Ali nodded. "Now, there are further refinements. To hit someone means something different from permitting oneself to be hit, if you see what I mean. Hitting someone means you have a legitimate grief. To permit oneself to be hit is a little more mysterious; it can mean that the challenger has been forced into the duel."
Dane nodded slowly, faint hope entering his tired brain for the first time since that dreadful trip to the mail drop. "I see, and there’s also the sheathed blade and the bare blade, which I do remember reading."
"Right," Ali said. "Hits with bared blade mean to the death, no questions asked."
"I thought all duels were to the death," Rip said.
"Well, technically they are," Ali said. "Here’s where the Shver get subtle. Let’s suppose that someone is forced by the clan to challenge someone else to a duel, someone the individual has no quarrel with. He lets the person know in much the manner that Dane received his challenge, and this guides the combatants in their choice of weapons. If the fight is declared satisfactory to the challenger, whether there’s a death or not, then the insult can be declared dead, and they leave the best of friends."
Rip sighed. "Except these guys can choose their own weapons before the duel. At least that’s what Dane told me while we were coming back up here. Though blasters and fire weapons that could breach the habitat walls are forbidden, anything else goes, right?"
"Right," Ali said, grinning.
"Then that oversized elephant can show up with a twelve-foot-long
force blade big enough to take on an entire Patrol platoon if he wants, and Dane can’t do a thing about it—and the only weapons we have to choose from are sleeprods and. and. Frank’s ultrasonic feedle pipe!"
Ali had begun to laugh, but he stopped, a strange look in his eyes.
No one spoke for a time. When the silence began to seem protracted the captain’s quiet voice was heard. "Ali?"
"I have to admit, I had everything figured out except what kind of weapon Dane might take," Ali admitted. "But I think. I have it."
"We can’t get our hands on any illegal weapons now," Steen said, his impatience making him sarcastic. "The duel is in less than an hour!"
"Won’t have to, if I’m right," Ali said.
Van Ryke frowned. "This isn’t a game, my young friend," he murmured. "Dane has to go out there and face whatever weapon this fellow brings. He’ll be in heavy grav against someone who is bigger, stronger, and masses three times what he does, and has been trained in fighting since birth. I’d say he’s facing a terrible risk."
"He faces that risk no matter what," Ali said. "We’ve been forced into that much of a situation. But think of this: that Shver is not a Golm, has never been near us before. He caused the duel in the most neutral manner he could—"
"He has to face Dane armed with something deadly, or he’s declared a coward and an outcast," Rip said.
Ali nodded. "Right. So Dane has a choice. Either he’s more deadly, or." He looked up. "Steen—you and Dane and I need to have a talk."
A piercing whistle on five distinct notes echoed through the dim tunnels of the Spin Axis.
The sound had become very familiar to Rael Cofort. She looked over at Jasper Weeks, who was already packing up their gear.
Rael’s heart thumped warningly but her hands stayed still as she used her thin immune-probe to restimulate the ill-healed muscle tissue of the
man lying against the wall before her.
As soon as she was done Jasper dropped a healpak over the reddened flesh, now responding again to the memory, deep in bone and sinew, of the original injury. Healing would go to completion. The patient twisted slightly and pushed off with his feet; moments later he was gone, diving through a narrow crack in an old lock.
"Come! Come!" Tooe shrilled, grabbing the gear from Jasper’s hands.
They could hear the sounds of the Monitors clearly now; Rael’s heart was pounding as she rebounded after Tooe, shooting through a maze of abandoned air ducts in which ghostly fronds of ancient dust fluttered lazily.
When they were safely away, Jasper veered close to Rael. "Fifth one," he muttered. "I wish I knew what was going on."
"What’s going on is easy," Rael replied as they reached a dim chamber full of immense, flaccid sacks on the walls, dim and bulky in the reddish light—Rael was irresistibly reminded of enormous fungus. In this case, she thought, fungus marked with the sigil of chemhazard. Whatever had leaked out of them was long dissipated.
Then they dived down into what seemed to be a dark well. Blackness closed around them and Rael flew along with her hands out. They bumped into a corner, another, and then saw light—and her orientation snapped into a new alignment: now she was ascending toward the light. "The Monitors are out in full force," she continued, now that she could see Jasper. "What we don’t know is why."
They stopped at a nexus obviously well known to Tooe, and waited until, ever so faintly, a signal was heard. Tooe whistled back. After a long space of two or three mintues another whistle came, equally faint.
Rael did not know the meaning of these particular signals, but that one five-note sequence would probably feature in nightmares to come, she thought grimly as once again they started off. Flee! Monitors coming!
The signals being sent back and forth now were most likely the regroup points. Tooe led them on a wild flight through the endless ducts and abandoned chambers; Rael knew she could have been led through the
same area again and again and not notice, the whole was so alien to her.
But at last they stopped, this time in a long, thin room with what looked like a threshing machine at one end. Rael looked at it, and at the bare walls leading to it, and was glad that no one could turn on the grav and force them into it.
Then she forgot it as, once again, patients of all ages and races began drifting in. She and Jasper unpacked their kit with practiced speed, and with no words wasted motioned the first person to come forward.
Before, they had gotten well through at least a few patients before the alarm came. This time, though, Rael was just about to activate her scanner when the first two high notes sounded, faint and far off, but no less frightening for that: all around them people stiffened, alert, then bounced off the nearest surface and zoomed away through an opening.
The alarm came again, clearer, now the room was empty; it was a five-note series, but different.
Tooe turned glowing yellow eyes to Rael. "Deathguard!" Her voice was shrill with strain. She whirled about, then froze again, her crest flat and quivering.
Another high note sounded, so high Rael knew what she had suspected before, that the Spinner people communicated in the ultrasonic range.
"Truce," Tooe said. "Conference—"
"What does that mean?" Rael asked, as Jasper once again began packing the gear.
"Tooe not know, me. All those Monitors—Deathguard blame us, maybe. Monitors look for us, Monitors look for them, who knows? Maybe they know."
"Do we have to go to this conference?"
Tooe’s pupils went wide and black. "Oh yes." She nodded vigorously enough to make herself bob gently against the wall at her back. "Or they come to us."
Rael felt the cold grip of fear at the back of her neck. Jasper was looking at her, plainly waiting for her to decide.
"Let’s go," was all she could think of to say.
A long, crazy journey later, Rael Cofort floated, hands loose at her sides, behind Tooe and Momo. Jasper was just above her, one hand hovering near the sleeprod at his belt, though his pale face was mild and polite as always.
The neutral place was brightly lit and bare, affording nowhere to hide for those with treachery in mind. The air was warm and redolent of a faint metallic tang, and Rael felt more than heard a deep, ambient hum.