“You made me come all the way here to kill you?”
“Yes,” McDermott said. The blazing eyes were unblinking now. “I’ve been immobilized for a year, now. I’m a vegetable in this thing. I sit here day after day, idle, bored. And healthy. I might live another hundred years, do you realize that, Holt? I’ve had a stroke, yes. I’m paralyzed. But my body’s still vigorous. This damned capsule of mine keeps me in tone. It feeds me and exercises me and—do you think I want to go on living this way, Holt? Would you?”
Holt shrugged. “If you want to die, you could ask someone in your family to unplug you.”
“I have no family.”
“Is that true? You had five sons…”
“Four dead, Holt. The other one gone to Earth. No one lives here any more. I’ve outlasted them all. I’m as eternal as the heavens. Two hundred thirty years, that’s long enough to live. My wives are dead, my grandchildren gone away. They’ll come home when they find they’ve inherited. Not before. There’s no one here to throw the switch.”
“Your robots,” Holt suggested.
Again the grim smile. “You must have special robots, Holt. I don’t have any that can be tricked into killing their master. I’ve tried it. They know what’ll happen if my life-capsule is disconnected. They won’t do it. You do it, Holt. Turn me off. Blow the tower to hell, if it bothers you. You’ve won the game. The prize is yours.”
There was a dryness in Holt’s throat, a band of pressure across his chest. He tottered a little. His robots, ever sensitive to his condition, steadied him and guided him to a chair. He had been on his feet a long time for a man of his age. He sat quietly until the spasm passed.
Then he said, “I won’t do it.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too simple, McDermott. I’ve hated you too long. I can’t just flip a switch and turn you off.”
“Bombard me, then. Blast the tower down.”
“Without provocation? Do you think I’m a criminal?” Holt asked.
“What do you want me to do?” McDermott said tiredly. “Order my robots to trespass? Set fire to your orchards? What will provoke you, Holt?”
“Nothing,” Holt said. “I don’t want to kill you. Get someone else to do it.”
The eyes glittered. “You devil,” McDermott said. “You absolute devil. I never realized how much you hated me. I send for you in a time of need, asking to be put out of my misery, and will you grant me that? Oh, no. Suddenly you get noble. You won’t kill me! You devil, I see right through you. You’ll go back to your keep and gloat because I’m a living dead man here. You’ll chuckle to yourself because I’m alone and frozen into this capsule. Oh, Holt, it’s not right to hate so deeply! I admit I’ve given offense. I deliberately built the tower here to wound your pride. Punish me, then. Take my life. Destroy my tower. Don’t leave me here!”
Holt was silent. He moistened his lips, filled his lungs with breath, got to his feet. He stood straight and tall, towering over the capsule that held his enemy.
“Throw the switch,” McDermott begged.
“I’m sorry. I can’t.”
“Devil!”
Holt looked at his robots. “It’s time to go,” he said. “There’s no need for you to guide us. We can find our way out of the building.”
The teardrop-shaped car sped across the shining snow. Holt said nothing as he made the return journey. His mind clung to the image of the immobilized McDermott, and there was no room for any other thought. That stench of decay tingled in his nostrils. That glint of madness in the eyes as they begged for oblivion.
They were crossing the borderlands, now. Holt’s car broke the warning barrier and got a pinging signal to halt and identify. A robot gave the password, and they went on toward Holt Keep.
His family clustered near the entrance, pale, mystified. Holt walked in under his own steam. They were bursting with questions, but no one dared ask anything. It remained for Holt to say the first word.
He said, “McDermott’s a sick, crazy old man. His family is dead or gone. He’s a pathetic and disgusting sight. I don’t want to talk about the visit.”
Sweeping past them, Holt ascended the shaft to the command room. He peered out, over the snowy field. There was a double track in the snow, leading to and from McDermott Keep, and the sunlight blazed in the track, making it a line of fire stretching to the horizon.
The building shuddered suddenly. Holt heard a hiss and a whine. He flipped on his communicator and a robot voice said, “McDermott Keep is attacking, your lordship. We’ve deflected a high-energy bombardment.”
“Did the screens have any trouble with it?”
“No, your lordship. Not at all. Shall I prepare for a counterattack?”
Holt smiled. “No,” he said. “Take defensive measures only. Extend the screens right to the border and keep them there. Don’t let McDermott do any harm. He’s only trying to provoke me, but he won’t succeed.”
The tall, gaunt man walked to the control panel. His gnarled hands rested lovingly on the equipment. So they had come to warfare at last, he thought. The cannon of McDermott Keep were doing their puny worst. Flickering needles told the story: whatever McDermott was throwing was being absorbed easily. He didn’t have the firepower to do real harm.
Holt’s hands tightened on the controls. Now, he thought, he could blast McDermott Keep to ash. But he would not do it, any more than he would throw the switch that would end Andrew McDermott’s life.
McDermott did not understand. Not cruelty, but simple selfishness, had kept him from killing the enemy lord, just as, all these years, Holt had refrained from launching an attack he was certain to win. He felt remotely sorry for the paralyzed man locked in the life-capsule. But it was inconceivable that Holt would kill him.
Once you are gone, Andrew, who will I have to hate? Holt wondered.
That was why he had not killed. No reason more complicated than that.
Michael Holt peered through the foot-thick safety glass of his command-room window. He saw the zone of brown earth, the snowfield with its fresh track, and the coppery ugliness of McDermott Keep. His intestines writhed at the ugliness of that baroque tower against the horizon. He imagined the skyline as it had looked a hundred years ago, before McDermott had built his foul monstrosity there.
He fondled the controls of his artillery bank as though they were a young girl’s breasts. Then he turned, slowly and stiffly, making his way across the command-room to his chair, and sat quietly, listening to the sound of Andrew McDermott’s futile bombardment expending itself harmlessly against the outer defenses of Holt Keep, and soon it grew dark as the winter night closed quietly down.