Code Duello

something.”

“One thing,” Helen said grudgingly. “I doubt if our Great Marconi is an agent provocateur. If he is, then we’re in the chowder already. But I don’t think he is.”

“And I don’t think he’s an Engelist, either,” Jerry said.

Helen looked at him. “Why not?”

Jerry shrugged it off in deprecation. “I don’t know. He’s got something simmering. What, I don’t know. But from everything we’ve seen and heard, these Engelists are a bunch of crackpots, and I don’t get quite that impression about Cesare Marconi.”

Dorn Horsten snorted. “If he’s an Engelist, it’s for the purpose of using them. I’m afraid that friend Marconi is one of the ruling hierarchy of Firenze who’s managed to get expelled from the inner ranks, and wants back in.”

Jerry said, “Well I wouldn’t be surprised if he made it. Compared to that First Signore, he’s a brain.”

“Which is more than I can say for you,” Helen snarled. “What do you think Dorn was pointing at his watch for? What do you think I said Geneva for?”

Jerry looked at her blankly.

“When you were telling d’Arrezzo about all the supposed capital you’ve got. Geneva, Geneva. The planet Geneva, where the only industry is interplanetary banking and exchange and making chronometers. If you’ve got variable capital in large amounts on hand, it’d be stashed safely away on Geneva.”

“Oh,” Jerry said apologetically. He brightened. “Evidently they’ve checked out my cover, and found that I’m supposedly loaded with the stuff.”

Horsten said, “If Irene Kasansky handled your cover, it’s handled, period. She’s undoubtedly fed into the records information indicating your family is one of the wealthiest in United Planets.”

Jerry lighted up. “There should be some way for me to blow some of it.” He added quickly, “Just in the way of maintaining the front, of course.”

Zorro growled, “How about buying this damned hotel and putting another floor on it so I can get some decent accommodations?” He looked at Horsten. “Shouldn’t we report again to Sid Jakes?”

Helen hopped down from her chair. “If you had your way, we’d report to Jakes every hour, on the hour. Our cover’s blown badly enough as it is. We’d better keep that communicator off the sub-space waves as much as we can.”

“Well, he ought to know about this new Dawnworld development. Possibly there’s something he can add to what we know. Something we can use.”

“Our assignment’s Firenze,” Horsten said. “Let Metaxa and Jakes worry about the Dawnworlds.”

Helen had approached the bar and squatted down before it on her heels, in a compelling childlike stance. She looked at the lock of the compartment the First Signore had used earlier. After a moment of contemplation, she took a hairpin from her blonde tresses.

She said, “Hm.”

“Hey!” Horsten snapped.

She ignored him. Her tiny hands were, as always, deft. The door opened. Helen peered inside.

“That’s what I thought,” she said. “Three bottles of the stuff. Tricky miser, isn’t he?” She reached into the interior, brought forth a full bottle of the exotic liqueur beloved by the First Signore of Firenze. She held the bottle up and read the label. “Twelve Star Golden Chartreuse,” she said. “He hordes it as though he couldn’t get another jug of the stuff with all the loot in his treasury.”

“Put it back,” Horsten said. “He probably couldn’t. I’ve heard of it. There’s no more available. When Betelgeuse Three was first explored, it didn’t allow colonization. The planetary engineering boys went to work and the biome balance was thrown off. When the first colonists moved in, the berry from which the beverage was made, surprisingly similar to the Earth plant of the ericaceous genus Vaccinium, was still surviving, and continued to do so for possibly half a century. During that period, the liqueur was laid down. Supposedly it has the most delicate bouquet and flavor of all time. However, ecology of Betelgeuse Three had been altered to the point where the berry slowly became extinct.”

She activated the stopper. “So you can’t get any more? You know, the stuff grows on you.”

“Put it back, you little lush,” Horsten said. “If you can’t get any more, why develop a taste for it?”

Helen ignored him. She put the bottle down by her side momentarily, bent back to the keyhole with her hairpin. She locked the small door again, came erect with the bottle, and acquired a glass from the bar.

She went back to the overgrown chair she had claimed as her own, put the bottle and glass on the cocktail table, after pouring herself a respectable portion, made herself comfortable and said, “All right, the meeting will come to order. So far, we’ve been handling this like a bunch of clowns. We need a plan of action.”

She raised her glass to her nose and sniffed. “You know”—she nodded to her supposed father—“you’re right. It sure stinks pretty. A little sticky, maybe, but real nice.”

Chapter Eleven

Dr. Horsten lumbered along the sidewalk with the great dignity of an Imperial penguin. His right forefinger, which in size resembled a small salami, was in the possession of his little girl who, to match his pace, even though he was but strolling, had devised a combination of trip and skip. Beneath her free arm was tucked a rather oversized doll whose bedraggled hair and every-which-way clothing proclaimed it had seen better days.

The big man seemed to have other, deeper things, on his mind, but he dutifully pointed out various sights as they progressed along the streets of Firenze, capital city of the Free Democratic Commonwealth of Firenze. It was quite a charming sight to their fellow pedestrians who couldn’t quite make out the actual words exchanged.

Helen tinkled in her childish treble, albeit softly, There’s another one of the obscenities.”

“Shush, damnit, watch your language. Somebody’ll hear you-” He beamed affectionately down at her.

“Watch your own damn language.” She smiled back winningly. “What’s the use of going out if every one of their multiple security agencies has at least one man on us, plus, probably, the Engelists to boot?”

“It’s a matter of getting the feeling of the town. Watch yourself; our cover is already blown badly enough, you diminutive witch.”

“Why, you overgrown ox. I ought to clobber you one. Besides, I’ve got the feeling of this jerk planet. It’s a nut factory. Half of them in uniform, the other half look like they’re on the kind of rations you get on the Welfare State worlds.”

Horsten chuckled benignly, as though the little girl had gotten off a childish bit of bright saying.

“Here’s a park,” he said. “Suppose we sit for a time and give the poor chaps tagging us an opportunity to rest their feet.”

They found an unoccupied bench and the little girl bounced up beside her daddy and smoothed her pretty skirt self-consciously. She propped the doll up beside her and smoothed its skirt as well.

She murmured, “Still no beep from Gertrude. Evidently they haven’t any great shakes in the way of parabolic mikes, at least not the mobile variety.”

“Which surprises me, but then I am continually being surprised on this world. It’s not exactly as I had expected it from the little Metaxa told us.”

“Let’s face it. This is a damned police state.”

Horsten grunted discomfort at her words. “But with that all-important difference, Helen. The dream of freedom is there. They are fighting to retain it.”

“Retain it? It’s already gone. It’s been smothered in gobbledygook. Which is often what happens to freedom, inalienable rights and such. It’s everybody to his own definition, and the devil take the hindmost.”

Horsten said in unhappy doggedness, “It’s why we were sent here. They’re desperately hanging onto free institutions, in the face of one of the most insidious undergrounds in United Planets.”

But Helen was feeling more than usually argumentative, even for Helen. “That word freedom is on the elastic side. Wait’ll I think of the classic example I memorized back when I was going to school. It’s a dilly.” She thought for a moment, pink tongue stuck out the side of her mouth.

“Yeah. Here it is. You need the background. The Spanish conquest of Mexico and the Aztecs. The quotation comes from Fransisco de Aguilar, one of Cortes’ Conquistadors . It goes: ‘Sometimes the