Odal got slowly to his feet.
“Kill him! You promised!” Geri insisted, half in tears.
“I can’t… not like this…”
“You mean you won’t!”
Nodding without taking his eyes off Odal, Hector said, “That’s right, I won’t. Not even for you.”
Odal’s voice was like a knife. “You’d better kill me, Watchman, while you have the chance. I’ll spend the rest of my life hunting you.”
A trio of uniformed guards puffed up to the doorway; behind them were a half-dozen people from the tri-di show, and Leoh.
“What’s going on? Who’s this? Are you…”
“This is Major Odal,” Hector said, pointing with the gun. “He’s… uh, under the protection of diplomatic immunity. Please escort him back to the Kerak embassy.”
His face expressionless, Odal nodded to the Star Watchman and went with the guards.
13
“You mean it all went out on the tri-di network? Every word?” asked Hector.
He, Leoh, and Geri were sitting in the back of an automated Dulaq ground car as it threaded its way through the darkened city, heading for Geri’s home. The midnight rain was falling for its programed half-hour, so the car’s bubble top was up.
Geri had not said a word since Odal was taken from the tri-di studio.
But Leoh was chuckling. “When you hit all those switches and turned on the commercial tapes, you also turned on the sound system for every studio. We heard the bedlam, with you and Odal shouting at each other over it all. It came over the speakers right in the middle of our show. You should have seen the look on everyone’s face!
And I understand that you ruined at least six other shows that were being taped at the time.”
“Really?” Hector squirmed. “I… that is, I didn’t mean… well, I’m sorry about that.…”
Waving a hand at him, Leoh said, “Relax, my boy. Your fight with Odal—the audio portion of it—was beamed into nearly every home on the planet. Everyone in Acquatainia knows what a fool I’ve been, and that Kerak is still as much of a threat as ever.”
“You’re not a fool,” Hector said.
“Yes, I’ve been one,” insisted Leoh. “Worse, I’ve been a dupe, letting my own glory get in the way of my judgment. But that’s over now. My place is in science, not politics, and certainly not show business! I’m going to concentrate on your ‘jump’ in the dueling machine. If that was a sample of teleportation, then the machine can amplify that talent, just as it amplified Odal’s telepathic abilities. Now, if we put enough power into the machine…”
The car glided to a stop under the roofed driveway in front of the entrance to Geri’s house. Leoh stayed in the car while Hector walked her to her door. In the shadows, he couldn’t see her face too well. They stopped at the door.
“Um… Geri, I… well, I just couldn’t kill him. Not… not like that. I wanted to please you… but, well, if you want an assassin… I guess it’s just not me that you’re interested in.”
She said nothing. A gentle warm breeze brought the odor of wet leaves to them.
Hector fidgeted.
Finally he said, “Well, good night…”
“Good-by, Hector,” Geri said flatly.
Leoh was studiously looking the other way, watching the final few drops of ram splatter on the statuary alongside the driveway, when Hector returned to the car. The old scientist looked at the Watchman as he ducked into the car and slumped in the seat.
“Why so glum, my boy? What’s the matter?”
Shrugging, Hector said. “It’s a long story…”
“Oh, I see. Well then. To get back to the teleportation idea. If we can boost the power of the machine…”
PART III
The Farthest Dream
1
It was ironic, thought Odal, that they were using the dueling machine to torture him. For it was torture, no matter what they called it or how they smiled when they were doing it.
He sat there in the cramped cubicle, staring at its featureless walls, the blank view screen, waiting for them to begin.
The price of failure was heavy, too heavy. Kanus had made Odal the glory of Kerak while he was a success, while he was killing the enemies of Kerak.
Now they were killing him.
Not that they caused him any physical harm. He was not even under arrest, technically. Merely assigned to experimentation at Kor’s headquarters, the Ministry of Intelligence: a huge, stone, hilltop castle, ancient and brooding from the outside; inside, a maze of pain and terror and Kor’s swelling lust for victims.
In the dueling machine, the illusion of pain was no less agonizing than the real thing. Odal smiled sardonically. The men he had killed died first in their imaginations. But soon enough their hearts stopped beating.
Now then, are you ready? It was a voice in his mind, put there by the machine’s circuitry through the neurocontacts circling his head.
We are going to probe a bit deeper today, in an effort to find the source of your extrasensory talents. I advise you to relax and cooperate.
There had been three of them working on him yesterday, from the other side of the machine. Today, Odal could tell, there were more. Six? Eight? A dozen, possibly.
He felt them: foreign thoughts, alien personalities, in his own mind. His hands twitched uncontrollably and his body began to ache and heave.
They were seizing his control centers, battering at sensory complexes. Muscles cramped spasmodically, nerves screamed in anguish, body temperature soared, ears shrilled, eyes flashed flaming reds and unbearable star bursts. Now they were going deeper, beyond the physical effects, digging, clawing away through a lifetime of self-protective neural patterns, reaching down with a searing, white-hot, twelfth-power probe into the personality itself.
Odal heard a terrified voice howling, They’re after ME. They’re trying to get ME. Hide! Hide!
The voice was his own.
Despite its spaciousness, Leoh thought, the Prime Minister’s office was a stuffy antique of a room, decorated in blue and gold, with the weight of outmoded traditions and useless memories hanging more heavily than the gilt draperies that bordered each door and window.
The meeting had been small and unspectacular. Martine had invited Leoh for an informal chat; Hector was pointedly not invited. A dozen or so aides, politicians, and administrators clustered around the Prime Minister’s desk as he officially thanked Leoh for uncovering Kerak’s attempt to use the dueling machine as a smoke screen for their war preparations.
“It was Star Watch Lieutenant Hector who actually uncovered the plot, not me,” Leoh insisted.
Martine waved away the words impatiently. “The Watchman is merely your aide; you are the man that Kanus fears.”
After about ten minutes of talking, Martine nodded to one of his aides, who went to a door and admitted a covey of news photographers. The Prime Minister stood up and walked around his desk to stand beside Leoh, towering proudly over the old man, while the newsmen took their pictures. Then the meeting broke up. The newsmen left and everyone else began to drift out of the office.
“Professor Leoh.”
He was nearly at the doorway when Martine called. Leoh turned back and saw the Prime Minister sitting at his tall desk chair. But instead of his usual icy aloofness, there was a warm, almost friendly smile on Martine’s face.
“Please close the door and sit down with me for a few minutes more,” Martine said.
Puzzled, Leoh did as the Prime Minister asked. As he took an armchair off to one side of the desk, he watched Martine carefully run a hand over the communications panel set into his desk top. Then the Prime Minister opened a drawer in the desk and Leoh heard the tiny click of a switch being turned.