The multitude of voices said: “We ask again whether peaceful accommodation can be found? If so, without dishonor, both participators may withdraw, and no slight against them will be permitted.”
Sir Guiden and Sarmento replied that no accommodation was possible.
“Have all measures to avoid this conflict been exhausted?” The number of voices had increased again. This time it was in the millions. Menelaus ran a rough calculation in his head about the coordination tolerance needed to avoid overlapping and blurring of that many waveforms: it implied a degree of mental unity far greater than what had obtained even a moment before.
It was everyone. It was the whole race of the Melusine speaking.
Sarmento i Illa d’Or was more alert than Montrose would have thought. Montrose was surprised when Sarmento said, “Senior! This is outside what we expected”—we in this case meaning Sarmento and his Ghost, Exillador—“the Cliometric calculus cannot account for this amount of interest from the Melusine. I suggest—”
Del Azarchel shook his head. “A bigger crowd than expected, eh? The Cowhand did actually have another move underway, and now the strike will come out of the obscuring fog. I care not. I don’t see that it is anything that can physically stop the duel. Speak your line.”
Sir Guiden on behalf of Montrose said that no additional measure could be found to avoid the conflict. Sarmento spoke the same words with a more obvious reluctance, wary that something had gone wrong, and his eyes were darting left and right at high speed in the peculiar way posthumans were wont to use.
Unexpectedly, something stung Montrose in his eyes. He drew the back of his gauntleted wrist across his brow, cocking the wrist so that the leather joint rather than the metal glove plates rubbed him. He stared in disbelief at the discoloration on his wrist. It was dank. He was sweating. Sweating in fear.
But Blackie had already knelt to Sarmento to allow his helmet to be wrestled on, and did not see it. That was a comfort, if only a small one. Mickey saw, and mopped Montrose’s brow dry with his lambrequin. That was a bigger comfort.
Montrose also knelt. Mickey raised the wide, heavy helmet and placed it over Montrose’s head, giving it a firm twist. With a click, the contact points in the inner and outer screw collar met, and, with a whine, the internal lights and readouts came on.
It took a moment of rocking and heaving for Montrose to get himself back afoot. He did not remember having problems like this back when he was a young man of twenty. Now he was biologically forty years—and even that was only equivalent years, because biosuspension did not arrest all life processes exactly, and thaw did not correct all damage exactly back to the point of prehibernation. It was approximate. He might have been, biologically speaking, older than that. He sure felt it.
Alalloel raised the baton to shoulder level, no higher. “Gentlemen, see to your countermeasures!”
Through his lookout visor, nothing was different, but the view in the helmet aiming monocle showed the real electronic story. Del Azarchel was now surrounded by a dozen shadows of himself, blurring and shifting and fading, and his radio silhouette swayed and dimmed with interference. Montrose looked the same to him. He could feel the warmth of the batteries powering his coat camouflage as they came online.
Alalloel now raised the baton fully overhead. It was the penultimate signal. “Gentlemen, see to your weapons! Do not fire before the signal, or all honor is forfeit, whereupon the Seconds may and must intervene!”
Sir Guiden presented the massive pistol and plugged it into the forearm sockets of Menelaus’ armor. Sir Guiden checked the circuits, double-checked, opened and closed the main chamber and the eight lesser chambers, then thumbed the chaff magazine.
Then Sir Guiden walked away, five, ten, fifteen paces. He turned and nodded. Sir Guiden called to Montrose: “Stand firm until the baton is dropped. When the baton is dropped, you are at liberty to fire.”
Montrose raised his left gauntlet, and held up his hand. By tradition, the non-weapon-hand was white, but a black circle was in the palm, so that the opponent could clearly see the sign. He was ready to fire.
Sarmento had taken longer than Sir Guiden, or perhaps had checked his master’s weapon more thoroughly. Or perhaps a growing suspicion that something was wrong was slowing his footsteps. He was not yet out of the line of fire. Blackie had not yet raised his glove.
Montrose waited, feeling the sweat begin to come into his eyes again, and knowing there was no way to wipe his helmeted face. This was not one of those modern helmets, whose internal circuits noticed wearer discomfort, and used small inside manipulators to wipe a hot face. If I blink during the wrong moment, I’m dead.
It seemed so unfair that such small things would make the difference between victory and death. He wrinkled his brow furiously, hoping to delay the gathering drip of ticklish saltwater he could feel accumulating.
Then Sarmento was out of the line of fire, and instructing Del Azarchel not to shoot until the baton dropped.
Montrose knew not to tense his arm before the raising, not to tense his trigger-finger. It had to be one smooth motion, and smoothness counted for more than speed, because one did not want to jar the chaff package, or confuse the aiming sensors with jerky or blurry motions. He waited, and eternity crawled by.
Del Azarchel raised his hand and opened it. There were the white fingers and thumb; there was the black palm. Montrose suddenly felt buoyant with relief, weightless, almost lightheaded, because the eight-thousand-year-long wait had ended. This was it.
And then—
—the baton dropped—
4. Misfire
—And Montrose blinked when the drop of sweat stung his eye. This made him raise his pistol too quickly: a sudden jerk. This in turn made his weight shift, and only then did the ice puddle on which he stood crack, give way, and drop him.
The bottom of the puddle was not far, a matter of a handsbreadth or less, but it was enough to slide a bootheel along the slick and frictionless mud of the puddle bottom, and pull his leg out from under him.
With a resounding clattering clash, Montrose fell. He landed on his hands and knees, but the heavy gun hit the ground and went off.
For a moment, he was deaf. His gun hand went numb as it was kicked backward as if by seven mules, and the charge of chaff and cloud exploded under his fingers instead of in the air between himself and his target. Splinters of rock ricocheted against his armor, and the fierce pain in his armpit and ribs told him his armor had been pierced. It felt as if the main bullet and two escort bullets, the number three and the number two, had gone off and blown themselves into the icy rock only a foot or less from his hand.
Montrose found himself kneeling, buried up to the neck in a swarming fog of glittering black chaff-particles, but his head was clearly visible to the enemy. A perfect target.
With his other hand, he raised his gun hand up, trying to see if any fingers had been blown off, but he was defeated by the weight of the gun dangling from his wrist and the restricted field of vision (the helmets were not designed to nod forward, nor was there a peep window below the jawline to let a man see his feet). From the sensation, he thought he’d lost a finger, maybe two. With some part of his brain, he knew he should be scrambling to take the gun up in his left hand and squeeze off the remaining escort bullets, hoping for a lucky shot.
With another part of his brain, he noted that being the master of a worldwide system of coffins which had the most advanced medical nanotechnology on the planet tended to make one nonchalant about wounds. His maimed feet from the day before had been healed overnight; because of events like this, he now regarded major wounds as an inconvenience rather than a lifelong tragedy.