Code Duello

Aftermath

“Luck!” Helen snarled at Jerry Rhodes.

“Why, sure,” Jerry said. “Who ever heard of such luck?”

“Luck!” she all but screamed. “It took me half the night to get into that damned room where they had those guns stashed in that supposedly locked box. It must have taken me an hour to pick that lock. And what did I find? They’d got there first and extracted the firing pin from your Sten gun. It took me another hour to figure out how to field strip those confounded primitive shooters, and switch matters around so it was his firing pin that was missing, and the necessary parts of my toy water pistol installed in yours, loaded with Chartreuse. And you call it luck!”

“Well,” Jerry said placatingly. “That’s what I mean. It sure was lucky for me you did all that.”

“Oh, shut up!” she snarled. She turned back to where Dorn Horsten had his massive body hunched over the Section G communicator. The faces of both Sid Jakes and Lee Chang Chu were in the screen, both of them a little on the wide-eyed side.

Horsten was summing it up.

“… and obviously a farce is what the First Signore and his gang could stand the least, especially on the eve of this pseudo-election of theirs. Nothing will come of it this time, perhaps, but by the next election, if not sooner, Cesare Marconi and his people will have their chance.”

“What people?” Sid Jakes demanded. “I thought you said he was the only Engelist on the whole planet.”

“Well,” Dorn Horsten explained plausibly, that’s why we’re going to have to stay on for awhile. We were sent to end the Engelist movement on this planet. But, actually, we’re going to have to get it underway. A real underground movement, that is.”

Lee Chang Chu murmured, “Talk about Special Talent!”

They sat around, still later, in the living room of the penthouse suite of the First Signore and worked out their situation, over drinks.

They were, it was decided, safe for the immediate future. Antonio d’Arrezzo and his group wouldn’t dare molest them, right at present. The full shockwaves of the disaster to the dignity of the First Signore would have to subside before he could so much as show his face. The ludicrous qualities of a regime, a political system, so dependent upon the antique code of the duelist were obviously too prominent in the minds of every thinking person on the planet, right now.

They batted it back and forth and made tentative plans for their activities in support of Cesare Marconi and his organization in embryo.

After a half hour of this, Helen said abruptly, “And now I think it’s time for a little game of Truth and Consequences.”

“What’re you talking about?” Jerry said. “Besides, that game’s called Truth or Consequences.”

“That’s what you think, lover,” Helen said. “You see these drinks I served you? I put the last of my supply of Scop in them.”

Zorro began to come to his feet, his face dark.

But it was then they all noticed that Helen had a very small gun in her chubby right hand and that her eyes were dangerous.

They were—Zorro Juarez, Jerry Rhodes, Dorn Horsten—familiar enough with the character of the diminutive Helen, so that when she snapped, “Subside, lovers,” they subsided and awaited developments.

It was to the big scientist that she turned.

“All right,” she said. “Listen, you lummox. In this Section G masquerade we play, do you picture yourself as sort of a romantic, dashing D’Artagnan, Three Musketeers type?”

He tried to hold his teeth firmly clamped. An absolute flare of red started up from his collar, but the word came out.

“Yes.”

She laughed sneeringly at him. “You overgrown romantic elephant.”

Her eyes went to Jerry. “All right, that was just a test to see if the Scop was working. Now then, this luck of yours. How does it happen? How do you account for it?”

His expression was blank, beyond the effects of the drug. Before he could answer, however, she had snapped, “Keep your hand away from that tranca of yours, Zorro.” She looked back at Jerry. “Why?” Why—why, it’s just luck.”

She nodded satisfaction. “I’m glad you didn’t know that you’ve been a parasite on your fellow man by utilizing something more than luck. At least, you’re basically honest.”

The effects of the drug weren’t such as to attack lucidity. Horsten growled, “What does that mean?”

Helen snorted. “You’re supposed to be the double-dome of the team. Haven’t you figured it out? Our boy, here, evidently as all the psi abilities in the book working for him subconsciously. Everything from telekinesis, when he’s flipping that coin of his, or lousing-up even rigged roulette wheels, to telepathy and clairvoyance. For all I know, he even exercises a bit of precognition.” She snorted again. “All subconscious, evidently. But from what little I know about it, that’s the way psi has often manifested itself down through the ages. Go back far enough and you’ll find psi adepts thinking themselves witches, or mediums, or some such.”

But now the gun was full on the chest of Zorro Juarez.

“And now we get to the real point. Keep your hands away from that tranca, lover. It’s your turn. Why did you join Section G?”

His hands, both on the table top, clinched until fingernails dug into palms. A trickle of sweat found its way down the side of his cheek from the sideburn of his hair.

The gun remained steady and Helen said, her voice empty and cold, “Answer.”

To… to… learn… more… about… the Dawnworlds.”

“Why did you want to learn more about the Dawn-worlds?”

His breath was short, desperate. “I… I belong… to a syndicate… that plans to… locate… the Dawnworlds… and secure some… of their… advanced devices.” The shoulders of the man had slumped in defeat.

“Then all of this gobbledygoolc you’ve been giving us about local interest in the subject was simply an effort to pry more information from us, and from Sid Jakes?”

“Yes.”

The diminutive agent looked at him in disgust “Lover, you’re first going to give us all the dope you possess on this syndicate of yours. Undoubtedly, they’re the ones that stole Ronny Bronston’s starchart, after you tipped them off to its existence. Sid and Lee Chang can deal with them. And then you’re going to get a dose of memory-wash so strong you’ll not only forget everything you know about Section G, you’ll have to go back to grammar school.”