Dueling -- Fiction; Science fiction; Short stories; War stories
"She's not good, Treb, understand that. She's evil and money-hungry, and
ambitious. But she is beautiful and I love her. I'd sell my soul and my
body to possess her.
"That's why I volunteered. With the winners' grant I would have money.
Prestige. Honor. There would be a thousand new opportunities for a
career. And Jane could not refuse me then."
"It is wrong, Harl Neilson, to so worship a woman. Like alcohol or
Venerian fire pollen--it is unnatural."
"I know. I have tried to forget, to put her memory aside. But it is like
a disease. An incurable disease. I must have Jane."
Treb threw more wood on the little fire and checked over the lashings
about Neilson's body.
"I am going to look at my rabbit snares," he said, "and to spring the
other traps. We will eat and sleep, and in the morning try to shave and
look decent before going to the locks."
Neilson let his head sag between his shoulders, and said nothing. He was
leaning against a tree, his arms lashed behind him and to it.
"There is one more thing, Harl, that I wish to discuss. It is about the
Paul Hubble Foundation Award. Think about it."
Treb moved off into the darkness.
* * * * *
The sunlight from the overhead "suns" of the Satellite revealed a
greatly changed Treb. He was shaved, his hair combed and hacked off
above his ears, and he was stitching the last rough patch on his dark
green trouser leg.
Now he donned the trousers and went over to the bound Andilian. He cut
the ropes, his carbine ready.
"Get down to the lake," he ordered. "You'll find a razor, soap and an
old shirt to dry yourself with."
Harl Neilson was chunky and fair-haired, with a healthy looking
red-brown skin. His eyes were wide and darkly blue. Now the wide mouth
under his shapeless nose twisted into a faint grin.
"I'll try to get away," he warned. "Aren't you afraid of that?"
"I have all the guns, grenades and needle-knives, Harl. I'll shoot you
if you attempt escape, of course, but I hope you'll listen to what I
propose first."
Neilson slowly stripped off his ragged tunic and trousers. There was the
scar of a recent bullet's path across his right shoulder blade. It was
crusted with blackened blood.
"I thought I heard you two days back, Harl," said Treb.
"Just a scratch." Neilson took up the soap and waded into the nearby
lake. "Start talking, Treb."
"I told you to think about Paul Hubble's Award, Harl. He's the American
industrialist who opposed violence in settling any issue."
"Sure. Heard about him in the lower grades. Fifty million dollars he
sunk in his worthless Peace Foundation. What about it?"
"Hear me out. Did you like what we just went through? Your friends and
comrades dying--my friends dead and wounded? And all to settle some
territorial dispute or to wipe out some imagined slur.
"Would you like to prevent your kid, or mine, from having to face this
again?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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