Ben Bova - The Dueling Machine

“I’ll let you get the feel of the car while we’re on the straightaway,” Odal’s voice came through the radio. “We won’t begin to play in earnest until we get into the mountains.”

The road was rising now, Leoh realized. A gentle grade, but at their speed they were soon well above the desert floor. The mountains were no longer distant blue wrinkles; they loomed close, high, and bareboned, with scraggy bushes and sparse patches of grass on them.

Leoh nearly missed the first curve, it came on him so quickly. He cut to the inside, slammed on the brakes, and skidded around.

“Not very good,” Odal laughed.

The red car was just off his left rear fender now, crowding him against the shoulder of the mountain rise that jutted up from the right side of the road. Leoh could hear pebbles clattering against the floorboards, over the whine of their two turbines. On the other side of the road, the cliff dropped away to the desert floor. And they were still climbing.

Leoh hugged the right side of the road, with Odal practically beside him. Suddenly the mountains fell away and a bridge, threaded dizzily between two cliffs, stood before them. It seemed to Leoh that the bridge was leaping toward him. He tried to get back toward the center of the road, but Odal rammed his side. The wheel ripped out of his hands, spinning wildly. The car skidded toward the road’s shoulder. Leoh grabbed at the wheel, steered out of the skid, and found himself on the bridge, the supporting suspension cables whizzing past. He was sweating hard and hunched, white-knuckled, over the wheel.

Odal was in front of him now. He must’ve passed me when I skidded, Leoh told himself. The red car was running smoothly, easily; Odal waved one hand back to his opponent.

On the other side of the bridge the road became a torturous series of curves, climbs, and drops. The grades were steep, the turns murderous, and at times the road narrowed so much that two cars could barely squeeze by. Sometimes they were flanked on both sides by looming masses of rock, rising up out of sight. Mostly, though, one side of the road was a sheer drop of a thousand meters or more.

Odal braked, swerved, pulled up alongside Leoh and slammed the two cars together with bone-rattling force. He was trying to force Leoh off the edge of the cliff. Leoh clung to the wheel, fighting for control. His one defense was that he could set the speed for the battle; but to his horror he found that not even this was under his real control. The car refused to slow much past seventy-five.

“You wish to stop and enjoy the scenery?” Odal called to him, banging the two cars together again, pushing Leoh dangerously close to the cliffs edge.

Desperately, Leoh leaned on the throttle with all his weight. The car spurted ahead, leaving Odal momentarily in a cloud of wheel-churned dirt.

“Ah-hah, now the turtle becomes a rabbit!” The red car streaked after him.

There was a tunnel ahead. Leoh raced for it, praying that it was long enough and narrow enough for him to stay ahead of Odal. The time must be running out. It’s got to be! It was hard for Leoh to keep his sweaty hands firm on the wheel. His back and head were hurting, his heart racing dangerously.

The tunnel was long and straight—and narrow! Hopefully, Leoh planted his car in the middle of the roadway and throttled down as much as he could. Still, the tunnel walls were a blur as he roared by, the turbine echoing shrilly against the encasing rock.

The red car was pulling close and now it was trying to pass him. Leoh swerved slightly to the left, to block it. The red car moved right. Leoh edged that way. Odal cut left again.

Got to keep ahead of him. Time must be almost over. Odal was insisting on his left. Leoh pushed farther to the left, staying ahead of him. But Odal kept coming, up off the roadway and onto the curving tunnel wall with his left wheels. Leoh stayed on the left of the road and Odal swung even farther up the wall just behind Leoh’s fender.

Glancing at the rearview screen, Leoh could see Odal’s face clenched grimly, determined to pass him. The red car seemed to climb halfway up the curving tunnel wall and…

And then fell over, out of control, smashing over upside down onto the roadway, exploding in a shower of sparks and fuel with a concussion that slammed Leoh so hard he nearly lost control of his car.

He found himself sitting in the dueling machine booth, the screen before him a calm flat gray, his body soaking wet, his hands pressed into aching fists in front of him, as though he were still gripping the car’s steering wheel.

The door jerked open and Hector ducked into the booth, his face anxious.

“You’re all right?”

Leoh’s arms dropped and his whole body relaxed.

“I beat him,” he said. “I beat Odal!”

They stepped outside the booth, Leoh smiling broadly now. Across the way, Odal’s thin face was deathly grim. The crowd was absolutely still, not daring to believe what it saw.

The chief meditech cleared his throat and announced loudly, “Professor Leoh is the victor!”

The crowd’s sudden roar burst through the room. They rose from their seats, swarmed down upon the machine and lifted Leoh and Hector to their shoulders. Jumping up and down on the main control desk, yelling louder than anyone, Was the white-coated chief meditech. Outside, the much larger throng was cheering even harder.

Within a few minutes no one was left in the chamber except a few of the uniformed policemen, Odal, and his seconds.

“Are you able to go outside now?” asked one of the soldiers, also a major.

The taut expression on Odal’s face relaxed a little. “Of course.”

The three men walked from the building to a waiting ground car. The other soldier, a colonel, said to, Odal, “You have taken your death rather well.”

“Thank you.” Odal managed a thin smile. “But after all, it’s not as though I was killed by the enemy. I engaged in a suicide mission, and my mission has been accomplished.”

“I…well… you saw what happened,” Hector said to Geri. “How could anybody do anything in that mob?”

They were sitting together in a restaurant near the tri-di studio where Leoh was being lionized by a panel of Acquatainia’s leading citizens.

She poked at her food with a fork and said, “You might never get the chance to kill him again. He’s probably on his way back to Kerak right now.”

“Well, maybe that’s… I mean… murder just isn’t right.…”

“It wouldn’t be murder,” Geri said coldly, staring at her plate. “It would be an execution. Odal deserves to die! And if you won’t do it, I’ll find someone who can!”

“Geri… I…”

“If you really loved me, you’d have done it already.” She looked as though she was going to cry.

“But it’s…”

“You promised me!”

Hector sagged, defeated. “All right, don’t cry. I’ll… I’ll think of something.”

Odal sat now in the office of the Kerak ambassador. The ambassador had left discreetly when Kor’s call came through.

The Kerak major sat at a huge desk, leaning back comfortably in the soft padding of the luxurious leather swivel chair. The wall-sized view screen across the room seemed to dissolve into another room: Kor’s dimly lit office. The Intelligence Minister eyed Odal for a long moment before speaking.

“You seem relieved.”

“I have performed an unpleasant duty, and done it successfully,” Odal said.

“Yes, I know. Leoh is now serving us to his full capacity. The Acquatainians will look up to him now as their savior. The fear they felt of Major Par Odal is now dissolved, and with it, their fear of Kerak is also purged.