Ben Bova - The Dueling Machine

The car glided to a stop under the roofed driveway in front of the entrance to Geri’s house. Leoh stayed in the car while Hector walked her to her door. In the shadows, he couldn’t see her face too well. They stopped at the door.

“Um… Geri, I… well, I just couldn’t kill him. Not… not like that. I wanted to please you… but, well, if you want an assassin… I guess it’s just not me that you’re interested in.”

She said nothing. A gentle warm breeze brought the odor of wet leaves to them.

Hector fidgeted.

Finally he said, “Well, good night…”

“Good-by, Hector,” Geri said flatly.

Leoh was studiously looking the other way, watching the final few drops of ram splatter on the statuary alongside the driveway, when Hector returned to the car. The old scientist looked at the Watchman as he ducked into the car and slumped in the seat.

“Why so glum, my boy? What’s the matter?”

Shrugging, Hector said. “It’s a long story…”

“Oh, I see. Well then. To get back to the teleportation idea. If we can boost the power of the machine…”

It was ironic, thought Odal, that they were using the dueling machine to torture him. For it was torture, no matter what they called it or how they smiled when they were doing it.

He sat there in the cramped cubicle, staring at its featureless walls, the blank view screen, waiting for them to begin.

The price of failure was heavy, too heavy. Kanus had made Odal the glory of Kerak while he was a success, while he was killing the enemies of Kerak.

Now they were killing him.

Not that they caused him any physical harm. He was not even under arrest, technically. Merely assigned to experimentation at Kor’s headquarters, the Ministry of Intelligence: a huge, stone, hilltop castle, ancient and brooding from the outside; inside, a maze of pain and terror and Kor’s swelling lust for victims.

In the dueling machine, the illusion of pain was no less agonizing than the real thing. Odal smiled sardonically. The men he had killed died first in their imaginations. But soon enough their hearts stopped beating.

Now then, are you ready? It was a voice in his mind, put there by the machine’s circuitry through the neurocontacts circling his head.

We are going to probe a bit deeper today, in an effort to find the source of your extrasensory talents. I advise you to relax and cooperate.

There had been three of them working on him yesterday, from the other side of the machine. Today, Odal could tell, there were more. Six? Eight? A dozen, possibly.

He felt them: foreign thoughts, alien personalities, in his own mind. His hands twitched uncontrollably and his body began to ache and heave.

They were seizing his control centers, battering at sensory complexes. Muscles cramped spasmodically, nerves screamed in anguish, body temperature soared, ears shrilled, eyes flashed flaming reds and unbearable star bursts. Now they were going deeper, beyond the physical effects, digging, clawing away through a lifetime of self-protective neural patterns, reaching down with a searing, white-hot, twelfth-power probe into the personality itself.

Odal heard a terrified voice howling, They’re after ME. They’re trying to get ME. Hide! Hide!

The voice was his own.

Despite its spaciousness, Leoh thought, the Prime Minister’s office was a stuffy antique of a room, decorated in blue and gold, with the weight of outmoded traditions and useless memories hanging more heavily than the gilt draperies that bordered each door and window.

The meeting had been small and unspectacular. Martine had invited Leoh for an informal chat; Hector was pointedly not invited. A dozen or so aides, politicians, and administrators clustered around the Prime Minister’s desk as he officially thanked Leoh for uncovering Kerak’s attempt to use the dueling machine as a smoke screen for their war preparations.

“It was Star Watch Lieutenant Hector who actually uncovered the plot, not me,” Leoh insisted.

Martine waved away the words impatiently. “The Watchman is merely your aide; you are the man that Kanus fears.”

After about ten minutes of talking, Martine nodded to one of his aides, who went to a door and admitted a covey of news photographers. The Prime Minister stood up and walked around his desk to stand beside Leoh, towering proudly over the old man, while the newsmen took their pictures. Then the meeting broke up. The newsmen left and everyone else began to drift out of the office.

“Professor Leoh.”

He was nearly at the doorway when Martine called. Leoh turned back and saw the Prime Minister sitting at his tall desk chair. But instead of his usual icy aloofness, there was a warm, almost friendly smile on Martine’s face.

“Please close the door and sit down with me for a few minutes more,” Martine said.

Puzzled, Leoh did as the Prime Minister asked. As he took an armchair off to one side of the desk, he watched Martine carefully run a hand over the communications panel set into his desk top. Then the Prime Minister opened a drawer in the desk and Leoh heard the tiny click of a switch being turned.

“There. Now I’m sure that we’re alone. That switch isolates the room completely. Not even my private secretary can listen to us now.”

Leoh felt his eyebrows rising toward his scalp.

“You have every right to look surprised, Professor. And I should look apologetic and humble. That’s why I had to make certain that this meeting is strictly private.”

“This meeting?” Leoh echoed. “Then the meeting we just had, with the others and the newsmen…”

Martine smiled broadly. “Kanus is not the only one who can put up a smoke screen.”

“I see. Well, what did you want to tell me?”

“First, please convey my apologies to Lieutenant Hector. He was not invited here for reasons that will be obvious in a moment. I realize that he wormed the truth out of Odal, although I’m not convinced that he knew what he was doing when he did it.”

Leoh suppressed a chuckle. “Hector has his own way of doing things.”

Nodding, Martine went on more soberly. “Now then, the real reason for my wanting to speak to you privately: I have been something of a stubborn fool. I realize that now. Kanus has not only outwitted me, but has actually penetrated deeply into my government. When I realized that Lal Ponte is a Kerak agent.…” The Prime Minister’s face was grim.

“What are you going to do with him?”

A shrug. “There’s nothing I can do. He has been implicated indirectly by Odal. There’s no evidence,” despite a thorough investigation. But I’m sure that if Kanus conquered the Acquataine Cluster, Ponte would expect to be named Prime Minister of the puppet government.”

Leoh said nothing.

“Ponte is not that much of a problem. He can be isolated. Anything that I want from his office I can get from men I know I can trust. Ponte can sit alone at his desk until the ceiling caves in on him.”

“But he’s not your only problem.”

“No. It’s the military problem that threatens us most directly. You and Spencer have been right all along. Kerak is building swiftly for an attack, and our defensive building is too far behind them to be of much use.”

“Then the alliance with the Commonwealth.…”

Shaking his head unhappily, Martine explained, “No, that’s still impossible. The political situation here is too unstable. I was voted into office by the barest margin… thanks to Ponte. To think that I was elected because Kanus wanted me to be! We’ve both been pawns, Professor.”

“I know.”