Time and Again (2 page)

III

T
WENTY YEARS
had not changed the Orion Arms.

To Sutton, stepping out of the teleport, it looked the same as the day he had walked away. A little shabbier and slightly more on the fuddy-duddy side…but it was home, the quiet whisper of hushed activity, the dowdy furnishings, the finger-to-the-lip, tiptoe atmosphere, the stressed respectability that he had remembered and dreamed about in the long years of alienness.

The life-mural along the wall was the same as ever. A little faded with long running, but the self-same one that Sutton had remembered. The same goatish Pan still chased, after twenty years, the same terror-stricken maiden across the self-same hills and dales. And the same rabbit hopped from behind a bush and watched the chase with all his customary boredom, chewing his everlasting cud of clover.

The self-adjusting furniture, bought at a time when the management had considered throwing the hostelry open to the alien trade, had been out-of-date twenty years ago. But it still was there. It had been repainted, in soft, genteel pastels, its self-adjustment features still confined to human forms.

The spongy floor covering had lost some of its sponginess and the Cetian cactus must have died at last, for a pot of frankly Terrestrial geraniums now occupied its place.

The clerk snapped off the visaphone and turned back to the room.

"Good morning, Mr. Sutton," he said, in his cultured android voice.

Then he added, almost as an afterthought, "We've been wondering when you would show up."

"Twenty years," said Sutton, dryly, "is long-time wondering."

"We've kept your old suite for you," said the clerk. "We knew that you would want it. Mary has kept it cleaned and ready for you ever since you left."

"That was nice of you, Ferdinand."

"You've hardly changed at all," said Ferdinand. "The beard is all. I knew you the second that I turned around and saw you."

"The beard and clothes," said Sutton. "The clothes are pretty bad."

"I don't suppose," said Ferdinand, "you have luggage, Mr. Sutton."

"No luggage."

"Breakfast, then, perhaps. We still are serving breakfast."

Sutton hesitated, suddenly aware that he was hungry. And he wondered for a moment how food would strike his stomach.

"I could find a screen," said Ferdinand.

Sutton shook his head. "No. I better get cleaned up and shaved. Send me up some breakfast and a change of clothes."

"Scrambled eggs, perhaps. You always liked scrambled eggs for breakfast."

"That sounds all right," said Sutton.

He turned slowly from the desk and walked to the elevator. He was about to close the door when a voice called:

"Just a moment, please."

The girl was running across the lobby…rangy and copper-haired. She slid into the elevator, pressed her back against the wall.

"Thanks very much," she said. "Thanks so much for waiting."

Her skin, Sutton saw, was. magnolia-white and her eyes were granite-colored with shadows deep within them.

He closed the door softly.

"I was glad to wait," he said.

Her lips twitched just a little and he said, "I don't like shoes. They cramp one's feet too much."

He pressed the button savagely and the elevator sprang upward. The lights ticked off the floors.

Sutton stopped the cage. "This is my floor," he said.

He had the door open and was halfway out, when she spoke to him.

"Mister."

"Yes, what is it?"

"I didn't mean to laugh. I really-truly didn't."

"You had a right to laugh," said Sutton, and closed the door behind him.

He stood for a moment, fighting down a sudden tenseness that seized him like a mighty fist.

Careful, he told himself. Take it easy, boy. You are home at last. This is the place you dreamed of. Just a few doors down and you are finally home. You will reach out and turn the knob and push in the door and it will all be there…just as you remembered it. The favorite chair, the life-paintings on the wall, the little fountain with the mermaids from Venus…and the windows where you can sit and fill your eyes with Earth.

But you can't get emotional. You can't go soft and sissy.

For that chap back at the spaceport had lied. And hotels don't keep rooms waiting for all of twenty years.

There is something wrong. I don't know what, but something. Something terribly wrong.

He took a slow step…and then another, fighting down the tension, swallowing the dryness of excitement welling in his throat.

One of the paintings, he remembered, was a forest brook, with birds flitting in the trees. And at the most unexpected times one of the birds would sing, usually with the dawn or the going of the sun. And the water babbled with a happy song that held one listening in his chair for hours.

He knew that he was running and he didn't try to stop.

His fingers curled around the doorknob and turned it. The room was there…the favorite chair, the babble of the brook, the splashing of the mermaids…

He caught the whiff of danger as he stepped across the threshold and he tried to turn and run, but he was too late. He felt his body crumpling forward to crash toward the floor.

"Johnny!" he cried and the cry bubbled in his throat. "Johnny!"

Inside his brain a voice whispered back. "It's all right, Ash. We're locked."

Then darkness came.

IV

T
HERE WAS
someone in the room and Sutton kept his eyelids down, kept his breathing slow.

Someone in the room, pacing quietly. Stopping now before the window to look out, moving over to the mantelpiece to stare at the painting of the forest brook. And in the stillness of the room, Sutton heard the laughing babble of the painted stream against the splashing of the fountain, heard the faint bird notes that came from the painted trees, imagined that even from the distance that he lay he could smell the forest mold and the cool, wet perfume of the moss that grew along the stream.

The person in the room crossed back again and sat down in a chair. He whistled a tune, almost inaudibly. A funny, little lilting tune that Sutton had not heard before.

Someone gave me a going over, Sutton told himself. Knocked me out fast, with gas or powder, then gave me an overhauling. I seem to remember some of it…hazy and far away. Lights that glowed and a probing at my brain. And I might have fought against it, but I knew it was no use. And, besides, they're welcome to anything they found. He hugged himself with a mental smugness. Yes, they're welcome to anything they pried out of my mind.

But they've found all they're going to find and they have gone away. They left someone to watch me and he still is in the room.

He stirred on the bed and opened his eyes, opened them slowly, kept them glazed and only partly focused.

The man rose from the chair and Sutton saw that he was dressed in white. He crossed the room and leaned above the bed.

"All right, now?" he asked.

Sutton raised a hand and passed it, bewildered, across his face.

"Yes," he said. "Yes, I guess I am."

"You passed out," the man told him.

"Something I ate," said Sutton.

The man shook his head. "The trip, more than likely. It must have been a tough one."

"Yes," said Sutton. "Tough."

Go ahead, he thought. Go ahead and ask some more. Those are your instructions. Catch me while I'm groggy, pump me like a well. Go ahead and ask the questions and earn your lousy money.

But he was wrong.

The man straightened up.

"I think you'll be all right," he said. "If you aren't, call me. My card is on the mantel."

"Thanks, doctor," said Sutton.

He watched him walk across the room, waited until he heard the door click, then sat up in bed. His clothing lay in a pile in the center of the floor. His case? Yes, there it was, lying on a chair. Ransacked, no doubt, probably photostated.

Spy rays, too, more than likely. All over the room. Ears listening and eyes watching.

But who? he asked himself.

No one knew he was returning. No one could have known. Not even Adams. There was no way to know. There had been no way that he could let them know.

Funny.

Funny the way Davis at the spaceport had recognized his name and told a lie to cover up.

Funny the way Ferdinand pretended his suite had been kept for him for all these twenty years.

Funny, too, how Ferdinand had turned around and spoken, as if twenty years were nothing.

Organized, said Sutton. Clicking like a relay system. Set and waiting for me.

But why should anyone be waiting? No one knew when he'd be coming back. Or if he would come at all.

And even if someone did know, why go to all the trouble?

For they could not know, he thought…they could not know the thing I have, they could not even guess. Even if they did know I was coming back, incredible as it might be that they should know, even that would be more credible by a million times than that they should know the real reason for my coming.

And knowing, he said, they would not believe.

His eyes found the attaché case lying on the chair, and stared at it.

And knowing, he said again, they would not believe.

When they look the ship over, of course, they will do some wondering. Then there might be some excuse for the thing that happened. But they didn't have time to look at the ship. They didn't wait a minute. They were laying for me and they gave me the works from the second that I landed.

Davis shoved me into a teleport and grabbed his phone like mad. And Ferdinand knew that I was on the way, he knew he'd see me when he turned around. And the girl—the girl with the granite eyes?

Sutton got up and stretched. A bath and shave, first of all, he told himself. And then some clothes and breakfast. A visor call or two.

Don't act as if you've got the wind up, he warned himself. Act naturally. Pick your nose. Talk to yourself. Pinch out a blackhead. Scratch your back against a door casing. Act as if you think you are alone.

But be careful.

There is someone watching.

V

S
UTTON
was finishing breakfast when the android came.

"My name is Herkimer," the android told him, "and I belong to Mr. Geoffrey Benton."

"Mr. Benton sent you here?"

"Yes. He sends a challenge."

"A challenge?"

"Yes. You know, a duel."

"But I am unarmed."

"You cannot be unarmed," said Herkimer.

"I never fought a duel in all my life," said Sutton. "I don't intend to now."

"You are vulnerable."

"What do you mean, vulnerable? If I go unarmed…"

"But you cannot go unarmed. The code was changed just a year or two ago. No man younger than a hundred years can go unarmed."

"But if one does?"

"Why, then," said Herkimer, "anyone who wants to can pot you like a rabbit."

"You are sure of this?"

Herkimer dug into his pocket, brought out a tiny book. He wet his finger and fumbled at the pages.

"It's right here," he said.

"Never mind," said Sutton. "I will take your word."

"You accept the challenge, then?"

Sutton grimaced. "I suppose I have to. Mr. Benton will wait, I presume, until I buy a gun."

"No need of that," Herkimer told him, brightly. "I brought one along. Mr. Benton always does that. Just a courtesy, you know. In case someone hasn't got one."

He reached into his pocket and held out the weapon. Sutton took it and laid it on the table.

"Awkward-looking thing," he said.

Herkimer stiffened. "It's traditional," he declared. "The finest weapon made. Shoots a .45-caliber slug. Hand-loaded ammunition. Sights are tested in for fifty feet."

"You pull this?" asked Sutton, pointing.

Herkimer nodded. "It is called a trigger. And you don't pull it. You squeeze it."

"Just why does Mr. Benton challenge me?" asked Sutton. "I don't even know the man. Never even heard of him."

"You are famous," said Herkimer.

"Not that I have heard of."

"You are an investigator," Herkimer pointed out. "You have just come back from a long and perilous mission. You're carrying a mysterious-appearing attaché case.
And
there are reporters waiting in the lobby."

Sutton nodded. "I see. When Benton kills someone he likes them to be famous."

"It is better if they are," said Herkimer. "More publicity"

"But I don't know Mr. Benton. How will I know who I'm supposed to shoot at?"

"I'll show you," said Herkimer, "on the televisor."

He stepped to the desk, dialed a number and stepped back.

"That's him," he said.

In the screen a man was sitting before a chess table. The pieces were in mid-game. Across the board stood a beautifully machined robotic.

The man reached out a hand, thoughtfully played his knight. The robotic clicked and chuckled. It moved a pawn. Benton's shoulders hunched forward and he bent above the board. One hand came around and scratched the back of his neck.

"Oscar's got him worried," said Herkimer. "He always has him worried. Mr. Benton hasn't won a single game in the last ten years."

"Why does he keep on playing, then?"

"Stubborn," said Herkimer. "But Oscar's stubborn, too."

He made a motion with his hand.

"Machines can be so much more stubborn than humans. It's the way they're built."

"But Benton must have known, when he had Oscar fabricated, that Oscar would beat him," Sutton pointed out. "A human simply can't beat a robotic expert."

"Mr. Benton knew that," said Herkimer, "but he didn't believe it. He wanted to prove otherwise."

"Egomaniac," said Sutton.

Herkimer stared at him calmly. "I believe that you are right, sir. I've sometimes thought the same myself."

Sutton brought his gaze back to Benton, who was still hunched above the board, the knuckles of one hand thrust hard against his mouth.

The veined face was scrubbed and pink and chubby, and the brooding eyes, thoughtful as they were, still held a fat twinkle of culture and good-fellowship.

"You'll know him now?" asked Herkimer.

Sutton nodded. "Yes, I think I can pick him out. He doesn't look too dangerous."

"He's killed sixteen men," Herkimer said, stiffly. "He plans to lay away his guns when he makes it twenty-five."

He looked straight at Sutton and said, "You're the seventeenth."

Sutton said, meekly, "I'll try to make it easy for him."

"How would you wish it, sir?" asked Herkimer. "Formal, or informal?"

"Let's make it catch-as-catch-can."

Herkimer was disapproving. "There are certain conventions…"

"You can tell Mr. Benton," said Sutton, "that I don't plan to ambush him."

Herkimer picked up his cap, put it on his head.

"The best of luck, sir," he said.

"Why, thank you, Herkimer," said Sutton.

The door closed and Sutton was alone. He turned back to the screen. Benton played to double up his rooks. Oscar chuckled at him, slid a bishop three squares along the board and put Benton's king in check.

Sutton snapped the visor off.

He scraped a hand across his now-shaved chin.

Coincidence or plan? It was hard to know.

One of the mermaids had climbed to the edge of the fountain and balanced her three-inch self precariously. She whistled at Sutton. He turned swiftly at the sound and she dived into the pool, swam in circles, mocking him with obscene signs.

Sutton leaned forward, reached into the visor rack, brought out the INF-JAT directory, flipped the pages swiftly.

INFORMATION-Terrestrial.

And the headings:

Culinary

Culture

Customs

That would be it. Customs.

He found DUELING, noted the number and put back the book. He reset the dial and snapped the tumbler for direct communication.

A robot's streamlined, modernistic face filled the plate.

"At your service, sir," it said.

"I have been challenged to a duel," said Sutton.

The robot waited for the question.

"I don't want to fight a duel," said Sutton. "Is there any way, legally, for me to back out? I'd like to do it gracefully, too, but I won't insist on that."

"There is no way," the robot said.

"No way at all?"

"You are under one hundred?" the robot asked.

"Yes."

"You are sound of mind and body?"

"I think so."

"You are or you aren't. Make up your mind."

"I am," said Sutton.

"You do not belong to any bona fide religion that prohibits killing?"

"I presume I could classify myself as a Christian," said Sutton. "I believe there is a Commandment about killing."

The robot shook his head. "It doesn't count."

"It is clear and specific," Sutton argued. "It says, 'Thou shalt not kill.' "

"It is all of that," the robot told him. "But it has been discredited. You humans discredited it yourselves. You never obeyed it. You either obey or you forfeit it. You can't forget it with one breath and invoke it with the next."

"I guess I'm sunk then," said Sutton.

"According to the revision of the year 7990," said the robot, "arrived at by convention, any male human under the age of one hundred, sound in mind and body, and unhampered by religious bonds or belief, which are subject to a court of inquiry, must fight a duel whenever challenged."

"I see," said Sutton.

"The history of dueling," said the robot, "is very interesting."

"It is barbaric," said Sutton.

"Perhaps so. But the humans are still barbaric in many other ways as well."

"You're impertinent," Sutton told him.

"I'm sick and tired of it," the robot said. "Sick and tired of the smugness of you humans. You say you've outlawed war and you haven't, really. You've just fixed it so no one dares to fight you. You say you have abolished crime and you have, except for human crime. And a lot of crime you have abolished isn't crime at all, except by human standards."

"You're taking a long chance, friend," said Sutton, softly, "talking the way you are."

"You can pull the plug on me," the robot told him, "any time you want to. Life isn't worth it, the kind of job I have."

He saw the look on Sutton's face and hurried on.

"Try to see it this way, sir. Through all his history, Man has been a killer. He was smart and brutal, even from the first. He was a puny thing, but he found how to use a club and rocks, and when the rocks weren't sharp enough he chipped them so they were. There were things, at first, he should not by rights have killed. They should have killed him. But he was smart and he had the club and flints and he killed the mammoth and the saber tooth and other things he could not have faced barehanded. So he won the Earth from the animals. He wiped them out, except the ones he allowed to live for the service that they gave him. And even as he fought with the animals, he fought with others of his kind. After the animals were gone, he kept on fighting…man against man, nation against nation."

"But that is past," said Sutton. "There hasn't been a war for more than a thousand years. Humans have no need of fighting now."

"That is just the point," the robot told him. "There is no more need of fighting, no more need of killing. Oh, once in a while, perhaps, on some far-off planet where a human must kill to protect his life or to uphold human dignity and power. But, by and large, there is no need of killing.

"And yet you kill. You must kill. The old brutality is in you. You are drunk with power and killing is a sign of power. It has become a habit with you…a thing you've carried from the caves. There's nothing left to kill but one another, so you kill one another and you call it dueling. You know it's wrong and you're hypocritical about it. You've set up a fine system of semantics to make it sound respectable and brave and noble. You call it traditional and chivalric…and even if you don't call it that in so many words, that is what you think. You cloak it with the trappings of your vicious past, you dress it up with words and the words are only tinsel."

"Look," said Sutton, "I don't want to fight this duel. I don't think it's…"

There was vindictive glee in the robot's voice.

"But you've got to fight it. There's no way to back out. Maybe you would like some pointers. I have all sorts of tricks…"

"I thought you didn't approve of dueling."

"I don't," the robot said. "But it's my job. I'm stuck with it. I try to do it well. I can tell you the personal history of every man who ever fought a duel. I can talk for hours on the advantage of rapiers over pistols. Or if you'd rather I argued for pistols, I can do that, too. I can tell you about the old American West gun slicks and the Chicago gangsters and the handkerchief and dagger deals and…"

"No, thanks," said Sutton.

"You aren't interested?"

"I haven't got the time."

"But, sir," the robot pleaded, "I don't get a chance too often. I don't get many calls. Just an hour or so…"

"No," said Sutton, firmly.

"All right, then. Maybe you'd tell me who has challenged you."

"Benton. Geoffrey Benton."

The robot whistled.

"Is he that good?" asked Sutton.

"All of it," the robot said.

Sutton shut the visor off.

He sat quietly in his chair, staring at the gun. Slowly he reached out a hand and picked it up. The butt fitted snugly in his hand. His finger curled around the trigger. He lifted it and sighted at the doorknob.

It was easy to handle. Almost as if it were a part of him. There was a feel of power within it…of power and mastery. As if he suddenly were stronger and greater…and more dangerous.

He sighed and laid it down.

The robot had been right.

He reached out to the visor, pushed the signal for the lobby desk.

Ferdinand's face came in.

"Anyone waiting down there for me, Ferdinand?"

"Not a soul," said Ferdinand.

"Anyone asked for me?"

"No one, Mr. Sutton."

"No reporters? Or photographers?"

"No, Mr. Sutton. Were you expecting them?"

Sutton didn't answer.

He cut off, feeling very silly.