White Stars

10. The Duel

The remains of the Rocky Mountains were still smouldering in the background as, from a safe distance, the crowd watched the ship containing the troopers rise into the air. Behind the crowd, feeling a little upset by the lack of attention, the Duke of Queens stood, sword in hand, awaiting his antagonist. The Duke was early. He had no interest in these other events, which he regarded as an unwelcome interruption, threatening to diffuse the drama of his duel with Lord Shark the Unknown; he thought that Sergeant Martinez and his men had behaved rather badly. Certainly, at any other time, he would have been as diverted by their actions as anyone, but, as it was, they had confused the presentation and robbed it of some of its tension.

At last the duke noticed that heads were beginning to turn in his direction, and he heard someone call:

"The Iron Orchid — Lord Shark — they emerge! They are saved!"

There came a chorus of self-conscious exultation.

The ranks parted; now the Iron Orchid, her slender fingers bare of rings, walked with a self-satisfied air beside Lord Shark the Unknown, stiff, sworded and stern.

They confronted each other over a narrow fissure in the earth. The Duke of Queens bowed. Lord Shark the Unknown, after a second's hesitation, bowed.

The Iron Orchid seemed reconciled. She took a step back. "May the best man win!" she said.

"My lord." The duke presented his sword. "To the death!"

Silently, Lord Shark the Unknown replied to the courtesy.

"En tou rage, mon coeur!" The Duke of Queens adopted the traditional stance, balancing on the balls of his feet, his body poised, one hand upon his hip, ready for the lunge. Lord Shark's body fell into the same position as precisely as that of one of his own automata.

The crowd moved forward, but kept its distance.

Lord Shark lunged. The Duke of Queens parried, at the same time leaning back to avoid the point of the blade. Lord Shark continued his forward movement, crossing the fissure, lunged again, was parried again. This time the Duke of Queens lunged and was parried. For a short while it was possible for the spectators to follow the stylized movements of the duellists, but gradually, as the combatants familiarized themselves with each other's method of fighting, the speed increased, until it was often impossible to see the thin blades, save for a gleaming blur as they met, parted, and met again.

Back and forth across the dry, dancing dust of that plain the two men moved, the duke's handsome, heavy features registering every escape, every minor victory, while the immobile mask of Lord Shark the Unknown gave no indication of how that strange, bleak recluse felt when his shoulder was grazed by the duke's blade, or when he came within a fraction of an inch of skewering his opponent's rapidly beating heart.

At first some of the crowd would applaud a near-miss or gasp as one of the duellists turned his body aside from a lunge which seemed unerring; soon, however, they fell silent, realizing that they must feel some of the tension the ancients had felt when they attended such games.

The duke, refusing in homage to those same ancestors to allow himself any energy boosts, understood that he was tiring much more than he had tired during his tuition, but he understood, also, that Lord Shark the Unknown had patterned his automata entirely after himself, for Lord Shark fought in exactly the same manner as had his mechanical servant, and this made the Duke of Queens more hopeful. Dimly he became aware of the implications of his bargain with Lord Shark: to die and never to be resurrected, to forego the rich enjoyment of life, to become unconscious forever. His attention wavered as these thoughts crept into his mind, he parried a lunge a little too late. He felt the sharp steel slide into his body. He knew pain. He gasped. Lord Shark the Unknown stepped back as the Duke of Queens staggered.

Lord Shark was expectant, and the duke realized that he had forgotten to acknowledge the wound.

"Toujours gai, mon coeur!" He wondered if he were dying, but no, the pain faded and became an unpleasant ache. He was still able to continue. He drew himself upright, conscious of the Iron Orchid's high-pitched voice in the background.

"En tou rage!" he warned, and lunged before he had properly regained his balance, falling sideways against Lord Shark's sword, but able to step back in time, recall his training and position himself properly so that when Lord Shark lunged again, he parried the stroke, returned it, parried again and returned again.

The Duke of Queens wondered at the temperature changes in his body. He had felt uncomfortably warm and now he felt a chill throughout, from head to toe, with only his wound glowing hot, but no longer very painful.

And Lord Shark the Unknown pushed past the duke's defence and the point of his sword gouged flesh from the duke's left arm, just below the shoulder.

"Oh!" cried the duke, and then, "Toujours gai!"

In grim silence, Lord Shark the Unknown gave him a few moments in which to recover.

The Duke of Queens was surprised at his own reaction now, for he quickly resumed his stance, coolly gave his warning, and found that a new emotion directed him. He believed that the emotion must be "fear".

And his lunges became more precise, his parries swifter, firmer, so that Lord Shark the Unknown lost balance time after time and was hard-pressed to regain it. It seemed to some of those who watched that Lord Shark was nonplussed by this new, cold attack. He began to lose ground, backing further and further away under the momentum of the duke's new-found energy.

And then the Duke of Queens, unthinking, merely a duellist, thrust once and struck Lord Shark the Unknown in the heart.

Although he must have been quite dead, Lord Shark stood erect for a little while, gradually lowering his sword and then falling, as stiff in death as he had been in life, onto the hard earth; his blood flooded from him, giving nourishment to the dust.

The Duke of Queens was astonished by what he had accomplished. Even as the Iron Orchid and his other friends came slowly towards him, he found that he was shaking.

The duke dropped his blade. His natural reaction, at this time, would have been to make immediate arrangements for Lord Shark's resurrection, but Lord Shark had been firm, remorseless in his affirmation that if death came to him he must remain dead through the rest of Time. The duke wondered at the thoughts and feelings, all unfamiliar, which filled him.

He could not understand why the Iron Orchid smiled and kissed him and congratulated him, why My Lady Charlotina babbled of the excitement he had provided, why Bishop Castle and his old acquaintance Captain Oliphaunt clapped him on the back and reminded him of his wounds.

"You are a Hero, darling duke!" cried the Everlasting Concubine. "You must let me nurse you back to health!"

"A fine display, glamorous Lord of Queens!" heartily praised the captain. "Not since 'Cannibals' has there been such entertainment!"

"Indeed, the fashion begins already! Look!" Bishop Castle displayed a long and jewelled blade.

The Duke of Queens groaned and fell to his knees. "I have killed Lord Shark," he said. A tear appeared on his cheek.

In the reproduction of what had been either a space- or air-ship, part of the collection long since abandoned by the Duke of Queens, Sergeant Martinez and his men peered through portholes at the distant ground. The ship had ceased to rise but now was borne by the currents of the wind. No response came from the engines; propellers did not turn, rockets did not fire — even the little sails rigged along the upper hull would not unfurl when Sergeant Martinez sent a reluctant Denereaz out to climb the ladder which clung to the surface of what was either a gas bag or a fuel tank.

"We have been suckered," announced Sergeant Martinez, after some thought. "This is not a time machine."

"Not so far," agreed Trooper Gan Hok, helping himself to exotic food paste from a cabinet. The ship was well stocked with provisions, with alcohol and dope.

"We could be up here forever," said Sergeant Martinez.

"Well, for a good while," agreed Trooper Smith. "After all, Sarge, what goes up must, eventually, come down — if we're still in this planet's gravity field, that is. Which we are."

Only Trooper Kevin O'Dwyer appeared to have accepted the situation with equanimity. He lay on a divan of golden plush while the stolen automaton brought him the finest food from the cabinets.

"And what I'd like to know, O'Dwyer, is why that damn robot'll only respond to your commands," said Sergeant Martinez darkly.

"Maybe it respects me, Sarge?"

Without much conviction, Sergeant Martinez said: "You ought to be disciplined for insubordination, O'Dwyer. You seem to be enjoying all this."

"We ought to make the best of it, that's all," said O'Dwyer. "Do you think there's any way of getting in touch with the surface? We could ask them to send up some girls."

"Be careful, O'Dwyer." Sergeant Martinez lay back on his own couch and closed his eyes, taking a strong pull on his cigar. "That sounds like fraternization to me. Don't forget that those people have to be regarded as alien belligerents."

"Sorry, Sarge. Robot, bring me another drink of that green stuff, will you?"

The automaton seemed to hesitate.

"Hurry it up," said O'Dwyer.

Returning with the drink, the automaton handed it to O'Dwyer and then hissed through its mask. "What purpose is there any longer to this deception, O'Dwyer?"

O'Dwyer rose and took the robot by the arm, leading it from the main passenger lounge into the control chamber, now unoccupied. "You must realize, Lord Shark, that if they realize I made a mistake and brought you up here instead of the robot, they'll use you as a bargaining counter."

"Should I care?"

"That's for you to decide."

"Your logic in substituting one of my automata for me and sending it out with the Iron Orchid to fight the Duke of Queens is still a mystery to me."

"Well, it's pretty simple to explain, Sharko. The duke was used to fighting robots — so I gave him a sporting chance. Also, when it's discovered it's a robot, and he's dead, they'll be able to bring him back to life — 'cause the rules will have been broken. Get it? If the robot's been put out of action, so what? Yeah?"

"Why should you have bothered to interfere?"

"I like the guy. I didn't want to see him killed. Besides, it was a favour to the Iron Orchid, too — and she looks like a lady who likes to return a favour. We worked it out between us."

"I heard you. Releasing me from my bonds when it was too late for me to return, then suggesting to your comrades that I was an automaton. Well, I shall tell them that you have deceived them."

"Go ahead. I'll deny it."

Lord Shark the Unknown walked to the porthole, studying the peculiar purple clouds which someone had created in this part of the sky.

"All my life I have been unable to see the point of human activity," he said. "I have found every experience further proof of the foolishness of my fellows, of the absolute uselessness of existence. I thought that no expression of that stupidity could bewilder me again. Now I must admit that my assumptions, my opinions, my most profound beliefs seem to dissipate and leave me as confused as I was when I first came into this tired and decadent universe. You are an alien here yourself. Why should you help the Duke of Queens?"

"I told you. I like him. He doesn't know when to come in out of the rain. I fixed things so nobody lost. Is that bad?"

"You did all that, including risking the disapproval of your fellows, out of an emotion of — what — affection? — for that buffoon?"

"Call it enlightened self-interest. The fact is that the whole thing's defused. I didn't think we'd get off this planet, or out of this age, and I'm glad we haven't. I like it here. But Sergeant Martinez had to make the attempt, and I had to go along with him, to keep him happy. Don't worry, we'll soon be on-planet again."

He gave Lord Shark the Unknown a friendly slap on the back. "All honour satisfied, eh?"

And Lord Shark laughed.