don’t propose going a couple of hundred miles to meet you at any such
unholy hour. We’ll fight in the nearest hallway that provides twenty
meters’ shooting distance.”
Marnark, Sirzob and Yirzol all clamored in protest. Verkan Vall
shouted them down, drawing on his hypnotically acquired knowledge of
Akor-Neb duelling customs. “The code explicitly states that
satisfaction shall be rendered as promptly as possible, and I insist
on a literal interpretation. I’m not going to inconvenience myself and
Assassin-President Klarnood and these four Gentlemen-Assassins just to
humor Statisticalist superstitions.”
The manager of the hotel, drawn to the Martian Room by the uproar,
offered a hallway connecting the kitchens with the refrigerator rooms;
it was fifty meters long by five in width, was well-lighted and
soundproof, and had a bay in which the seconds and other could stand
during the firing.
They repaired thither in a body, Klarnood gathering up several hotel
servants on the way through the kitchen. Verkan Vall stripped to the
waist, pulled off his ankle boots, and examined Olirzon’s knife. Its
tapering eight-inch blade was double-edged at the point, and its
handle was covered with black velvet to afford a good grip, and wound
with gold wire. He nodded approvingly, gripped it with his index
finger crooked around the cross-guard, and advanced to meet Marnark of
Bashad.
As he had expected, the burly politician was depending upon his
greater brawn to overpower his antagonist. He advanced with a sidling,
spread-legged gait, his knife hand against his right hip and his left
hand extended in front. Verkan Vall nodded with pleased satisfaction;
a wrist-grabber. Then he blinked. Why, the fellow was actually holding
his knife reversed, his little finger to the guard and his thumb on
the pommel!
Verkan Vall went briskly to meet him, made a feint at his knife hand
with his own left, and then side-stepped quickly to the right. As
Marnark’s left hand grabbed at his right wrist, his left hand brushed
against it and closed into a fist, with Marnark’s left thumb inside of
it, He gave a quick downward twist with his wrist, pulling Marnark off
balance.
Caught by surprise, Marnark stumbled, his knife flailing wildly away
from Verkan Vall. As he stumbled forward, Verkan Vall pivoted on his
left heel and drove the point of his knife into the back of Marnark’s
neck, twisting it as he jerked it free. At the same time, he released
Marnark’s thumb. The politician continued his stumble and fell forward
on his face, blood spurting from his neck. He gave a twitch or so, and
was still.
Verkan Vall stooped and wiped the knife on the dead man’s
clothes—another Khanga pirate gesture—and then returned it to
Olirzon.
“Nice weapon, Olirzon,” he said. “It fitted my hand as though I’d been
born holding it.”
“You used it as though you had, Lord Virzal,” the Assassin replied.
“Only eight seconds from the time you closed with him.”
[Illustration: ]
The function of the hotel servants whom Klarnood had gathered up now
became apparent; they advanced, took the body of Marnark by the
heels, and dragged it out of the way. The others watched this removal
with mixed emotions. The two remaining principals were impassive and
frozen-faced. Their two Assassins, who had probably bet heavily on
Marnark, were chagrined. And Klarnood was looking at Verkan Vall with
a considerable accretion of respect. Verkan Vall pulled on his boots
and resumed his clothing.
There followed some argument about the pistols; it was finally decided
that each combatant should use his own shoulder-holster weapon. All
three were nearly enough alike—small weapons, rather heavier than
they looked, firing a tiny ten-grain bullet at ten thousand
foot-seconds. On impact, such a bullet would almost disintegrate; a
man hit anywhere in the body with one would be killed instantly, his
nervous system paralyzed and his heart stopped by internal pressure.
Each of the pistols carried twenty rounds in the magazine.
Verkan Vall and Sirzob of Abo took their places, their pistols lowered
at their sides, facing each other across a measured twenty meters.
“Are you ready, gentlemen?” Klarnood asked. “You will not raise your
pistols until the command to fire; you may fire at will after it.
Ready. _Fire!_”
[Illustration: ]
Both pistols swung up to level. Verkan Vall found Sirzob’s head in his
sights and squeezed; the pistol kicked back in his hand, and he saw a
lance of blue flame jump from the muzzle of Sirzob’s. Both weapons
barked together, and with the double report came the whip-cracking
sound of Sirzob’s bullet passing Verkan Vall’s head. Then Sirzob’s
face altered its appearance unpleasantly, and he pitched forward.
Verkan Vall thumbed on his safety and stood motionless, while the
servants advanced, took Sirzob’s body by the heels, and dragged it
over beside Marnark’s.
“All right; Honorable Yirzol, you’re next,” Verkan Vall called out.
“The Lord Virzal has fired one shot,” one of the opposing seconds
objected, “and Honorable Yirzol has a full magazine. The Lord Virzal
should put in another magazine.”
“I grant him the advantage; let’s get on with it,” Verkan Vall said.
Yirzol of Narva advanced to the firing point. He was not afraid of
death—none of the Akor-Neb people were; their language contained no
word to express the concept of total and final extinction—and
discarnation by gunshot was almost entirely painless. But he was
beginning to suspect that he had made a fool of himself by getting
into this affair, he had work in his present reincarnation which he
wanted to finish, and his political party would suffer loss, both of
his services and of prestige.
“Are you ready, gentlemen?” Klarnood intoned ritualistically. “You
will not raise your pistols until the command to fire; you may fire at
will after it. Ready, _Fire!_”
Verkan Vall shot Yirzol of Narva through the head before the latter
had his pistol half raised. Yirzol fell forward on the splash of blood
Sirzob had made, and the servants came forward and dragged his body
over with the others. It reminded Verkan Vail of some sort of
industrial assembly-line operation. He replaced the two expended
rounds in his magazine with fresh ones and slid the pistol back into
its holster. The two Assassins whose principals had been so
expeditiously massacred were beginning to count up their losses and
pay off the winners.
Klarnood, the President-General of the Society of Assassins, came
over, hooking fingers and clapping shoulders with Verkan Vall.
“Lord Virzal, I’ve seen quite a few duels, but nothing quite like
that,” he said. “You should have been an Assassin!”
That was a considerable compliment. Verkan Vall thanked him modestly.
“I’d like to talk to you privately,” the Assassin-President continued.
“I think it’ll be worth your while if we have a few words together.”
Verkan Vall nodded. “My suite is on the fifteenth floor above; will
that be all right?” He waited until the losers had finished settling
their bets, then motioned to his own pair of Assassins.
* * * * *
As they emerged into the Martian Room again, the manager was waiting;
he looked as though he were about to demand that Verkan Vall vacate
his suite. However, when he saw the arm of the President-General of
the Society of Assassins draped amicably over his guest’s shoulder, he
came forward bowing and smiling.
“Larnorm, I want you to put five of your best Assassins to guarding
the approaches to the Lord Virzal’s suite,” Klarnood told him. “I’ll
send five more from Assassins’ Hall to replace them at their ordinary
duties. And I’ll hold you responsible with your carnate existence for
the Lord Virzal’s safety in this hotel. Understand?”
“Oh, yes, Honorable Assassin-President; you may trust me. The Lord
Virzal will be perfectly safe.”
In Verkan Vall’s suite, above, Klarnood sat down and got out his pipe,
filling it with tobacco lightly mixed with _zerfa_. To his surprise,
he saw his host light a plain tobacco cigarette.
“Don’t you use _zerfa_?” he asked.
“Very little,” Verkan Vall replied. “I grow it. If you’d see the bums
who hang around our drying sheds, on Venus, cadging rejected leaves
and smoking themselves into a stupor, you’d be frugal in using it,
too.”
Klarnood nodded. “You know, most men would want a pipe of fifty
percent, or a straight _zerfa_ cigarette, after what you’ve been
through,” he said.
“I’d need something like that, to deaden my conscience, if I had one
to deaden,” Verkan Vall said. “As it is, I feel like a murderer of
babes. That overgrown fool, Marnark, handled his knife like a
cow-butcher. The young fellow couldn’t handle a pistol at all. I
suppose the old fellow, Sirzob, was a fair shot, but dropping him
wasn’t any great feat of arms, either.”
Klarnood looked at him curiously for a moment. “You know,” he said, at
length, “I believe you actually mean that. Well, until he met you,
Marnark of Bashad was rated as the best knife-fighter in Darsh. Sirzob
had ten dueling victories to his credit, and young Yirzol four.” He
puffed slowly on his pipe. “I like you, Lord Virzal; a great Assassin
was lost when you decided to reincarnate as a Venusian land-owner. I’d
hate to see you discarnated without proper warning. I take it you’re
ignorant of the intricacies of Terran politics?”
“To a large extent, yes.”
“Well, do you know who those three men were?” When Verkan Vall shook
his head, Klarnood continued: “Marnark was the son and right-hand
associate of old Mirzark of Bashad, the Statisticalist Party leader.
Sirzob of Abo was their propaganda director. And Yirzol of Narva was
their leading socio-economic theorist, and their candidate for
Executive Chairman. In six minutes, with one knife thrust and two
shots, you did the Statisticalist Party an injury second only to that
done them by the young lady in whose name you were fighting. In two
weeks, there will be a planet-wide general election. As it stands, the
Statisticalists have a majority of the seats in Parliament and on the
Executive Council. As a result of your work and the Lady Dallona’s,
they’ll lose that majority, and more, when the votes are tallied.”
“Is that another reason why you like me?” Verkan Vall asked.
“Unofficially, yes. As President-General of the Society of Assassins,
I must be nonpolitical. The Society is rigidly so; if we let ourselves
become involved, as an organization, in politics, we could control the
System Government inside of five years, and we’d be wiped out of
existence in fifty years by the very forces we sought to control,”
Klarnood said. “But personally, I would like to see the Statisticalist
Party destroyed. If they succeed in their program of socialization,
the Society would be finished. A socialist state is, in its final
development, an absolute, total, state; no total state can tolerate
extra-legal and para-governmental organizations. So we have adopted
the policy of giving a little inconspicuous aid, here and there, to
people who are dangerous to the Statisticalists. The Lady Dallona of
Hadron, and Dr. Harnosh of Hosh, are such persons. You appear to be
another. That’s why I ordered that fellow, Larnorm, to make sure you
were safe in his hotel.”
“Where is the Lady Dallona?” Verkan Vall asked. “From your use of the
present tense, I assume you believe her to be still carnate.”
Klarnood looked at Verkan Vall keenly. “That’s a pretty blunt
question, Lord Virzal,” he said. “I wish I knew a little more about
you. When you and your Assassins started inquiring about the Lady
Dallona, I tried to check up on you. I found out that you had come to
Darsh from Ghamma on a ship of the family of Zorda, accompanied by
Brarnend of Zorda himself. And that’s all I could find out. You claim
to be a Venusian planter, and you might be. Any Terran who can handle
weapons as you can would have come to my notice long ago. But you have
no more ascertainable history than if you’d stepped out of another
dimension.”
That was getting uncomfortably close to the truth. In fact, it _was_
the truth. Verkan Vall laughed.
“Well, confidentially,” he said, “I’m from the Arcturus System. I
followed the Lady Dallona here from our home planet, and when I have
rescued her from among you Solarians, I shall, according to our
customs, receive her hand in marriage. As she is the daughter of the
Emperor of Arcturus, that’ll be quite a good thing for me.”
Klarnood chuckled. “You know, you’d only have to tell me that about
three or four times and I’d start believing it,” he said. “And Dr.
Harnosh of Hosh would believe it the first time; he’s been talking to
himself ever since the Lady Dallona started her experimental work
here. Lord Virzal, I’m going to take a chance on you. The Lady Dallona
is still carnate, or was four days ago, and the same for Dirzed. They
both went into hiding after the discarnation feast of Garnon of Roxor,
to escape the enmity of the Statisticalists. Two days after they
disappeared, Dirzed called Assassins’ Hall and reported this, but told
us nothing more. I suppose, in about three or four days, I could
re-establish contact with him. We want the public to think that the
Statisticalists made away with the Lady Dallona, at least until the
election’s over.”
Verkan Vall nodded. “I was pretty sure that was the situation,” he
said. “It may be that they will get in touch with me; if they don’t,
I’ll need your help in reaching them.”
“Why do you think the Lady Dallona will try to reach you?”
“She needs all the help she can get. She knows she can get plenty from
me. Why do you think I interrupted my search for her, and risked my
carnate existence, to fight those people over a matter of verbalisms
and political propaganda?” Verkan Vall went to the newscast visiplate
and snapped it on. “We’ll see if I’m getting results, yet.”
The plate lighted, and a handsome young man in a gold-laced green suit
was speaking out of it:
“... where he is heavily guarded by Assassins. However, in an
exclusive interview with representatives of this service, the Assassin
Hirzif, one of the two who seconded the men the Lord Virzal fought,
said that in his opinion all of the three were so outclassed as to
have had no chance whatever, and that he had already refused an offer
of ten thousand System Monetary Units to discarnate the Lord Virzal
for the Statisticalist Party. ‘When I want to discarnate,’ Hirzif the
Assassin said, ‘I’ll invite in my friends and do it properly; until I
do, I wouldn’t go up against the Lord Virzal of Verkan for ten million
S.M.U.’”
Verkan Vall snapped off the visiplate. “See what I mean?” he asked. “I
fought those politicians just for the advertising. If Dallona and
Dirzed are anywhere near a visiplate, they’ll know how to reach me.”
“Hirzif shouldn’t have talked about refusing that retainer,” Klarnood
frowned. “That isn’t good Assassin ethics. Why, yes, Lord Virzal; that
was cleverly planned. It ought to get results. But I wish you’d get
the Lady Dallona out of Darsh, and preferably off Terra, as soon as
you can. We’ve benefited by this, so far, but I shouldn’t like to see
things go much further. A real civil war could develop out of this
situation, and I don’t want that. Call on me for help; I’ll give you a
code word to use at Assassins’ Hall.”
* * * * *
A real civil war was developing even as Klarnood spoke; by mid-morning
of the next day, the fighting that had been partially suppressed by
the Constabulary had broken out anew. The Assassins employed by the
Solar Hotel—heavily re-enforced during the night—had fought a
pitched battle with Statisticalist partisans on the landing stage
above Verkan Vall’s suite, and now several Constabulary airboats were
patrolling around the building. The rule on Constabulary interference
seemed to be that while individuals had an unquestionable right to
shoot out their differences among themselves, any fighting likely to
endanger nonparticipants was taboo.
Just how successful in enforcing this rule the Constabulary were was
open to some doubt. Ever since arising, Verkan Vall had heard the
crash of small arms and the hammering of automatic weapons in other
parts of the towering city unit. There hadn’t been a civil war on the
Akor-Neb Sector for over five centuries, he knew, but then, Hadron
Dalla, Doctor of Psychic Science, and intertemporal trouble-carrier
extraordinary, had only been on this sector for a little under a year.
If anything, he was surprised that the explosion had taken so long to
occur.
One of the servants furnished to him by the hotel management
approached him in the drawing room, holding a four-inch-square wafer
of white plastic.
“Lord Virzal, there is a masked Assassin in the hallway who brought
this under Assassins’ Truce,” he said.
Verkan Vall took the wafer and pared off three of the four edges,
which showed black where they had been fused. Unfolding it, he found,
as he had expected, that the pyrographed message within was in the
alphabet and language of the First Paratime Level:
Vall, darling:
Am I glad you got here; this time I really _am_ in the
middle, but good! The Assassin, Dirzed, who brings this, is
in my service. You can trust him implicitly; he’s about the
only person in Darsh you can trust. He’ll bring you to where I
am.
Dalla
P.S. I hope you’re not still angry about that musician. I
told you, at the time, that he was just helping me with an
experiment in telepathy.
D.
Verkan Vall grinned at the postscript. That had been twenty years ago,
when he’d been eighty and she’d been seventy. He supposed she’d expect
him to take up his old relationship with her again. It probably
wouldn’t last any longer than it had, the other time; he recalled a
Fourth Level proverb about the leopard and his spots. It certainly
wouldn’t be boring, though.
“Tell the Assassin to come in,” he directed. Then he tossed the
message down on a table. Outside of himself, nobody in Darsh could
read it but the woman who had sent it; if, as he thought highly
probable, the Statisticalists had spies among the hotel staff, it
might serve to reduce some cryptanalyst to gibbering insanity.
The Assassin entered, drawing off a cowl-like mask. He was the man
whose arm Dalla had been holding in the visiplate picture; Verkan Vall
even recognized the extremely ornate pistol and knife on his belt.
“Dirzed the Assassin,” he named himself. “If you wish, we can
visiphone Assassins’ Hall for verification of my identity.”
“Lord Virzal of Verkan. And my Assassins, Marnik and Olirzon.” They
all hooked fingers and clapped shoulders with the newcomer. “That
won’t be needed,” Verkan Vall told Dirzed. “I know you from seeing you
with the Lady Dallona, on the visiplate; you’re ‘Dirzed, her faithful
Assassin.’”
Dirzed’s face, normally the color of a good walnut gunstock, turned
almost black. He used shockingly bad language.
“And that’s why I have to wear this abomination,” he finished,
displaying the mask. “The Lady Dallona and I can’t show our faces
anywhere; if we did, every Statisticalist and his six-year-old brat
would know us, and we’d be fighting off an army of them in five
minutes.”
“Where’s the Lady Dallona, now?”
“In hiding, Lord Virzal, at a private dwelling dome in the forest;
she’s most anxious to see you. I’m to take you to her, and I would
strongly advise that you bring your Assassins along. There are other
people at this dome, and they are not personally loyal to the Lady
Dallona. I’ve no reason to suspect them of secret enmity, but their
friendship is based entirely on political expediency.”
“And political expediency is subject to change without notice,” Verkan
Vall finished for him. “Have you an airboat?”
“On the landing stage below. Shall we go now, Lord Virzal?”
“Yes.” Verkan Vall made a two-handed gesture to his Assassins, as
though gripping a submachine-gun; they nodded, went into another room,
and returned carrying light automatic weapons in their hands and
pouches of spare drums slung over their shoulders. “And may I suggest,
Dirzed, that one of my Assassins drives the airboat? I want you on the
back seat with me, to explain the situation as we go.”
Dirzed’s teeth flashed white against his brown skin as he gave Verkan
Vall a quick smile.
“By all means, Lord Virzal; I would much rather be distrusted than to
find that my client’s friends were not discreet.”
There were a couple of hotel Assassins guarding Dirzed’s airboat, on
the landing stage. Marnik climbed in under the controls, with Olirzon
beside him; Verkan Vall and Dirzed entered the rear seat. Dirzed gave
Marnik the co-ordinate reference for their destination.
“Now, what sort of a place is this, where we’re going?” Verkan Vall
asked. “And who’s there whom we may or may not trust?”
“Well, it’s a dome house belonging to the family of Starpha; they own
a five-mile radius around it, oak and beech forest and underbrush,
stocked with deer and boar. A hunting lodge. Prince Jirzyn of Starpha,
Lord Girzon of Roxor, and a few other top-level Volitionalists, know
that the Lady Dallona’s hiding there. They’re keeping her out of sight
till after the election, for propaganda purposes. We’ve been hiding
there since immediately after the discarnation feast of the Lord
Garnon of Roxor.”
“What happened, after the feast?” Verkan Vall wanted to know.
“Well, you know how the Lady Dallona and Dr. Harnosh of Hosh had this
telepathic-sensitive there, in a trance and drugged with a
_zerfa_-derivative alkaloid the Lady Dallona had developed. I was Lord
Garnon’s Assassin; I discarnated him, myself. Why, I hadn’t even put
my pistol away before he was in control of this sensitive, in a room
five stories above the banquet hall; he began communicating at once.
We had visiplates to show us what was going on.
“Right away, Nirzav of Shonna, one of the Statisticalist leaders who
was a personal friend of Lord Garnon’s in spite of his politics,
renounced Statisticalism and went over to the Volitionalists, on the
strength of this communication. Prince Jirzyn, and Lord Girzon, the
new family-head of Roxor, decided that there would be trouble in the
next few days, so they advised the Lady Dallona to come to this
hunting lodge for safety. She and I came here in her airboat, directly
from the feast. A good thing we did, too; if we’d gone to her
apartment, we’d have walked in before that lethal gas had time to
clear.
“There are four Assassins of the family of Starpha, and six
menservants, and an upper-servant named Tarnod, the gamekeeper. The
Starpha Assassins and I have been keeping the rest under observation.
I left one of the Starpha Assassins guarding the Lady Dallona when I
came for you, under brotherly oath to protect her in my name till I
returned.”
The airboat was skimming rapidly above the treetops, toward the
northern part of the city.
“What’s known about that package bomb?” Verkan Vall asked. “Who sent
it?”
Dirzed shrugged. “The Statisticalists, of course. The wrapper was
stolen from the Reincarnation Research Institute; so was the case. The
Constabulary are working on it.” Dirzed shrugged again.
The dome, about a hundred and fifty feet in width and some fifty in
height, stood among the trees ahead. It was almost invisible from any
distance; the concrete dome was of mottled green and gray concrete,
trees grew so close as to brush it with their branches, and the little
pavilion on the flattened top was roofed with translucent green
plastic. As the airboat came in, a couple of men in Assassins’ garb
emerged from the pavilion to meet them.
“Marnik, stay at the controls,” Verkan Vall directed. “I’ll send
Olirzon up for you if I want you. If there’s any trouble, take off for
Assassins’ Hall and give the code word, then come back with twice as
many men as you think you’ll need.”
Dirzed raised his eyebrows over this. “I hadn’t known the
Assassin-President had given you a code word, Lord Virzal,” he
commented. “That doesn’t happen very often.”
“The Assassin-President has honored me with his friendship,” Verkan
Vall replied noncommittally, as he, Dirzed and Olirzon climbed out of
the airboat. Marnik was holding it an unobtrusive inch or so above the
flat top of the dome, away from the edge of the pavilion roof.