Mack Reynolds - Code Duello

“Over there.” The other pointed. He looked back at the armored scout again, gloomily. “What’m I ever gonna tell the sergente?” he muttered.

Horsten hustled Helen across the street in the direction the police officer had indicated.

She looked at him bitterly. “Zorro’s whip is too conspicuous,” she said. “What’d you think is going to happen when that cop tells his sergeant what you just did? And why you did it. And where it was you wanted to go.”

The algae specialist was all good nature again. He looked down at her. “If that man is stupid enough to tell his sergeant what happened, he’ll undoubtedly wind up behind bars for drinking whilst on duty, my dear girl.”

“I surrender,” she muttered. “I give up.”

They came to a halt and stared at the enormous building that confronted them.

“Ministry of Anti-Subversion,” Horsten read with satisfaction.

“Closed,” Helen said. “Look at the size of those bronze doors. The place looks like a cathedral.”

“Um. However, someone should be here. Probably a night shift, or, at least, some guards.”

“So we just knock?” Helen said hopefully, as he started off again, dragging her along.

“Well, I doubt if that would be effective. If they expected evening callers, undoubtedly there would be some entry provided, but all seems quite closed up.”

“I can see it coming,” Helen muttered glumly.

They stood before the gigantic bronze doors which dwarfed ten-fold even the oversized Dorn Horsten.

“There isn’t even an identity screen, a method of summoning the nightman,” Horsten said accusingly.

“All right, all right, you don’t have to find excuses for me,” Helen said. “I’ve been through the equivalent of this before.” She looked back over her shoulder. There was a broad expanse of paved area before the building, and not a soul in sight. The vicinity of the Ministry of Anti-Subversion was evidently not sought out by the citizenry of Firenze, come the cool of evening.

Horsten took the large bronze doorknob in hand. It was an enormous, elaborate thing. He shook it. “Locked,” he announced.

“Come on, come on,” Helen said wearily.

He pulled, seemingly gently. He looked down at the knob, now in his hand. “It came out,” he told her.

Helen grunted.

He put his huge paw against the door and shoved. Something inside the door groaned. He pushed a bit harder. Something rasped metallic complaint. Although his air seemed still one of gentle curiosity, his shoulders were now bunched.

“I’ll be confounded,” he said. “Open all the time.”

“You damned mastodon,” she said. “Come on. Inside, before somebody spots us.”

They pushed their way in, the scientist closing the door behind. They looked about.

“Looks like Grand Central Station,” Horsten muttered.

“What’s that?” Helen said.

“Confound if I know. An idiomatic saving that comes down from antiquity; a connotation of being large in interior.”

“Well, what do we do now?”

“I suppose we stroll about until we find someone.”

“Oh, great. Or until somebody shoots us.”

He looked down at her. “Now, who would shoot a nice little girl like you?”

She snorted at him. “Somebody who figures that nice little girls don’t break into hush-hush government ministries.”

Two massive stairways flanked a bank of a full dozen elevator shafts.

“Elevators,” the big man said. “How anachronistic can you get? Have you noticed, my dear, they seem to go beyond the call of reason to maintain an air of yesteryear on this planet?”

Helen said, “Let’s take the stairs. Then at least some stute won’t be able to trap us between floors.”

She caught onto his belt, gracefully bounded up to his shoulder, to save herself the climb. On the second floor, they looked up and down the extensive corridor that seemingly stretched away into infinity.

“All right,” Helen said. “Do we keep climbing, or what? How do we find the department devoted to the Engelists? This place obviously doesn’t run a night shift. And, for that matter, doesn’t seem to boast much in the way of night…”

A voice behind them snapped, “Stand where you are!”

Dorn Horsten turned—and turned on his good-natured beam. “Ah, here we are, he said jovially. “I knew we’d find somebody!”

The other was a heavy-set, elaborately uniformed, suspicious looking officer who held a heavy scrambler in his right hand. He was about thirty feet from them and stood with his legs well parted and in a slight crouch: the stance of a fighting man.

He was not to be cozened. His heavy, somewhat brutal face bore several scars, mementoes of duel or street fights, or perhaps of military combat.

“Who are you?” he snapped.

Horsten jiggled little Helen on his shoulders to reassure her, and beamed at the other. “The question is, who are you, my dear fellow?”

Obviously the Florentine was confused by this confrontation, but was not to be put off his competent guard. “I’m Colonnello Fantonetti,” he said, the weapon not wavering a particle. “Now, very quickly, who are you and what are you doing on the second floor of this ministry after closing hours?”

“I want down, Daddy!” Helen shrilled. “I’m afraid of that man.”

Horsten said something and, ignoring the colonnello momentarily, slipped her to the floor, tucking Gertrude and the Dolly’s Nurse Kit under his arm. Then he turned back to the Florentine.

“I came to inquire into the Engelists,” he said, in a tone that might have been disarming had the words been other.

“The Engelists?” the armed man blurted. “You admit it?” Then, “How did you get in here?”

“I walked in,” the big scientist said simply. He looked down at Helen, whose lower lip was trembling. “Now, now,” he said. “After a time, Daddy will play alez-oop with you.” He looked back at the anti-subversion officer. “So, you can tell me with whom I can get in touch in order to investigate thoroughly this Engelism program.”

The other shook his head, as though unbelieving, but the gun didn’t waver. He said, “This whole ministry is devoted to fighting the Engelists. I am head of my department Luckily, I was working late tonight. You have explained nothing. You are under arrest.” His eyes went to an empty desk which stood before the rank of elevator doors. On it was an orderbox and various switches and burtons. Still keeping his eyes on Dorn Horsten, as well as the muzzle of his scrambler, he started in that direction.

Helen said, “Allez-oop!”

The massive scientist had been holding her by one hand. Now, he suddenly flipped her upward, spun her, and flung her toward a stone column which stood some ten feet before the elevators.

The colonnello’s trigger finger had, at the first motion, tightened, but then he stood there, eyes bugging.

In air, Helen seemed to become a ball then, at the last split moment, she turned, legs foremost, and struck the stone pillar. Seemingly, she bounced; somehow, upward. She seemed to spin in the air. A tiny human pin-wheel she turned and turned again. Hit the desk toward which the Florentine had been heading; caromed off in an impossible exhibition of tumbling; hit the metal door of one of the elevators, caromed off and struck immediately before the colonnello. She bounced high. His head reared back in alarm. She settled down, light as gauze, on his shoulder.

“Oooo,” she said. “I musta slipped.” Her right arm was around the startled officer’s head, holding on tightly.

But her little left hand had a secure grip on the scrambler which, a moment ago, had been in his own supposedly competent grasp—and the muzzle was boring into his left ear.