Code Duello up-4

  Code Duello

  ( United Planets - 4 )

  Mack Reynolds

  Code Duello

  by Mack Reynolds

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  Irene Kasansky said, “He’s expecting you. Watch out. The jetsam is flying today.” She did things to the bank of orderboxes she had on her desk, even as she clipped out her words. Her deft hands flew, pressing buttons, flicking switches.

  Sid Jakes grinned at her. “I’ve never seen the day,” he said, “when you didn’t think the jetsam was flying. I hate to say this, Irene, but I think you’re a fake. I think you like it here at Section G.” She glared at him.

  Lee Chang Chu, who stood next to the assistant Section G head, said, “Irene is the most efficient colleague we have.”

  Irene snorted and snapped into an orderbox: “Well, find him, then!” She flicked it off and glared up at Lee Chang, standing there hardly five feet tall and very antique Oriental in her cheongsam dress. “Let me tell you, Goody Two Shoes, my resignation is in. This efficient colleague has had it. I’m transferring to Statistics.” Sid chuckled over his shoulder even as he led the way to the door to the sanctum sanctorum beyond. “That’ll be a neat trick to pull off,” he said. “The Old Man wouldn’t let you go if the Director of the Commissariat himself was silly enough to want you.”

  The ultra-secretary glowered at him, but was forced to direct her attention to her chattering orderboxes.

  Sid Jakes held open the door for Lee Chang, taking her slim figure in appreciatively, as she tripped through in the ages-old quick shuffle of the Chinese woman.

  “Lee Chang,” he said, “why don’t you marry me? I’m handsome, reasonably young, of charming disposition, and an incredibly competent lover, and have excellent prospects, if our good commissioner will ever drop dead.” He hurried ahead of her to deal with the next door.

  She cocked her head to one side slightly and thought about it. She said briskly, “Several reasons, Citizen Jakes.”

  “I can’t imagine what they could be.”

  “Well, though I’m highly flattered by the proposal, I suspect that you’re ulcer-prone, in spite of your surface clan. Besides, I doubt if Commissioner Metaxa plans on dropping dead in the immediate future. But, above all, you’re already married.”

  “Um.” He made a wry face. “That’s true, that’s true, but we could always elope to the planet Saudi.” He had a finger on the door screen now, activating it, and standing so that the occupant of the office beyond could see him.

  “Saudi?” Her voice, as always was a tinkle. It would be a perceptive observer who could suspect that Lee Chang Chu was one of the most efficient supervisors in the cloak and dagger Section G of the Bureau of Investigation, Department of Justice, Commissariat of Interplanetary Affairs.

  The door smoothed open and Sid Jakes grinned, even as he politely motioned her to precede him. “Saudi. The planet Saudi. Polygamy,” he said.

  Ross Metaxa, rumpled of clothes as ever, sat behind his cluttered desk. He was slightly red of eye, sour of mien and gave a first impression of either too little sleep, or too much bottle belting the night previous.

  Before Sid Jakes could get Lee Chang settled into a chair, the Commissioner of Section G growled, “What is a Special Talents class?” He reached into a desk drawer and came up with a squat bottle and three small glasses. “Denebian tequila?” he said, gesturing an invitation with the brown bottle.

  Lee Chang Chu shuddered a polite negation.

  Sid Jakes said, “I’m much too young, Chief.”

  Lee Chang said, “It’s a project of mine, Commissioner. After all, you put me in charge of recruiting new agents.”

  He glared at her. Ross Metaxa was the only person in Section G who would have dreamed of glaring at the tiny Chinese. He picked up a report from the mess on his desk, laid it down again and thumped it with the back of his hand.

  “Agents, agents! Section G agents, the toughest operatives in United Planets. It takes years to locate a prospect, more years to train one. You’re an old hand, Chu; I thought I could trust you with this. In the field, you’re as good a supervisor as we have. And in the past you’ve field trained some of our best. Ronny Bronston, for example.” He looked at his assistant, perched on the side of his superior’s desk. “How is Bronston?”

  “Oh, Ronny’ll be all right. You can’t crisp him.”

  “You can evidently come mighty close. How is he?”

  “Still unconscious.”

  Metaxa made a face. He looked back at Lee Chang, who was demurely maintaining her peace. “What’s this about sending an eight-year-old girl to Falange?”

  Sid Jakes laughed. “Chief, you misread that report. Helen just looks like an eight-year-old. She’s in her mid-twenties.”

  “How can anybody who looks like an eight-year-old child be a Section G operative? What’s this other supposed agent? A Cordon Bleu chef. If this Tri-Di photo with his dossier means anything at all, he looks like a roly-poly middle-aged man. And this…”

  Lee Chang said mildly, “The point is, Commissioner, they cleaned up the Falange mess. A mess that had cost us three men, experienced agents, before they took over.”

  Metaxa looked at her blankly, looked back at the report. He poured himself another of the fiery Denebian tequilas and tossed it back. “How could they possibly have?”

  Lee Chang came gracefully to her feet. “I suggest we go to the gym. At this time of the day, most of the class is exercising… or practicing their special talents.”

  Ross Metaxa glared at her again, then growled into his orderbox, “Irene, can I be spared for fifteen minutes?”

  Sid Jakes and Lee Chang failed to make out the reply, but Metaxa turned the glare from the Chinese girl to the box. “Oh, is that so?” he snapped. “Well, you’re fired.” He came to his feet and lumbered around the desk, heading for the door. “I don’t know why I put up with that woman.”

  Sid Jakes came to his own feet, to follow. He chuckled. “You put up with her, Chief, because she knows more about the workings of Section G than the three of us, here, put together.”

  Metaxa snorted.

  The Commissioner of Section G stared about him in disbelief. The hall was a madhouse.

  Up near the ceiling, a small child was doing things on a trapeze that should have been impossible. Over near one wall, a stocky, not to say plump, man was winging a shovel around and around his head. Suddenly, he let go and the shovel spun over and over, finally to smash, blade first, into the bull’s-eye of what Metaxa could now see was a target, some thirty feet away. Near another wall, a dark complected, serious looking worthy was snapping a bullwhip of the type that could sometimes be seen in Old West historical fiction Tri-Di shows.

  Lee Chang, who was leading the way, came up to a dignified man whose huge size was mollified by the anachronistic pince-nez glasses he wore, and his air of the scholarly. He was watching the child trapeze artist. At his feet was the largest dumbbell the Commissioner had ever seen.

  “Special talents?” Ross Metaxa blurted, in disgust. His eyes went around the room. “These are the agents you’ve been recruiting for my department?”

  Sid Jakes chuckled.

  “Shut up, you laughing hyena,” Metaxa snapped. “With this Dawnworlds crisis on our hands, we’re shorter of trained agents than Section G has ever been, and you come up with this gang of freaks.” He glanced at a plain-looking middle-aged woman who looked back at him mildly.

  Lee Chang said, “Martha Lorans. She has total recall. With Martha along, a troupe assigned to some emergency can set down on a planet without any records whatsoever on their persons. No matter what data they need for the job, they can carry it in her head.”

  She indicated th
e large scholar. “That is Dr. Dorn M. Horsten, top-notch research algae specialist. He has a hobby that is a personal entertainment. Since boyhood he’s amused himself with weight lifting and pretzel-tying—using one-inch mild steel bars for pretzels. He is actually one of the strongest human beings in United Planets. His home world helps: it’s a one point four G planet A very nice, soft-spoken gentleman, conspicuous at every unicellular biology meeting for his brilliant mind. Naturally, nobody notices he has muscles, and can do things that any other human being finds impossible.”

  Ross Metaxa grunted. He said, “What’s that fellow doing?”

  “Zorro Juarez? He comes from Vacamundo, settled by Argentines. They specialize in raising the best cattle and horses in the confederation, breed them to order to meet the local conditions pertaining on the worlds that desire such animals. The national sport is the use of the bullwhip. Have you ever seen a twenty-foot bullwhip artist perform, Commissioner? Zorro can make old William Tell look very amateurish. He could quarter the apple on the boy’s head and peel one half of it in the bargain.”

  Metaxa said, “Confound it, what good does a bull-whip artist do in this day and age, and among Section G operatives?”

  Lee Chang’s voice was sweet. “Among other things, it is a most deadly weapon and involves no electronic gadgetry, metal parts, or anything else detectable by search devices.”

  The head of her department grunted and marched across the room to a somewhat colorless looking young man who had been practicing, rather ineptly, at the quick draw.

  “How about you?” Metaxa snapped.

  The young man—he couldn’t have been more than in his mid-twenties—looked up with an air of apology. “I’m lucky,” he said.

  Ross Metaxa was bleak. “And I’m Rossie, but just to keep things in perspective, I think you’d better call me Commissioner Metaxa, and the hell with the nicknames. I meant what’s your so-called special talent?”

  “That’s what I meant. I’m lucky.”

  Section G’s ultimate head looked at him for a long empty moment. Then he turned his eyes to Lee Chang Chu, in silence.

  The diminutive Chinese girl tinkled laughter. “This is Jerry Rhodes, Commissioner. He is quite correct. His special talent is that he is lucky.”

  Ross Metaxa closed his tired, moist eyes and muttered something inwardly. He opened them again to glare.

  Jerry Rhodes cleared his throat, the apology still there. “I don’t pretend to explain it.”

  “I’ll bet you don’t,” Metaxa said. “Show me.”

  Rhodes thought for a moment. He said, “There is an element I should mention. My own fortunes have to be involved.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  The colorless young man fished in a pocket. “Here is a coin. You know what a coin is?”

  “Yes,” Metaxa said. “I know what a coin is. In fact, they still use them on various of the less progressive worlds. Listen, Rhodes, or whatever your name is, start off on the basis that I’m not stupid. I didn’t get to be Commissioner of Section G by being stupid.”

  Rhodes said, “Yes, sir. This is an old coin going back to United States days.” He looked at it. “Sony, France.”

  “All right, all right, a coin.”

  “Very well. I will wager you a hundred interplanetary credits that if I flick this coin into the air it will come down with the head on top.”

  Metaxa looked at him. “Very well, flick the coin. I suppose there’s some rhyme or reason to this.”

  Rhodes flicked the coin high. When it bounced to the floor he didn’t bother to look. He held out his hand. “You owe me one hundred credits. Will you document it so that I may credit my account?”

  Metaxa looked at Lee Chang in irritation. “Anybody could flip a coin and win. A fifty-fifty chance. What’s lucky about that?”

  “That comes next,” Rhodes said gently. “This time I will wager you the same amount that I can flip it heads three times in a row.”

  Metaxa blinked. “You’re on.”

  Heads. Heads. Heads.

  Rhodes said, “You owe me two hundred credits. The next bet is another hundred that I can flip it five times in a row heads—or tails for that matter. You call it.”

  Metaxa was staring by now. “Let me see that damned coin! What bet comes after that?”

  “That I can flip it ten times in a row,” Rhodes said. “I seldom manage to cozen anybody into that. Are you game?”

  “Yes, but not everybody’s!” Metaxa spun back to Lee Chang and Sid Jakes. He pointed to another of the room’s occupants. “What does he do?”

  Sid answered him this times. “That’s George Killmer, Licensed Orbit Computer. A ballistics specialist. He does celestial mechanics problems like solving the equations of motion of planetary systems as an off-hand job when somebody brings in a set of observations on some new system. His main work is computing interstellar flight paths for commercial and military ships, and as such he can go just about anywhere among the settled worlds without anyone thinking of him as a possible agent.”

  “What’s that got to do with Section G?” Metaxa asked. “What’s his so-called special talent?”

  Sid said, grinning, “He’s the best pickpocket Lee Chang was able to locate by going through the files of every planet whose police cooperate with Inter-Planet-Pol. He’s probably the best pickpocket who ever lived. Imagine. Almost three thousand planets in U.P. with socioeconomic systems that have crime, and each with an average population of about two billion. And he’s the best pickpocket of all.”

  Ross Metaxa closed his eyes in pain.

  When he opened them again, it was to stare at Lee Chang. “Look,” he said. “I assume you’re not trying deliberately to sabotage Section G. You’ve been dedicated too long for that. But when I gave you the job of recruiting new agents, I didn’t expect you to wind up with a bevy of pickpockets, shovel throwers and… and lucky coin flippers. All this is out of the question, understand? We’ll go back to our old system.”

  Lee Chang was shaking her head. “We haven’t the time, Commissioner Metaxa. And you know it. We need new agents, fast. We haven’t the time to seek out the young men from all over United Planets who are potential Section G operatives, and we haven’t got five years for training them. In the past year, this department has had more work than we had in the last ten.”

  “Do you think I am unfamiliar with that!”

  She said, persuasively, “The need to push, prod, pry the member worlds of United Planets into progress is more pressing than ever. And nine out of ten of them resent—or would if they knew what we were about—such pressures on our part Man will cling, suicidally, to such institutions as religion, political systems, socioeconomic systems, racial beliefs, no matter how much they may be standing in the way of progress. In trying to change such institutions, we’ve lost a score of experienced agents in the past few months.”

  His eyes hadn’t lost their anger. “You think you know this any better than I do? But I need agents, not freaks.”

  “You need people who will bring results, Commissioner. I am combing United Planets to locate them. People with special talents who also have man’s dream.” She pursed her small mouth in a moue of defiance.

  Ross Metaxa pointed over at Jerry Rhodes, who had resumed his miserable attempts to jerk a heavy Model H gun from the holster he had under his left arm.

  “What good would that clod do, if he came up against one of the strong-arm bully-boys on the planet Goshen? He’d be crisped before he could get his shooter out. And by the way he handles it, even if he did get it out, he’d probably shoot off his own foot.”

  “Not with his luck,” Sid Jakes said.

  Metaxa scoffed. “I suppose you think he could gamble a Goshen pistolero’s shooter away from him by matching coins.”

  Lee Chang said, “We have already had one of our special talents troupes succeed on an assignment. I suggest you give another group a job and see how they work out. If they don’t, very well
, Commissioner, then you’ve made your point. Meanwhile, of course, we are also recruiting in the old manner.”

  The Section G head hesitated.

  “How can you lose?” Sid Jakes said humorously. “Put up or shut up, Chief.”

  Metaxa cast his eyes upward, in search of divine guidance. “Surrounded by stutes,” he muttered. Then, to Lee Chang, “You’re on. Anything to bring you to your senses.” He thought about it. “There’s a situation brewing on Firenze. The type of job any troupe of competent Section G operatives should be able to handle. Very well, round up four of these miracles of yours and send them to my office.”

  He turned and marched off, still muttering.

  Sid Jakes grinned down at Lee Chang Chu. “Okay, he’s tossed you the whistle; let’s see how you blow it.”

  She bit her lower lip thoughtfully, and looked around the hall at her proteges.

  They were seated before his desk in a row. Ross Metaxa couldn’t keep his eyes from the seeming eight-year-old girl in her pretty little pink party dress and with the pink hair ribbon in her pretty blonde hair which came down to her shoulders in a style of yesteryear.

  He rapped, “Are you sure you’re twenty-five years old?”

  Helen, who had a red ball in her right hand, jumped to the floor, and, bouncing the toy, skipped around the desk singing in a childish treble, “Three little girls in blue, tra la, three little girls in blue.” It couldn’t have been more charming.

  The Commissioner of Section G was in no humor to be charmed. When she sidled up to him to whisper in his ear, he began to growl at her.

  She whispered, a lisp in her voice, “You should never ask a lady her age, but it’s twenty-six, not twenty-five.” Even as she whispered, her tiny child hands twisted the red ball which fell away into halves revealing a hollow center. Quickly deft, she scooped the small hypo-gun from its concealment and ground it into his side.

  “Three little girls in blue, tra la,” she sneered nastily.

  The other three present were laughing.