Fritz Kapock separated himself from the group around Arran Handully and began to walk toward where Hop and Jazz were sitting.
"You see," Jazz said, "they're persistent. They won't settle for one attempt."
"What?" Hop asked. "Not Kapock. He's —" but then Hop remembered the gossip sheet " — a damned good swordsman and has had more than a few formal duels. None to the death, but Jazz, be careful, you've got to keep yourself safe. The Empire needs you."
"Not as much as you need your twenty percent, my dear friend," Jason answered.
Fritz Kapock stopped about three meters away, and began talking loudly with a group that had gathered there. Jazz didn't take his eyes off Kapock. Hop was worried. "Jazz, you know a hell of a lot more than you've been telling me."
"Of course," Jazz said, patting Hop's wrist. "That's why you're a manager and I'm a starpilot."
Kapock's voice came loudly to them: "Only a bastard and a coward would make an accusation like that — especially at her own party."
People nearby began to edge nearer. Actresses frantically fiddled with their loop recorders, trying to get them to warm up again, though they knew it was hopeless for a few minutes more — suppressors always ruined recording for exactly ten minutes, no more, no less.
"Jazz, he's trying to provoke you," Hop said.
"Perhaps I shall let him succeed," Jazz answered, and Hop resigned himself to watching his meal ticket get killed on the end of Fritz Kapock's sword. It went like clockwork.
"That boor isn't fit company for civilized persons," said Fritz.
"Hold my hat," said Jazz.
"They should never allow these common soldiers in refined company," said Fritz Kapock.
"Fritz Kapock, I believe?" said Jazz.
"And you're the man who ruined our hostess's evening, aren't you?" Fritz snarled.
"I assume you were hoping I would overhear your insults."
"It's hardly my affair what you do and don't hear."
A woman whooped with glee as her loop recorder came on. Another breathed a sigh of relief.
"I heard, I take due note, and I assume you'll want choice of weapons."
Hop moaned. Jason hadn't even been clever. Hadn't even tried to get Kapock to make the challenge so that the starpilot would get the chance to choose peashooters or tennis or some other harmless duel weapon.
"Foils are effeminate," Kapock said. "And sabers are like meat axes. Rapier? Three edged?"
"Which, just by coincidence, you no doubt have nearby," Jason said. "I'll agree to that."
A servant went for the weapons, and Hop angrily volunteered to be Jason's second. "You irresponsible bastard," Hop muttered as he helped Jazz take off his jacket and shirt.
"True, true. It's been nice knowing you," Jazz said.
"Do you know how to fight with swords?" Hop asked, wondering how Jazz could be so calm about this.
"Sure. You just hold it by the dull end and stick the sharp end in the other fellow."
"Not funny," Hop said. And then the weapons arrived, the crowd cleared a space, and Fritz and Jason, stripped to the waist, took their weapons and went to opposite comers. As a volunteer referee went through the ritual of pleading with both parties to reconcile their differences peaceably, Jazz asked Hop Noyock, "Do you have your loop recorder?"
"Yes."
"Is it off?"
"Of course."
"Then here. Use this." And Jazz handed Hop a small suppressor. Hop looked at him in surprise.
"This is illegal."
"So is duelling. But I want you to have an exclusive. Your last chance to make money off me."
Hop grimaced at the implication of his own venality; at the same time he realized that having an exclusive of this duel would be immeasurably valuable whoever won. So he turned on the suppressor, and the moans and cries of outrage came from women and men all around the duelling square. Then, because his own loop recorder had not been on, Hop started it right up, ready to create another Noyock Productions masterpiece.
"All ready?" Jazz asked. Noyock, holding both suppressor and recorder in his pockets, nodded. "Wish me luck," Jazz said, and then he raised his sword to signal the start of the duel. Kapock raised his, and then leaped forward, swinging the sword in a dazzling display of control, putting the point exactly where he wanted it. Jazz merely held his sword in front of him, almost as if it were a foil, and stood half–crouched. No style at all.
Then Kapock came close enough to strike — and struck. But his sword met Jason's in mid–thrust. Kapock recovered, struck again and again found his blade parried. He backed off. Jason merely stood, waiting, his sword having varied only twice from its straight forward position. Kapock was embarrassed and angry. He had been made to look like a pompous show–off, who could be stopped with ease by a man not even bothering to observe proper form.
Kapock moved to attack again, this time with such quick movements that parrying seemed impossible. Feints could not be distinguished from attacks; but Jason was not drawn into parrying any of the false moves. Instead he moved only three times, each time throwing aside Kapock's whistling blade, and the third time twisting the blade, breaking it off near the hilt. The broken blade spun out toward the crowd, but hit the floor before it could do any damage.
Kapock stood looking at the broken sword in his hand, as amazed as Hop had ever seen a man.
Hop could understand it — he had tried his hand at swordplay years ago, and he remembered enough to know that it was humiliating to be disarmed on only the fifth parry. He also knew that Jazz had blocked the attacks as perfectly as if he had known exactly where and when they were coming, before Kapock himself even knew. More grist for the Jazz Worthing legend mill.
The next step, of course, was for Jazz to step forward and magnanimously state that he was satisfied, and no further fighting was necessary. But at that moment a woman screamed, and all eyes whirled to Arran, who was standing, still naked, looking with horror at the large doors to her hall. They were open, and a group of laserarmed men in Space Service uniforms were marching in. And all at once everyone seemed to come to the same conclusion. Jazz Worthing, the great starpilot, had been under attack — poison, and then a duel. These soldiers would not stand for such an insult to the Service and to the Service's most successful fleet commander. And the guests, in the irrational manner of crowds, immediately began to head for the opposite exit. At the moment they started to move, however, those doors opened, too, and more soldiers came in. The crowd panicked, massed in a jumble in the middle of the hall, and began to shout and scream and scurry meaninglessly from place to place so that it was impossible to tell what was going on.
So Hop did what he always did. He stuck with Jason, following him as Jazz coolly walked to Arran Handully, who was looking dazed and vaguely depressed as the crowd whirled around her. Jazz picked her up and lifted her over his shoulder in a manner vaguely reminiscent of the worst excesses of the pornographic brutality plays. Hop had never seen Jazz treat a woman like that — but then, she had tried to kill him.
Fritz Kapock tried to interfere. Jason hit him, but the blow would only have slowed the artist down, hampered as Jason was by Arran's rather uncooperative bulk. Hop considered it his duty (and a pretty damn good idea for profits) to try to keep Jazz Worthing alive no matter what stupid things he was trying to do. So Hop used a few of the low blows he had learned in his childhood in the lowest corridor of Capitol, and Fritz was out for the duration. Perhaps longer. Hop didn't stop to check.