Ben Bova: The Dueling Machine

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

“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 his group of advisers before the looming impersonality of the machine. Across the way, Odal remained with his two seconds.

“You needn’t go through with the next phase of the duel immediately,” one of the Prime Minister’s advisers 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 on 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 rules of the duel, of resuming.”

“But he has the option of retiring for the day, doesn’t he?”

“If Major Odal agrees.”

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

“But…”

The Prime Minister’s expression hardened. His advisers lapsed into a respectful silence. The chief meditech ushered Dulaq back into his booth. On the other side of the machine, Odal glanced at the Acquatainians, grinned humorlessly, and strode into 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 and withdrew. He was alone in the booth now, looking at the dead-white walls, completely bare except for the large view screen before his eyes. The screen began to glow slightly, then brightened into a series of shifting colors. The colors merged and changed, swirling 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 a disturbingly harsh yellow sky. He looked down at his feet and 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 weapons and environment.

Then a curious thing happened.

On the master control panel of the dueling machine, a single light flashed red. The chief meditech blinked at it in surprise, then pressed a series of buttons on his board. More red lights appeared. The chief meditech reached out 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… Yeah, look, they’re opening up the booths. Somebody’s scored a win.”

“But who?”

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!”

More than two thousand light-years from Acquatainia was the star cluster called Cannae. Although it was an even greater distance away from Earth, Carinae was still well within the confines of the mammoth Terran Commonwealth. Dr. Leoh, inventor of the dueling machine, was lecturing at the Carinae 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 then 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 was balding and jowly, the oldest man at the university. The oldest man anyone in the university knew, for that matter. But his face was creased from a smile that was almost habitual, and his eyes were active and alert. He wasn’t smiling, though, as they left the slideway and entered the administration building.

They rode the lift tube to the president’s office. Leoh asked the assistant professor as they stepped through the president’s open doorway, “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. “I don’t understand it. Nothing like this has ever happened in a dueling machine before.”

The president said, “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 won’t reflect on the university. That’s why I formed Psychonics as a separate business enterprise.” Then Leoh grinned and added, “The money, of course, was only a secondary consideration.”

The president managed a smile. “Of course.”

“I suppose the Acquatainians want to talk to me?” Leoh asked academically.

“They’re on tri-di now, waiting for you.”

“They’re holding a transmission frequency open over two thousand light-years?” Leoh looked impressed.

“You’re the inventor of the dueling machine and the head of Psychonics, Incorporated. 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 at your desk,” Leoh insisted. “There’s no need for you to leave. Or you either,” he added 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 in distant 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 simultaneously, they all looked toward one of their members—a tall, determined, shrewd—looking 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 there’s apparently been some difficulty with one of the dueling machines installed in your 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,” a minister added, “in the midst of our difficulties with the Kerak Worlds.”

Massan gestured them to silence.

“The dueling machine,” Leoh said calmly, “is nothing more than a psychonic device… it’s no more dangerous than a tri-di communicator. It merely allows two men to share a dream world that they create together. They can do anything they want to in their dream world-settle an argument as violently as they wish, and neither of them is physically hurt any more than a normal dream can hurt you physically. Men can use the dueling machine as an outlet for their aggressive feelings, for their tensions and hatreds, without hurting themselves or their society.