The Paradox Men Page 3

  “Some day,” he muttered, “I really shall sell you to Shey.”

  “You said that before.”

  “I want you to know that I mean it.”

  “Do it any time you like.”

  The curl came back to his lips. “I will. But not yet. All things in due time.”

  “Just as you say, Bern.”

  The televizor buzzed. Haze-Gaunt bent over, snapped the “Incoming” switch and was welcomed immediately by a nervous giggle. The screen, in the intimacy of the boudoir, had a manually operated button which required continuous fingertip pressure for a two-way image. Haze-Gaunt thumbed the button. The screen remained blank.

  “Ah,” said the caller’s voice, followed by some throat clearing. “Bern!” It was Shey.

  “Well, well. Count Shey.” Haze-Gaunt glanced at the woman. She had dropped the brush to her lap and straightened her dressing gown as he had reached for the switch. “Perhaps he’s calling to increase his already generous offer for you, Keiris. But I will remain firm.”

  Keiris said nothing. Shey, at the other end, was making some querulous croaks, more over the unexpected greeting, probably, than from embarrassment. She knew, however, the subtle point behind Haze-Gaunt’s remark. It served more than merely to drive another barb into her; Shey had been informed that she was present and, therefore, to be discreet.

  “Well, now, Shey,” Haze-Gaunt said abruptly. “What prompts your call?”

  “I had an unfortunate encounter during the night.”

  “Yes?”

  “With a Thief.” Shey paused for the dramatic effect of his words, but Keiris noticed that there wasn’t a flicker of a muscle in the face of the Imperial chancellor. His only reaction was a series of quick, rough strokes across the fur of the little animal on his shoulder. The tiny ape-thing shivered, wild-eyed, more frightened than ever.

  “My throat was lacerated,” Shey continued, when it became obvious that no comment was forthcoming. “My personal physician has been administering to me all morning.” There was a sigh. “Nothing serious, no interesting pain, just soreness. And, of course, some bandages which only serve to make me look ridiculous.” There was the reason, thought Keiris with secret amusement, for the blank screen—Shey’s vanity.

  The details of the attack and escape by the Thief came out swiftly. Plainly Shey’s throat had recovered enough not to hamper his smooth flow of words. He concluded his narration by asking the chancellor to be sure to meet him a little later in the Room of the Meganet Mind.

  “Very well,” agreed Haze-Gaunt and turned off the vizor.

  “Thieves,” the woman said and began to brush her hair again.

  “Criminals.”

  “The Society of Thieves,” mused Keiris, “is about the only moral force in America Imperial. How strange! We destroy our churches and feast our souls on robbers!”

  “Their victims rarely report a spiritual awakening,” returned Haze-Gaunt dryly.

  “Which is hardly unexpected,” she retorted. “Those few who wail over their trifling losses are blind to the salvation which is brought to the many.”

  “No matter how the Society uses its loot, remember, it is still made up of common thieves. Simple police cases.”

  “Simple police cases! Just yesterday the Minister of Subversive Activities made a public statement to the effect that if they weren’t obliterated within another decade—”

  “I know, I know,” Haze-Gaunt said impatiently, trying to cut her off.

  Keiris refused to be interrupted. “—if they weren’t obliterated within another decade the Thieves would destroy the present ‘beneficial’ balance between freeman and slave.”

  “He’s perfectly right.”

  “Perhaps. But tell me this: Did my husband really found the Society of Thieves?”

  “Your ex-husband?”

  “Let’s not quibble. You know who I mean.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, “I know who you mean.” For a fleeting moment his face, though completely immobile, seemed transformed into something hideous.

  The man was silent for a long time. He said finally, “That’s quite a story. Most of it you know as well as I.”

  “Perhaps I know less about it than you think. I know that you and he were bitter enemies as students at the Imperial University, that you thought he deliberately tried to excel you and defeat you in campus competitions. After graduation everyone seemed to think his researches were a shade more brilliant than yours. Somewhere along about then there was something about a duel, wasn’t there?”

  It had always struck Keiris a little odd that dueling had come back, complete with deadly weapons and a rigid etiquette, to a civilization so coldly scientific as the present one. Of course, it had been rationalized by many. The official attitude was one of resignation; there were laws against it, naturally, but what could the government do when the people themselves persisted in the ridiculous practice? Underneath that legal attitude, however, Keiris knew that it was secretly encouraged. She had heard many officials openly boast of their duels and explain smugly that it was instilling a healthy, vigorous spirit into the aristocracy. The age of chivalry, they maintained, had returned. Yet beneath it all, rarely voiced by anyone, was the feeling that dueling was necessary for the preservation of the state. The Society of Thieves had brought back the sword as a basic instrument for survival—the last defense of the despots.

  Her question had not been answered, so she persisted, “You challenged him to a duel, didn’t you? And then you disappeared for a few months.”

  “I fired first—and missed,” said Haze-Gaunt shortly. “Muir, with his characteristic insufferable magnanimity, fired into the air. The I.P.’s were watching and we were arrested. Muir was released on probation. I was condemned and sold to a great orchard combine.

  “An underground hydroponic orchard, my dear Keiris, is not the country idyll of the nineteenth century. I didn’t see the sun for nearly a year. With thousands of tons of apples growing around me I was fed garbage a rat wouldn’t touch. The few of my companion slaves who tried to steal fruit were detected and lashed to death. I was careful. My hatred sustained me. I could wait.”

  “Wait? For what?”

  “Escape. We took turns, laid the plans carefully and were frequently successful. But, on the day before my turn was due, I was bought—and freed.”

  “How fortunate. By whom?”

  “By ‘a party unknown’ the certificate said. But it could only have been Muir. He had been scheming, borrowing, and saving for months to fling this final gesture of contemptuous pity in my face.”

  The little ape-creature sensed the icy savageness in the man’s voice and ran fearfully down his jacket sleeve to the back of his hand. Haze-Gaunt stroked his pet with a curled index finger.

  The only sound in the room was the soft luxurious meeting of brush and black hair as Keiris continued her silent task. She marveled at the insane bitterness evoked by a simple act of humanity.

  Haze-Gaunt stated, “It was not to be borne. I then decided to devote the remainder of my life to the destruction of Kennicot Muir. I could have hired an assassin, but I wanted to kill him myself. In the meantime I entered politics and advanced quickly. I knew how to use people. My year underground taught me that fear gets results.

  “But even in my new career I could not escape Muir. The day I was appointed Secretary of War, Muir landed on Mercury.”

  “Surely,” Keiris said, carefully filtering the sarcasm out of her words, “you don’t accuse him of deliberately planning the coincidence?”

  “What does it matter how it happened? The point is, it did happen. And such things continued to happen. A few years later, on the eve of the elections that were to make me chancellor of America Imperial, Muir returned from his trip to the sun.”

  “That was certainly an exciting time for the world.”

  “It was an exciting time for Muir, too. As if the trip alone wasn’t enough to stir the populace, he announced an important discover
y. He had found a way to beat the tremendous solar gravity by the continuous synthesis of solar matter into a remarkable fission fuel via an anti-grav mechanism. Again he was the toast of imperial society—and my greatest political triumph was ignored.”

  Keiris did not marvel at the bitterness in these words; she could too easily understand the resentment Haze-Gaunt must have felt at that time, was feeling even now. He had become a successful politician at the precise moment Muir had become a public hero. The contrast had not been flattering.

  “But,” he continued, his eyes narrowing, “my patience was finally rewarded. It was almost exactly ten years ago. Muir finally had the temerity to differ with me on a strictly political matter, and I knew then that I must kill him quickly or be eclipsed by him forever.”

  “You mean, have him—” She spoke the word without flinching. “—killed.”

  “No. I myself, personally, had to do it.”

  “Certainly not by dueling?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “I didn’t know Kim ever went in for politics,” murmured Keiris.

  “He didn’t view it as a political question.”

  “What was the argument?”

  “Just this: After establishing the solar stations Muir insisted that America Imperial follow his own policy in the use of muirium.”

  “And,” Keiris continued to probe, “just what exactly was that policy?”

  “He wanted production to be used to regenerate the general world standard of living and to free the slaves, whereas I, Chancellor of America Imperial, maintained that the material was needed for the defense of the Imperium. I ordered him to return to Earth and to report to me at the chancellory. We were alone in my inner office.”

  “Kim was unarmed, of course?”

  “Of course. And when I told him that he was an enemy of the state, and that it was my duty to shoot him, he laughed.”

  “And so you shot him.”

  “Through the heart. He fell. I left the room to order his body removed. When I returned with a house-slave he—or his corpse—had vanished. Had a confederate carried him away? Had I really killed him? Who knows? Anyway the thefts began the next day.”

  “He was the first Thief?”

  “We don’t really know, of course. All we know is that all Thieves seemed invulnerable to police bullets. Was Muir wearing the same type of protective screen when I shot him? I don’t suppose I’ll ever know.”

  “Just what is the screen? Kim never discussed it with me.”

  “There again we don’t know. The few Thieves we’ve taken alive don’t know, either. Under Shey’s persuasion they indicated that it was a velocity-response field based electrically on their individual encephalographic patterns, and was maintained by their cerebral waves. What it really does is spread the bullet impact over a wide area. It converts the momentum of the bullet into the identical momentum of a foam rubber cushion.”

  “But the police have actually killed screen-protected Thieves, haven’t they?”

  “True. We have semiportable Kades rifles that fire short-range heat beams. And then, of course, plain artillery with atomic explosive shells; the screen remains intact but the Thief dies rather quickly of internal injuries. But you’re fully acquainted with the main remedy.”

  “The sword.”

  “Precisely. Since the screen resistance is proportional to the velocity of the missile, it offers no protection against the comparatively slow-moving things, such as the rapier, the hurled knife or even a club. And all this talk of rapiers reminds me that I have business with the Minister of Police before meeting Shey. You will come with me and we’ll watch Thurmond at rapier practice for a few minutes.”

  “I didn’t know your vaunted Minister of Police required practice. Isn’t he the best blade in the Imperium?”

  “The very best. And practice will keep him that way.”

  “Just one more question, Bern. As an ex-slave I should think you’d favor the abolition of slavery rather than its extension.”

  He replied sardonically, “Those who struggle mightily against enslavement can best savor their success by enslaving others. Read your history.”

  The tarsier stared fearfully at her from the shelter of Haze-Gaunt’s shoulder. She could see the faces of man and beast together. There was something… As she studied the animal, she thought, In nightmares, I know you. You fascinate, you horrify. Yet you seem so harmless. Aloud she said, “Wait up, I’m coming.”

  3

  The Mind

  AN OBSEQUIOUS HOUSE-SLAVE in the red-and-gray livery of the Police Minister led them down the arched corridor to the fencing rooms. At the threshold of the chamber the slave bowed again and left them. Haze-Gaunt indicated chairs and they seated themselves unobtrusively.

  Thurmond noted their arrival from the center of the gym, nodded briefly and immediately resumed a quiet conversation with his fencing opponent.

  Keiris ran her eyes in grudging admiration over the Police Minister’s steel-chiseled face and gorgeously muscled torso, clad lightly in a silken jacket and flowing trunks. A metallic indomitable voice floated to her.

  “Do you understand the terms?”

  The opponent replied thickly, “Yes, excellency.” His face was covered with perspiration, and his eyes were wide and glazed.

  “Remember then that if you are still alive after sixty seconds you will have your freedom. I paid nearly forty thousand unitas for you and I expect a good return for my money. Do your best.”

  “I shall, excellency.”

  Keiris turned to Haze-Gaunt sitting stiffly in the chair next to her, his arms folded across his chest. “Tell me, Bern, frankly: Doesn’t it strike you that dueling nowadays is just a perverted sport? Hasn’t the honor in it been lost?” She kept her voice low, away from the ears of the others.

  He searched her with his hard, intelligent eyes to see if her questioning was serious. He found that it was; this was no attempt to irritate him.

  “Times have changed things,” he said. He decided to answer her flatly. “Yes, the traditions have been for the most part lost. The primary motivation is no longer one of ‘cowardice and courage.’”

  “Then it has degenerated into a mere barbaric rite.”

  “If it has, you can thank the Thieves for that.”

  “But was it ever more than that?”

  “It once commanded great respect.” He watched Thurmond and his opponent choosing their weapons. “Although dueling prevailed in antiquity, the modern private duel grew out of the judicial duel. In France in the sixteenth century it became very common after the famous challenge of Francis the First to his rival Charles the Fifth. After that every Frenchman seemed to think that he was called upon to use his sword in defending his honor against the slightest imputation.”

  “That was Europe, though,” Keiris insisted, “in the old days. This is America.”

  Haze-Gaunt continued to watch the two men preparing for their combat. He seemed to forget the woman beside him, his reply sounding more like a recital for his own benefit. “In no part of the world was dueling so earnestly engaged in as in America. Combats were held under all sorts of conditions, with every conceivable variety of weapon. And most of them were fatal. That’s what brought about laws which stamped it out until the establishment of the Imperium.” He turned to look at her. “It’s not remarkable that it has been revived.”

  “But now it has lost all moral respectability,” she said. “It’s just an invitation to legalized murder.”

  “We have laws,” he replied. “No one is forced to duel.”

  “Like that poor fellow,” said Keiris, pointing toward the center of the gym, and her black eyes flashed.

  “Like him.” Haze-Gaunt nodded soberly. “Now be quiet. They are ready to begin.”

  “En garde!”

  Thrust, parry, feint, thrust, parry…

  The tempo increased rapidly.

  Thurmond’s blade had the enchanting delicacy of an instrument that was p
art of its wielder. The man was incredibly light on his feet, balancing effortlessly on tiptoe—an extraordinary stance in a fencer—while his bronzed body rippled and flashed, itself a rapier, in the soft light of the chamber. His eyes were heavylidded, his face an expressionless mask. If he was breathing, Keiris could not detect it.

  She transferred her study to the slave fencer and noted that the man had cast aside his despair and was defending himself with savage precision. So far his new owner had not scratched him. Perhaps in free life he really had been a dangerous duelist. Then a tiny trickle of red appeared magically on his left chest. And then one on his right chest.

  Keiris held her breath and tensed her fists. Thurmond was touching each of the six sections into which a fencer’s body is arbitrarily divided—a demonstration that he could kill the other at will.

  The doomed man’s jaw dropped, and his efforts passed from science to frenzy. When the sixth cut appeared on his lower left abdomen he screamed and sprang bodily at his tormentor.

  He was dead before his disarmed blade clattered to the floor.

  A gong sounded, indicating that the minute was up.

  Haze-Gaunt, erstwhile pensive and silent, now arose and clapped his hands twice. “Bravo, Thurmond. Nice thrust. If you’re free I’d like you to accompany me.”

  Thurmond handed his reddened blade to a house-slave and bowed over the corpse.

  Within the transparent plastic dome the man sat trance-like. His face was partly obscured from Keiris’s view by a cone-shaped metal thing that hung from the globe’s ceiling and that was fitted at its lower extremity with two viewing lenses. The man was staring fixedly into the lenses.

  His head was large, even for the large body that bore it. His face was a repulsive mass of red scar tissue, devoid of definable features. His hairless hands were similarly scarred and malformed.

  Keiris shifted uneasily in her seat in the semicircle of spectators: On her left was Thurmond, silent, imperturbable. On her right Haze-Gaunt sat immobile in his chair, arms crossed over his chest. It was clear that he was growing impatient. Beyond him was Shey, and beyond Shey was a man she recognized as Gaines, Undersecretary for Space.