Odal felt a flash of anger, but replied calmly, “May I remind you that you are under arrest and therefore have no rank. And if you insist on refusing me access to your memories of this meeting, more stringent methods of interrogation will be used.”
“You can do anything you want to,” Runstet said. “Drugs, torture… you’ll get nothing from me. Use this damnable dueling machine for a hundred years and I’ll still tell you nothing!”
Unmoving, Odal said, “Shall I recreate the scene for you? I have visited your home in Meklin, and I have a list of the officers who attended your meeting.”
“When Marshal Lugal learns how Kor and his trained assassins have treated a general officer, you’ll all be exterminated!” Runstet bellowed. “And you! An officer yourself. A disgrace to the uniform you wear!”
“I have my duty,” Odal said. “And I am trying to spare you some of the more unpleasant methods of interrogation.”
As Odal spoke, the mist around them dissolved and they were standing in a spacious living room. Sunlight streamed through the open patio doors. Nearly a dozen men in army uniforms sat on the couches. But they were silent, unmoving.
“Now then,” said Odal, “you will show me exactly what happened. Every word and gesture, every facial expression.”
“Never!”
“That in itself is an admission of guilt,” Odal snapped. “You have been plotting against the Leader; you and a number of others of the general staff.”
“I will not incriminate other men,” Runstet said stubbornly. “You can kill me, but…”
“We can kill your wife and children, too,” Odal said softly.
The General’s mouth popped open and Odal could feel the panic flash through him. “You wouldn’t dare! Not even Kanus himself would.…”
“Accidents happen,” said Odal. “As far as the rest of Kerak is concerned, you are hospitalized with a mental breakdown. Your despondent wife might take her own life, or your entire family could die in a crash while on their way to the hospital to see you.”
Runstet seemed to crumple. He did not physically move or say a word, but his entire body seemed to soften, to sag. Behind him, one of the generals stirred to life. He leaned forward, took a cigar from the humidor on the low table before him, and said:
“When we’re ready to attack the Acquatainians, just how far can we trust Kanus to allow the army to operate without political interference?”
5
“I simply don’t understand what came over me,” Leoh said to Spencer and Hector. “I never let my temper get the better of me.”
They were standing in the former lecture hall that housed the grotesque bulk of the dueling machine. No one else had entered yet; the duel with Ponte was still an hour away.
“Come now, Albert,” said Spencer. “If that whining little politician had spoken to me the way he did to you, I’d have been tempted to hit him there and then.”
Leoh shrugged.
“These Acquatainians are an emotional lot,” Spencer went on. “Frankly, I’m glad to be leaving.”
“When will you go?”
“As soon as this silly duel is finished. It’s quite clear that Martine is unwilling to accept any support from the Commonwealth. My presence here is merely aggravating him and his people.”
Hector spoke for the first time. “That means there’ll be war between Acquatainia and Kerak.” He said it quietly, his eyes gazing off into space, as though he were talking to himself.
“Both sides want war,” Spencer said.
“Stupidity,” muttered Leoh.
“Pride,” Spencer corrected. “The same kind of pride that makes men fight duels.”
Startled, Leoh was about to answer until he saw the grin on Spencer’s leathery face.
The chamber filled slowly. The meditechs who operated the dueling machine came in, a few at a time, and started checking out the machine. There was a new man on the team, sitting at a new console. His equipment monitored the duels and made certain that neither of the duelists was getting telepathic help from outside.
Ponte and his group arrived precisely at the appointed time for the duel. Four newsmen appeared in the press gallery, high above. Leoh suppressed a frown.
They went through the medical checks, the instructions on using the machine (which Leoh had written), and the agreement that the challenged party would have the first choice of weapons.
“My weapon will be the elementary laws of physics,” Leoh said. “No special instructions will be necessary.”
Ponte’s eyes widened slightly with puzzlement. His seconds glanced at each other. Even the dueling machine’s meditechs looked uncertain. After a heartbeat’s silence, the chief meditech shrugged.
“If there are no objections,” he said, “let us proceed.”
Leoh sat patiently in his booth while the meditechs attached the neurocontacts to his head and torso.
The meditechs left and shut the booth. Leoh was alone now, staring into the screen and its subtly shifting colors. He tried to close his eyes, found that he couldn’t, tried again and succeeded.
When he opened them he was standing in the middle of a large, gymnasium-like room. There were windows high up near the lofty ceiling. Instead of being filled with athletic apparatus, this room was crammed with rope pulleys, inclined ramps, metal spheres of all sizes from a few centimeters to twice the height of a man. Leoh was standing on a slightly raised, circular platform, holding a small control box in his hand.
Lal Ponte stood across the room, his back to a wall, frowning at the jungle of unfamiliar equipment.
“This is a sort of elementary physics lab,” Leoh called out to him. “While none of the objects here are really weapons, many of them can be dangerous if you know how to use them. Or if you don’t know.”
Ponte began to object. “This is unreasonable…”
“Not really,” Leoh said pleasantly. “You’ll find that the equipment is spread around the room to form a sort of maze. Your job is to get through the maze to this platform, and to find something to use as a weapon on me. Now, there are traps in the maze. You’ll have to avoid them. And this platform is really a turntable… but we’ll talk about that later.”
Ponte looked around. “You are foolish.”
“Perhaps.”
The Acquatainian took a few steps to his right and lifted a slender metal rod. Hefting it in his hand, he started toward Leoh.
“That’s a lever,” the Professor said. “Of course, you can use it as a club if you wish.”
A tangle of ropes stood in Ponte’s way. Instead of detouring around them, he pushed his way through.
Leoh shook his head and touched a button on his control box. “A mistake, I’m afraid.”
The ropes—a pulley, actually—jerked into motion and heaved the flooring under Ponte’s feet upward. The Acquatainian toppled to his hands and knees and found himself on a platform suddenly ten meters in the air. Dropping the lever, he began grabbing at the ropes. One of them swung free and he jumped at it, curling his arms and legs around it.
“Pendulum,” Leoh called to him. “Watch your…”
Ponte’s rope, with him on it, swung out a little way, then swung back again toward the mid-air platform. He cracked his head nastily on the platform’s edge, let go of the rope, and thudded to the floor.
“The floor’s padded,” Leoh said, “but I forgot to pad the edge of the platform. Hope it didn’t hurt you too
