Code Duello

“Not with his luck,” Sid Jakes said.

Metaxa scoffed. “I suppose you think he could gamble a Goshen pistolero’s shooter away from him by matching coins.”

Lee Chang said, “We have already had one of our special talents troupes succeed on an assignment. I suggest you give another group a job and see how they work out. If they don’t, very well, Commissioner, then you’ve made your point. Meanwhile, of course, we are also recruiting in the old manner.”

The Section G head hesitated.

“How can you lose?” Sid Jakes said humorously. “Put up or shut up, Chief.”

Metaxa cast his eyes upward, in search of divine guidance. “Surrounded by stutes,” he muttered. Then, to Lee Chang, “You’re on. Anything to bring you to your senses.” He thought about it. “There’s a situation brewing on Firenze. The type of job any troupe of competent Section G operatives should be able to handle. Very well, round up four of these miracles of yours and send them to my office.”

He turned and marched off, still muttering.

Sid Jakes grinned down at Lee Chang Chu. “Okay, he’s tossed you the whistle; let’s see how you blow it.”

She bit her lower lip thoughtfully, and looked around the hall at her proteges.

They were seated before his desk in a row. Ross Metaxa couldn’t keep his eyes from the seeming eight- year-old girl in her pretty little pink party dress and with the pink hair ribbon in her pretty blonde hair which came down to her shoulders in a style of yesteryear.

He rapped, “Are you sure you’re twenty-five years old?”

Helen, who had a red ball in her right hand, jumped to the floor, and, bouncing the toy, skipped around the desk singing in a childish treble, “Three little girls in blue, tra la, three little girls in blue.” It couldn’t have been more charming.

The Commissioner of Section G was in no humor to be charmed. When she sidled up to him to whisper in his ear, he began to growl at her.

She whispered, a lisp in her voice, “You should never ask a lady her age, but it’s twenty-six, not twenty-five.” Even as she whispered, her tiny child hands twisted the red ball which fell away into halves revealing a hollow center. Quickly deft, she scooped the small hypo-gun from its concealment and ground it into his side.

“Three little girls in blue, tra la,” she sneered nastily.

The other three present were laughing.

Dr. Dorn Horsten said, “Thank the Holy Ultimate that she’s on our side.”

“All right, all right,” Mextaxa said. “The point’s made. I suppose your makeup is a natural for eavesdropping and such.” He shook his head as she returned to her chair. “It’s just that…” He let the sentence fade away and looked at the others thus far silent, two special talents operatives.

The one Lee Chang Chu had pointed out earlier as Zorro Juarez, the bullwhip artist from the planet Vacamundo, was a handsome man in the Latin tradition, evidently on the dour and quiet side by nature. He sat fiddling with an object that looked like a cross between a swagger stick and a foot and a half of sawed-off broom- handle. It seemed to be of highly decorated leather.

Metaxa said, “Lee Chang has evidently seen your whip demonstrations. It all sounds very well, but where’s the whip?”

Zorro Juarez said, “Wrapped around my waist.”

Metaxa snorted. “Not exactly a weapon you could get into action in a hurry.”

Zorro had been pounding his leather baton in the palm of his left hand. Suddenly—he must have touched a stud, or something—a section of plastic thong shot out from the end of that baton, which now proved to be the whip handle. He flicked it once and it snaked, to gently pluck out from the Commissioner’s breast pocket, the stylo he kept there. Another twist of wrist and the stylo was in the hand of Zorro Juarez. He tossed it on the desk.

“I say, that’s a new one,” Dorn Horsten said enthusiastically.

Zorro said, even as he touched the stud again, “We all carry them on Vacamundo.” The plastic thong disappeared back into the handle.

Metaxa snorted. His eyes went to the fourth member of the party. Jerry Rhodes was slumped in his chair, in an easy-going attitude. His face was pleasantly vacant, almost to the point of being inane.

“I suppose you’re going along to bring everybody luck,” Metaxa said.

Jerry shrugged amiably. “It doesn’t work that way, sir. My luck is only for me. I have to be involved.”

Metaxa stared at him. “Look, if you’re so lucky, why don’t you go to the planet Vegas, or one of the other worlds where they have free enterprise, and such things as gambling? You could clean up.”

Jerry nodded, agreeably. “Actually, I’m persona non grata on Vegas. But that’s not the only thing. You see, you don’t have any particular need for money when you’re completely lucky. You get everything you need-”

“How?”

“Well—” Rhodes hesitated. “Somehow. You never know.”

Ross Metaxa grunted, as though in despair. He fished absently in his desk and emerged with his squat brown bottle and several glasses. He said, as though not expecting an affirmative answer. “Would anybody like to try this Denebian tequila?”

“Bit early for me,” Horsten murmured politely. The others except Helen, had evidently heard of Metaxa’s tequila; they shook their heads, even as the Commissioner poured one of the glasses full.

Helen beat her superior to it. The drink went down as though it was fruit juice. “Um,” she said. “Smooth.” She put the glass back.

“Smooth?” Metaxa said blankly. He looked at the brown bottle. “That’s the first time anybody called it that.” He looked at the seeming child, in her party dress, and shaking his head, he evidently decided against his own drink, as though already his senses where betraying him.

He said, “Look, I’m feeling less optimistic about this assignment by the minute, but let’s go. Have any of you ever heard of a planet named Firenze?”

Dorn Horsten said slowly, “I attended a conference on the phylum Thallophyta there, some years ago. Although at the time I wasn’t particularly interested in her institutions, it seemed a moderately progressive world.”

“Not progressive enough. Firenze is a comparatively recently colonized planet. Most of the population came from Avalon, which in turn had been settled from Italy. Firenze, in a way, is still a frontier world and one would expect a wonderful atmosphere for the competent to develop. Unfortunately, it hadn’t worked out that way.”

“And,” Helen prompted, serious now, her voice adult, “our job will be to overthrow the politico-economic system and get things underway?”

But Ross Metaxa was scowling denial. “No. To the contrary. The First Signore and his government have been plagued by an underground for decades. An underground so insidious that the measures that have had to be taken to contain it are what are holding up proper development. The planet can’t get underway because of the necessity to fight these subversives.”

Horsten pushed his pince-nez glasses back onto the bridge of his nose in consideration. “We have a Section G representative there?”

“We did until recently. An old hand named Bulchand. He was challenged by a Florentine and shot.”

The four of them looked at him.

Ross Metaxa shifted in his chair. “I mentioned that it was a frontier world. They built up a system of self- defense—or perhaps I should say offense, unrivaled, so far as I can think, since the frontier days of the old United States. Do you remember the saying, All men are created equal, Samuel Colt made ’em that way ?”

Zorro Juarez said, “You mean they all go armed?”

“I suppose so. A Florentine gentleman is always ready to defend his honor. Evidently, always. It leads to some strange complications. In politics, for instance.”

Jerry Rhodes said, “How does that follow?”

His superior twisted his less than handsome face. “Ordinarily, the only citizens not eligible to be called out, under their Code Duello, are the First Signore and his Council of Nine. However, no one is exempt during elections. No full citizens, that is; evidently, criminals and lower elements in general are not considered