?” Massan shook his head. “In politics, my dear sir, the
appearance
of a man means much—sometimes more than his substance. As a coward, I would soon be out of office. But, perhaps, as the winner of a duel against the invincible Odal... or even as a martyr... I may accomplish something useful.”

Leoh said nothing.

Massan continued, “I put off the duel for a week, which is the longest time I dare to postpone. I hope that in that time you can discover Odal’s secret. As it is, the political situation may collapse about our heads at any moment.”

“I’ll take the machine apart and rebuild it again, molecule by molecule,” Leoh promised.

As Massan’s image faded from the screen, Leoh turned to Hector. “We have one week to save his life.”

“And, uh, maybe prevent a war,” Hector added.

“Yes.” Leoh leaned back in his chair and stared off into infinity.

Hector shuffled his feet, rubbed his nose, whistled a few bars of off-key tunes, and finally blurted, “How can you take apart the dueling machine?”

“Hmm?” Leoh snapped out of his reverie.

“How can you take apart the dueling machine?” Hector repeated. “I mean... well, it’s a big job to do in a week.”

“Yes, it is. But, my boy, perhaps we—the two of us—can do it.”

Hector scratched his head. “Well, uh, sir... I’m not very... that is, my mechanical aptitude scores at the academy....”

Leoh smiled at him. “No need for mechanical aptitude, my boy. You were trained to fight, weren’t you? We can do this job mentally.”

It was the strangest week of their lives.

Leoh’s plan was straightforward: to test the dueling machine, push it to the limits of its performance, by actually operating it—by fighting duels.

They started off easily enough, tentatively probing and flexing their mental muscles. Leoh had used the machines himself many times in the past, but only in tests of the system’s routine performance. Never in actual combat against another human being. To Hector, of course, the machine was a totally new and different experience.

The Acquatainian staff plunged into the project without question, providing Leoh with invaluable help in monitoring and analyzing the duels.

At first, Leoh and Hector did nothing more than play hide-and-seek, with one of them picking an environment and the other trying to find him. They wandered through jungles and cities, over glaciers and interplanetary voids, all without ever leaving the dueling machine booths.

Then, when Leoh was satisfied that the machine could reproduce and amplify thought patterns with strict fidelity, they began to fight light duels. They fenced with blunted foils. Leoh did poorly, because he knew nothing about fencing, and his reflexes were much slower than Hector’s. The dueling machine did not change a man’s knowledge or his physical abilities; it only projected them into a dream he was sharing with another man. It matched Leoh’s skills and knowledge against Hector’s. Then they tried other weapons—pistols, sonic beams, grenades—but always with the precaution of imagining themselves to be wearing protective equipment. Strangely, even though Hector was trained in the use of these weapons, Leoh won almost all the bouts. He was neither faster nor more accurate when they were target-shooting. But when the two of them faced each other, somehow Leoh almost always won.

The machine projects more than thoughts,
Leoh began to realize
. It projects personality.

They worked in the dueling machine day and night now, enclosed in the booths for twelve or more hours a day, driving themselves and the machine’s regular staff to near exhaustion. When they gulped their meals, between duels, they were physically ragged and sharp-tempered. They usually fell asleep in Leoh’s office, discussing the results of the day’s work.

The duels slowly grew more serious. Leoh was pushing the machine to its limits now, carefully extending the rigors of each bout. Even though he knew exactly what and how much he intended to do in each fight, it often took a conscious effort to remind himself that the battles he was fighting were actually imaginary.

As the duels became more dangerous, and the artificially amplified hallucinations began to end in blood and death, Leoh found himself winning more and more frequently. With one part of his mind he was driving to analyze the cause of his consistent success. But another part of him was beginning to enjoy his prowess.

The strain was telling on Hector. The physical exertion of constant work and practically no relief was considerable in itself. But the emotional effects of being “hurt” and “killed” repeatedly were infinitely worse.

“Perhaps we should stop for a while,” Leoh suggested after the fourth day of tests.

“No, I’m all right.”

Leoh looked at him. Hector’s face was haggard, his eyes bleary.

“You’ve had enough,” Leoh said quietly.

“Please don’t make me stop,” Hector begged. “I... I can’t stop now. Please give me a chance to do better. I’m improving... I lasted twice as long in this afternoon’s duels as I did this morning. Please, don’t end it now... not while I’m completely lost...”

Leoh stared at him. “You want to go on?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And if I say no?”

Hector hesitated. Leoh sensed he was struggling with himself. “If you say no,” he answered dully, “then it’ll be no. I can’t argue against you any more.”

Leoh was silent for a long moment. Finally he opened a desk drawer and took a small bottle from it. “Here, take a sleep capsule. When you wake up we’ll try again.”

It was dawn when they began again. Leoh entered the dueling machine determined to let Hector win. He gave the youthful Star Watchman his choice of weapons and environment. Hector picked one-man scout ships in planetary orbits. Their weapons were conventional laser beams.

But despite his own conscious desire, Leoh found himself winning! The ships spiraled around an unnamed planet, their paths intersecting at least once in every orbit. The problem was to estimate your opponent’s orbital position, and then program your own ship so that you would arrive at that position either behind or to one side of him. Then you could train your guns on him before he could turn on you.

The problem should have been an easy one for Hector, with his knack for intuitive mental calculation. But Leoh scored the first hit. Hector had piloted his ship into an excellent firing position, but his shot went wide. Leoh maneuvered clumsily, but he managed to register a trifling hit on the side of Hector’s ship.

In the next three passes, Leoh scored two more hits. Hector’s ship was badly damaged now. In return, the Star Watchman had landed one glancing shot on Leoh’s ship. They came around again, and once more Leoh had outguessed his young opponent. He trained his guns on Hector’s ship, then hesitated with his hand poised above the firing button.

Don't kill him again,
he warned himself
. His mind can't take another defeat.

But Leoh’s hand, almost of its own will, reached the button and touched it lightly; another gram of pressure and the guns would fire.

In that instant’s hesitation, Hector pulled his crippled ship around and aimed at Leoh. The Watchman fired a searing blast that jarred Leoh’s ship from end to end. Leoh’s hand slammed down on the firing button; whether he intended to do it or not, he didn’t know.

Leoh’s shot raked Hector’s ship but didn’t stop it. The two vehicles were hurtling directly at each other. Leoh tried desperately to avert a collision, but Hector bore in grimly, matching Leoh’s maneuvers with his own.

The two ships smashed together and exploded.

Abruptly, Leoh found himself in the cramped booth of the dueling machine, his body cold and damp with perspiration, his hands trembling.

He squeezed out of the booth and took a deep breath. Warm sunlight was streaming into the high-vaulted room. The white walls gleamed brilliantly. Through the tall windows he could see trees and early students and clouds in the sky.

Hector walked up to him. For the first time in several days, the Watchman was smiling. Not much, but smiling. “Well, we... uh, broke even on that one.”

Leoh smiled back, somewhat shakily. “Yes. It was... quite an experience. I’ve never died before.”

Hector fidgeted. “It’s not so bad, I guess. It... sort of, well, it sort of shatters you, though.”

“Yes. I can see that now.”

“Try another duel?” Hector asked, nodding toward the machine.

“No. Not now. Let’s get out of this place for a few hours. Are you hungry?”

“Starved.”

They fought several more duels over the next day and a half. Hector won three of them. It was late afternoon when Leoh called a halt.

“We can get in another couple,” the Watchman said.

“No need,” said Leoh. “I have all the data I require. Tomorrow Massan meets Odal, unless we can put a stop to it. We’ve got much to do before tomorrow morning.”

Hector sagged into the couch. “Just as well. I think I’ve aged seven years in the past seven days.”

“No, my boy,” Leoh said gently, “you haven’t aged. You’ve matured.”

It was deep twilight when the ground car slid to a halt on its cushion of compressed air before the Kerak embassy.

“I still think it’s a mistake to go in there,” Hector said. “I mean, you could’ve called him on the tri-di, couldn’t you?”

Leoh shook his head. “Never give an agency of any government the opportunity to say, ‘hold the line a moment.’ They huddle together and consider what to do with you. Nineteen times out of twenty, they’ll end by passing you to another department or transferring your call to a taped, ‘So sorry,’ message.”

“Still,” Hector insisted, “you’re sort of, well, stepping into enemy territory.”

“They wouldn’t dare harm us.”

Hector didn’t reply, but he looked unconvinced.

“Look,” Leoh said, “there are only two men alive who can shed light on this matter. One of them is Dulaq, and his mind is closed to us for an indefinite time. Odal is the only other man who knows what happened in those duels.”

Hector shook his head skeptically. Leoh shrugged, and opened the door of the ground car. Hector had no choice but to get out and follow him as he walked up the pathway to the main entrance of the embassy building. The building stood gaunt and gray in the dusk, surrounded by a precisely clipped hedge. The entrance was flanked by a pair of evergreen trees, straight and spare as sentries.

Leoh and Hector were met just inside the entrance by a female receptionist. She looked just a trifle disheveled, as though she’d been rushed to her desk at a moment’s notice. They asked for Odal, were ushered into a sitting room, and within a few minutes—to Hector’s surprise—were informed by the girl that Major Odal would be with them shortly.

“You see,” Leoh pointed out jovially, “when you come in person they haven’t as much of a chance to consider how to get rid of you.”

Hector glanced around the windowless room and contemplated the thick, solidly closed door. “There’s a lot of scurrying going on behind that door, I’ll bet. I mean... they might be figuring out how to get rid of us... uh, permanently.”

Leoh was about to reply when the door opened and Odal came into the room. He wore a military uniform of light blue, with his insignia of rank on the shoulders and the Star of Kerak on his breast.

“Dr. Leoh, I’m flattered,” he said with a slight bow. “And Mr. Hector... or is it Lieutenant Hector?”

“Junior Lieutenant Hector,” the Watchman answered, with a curtness that surprised Leoh.

“Lieutenant Hector is assisting me,” the Professor said, “and acting as liaison for Commander Spencer.”

“So,” Odal commented. He gestured them to be seated. Hector and Leoh placed themselves on a plush couch while Odal drew up a stiff chair, facing them. “Now, why have you come to see me?”

“I want you to postpone your duel against Minister Massan tomorrow,” Leoh said.

Odal’s lean face broke into a tight smile. “Has Massan agreed to a postponement?”

“No.”

“Then why should I?”

“To be perfectly frank, Major, I suspect that someone is tampering with the machine used in your duels. For the moment, let’s say that you have no knowledge of this. I am asking you to forego any further duels until we get to the bottom of this. The dueling machines are not to be used for political assassinations.”

Odal’s smile faded. “I regret, Professor, that I cannot postpone the duel. As for tampering with the machines, I can assure you that neither I nor anyone of the Kerak Worlds has touched the machines in any unauthorized manner.”

“Perhaps you don’t fully understand the situation,” Leoh said. “In the past week we’ve tested the dueling machine here on Acquatainia exhaustively. We’ve learned that its performance can be greatly influenced by a man’s personality and his attitude. You’ve fought many duels in the machines. Your background of experience, both as a professional soldier and in the machines, gives you a decided advantage over your opponents.

“However, even with all this considered, I’m still convinced that no one can kill a man in the machine—under normal circumstances. We’ve demonstrated that fact in our tests. An unsabotaged machine cannot cause actual physical harm.

“Yet you’ve already killed one man and incapacitated another. Where will it stop?”

Odal’s face remained calm, except for the faintest glitter of fire deep in his eyes. His voice was quiet, but it had the edge of a well-honed blade to it. “I cannot be blamed for my background and experience. And I have not tampered with your machine.”

The door to the room opened, and a short, thickset, bullet-headed man entered. He was dressed in a dark street suit, so that it was impossible to guess his station at the embassy.

“Would the gentlemen care for some refreshments?” he asked in a low-pitched voice.

“No thank you,” Leoh said.

“Some Kerak wine, perhaps?”

“Well...”

“I, uh, don’t think we’d better, sir,” Hector said. “Thanks all the same.”

The man shrugged and sat at a chair next to the door.

Odal turned back to Leoh. “Sir, I have my duty. Massan and I duel tomorrow. There is no possibility of postponing it.”

“Very well,” Leoh said. “Will you at least allow me to place some special instrumentation into the booth with you, so that we can monitor the duel more fully? We can do the same thing with Massan. I know that duels are normally private and you’d be within your legal rights to refuse the request, but morally...”

The smile returned to Odal’s face. “You wish to monitor my thoughts. To record them and see how I perform during the duel. Interesting. Very interesting...”

The man at the door rose and said, “If you have no desire for refreshments, gentlemen...”

Odal turned to him. “Thank you for your attention.”

Their eyes met for an instant. The man gave a barely perceptible shake of his head, then left.

Odal returned his attention to Leoh. “I’m sorry, Professor, but I can’t allow you to monitor my thoughts during the duel.”

“But...”

“I regret having to refuse you. But, as you yourself pointed out, there is no legal requirement for such a course of action. I must refuse. I hope you understand.”

Leoh rose slowly from the couch. “No, I do not understand. You sit here and discuss legal points when we both know full well that you’re planning to murder Massan tomorrow.” His voice burning with anger, Leoh went on, “You’ve turned my invention into a murder weapon. But you’ve turned me into an enemy. I’ll find out how you’re doing it, and I won’t rest until you and your kind are put away where you belong... on a planet for the criminally insane!”

Hector reached for the door and opened it. He and Leoh went out, leaving Odal alone in the room. In a few minutes, the dark-suited man returned.

“I have just spoken with the Leader on the tri-di and obtained permission to make a slight adjustment in our plans.”

“An adjustment, Minister Kor?”

“After your duel tomorrow, your next opponent will be Dr. Leoh,” said Kor. “He is the next man to die.”

The mists swirled deep and impenetrable around Fernd Massan. He stared blindly through the useless view plate in his helmet, then reached up slowly and carefully placed the infrared detector before his eyes.

I never realized a hallucination could seem so real,
Massan thought.

Since the challenge by Odal, the actual world had seemed quite unreal. For a week, he had gone through the motions of life, but felt as though he were standing aside, a spectator mind watching its own body from a distance. The gathering of his friends and associates last night, the night before the duel—that silent, funereal group of people—it had all seemed completely unreal to him.

But now, in this manufactured dream, he seemed vibrantly alive. Every sensation was solid, stimulating. He could feel his pulse throbbing through him. Somewhere out in those mists, he knew, was Odal. And the thought of coming to grips with the assassin filled him with a strange satisfaction.

Massan had spent many years serving his government on the rich but inhospitable high-gravity planets of the Acquataine Cluster. This was the environment he had chosen: crushing gravity; killing pressures; atmosphere of ammonia and hydrogen, laced with free radicals of sulphur and other valuable but deadly chemicals; oceans of liquid methane and ammonia; “solid ground” consisting of quickly crumbling, eroding ice; howling, superpowerful winds that could pick up a mountain of ice and hurl it halfway around the planet; darkness; danger; death.