“No, I don’t object.”
“You’ll become a famous man all over the planet,” the V.P. beamed. “Your name will become a household word; tri-di stardom can do that for you.”
“If the tape will convince the Acquatainian people that the dueling machine is safe, fine,” Leoh said. “As for fame… I’m already rather well known.”
“Ah, but not to the general public. Certainly you’re famous among your fellow scientists, and to the elite of Acquatainia and the Commonwealth. But all the general public’s seen of you has been a few fleeting glimpses on news broadcasts. But now you’re going to become very famous.”
“Because of one silly duel? I doubt that”
“You’ll see,” the V.P. promised.
The V.P. did not exaggerate. In fact, he had been overly conservative.
Leoh’s duel was broadcast over the tri-di networks all across the planet that night. Within the week, it had been shown throughout the Acquataine Cluster and was in demand in the Commonwealth.
It was the first time a duel had ever been seen by the general public, and the fact that the inventor of the dueling machine was involved made it doubly fascinating. The sight of the chubby newsman bumbling into obvious traps and getting tangled in pulleys and inclined planes with bowling balls atop them, while Leoh solicitously urged him to be careful every step of the way, struck most people as funny. The Acquatainians, living for months now with the fear of war hanging over them, found a sudden and immense relief in Leoh’s duel. Here was the inventor of the dueling machine, the man who had stopped the Kerak assassinations, appearing on tri-di, showing how clever he is, proving that Kerak is up against a mastermind.
The real facts of the matter—that Leoh had no influence with Martine’s government, that Odal was now back in Acquatainia, that Kerak war fleets were quietly deploying along the Acquatainian frontier—these facts the average Acquatainian submerged in his joy over Leoh’s duel.
Leoh became an instant public figure. He was invited to speak at every university in the Cluster. Tri-di shows vied for his appearance and newsmen followed his every move.
The old scientist tried to resist the pressure, at first. For the week after the original showing of his duel on tri-di, he refused to make any public statement.
“Tell them I’m busy,” he said to Hector, and he tried to barricade himself behind his equations and computer tapes in the office behind the dueling machine.
When the universities began calling on him, though, he bowed to their wishes. Before he knew it, he was swept away in a giddy tide of personal appearances, tri-di shows, and parties.
“Perhaps,” he told Hector, “this is the way to meet the people who influence Martine’s government. Perhaps I can convince them to consider the Commonwealth alliance, and they can put pressure on Martine.”
At parties, at private meetings, at press conferences, Leoh stressed the point. But there was no apparent affect The students, the professors, the newsmen, the businessmen, the tri-di audience—they wanted entertainment, not politics. They wanted to be assured that all was well, not forced to think about how to protect themselves.
The university lectures were huge successes, as lectures. Leoh expected to be speaking mainly to the psychonics students, but each vast auditorium was filled to overflowing with students and faculty from political science, physics, mathematics, sociology, psychiatry… thousands at each campus.
And at each university there were the local newsmen, tri-di appearances, discussion clubs. And the faculty parties in the evenings. And the informal student seminars in the late afternoons. And the newsman who just “dropped in for a few words” at breakfast time.
It took more than two months to make the rounds of each university in the Cluster. At first, Leoh tried to steal a few moments each day to work on the problem of Hector’s “jump.” But each day he woke up more tired, each day was filled with still more people to talk to, people who listened respectfully, admiringly. Each night he retired later; happy, exhausted, with a small nagging grumble in the back of his mind that he should really stop this show-business routine and get back to science.
Hector grew more and more worried as he shepherded Leoh from one campus to the next. The old man was obviously enjoying himself hugely, and just as obviously spending too much of his strength on the traveling and personal appearances and parties. What’s more, Geri was in the capital city, and all the eager smiling girls on all the campuses in the Cluster couldn’t replace her in his eyes.
In the midst of all this, Leoh even fought two more duels.
The first one was with a university physics student who had bet his friends that he could beat the Professor. Leoh agreed good-naturedly to the duel, provided the boy was willing to let the tape be shown on tri-di. The boy agreed.
Instead of the simple physics arena, Leoh chose a more difficult battleground: the intensely warped space in the powerful gravitational field of a collapsed star. The duelists fought in one-man spacecraft, using laser beams for weapons. The problem was to control the ship in a gravitational field so tenacious that one slip meant an inevitable spiral into the star’s seething surface; and to aim the laser weapons properly, where the relativistic warp of space drove straight-line physics out the window.
The boy tried bravely as the two ships circled the dying star. The tape showed the view from each ship, alternately. Now the viewer could see the black depths of space, empty except for a few distant pinpoints of stars, and the curving crescent of the other duelist’s ship streaking by, a pencil beam of laser light flicking out, bending weirdly in that crazy gravity field, seeking its target. Then the bluish inferno of the star would slide into view, blazing, brilliant, drowning out everything else from sight.
The boy fought well, but finally maneuvered himself too close to the star. He could have escaped if he had controlled the ship a little better. Instead, he power-dived straight into its flaming surface. The tri-di executives decided to erase his final screams from the tape before they showed it to the public.
The second challenge came from an Acquatainian merchant, one of the richest men in the Cluster, who had drunk too much at a party and picked a quarrel with Leoh. The Professor went back to the simple physics arena and disposed of him easily.
By the time Leoh (and Hector) returned to the capital, he was the darling of Acquatainian society. They feasted him, they toasted him, they took him to the ballet and opera, they did everything except let him alone to work. Geri was part of Acquatainia’s social leadership, so Hector at least got to see her—but only in crowded, noisy rooms.
11
Odal sat tensely to his room’s only chair and watched Kor’s bullet-shaped head on the view screen as the Intelligence Minister said:
“So far the plan has gone extremely well. Leoh has not only been of no trouble to us, but his exploits have distracted most of the soft-headed Acquatainians. Meanwhile our preparations are exactly on schedule.”
“The invasion,” Odal murmured.
Kor smiled. “We have—let us say, persuaded—the government of the Etra Domain to allow us to station a battle fleet in their territory. Etra stands between the Acquatainian Cluster and the nearest Star Watch bases. If the Commonwealth tries to intervene, we can hold up their forces long enough to allow us to conquer Acquatainia.”
Odal nodded curtly, he had heard the plan before.
“Now is the time,” Kor went on, “for you to supply the final step. The destruction of Leoh, and the complete lulling of the Acquatainians.”