Ben Bova - The Dueling Machine

Odal was advancing on him. Something in the back of Hector’s mind was telling him to run away and hide, but then he heard the barking voice of his old instructor insisting, “The best defense is a fast, aggressive attack.” Hector took a deep breath, planted his feet solidly, and launched himself at Odal.

Only to find himself twisted around, lifted off his feet, and thrown back against the desk, banging painfully against the switches.

“LOOKING FOR THE IDEAL VACATION PARADISE?” a voice boomed at them. From behind Odal’s shoulder a girl in a see-through spacesuit did a free-fall somersault. Hector blinked at her, and Odal looked over his shoulder, momentarily amazed. The voice blared on, “JOIN THE FUN CROWD AT ORBIT HOUSE, ACQUATAINIA’S NEWEST ZERO-GRAVITY RESORT.…”

Through his mind flashed another maxim from his old instructor: “Whenever possible, divert your opponent’s attention. Create confusion. Feint, maneuver!”

Hector rolled off the desktop and ran along the master control unit, pounding every switch in sight.

“TIRED OF BEING CALLED SHORTY?” A disgruntled young man, standing on tiptoes next to a gorgeous, statuesque redhead, appeared beside Odal. The Kerak major involuntarily stepped back.

“THE IRRESISTIBLE PERFUME,” a seductive blonde materialized before his eyes, speaking smokily.

“MODERN SCIENCE CAN CURE ANY DISEASE, BUT WHEN EMBARRASSING…” said a medic, radiating sincerity and concern.

Odal was surrounded by solid-looking, life-sized, tri-di advertising pitches.

“WHEN YOU’VE EATEN MORE THAN YOU SHOULD…”

“THE NORMAL TENSIONS OF MODERN LIFE…

“FOR THE ULTIMATE IN FEMININE…”

Eyes goggling, Odal saw himself being pressed backward by a teenage dancer, an “average family” mother, a worried young husband, a nervous businessman, a smiling teen couple, a crowd of surfers, a chorus of animated vegetables. Suddenly bellowing with rage, Odal dived through the pleading, cajoling, urgent figures and threw himself at the long control desk.

“You can’t hide from me!” he roared, and he started punching at the control switches, banging the desk panels with both fists.

“Who’s hiding?” Hector yelled from behind him.

Odal turned and swung heavily at the voice. Startled, he saw his fist whisk through the impalpable jaw of a lovely girl in a skimpy bathing suit. She smiled at him and continued selling. “… AND WHEN YOU’RE IN THE MOOD FOR SOMETHING REALLY REFRESHING…”

Hector had ducked away. Odal turned and chased after the Watchman, trying to follow him as he flickered in and out among the dozens of tri-di images that were dancing, urging, laughing, drinking, eating, taking pills, worrying…

“You coward!” Odal screamed over the babble of sales talk.

“Why should I fight you?” Hector hollered back from somewhere across the room.

Odal squinted, trying to see through the gyrating tri-di figures. “You tricked me in the dueling machine but now there’ll be no tricks. I’ll find you, and when I do, I’ll kill you!”

The flash of a black-and-silver uniform among the fashion models, overweight women, underweight men, scientific demonstrations and new, new, new products. Odal headed in that direction.

“And what about Leoh?” Hector’s voice cut through the taped noise. “He killed you without any tricks. But you’re afraid to go after him now, aren’t you?”

Odal laughed. “Do you really believe that old man beat me? I could have destroyed him at any time I wished.”

He ducked under the arm of a well-preserved matron who was saying, “WHY LET ADVANCING AGE WORRY YOU, WHEN A REJUVE.…” There was Hector, edging slowly toward the door.

“You deliberately lost to Leoh?” Hector’s face, in the reflections of the tri-di images, looked more puzzled than frightened. “To make it seem…”

“To make it seem that Leoh is a great hero, and that Kerak is populated by weaklings and cowards. All his duels were designed for that purpose. And while he lulls the Acquatainians with his tales of victory, we prepare to strike.”

On the final word Odal leaped at Hector, hit him with satisfying solidity, shoulder in mid-section, and they both went down.

A tangle of arms and legs, knees and elbows, gasps, two strong young bodies grappling. Somehow they rolled into one of the desk chairs, which toppled down on them. Odal felt Hector slipping out of his grasp. As the Kerak major started to get back to his feet, the chair slid into him again and he slipped against it and hit the floor face first.

Swearing, he started to get up. But Hector was already on his feet. And then the door swung open, stabbing light from the hallway into the room. A girl stood there, with a gun in her trembling hand.

“Hector! Here!” Geri said, and she tossed the gun to the Watchman.

Hector grabbed it and pointed it at Odal. The Kerak major froze, on one knee, hands on the floor, head upturned, face a mask of rage turned to sudden fear. Hector stood equally immobile, arm outstretched with the gun aimed at Odal’s head.

“Kill him!” Geri whispered harshly. “Quickly, they’re coming!”

Hector let his arm relax. The gun dropped slightly away from Odal. “Get up,” he said. “And… don’t give me any excuses for using this thing.”

Odal got slowly to his feet.

“Kill him! You promised!” Geri insisted, half in tears.

“I can’t… not like this…”

“You mean you won’t!”

Nodding without taking his eyes off Odal, Hector said, “That’s right, I won’t. Not even for you.”

Odal’s voice was like a knife. “You’d better kill me, Watchman, while you have the chance. I’ll spend the rest of my life hunting you.”

A trio of uniformed guards puffed up to the doorway; behind them were a half-dozen people from the tri-di show, and Leoh.

“What’s going on? Who’s this? Are you…”

“This is Major Odal,” Hector said, pointing with the gun. “He’s… uh, under the protection of diplomatic immunity. Please escort him back to the Kerak embassy.”

His face expressionless, Odal nodded to the Star Watchman and went with the guards.

“You mean it all went out on the tri-di network? Every word?” asked Hector.

He, Leoh, and Geri were sitting in the back of an automated Dulaq ground car as it threaded its way through the darkened city, heading for Geri’s home. The midnight rain was falling for its programed half-hour, so the car’s bubble top was up.

Geri had not said a word since Odal was taken from the tri-di studio.

But Leoh was chuckling. “When you hit all those switches and turned on the commercial tapes, you also turned on the sound system for every studio. We heard the bedlam, with you and Odal shouting at each other over it all. It came over the speakers right in the middle of our show. You should have seen the look on everyone’s face!

And I understand that you ruined at least six other shows that were being taped at the time.”

“Really?” Hector squirmed. “I… that is, I didn’t mean… well, I’m sorry about that.…”

Waving a hand at him, Leoh said, “Relax, my boy. Your fight with Odal—the audio portion of it—was beamed into nearly every home on the planet. Everyone in Acquatainia knows what a fool I’ve been, and that Kerak is still as much of a threat as ever.”

“You’re not a fool,” Hector said.

“Yes, I’ve been one,” insisted Leoh. “Worse, I’ve been a dupe, letting my own glory get in the way of my judgment. But that’s over now. My place is in science, not politics, and certainly not show business! I’m going to concentrate on your ‘jump’ in the dueling machine. If that was a sample of teleportation, then the machine can amplify that talent, just as it amplified Odal’s telepathic abilities. Now, if we put enough power into the machine…”