Count to a Trillion (8 page)

With him was a heavy man, slow and big. Menelaus recognized the footstep. His foe.

Something was wrong. There were four lanterns, and one burned more brightly than the others, a wide beam. The man behind moved with slower pace: an old man’s walk.

His little brother Leonidas was acting as his second. Leo jogged over to Amiens to discover why there was an extra man present. In a moment he was back. Menelaus could not see Leo’s features, save as an outline against the brightening red sky beyond.

“What’s the deal? Only supposed to be two witnesses for me, two for Nails.” Mike Nails was the disputant in this party, and a man with a steady aim and rich enough to have a team of five to program and pack his pistol. “Who might that stranger be?”

“A … man … from the Coast as wants to espy the fighting. Amiens says to trust him, no worries.”

The way his brother drawled the word “
man
” caught his ear. “You mean a foreigner? Which is he, a beaneater or a grasseater?”

“Not neither. He’s a Frenchman.”

“I don’t give a tinker’s damn, but why is Amiens willing to let a man-whore watch straight-ups at our quarreling? That don’t seem much like in his character.”

“Not that kind of Frenchman, man from France. Or Monaco, leastways. A Prince.”

“What do you mean a Prince? He got a crown of gold on his head?”

“Nope, but he got a fat wallet full a cash and everything. Bet the phone on his wrist cost more ’n our whole digs, back home.”

Menelaus spat on the ground. “Pshaw. The Euros already think we’re uncivilized. Are we dancing bears for the tourists to gawp at? Go tell ’em no.
My client and I find the conditions of the settlement unacceptable relating to reasons of the dignity of my person as officer of the court.
Got that? And talk fine, like Mama told you.”

Leonidas trotted back over. Menelaus could not hear the voices, but he saw how the lamps moved as men gestured with their hands.

He came back. “The guy is not here to watch the fight. He just wants to see you.”

“I keep regular office hours. Walk-ins welcome.”

“Yeah, but he’s afraid you might be dead tomorrow.”

“Pshaw!” said Menelaus. “Mike Nails ain’t putting me in the ground.”

“He says it’s your destiny.”

“What?”

“You’re destined for greater things, he says. To go to the stars, not die down here in the mud.”

“Issat what he said?”

“It sure is.”

“What’s his name?”

“Ronny-yay. The Seventh.”

“Come again?”

“His Serene Highness, Rainier VII Sovereign Prince of Monaco, Duke of Valentinois, Marquis of Baux, Count of Polignac, Baron of this, Lord of that, Sire of somemother damn thing. You know how Euros are. Ever since their lands shrunk up, their damn titles get longer. But get this: He’s got the mark on his head.”

“What kinda mark?”

Leonidas solemnly touched finger to brow. “Right there. Hindu caste mark. He’s a Brahmin.”

“Damnation,” whispered Menelaus, impressed in spite of himself. “Ain’t so many White Men get that. No wonder he’s rich … I … Leo, I know who this is. It’s Grimaldi! It’s
him
!”

“Him? Him who?”

“Him, the Captain!”

Leonidas looked left and right, unhurriedly, but clearly scoping out escape routes. “Captain of what?” His voice betrayed his tension.

“Not that kind of captain, not a trooper-captain, a ship-captain. The ship!”

“So who is he?”

Menelaus had to grin. “Smartest man alive. Luckiest, too. The Hindus and the Spaniards could not agree on anyone else. He showed up at Sriharikota Island, at the main launch-site, with a bankful of his own money. Monaco had not signed the anti-space proliferation treaty, so if the whole project was in his name, the Sinosphere couldn’t stop it, so they made him Captain! It was in all the chatterboxes. They have a setting for verbal, if’n you can’t be troubled to read ’em.”

“O-Ooh. You mean that ship what ain’t never going to sail?” replied Leonidas. “’Course you do. What the plague other ship you ever the plague talk about? They been building that ship for ten years now.”

Takes a fair piece of time to build a cathedral,
Menelaus said. But he did not say it aloud.

Menelaus stared at the dark ground, the tall, straight, beautiful trees. Then he craned his neck up and inspected the sky. One bright star still hung overhead. Perhaps it was an artificial satellite, a Hindu Sputnik. Just like the Americans used to put up, back before civilization threw a shoe, fell, broke its leg, and had to be put down.

They were out there. He was down here.

Down here with his family. His reputation would not survive if he walked away from the settlement, just to go talk to the Star Captain. Even if he walked off the field for a minute, five minutes, the whispers would start.

The more he thought on it, the stranger it seemed. What was Amiens thinking? The breach of secrecy was unheard-of. Menelaus could claim grounds to walk away, but then … would he have the nerve to come back here again?

He never wanted to do anything more ferociously in his life. The desire to go see the man who would fly to the stars boiled like bad whiskey in Menelaus’s belly, it was so strong.

“Tell him to go rut himself,” Menelaus said. “Tell him to get lost. He can see me during office hours. But talk fine, Leon, like Mama…”

“Sure, Meany. Just like Mama says.
My principle is affronted at this breach of the security, and politely demands the extraneous party to remove him beyond the bounds set aside for this exercise.
How’s that?”

“Like you was born in a skyscraper with running water, little brother.”

2. Mike Nails

The pink sky was now bright enough, merely. Amiens, acting as judge, inspected first one duelist and his weapon, and then the other. He took up his position.

Amiens, in a loud voice, politely asked the Seconds if their Principals could settle the matter in any other way. “Even now, if an accommodation can be reached, both parties may withdraw in honor. Gentlemen! Will your principals seek reconciliation?”

Both Seconds politely returned a negative answer.

“Have all measures to avoid this conflict been exhausted?”

Both Seconds solemnly answered that they had.

At his signal, the distance was paced out by the seconds, and the Principals were posted at thirty yards apart. The sun was still below the horizon: only the eastern clouds were aflame. Menelaus could scarcely see his foe. Mike Nails was no more than a stocky shape against the trees, a dark silhouette against a gray background. The man was bulky to begin with. In his dueling armor, he looked like a black ape with a bald metal head.

Amiens called out again. “Gentlemen, see to your countermeasures!”

There was no change to the naked eye. Menelaus through his helmet monocle could see the view his bullet would see: a confusing blur of ghosts, dancing and fading. Nails had turned on his camouflage. Menelaus put his thumb on the switch on his fanny-pack, and powered his coat circuits also.

Amiens called, “Gentlemen, ready your weapons! On peril of your honor, do not fire before the signal!”

Nails shouted, his voice strangely flat in the cold pre-dawn air, half-unheard beneath the cheery calls of birds. “Backwoodsman! The Frog and his Wogs would have you for their star-venture, eh? I would hate to shoot an
aaasssss
—tronaut. Go ’way, fly off, and freeze! I’ll be safely in my grave before you wake!”

Menelaus was more puzzled than angered. What was this talk of being an astronaut? Menelaus assumed Mike Nails must have heard something from the rich Monegasque stranger who’d walked up with him. Or recognized the Star Captain. Unlike his brother, Nails read the newsboxes.

Was that wisecrack about a destiny among the stars supposed to mean something? Something for real?

For a moment, Menelaus felt as if some childhood dream, long-forgotten, was stirring in his heart. It lived in his thoughts as a child, usurping golden afternoons. But he could not recall it to mind, not now.

Tradition commanded that each was to address each other only through their Seconds. Amiens called out in a solemn, grave voice, “The Principals are to be respectful in meeting, and neither by look nor expression irritate each other! They are to be wholly passive, being entirely under the guidance of their Seconds, who keep their honor for them, and answer for them!”

He could not recall his dreams to mind. Not now. There was no time.

Menelaus cried, “My answer is here.” And with a ponderously slow gesture put his pistol overhead, arm straight.

His brother’s voice came from the gloom. “Stand firm until the signal is dropped. When the signal is dropped, you are at liberty to fire.” The other second, Mike’s nephew Zechariah, said the same words to Mike Nails, as if an echo hung in the cool dawn air.

There was a flutter of red as Amiens raised the scarf. Both men saluted by holding up their off hands, palm out and fingers spread, indicating ready. As was the Spanish custom, copied here, the left glove of a duelist was sewn with a black palm, so that this gesture could be seen from afar.

The second for Mike Nails called out that he was ready. Leonidas called out likewise.

Amiens released the scarf.

3. Pistolshot

Dueling, as a custom, does not exist if pistols are too capable. In Menelaus’s great-grandfather’s day, when a sniper in Austin could shoot a satellite-triangulated beam-guided bullet to Fort Worth and down a man’s chimney and into his left ear, duelists within eyeshot of each other would have been certain to die. It was not the inaccuracy of the guns that revived the custom in this generation; it was the perfection of the defensive measures.

Menelaus was confident. He had a Krupp 5 MegAmp railgun with a 250 IQ that fired two pounds of smart shot and a nine-meter globe of effective counterfire. The main slug could dance and jink like a drop of mercury on a skillet.

The pistol, a six-pound behemoth, was only good for one shot. Most of the mass of the gun was in the packed chaff, which consisted of hundreds of spinning, irregular bits of self-propelled interceptors. The computing technology needed to hit a bullet out of the air with a bullet had long been known; but the chaff did not need to hit a bullet straight-on to deflect it, merely to put a vortex of sufficient overpressure in the path. The Bernoulli effect, the same thing that gave curved wings lift or tennis balls backspin, would do the rest.

To counter this, gunsmiths developed bullets as large as miniature rockets. The heavier the slug, the less partial vacuums created by counterfire could deflect it, and also a large slug could carry retrorockets and a simple calculator to correct deflection errors. Escort bullets, which were smaller and lighter, could run interference, feinting the chaff into premature discharge and clearing a path, or setting up vortices of their own to pull the main shot back onto its flightpath.

And the inner globe of chaff which followed the outer globe corrected for feints, bringing more chaff-mass suddenly to one vector to deflect the bullet.

And, of course, the bullet could be programmed to feint and correct, as could the escorts, to trick the chaff into mistaking one for the other; and chaff could be counterprogrammed to correct for this feint or ignore it, or …

The chaff flight pattern and distribution was based on the microscopic differences in shape of their various lifting surfaces. Which shape of chaff went in which of the eight launchers that distributed the load was, of course, a question of pure game-theory, whose solution would maximize defensive flightpaths in minimum time, while leaving maximum correction options. It all depended on what you loaded where, how you packed your weapon.

And then there was a simple psychological question: Was the opponent someone who programmed a dogleg feint and a straight-line correction, or a straight-line feint and a dogleg correction? If the first, you packed your gun to spread your chaff in a toroid like a smoke-ring; if the second, in a cone centered on his line of fire.

Once the shot encountered the chaff cloud, it was all a chessgame on autopilot, with the bullet calculating the possible vortices of the chaff based on their presumed shapes, and the chaff attempting to deflect the bullet based on its presumed flightpath. The duel depended on the skill with which the chaff had been packed, the programming of the decision trees, and the intelligence of the pistol.

Menelaus smiled. He had been packing chaff since boyhood. And his Krupp 5M could do the
New New York Times
sudoku puzzle.

Menelaus was standing with his arm overhead, as if he meant to delope, and shoot in a right line into the air. It would have been the gentlemanly thing to do, if Nails had been convinced he meant it. If Nails had followed suit, both men could have discharged harmlessly and, with no dishonor, walked away alive. Merely to come to this field preserved one’s name.

Menelaus normally shot straight-line and corrected: swift, direct, bloody. This time he was not. Why did he give his opponent one last clear chance to walk away, both of them unbloodied, unashamed? Nails must have thought it was weakness.

Thought? There was no time, really, to think through the options once the scarf dropped. These things are decided on instant and instinctive levels. Perhaps Nails sensed Menelaus had no more nerve. Perhaps he just wanted to get in the shot first.

So Nails fired from the hip, not taking the extra eighth-second to raise his arm. Perhaps he sprained his wrist; certainly the kick threw him back, off balance, as if a hammer struck his shooting arm. His heavy armor clanged like a bell around him. Jets of black chaff erupted in eight directions from his barrel, making the man vanish in an opaque cloud, from which only radar aiming beams emerged. A smoke-ring. He had guessed Menelaus was firing on an indirect path.

Menelaus had the swifter reflexes, and had fired an instant before his foe, sensing by the tilt of the shoulder-armor that Nails had committed himself. So he was also hidden in a cloud, but this one was a cone reaching straight overhead, like a black tornado. His own aiming beam was pointed straight up.