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  Suddenly several women moaned in disappointment, punching at the buttons on their loop recorders. A grim-faced man came up, holding a suppressor, and the moans stopped. Mother’s Little Boys could do whatever they liked—including cutting out a choice scene from a lifeloop. The man knelt down by the fragments of glass and in a very businesslike way mopped up a sample of the liquid and took four pieces of glass, dumped them into a small bag he pulled from his pocket, and then, nodding to the company, left.

  Arran was sitting down, shaking.

  Fritz Kapock looked at Jason Worthing in hatred. “That was incredibly crude, doing a thing like that,” he said.

  “I know,” Jazz agreed, smiling. “A more courteous man would have drunk, and died gracefully.” Jazz excused himself from the group in a way that informed everyone that he preferred not to be accompanied. Hop, of course, accompanied him anyway.

  “How did you know?” Hop asked.

  “I didn’t. But it seems like it was a pretty good guess, doesn’t it?”

  Guess? Hop knew perfectly well that Jazz Worthing wasn’t stupid enough to open himself up to libel suits on the basis of mere guesswork. But if he preferred not to tell, why push him? Then again, why not? Managers have some rights.

  “Come on, Jazz. How did you know?”

  “I’m a Swipe,” Jazz answered.

  Hop rolled his eyes and laughed. “All right then. Don’t tell me. Protect your sources. But at least tell me why she tried!”

  Jazz only smiled and looked over at the group gathered to commiserate with their offended hostess. She was looking weak and helpless, and Hop couldn’t help but admire her technique. A brilliant actress—able to utterly hide every natural emotion, play a role every waking moment.

  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 dueling. 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 dueling 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 laser armed 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.

  They headed for a service entrance, and Hop helped muscle a path for Jason to follow through the crowd that was trying to get out that way. Once into the corridor beyond the door (carpeted, Hop noticed—Arran had spent a lot of money on her flat), Jason looked at the direction the crowd was heading, and went the other way. Hop Noyock tagged along, noting with pleasure that he was young enough to appreciate the way Arran Handully looked as she wriggled and jerked, trying to free herself from Jason’s grasp. When she started digging fingernails into Jazz’s back, Noyock swatted her sharply. “None of that,” he said, and she seemed to realize for the first time that she and Jazz weren’t alone. She stopped struggling.

  “Why don’t they have anybody in here guarding the halls?” Hop asked.

  “Because they’re Servicemen, not constables, and certainly not Mother’s Little Boys,” Jason answered. “Besides, we’re heading farther in, not out.”

  “Why the hell are we doing that?” Noyock asked, making it a point to breathe heavily so that Jazz knew how tired he was getting as they wound up a ramp.

  “Go the other way, if you want to get picked up by angry soldiers.”

  Hop doggedly followed as Jason went up the ramp, and saw, to his relief, that the starpilot was capable of getting tired. Jazz slowed at the top of the ramp, then swung Arran off his shoulder and slammed her a little harder than necessary against a wall. He held her right hand in his, with his forearm pressing against her throat, and his legs both to one side of hers—he wasn’t giving her an opportunity for any action. Just to be sure, however, Hop held her left hand, too. She shot him a glare.

  “Don’t look at me like that, Arran,” Hop said, using his wounded dignity voice. “I’m only holding you twenty percent against the wall. He’s responsible for eighty percent.”

  She didn’t answer. Jazz ignored Hop, too, and so he stood holding Arran’s hand as Jazz asked her, “Which way from here?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “I know you have a hiding place, Arran. The reason those soldiers were there is because the test on the poison came out positive and they got mad. Want me to take you down there to them?”

  She shook her head.

  “Then where’s the hiding place?”

  Hop watched as Jazz stared at her eyes, as if hoping to pluck the answers out of them. Apparently Arran saw a different intent, and she let her eyes fill up with tears. A play for sympathy, Hop knew, but it didn’t stop him from feeling instant pity. The bitch. Actresses shouldn’t be allowed to have private lives. They didn’t know how to stop acting.

  Abruptly Jazz jerked her away from the wall and slung her over his shoulder again. Sighing wearily, Hop followed him off down a corridor.

  The halls were narrower up here, Hop noticed, and the floors and walls were made of wood. He touched one, and was surprised at the roughness. Not just wood, then. Real wood. He whistled.

  “Shut up,” Jazz said.

  “Why so glum?” Hop asked. “A billion men would give their privates to have her over their shoulder wearing that costume. Though that would rather defeat the purpose, wouldn’t it?”

  Jazz didn’t laugh, and so Hop shut up.

  They stopped in front of a rather insignificant looking door. “What’s in here?” Jazz asked.

  “A wardrobe,” she said immediately.

  “Can you break it open, Hop?”

  “Me?”

  “Forget it,” Jazz said. He stepped back and, still burdened with Arran, kicked the door. It budged, but just barely.

  “Let me,” Hop said, now that he was sure there was no sentry planted in the door. No sense getting blown up unnecessarily. Jazz may be a meal ticket, but keeping him alive would be pointless to Hop if Hop weren’t around to get his twenty percent. He stood facing the opposite wall of the narrow corridor, his hands firmly placed on the wall. Then he jumped up and pushed off from the wall, slamming his feet into the door. It didn’t quite break free, but all it took was another halfhearted kick from Noyock as he lay on the floor.

  “Spectacular,” Jazz said as he stepped over Noyock and walked into the room. “You’re very agile for a fat man.”

  “Paunch covers muscle, it doesn’t replace it,” Hop commented, and got up. The “wardrobe” was a large library, with mirrors wherever there were no shelves, including the floor and ceiling. But the real attraction was the contents of the shelves—real paper books, not tapes, filling every available space. Noyock wasn’t much of a reader, but he appreciated value in whatever form it took, and under his breath he mumbled, “The lady’s literate, after all.”

  Jazz paid no attention. Instead he picked Arran off his shoulders and tossed her to the floor. She landed heavily.

  “Where’s the door?” he heard Jazz say. Arran shook her head, wincing with some pain she acquired in the fall to the floor. Jazz shook her, and she started to cry. Hop hated himself, but the crying made him want to say, “Hey, Jazz, go easy on the woman, huh?” He resisted the impulse, however.

  So did Jazz, if indeed he felt such a charitable feeling. Instead, he doubled up his fist and plunged it sharply into Arran’s stomach. Hop was sure he heard a rib break. She screamed in pain, and Hop wondered if it was the first honest emotion he had seen her use.

  Jazz leaned down and put his ear by her lips. Hop was surprised she was conscious—but apparently she had been for at least a moment, for Jason got up and walked straight to a bookshelf and pulled off two books, reaching behind to find something. Immediately a mirror slid into the floor, and a little room was revealed behind. Jazz walked back to Arran, picked her up, and carried her limp unconscious body into the room. Noyock decided to follow.

  As soon as they were inside, Jason lay Arran down on the floor. “Find a light switch,” Jazz said, but before Noyock could even glance around, the door slid back up, cutting off all light.

  “And I suppose you didn’t think to bring a candle,” Jason said.

  “Next time I’ll do better,” Hop answered.

  “A lighter?”

  “You know I don’t poison myself, Jazz, why would I carry fire with me?” Not that Hop hadn’t once junked himself, but he had long since decided long life took precedence over fleeting pleasures, like smoking. That decision had made him feel like a puritan for months. Now he regretted it again.

  They stood in the darkness for a while. Then Hop offered to prowl around and see what he could feel.

  “Don’t even twitch,” Jazz said. “There may be some nasty surprises in here.”

  They waited awhile more. “Has it been three years yet, Jazz, or only two?” Hop asked.r />
  “About four minutes. Give the lady a chance to wake up.”

  “I think you broke a rib.”

  “I hope so. The bitch deserved to lose her head.”

  “But she never did lose it, did she.”

  “Quiet. She’s waking up.”

  Arran groaned, and Noyock wasn’t even surprised that the moan was vaguely seductive. She could hardly be expected to lose lifetime habits all at once.

  “Don’t move around too much, Arran,” Jazz said softly. “Your rib is broken, and you’re in the secret room behind the mirror in the library.”

  “How did you find the door!”

  “You told me.”

  “I never—”

  Jazz slapped her, and she cried out. Hop began to feel a little bit disturbed at the way his meal ticket was acting. Cruelty should have some point, Hop firmly believed.

  Jazz hissed at her, “You’ve lied every moment since we first met tonight. You tried to kill me. I want to know why.”

  Silence. Then another slap, another cry of pain.

  “Dammit, Jazz, stop it!” Hop said.

  “I’ve got to know what I’m up against, Hop. There’s a lot she isn’t telling me. Like the fact that she has a friend named Farl Baak, a Cabinet minister, who for some absurd reason wants me dead.”

  She gasped.

  “I didn’t come to your party ignorantly, Arran. Now you can start telling us things. For instance, you might start by telling me how to turn the lights on in here.”

  “Right by the door,” she said.

  Hop stepped in the direction he remembered the door was in, but Jazz’s voice cut through the darkness. “Don’t touch it! Stop where you are, Hop!” Hop stayed where he was. He heard Arran groan in fear—whatever Jazz was doing she didn’t like. “Clever trap, Arran,” Jason said. “But I’ll start feeding you your fingers in small sections if you don’t start cooperating.”

  Another groan of fear and pain, and Arran shouted, “Stop it! Stop it—the light’s in the far right corner as you come in, at about knee height—”

  The light went on. Jazz was still holding Arran’s hand, tightly, while his other hand was extended to touch the spot she had described. Noyock turned from them to examine the door. “Where’s the trap?” he asked.