Free Count to a Trillion by John C. Wright Page A

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