“When you rouse me, you will do it with courtesy,” he said. “I am not a common criminal, and I will not be’ treated as one by such as you. And even though my door is locked from the outside, you will knock on it before entering. Is that clear?”
The sergeant climbed to his feet, rubbing his throat, his eyes a mixture of anger and fear.
“I’m just following orders. Nobody told me to treat you special.…”
“I am telling you,” Odal snapped. “And as long as I still have my rank, you will address me as sir!”
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant muttered sullenly.
Odal relaxed slightly, flexed his fingers.
“You’re wanted at the dueling machine… sir.”
“In the middle of the night? By whose orders?”
The guard shrugged. “They didn’t say. Sir.”
Odal smiled. “Very well. Step outside while I put on my ‘uniform.’ ” He gestured to the shapeless fatigues draped over the end of the cot.
A single meditech stood waiting for Odal beside the dueling machine, which bulked ominously in the dim night lighting. Odal recognized him as one of the inquisitors he had been facing for the past several weeks. Wordlessly, the man gestured Odal to his booth. The sergeant took up a post at the doorway to the large room as the meditech fitted Odal’s head and torso with the necessary neurocontacts. Then he stepped out of the compartment and firmly shut the door.
For a few moments nothing happened. Then Odal felt a voice in his mind:
“Major Odal?”
“Of course,” he replied silently.
“Yes… of course.”
There was something puzzling. Something wrong. “You… you are not the…”
“I am not the man who put you into the dueling machine. That is correct.” The voice seemed both pleased and worried. “That man is at the controls of the machine, while I am halfway across the planet. He has a miniature transceiver with him, and I am communicating with you through it. This means of communication is unorthodox, but it probably cannot be intercepted by Kor or his henchmen.”
“But I know you,” Odal thought. “I have met you before.”
“That is true.”
“Romis! You are Minister Romis.”
“Yes.”
“What do you want with me?”
“I learned only this morning of your situation. I was shocked at such treatment for a loyal soldier of Kerak.”
Odal felt the words forming in his mind, yet he knew that Romis’ words were only a glossy surface, hiding a deeper meaning. He communicated nothing, and waited for the Minister to continue.
“Are you being mistreated?”
Odal smiled mirthlessly. “No more so than any laboratory animal. I suppose it’s no worse than having one’s intestines sliced open without anesthetics.”
Romis’ mind recoiled. Then he recovered and said, “There might be some way in which I can help you…”
Odal lost his patience. “You haven’t contacted me in the middle of the night, using this elaborate procedure, to ask about my comfort. Something is troubling you greatly and you believe I can be useful to you.”
“Can you actually read my thoughts?”
“Not in the manner one reads a tape. But I can sense things…and the dueling machine amplifies this talent.”
Romis hesitated a moment, then asked, “Can you… sense… what is in my mind?”
Now it was Odal’s turn to hesitate. Was this a trap? He glanced around the confining walls of the tiny booth, and at the door that he knew was locked from the outside. What more can they do? Kill me?
“I can feel in your thoughts,” Odal replied, “a hatred for Kanus. A hatred that is matched only by your fear of him. If you had it in your power you would…”
“I would what?”
Odal finally saw the picture clearly. “You would have the Leader assassinated.”
“how?”
“By a disgraced army officer who would have good cause to hate Kanus.”
“You have cause to hate him,” Romis emphasized.
“Perhaps.”
“Perhaps? Can you fail to hate him?”
Odal shook his head. “I’ve never considered the question. He is the Leader. I have neither loved nor hated, only followed his commands.”
“Duty above self,” Romis’ thought returned. “You speak like a member of the nobility.”
“Such as you are. And yet you wish to assassinate the Leader.”
“Yes! Because a true member of the nobility puts his duty to the Kerak Worlds before his allegiance to this madman—this usurper of power who will destroy us all, nobleman and commoner alike.”
“I am only a commoner,” Odal replied, very deliberately. “Perhaps I’m not equipped to decide where my duty lies. Certainly, I have no choice in my duties at present.”
Romis recovered his composure. “Listen to me. If you agree to join us, we can help you escape from this beastly experimentation. As you can see, certain members of Kor’s staff are with us; so too are groups in the army and space fleet. If you will help us, you can once again be a hero of Kerak.”
If I murder Kanus and survive the deed, Odal thought to himself. And if I am not then assassinated in turn by your friends.
To Romis he asked, “And if I don’t agree to join you?”
The Minister remained silent.
“I see,” Odal answered for himself. “I know too much now to be allowed the risk of living.”
“Unfortunately, the stakes are too high to let personal feelings intervene. If you do not agree to help us before leaving the dueling machine, the medical technician and sergeant are waiting outside for you. They have their orders.”
“To murder me,” Odal said bluntly, “and make it seem as though I tried to escape.”
“Yes. I am sorry to be brutal, but that is your choice. Join or die.”
4
While Odal deliberated his choice in the midnight darkness of Kerak, it was sunset in the capital city of Acquatainia.
High above the city, Hector circled warily in a rented air car that had been ready for the junk heap long ago. He kept his eyes riveted to the view screens on the control panel in front of him, sitting tensely in the pilot’s seat; the four-place cabin was otherwise empty.
Part of his circle carried him through one of the city’s busier traffic patterns, but he ignored other air cars and kept the autopilot locked on its circle while homeward-bound commuters shrieked into their radios at him and dodged around the Watchman’s vehicle. Hector had his radio off; every nerve in his body was concentrating on the view screens.
The car’s tri-di scanners were centered on Geri Dulaq’s house, on the outskirts of the city. As far as Hector was concerned, nothing else existed. Cars buzzed by his bubble-topped canopy and apoplectic-faced drivers shook their fists at him. He never saw them. Wind whistled suspiciously through what should have been a sealed cabin; the air car groaned and rattled when it should have hummed and soared. He never noticed.
There she is! He felt a charge of electricity flash through him as he saw her at last, walking through the garden next to the house.
For an instant he wondered if he had the nerve to go through with it, but his hands had already nudged the controls and the air car, shuddering, started a long whining descent toward the house.
The reddish sun of Acquatainia was shining straight into Hector’s eyes, through the ancient photochromic canopy that was supposed to screen out the glare. Squinting hard, Hector barely made out the menacing bulk of the house as it rose to meet him. He pulled back on the controls, jammed the brake flaps full open, flipped the screeching engine pods to their landing angle, and bounced the car in a shower of dust and noise and wind squarely into Geri’s flower bed.