There was no shortage of volunteers to take up the reality of the romantic challenge. . . .
1
A taster of wine, with an eye for a maid,
Never too bold, and never afraid. . . .
—Bliss Carman
The crowd in Carnaval finery burst apart with a collective shriek.
The man forcing his way toward Johnnie through the revelers had a stubble beard and a wild look in his eyes. His left arm clamped a woman against his chest like the figurehead of a packet ship. Her domino mask hung from one ear. There were scratches on her collarbone, and the gauzy blouse had been shredded away from her breasts.
The man's right hand waved a butcher knife with an eight-inch blade.
"All right, you whore!" the man screamed. His dilated pupils weren't focused on anything in his present surroundings. "You want to spread it around, I'll help you spread it around!"
The knife slipped like a chord of light-struck ripple toward the woman's belly.
Johnnie's right hand dropped as he swung his hips to the left. The hem of his scarlet tunic had tiny weights in it, so that the ruffed flare stood out as his body moved—
Clearing the pistol holstered high on Johnnie's right hip.
The woman's body shielded all of the madman except his arms and the wedge of face including his staring, bloodshot eyes. The Carnaval crowd was a montage of silks and shrieks surrounding the event.
Johnnie's hand curved up with the pistol; faster than a snake striking, faster than the knife. For an instant that trembled like the sun on dew, the line of the pistol barrel joined Johnnie's eye and the madman's.
The muzzle lifted with a flash and a haze of clean-burning propellant. The sharp crack! of muzzle blast slapped through the screams. The madman's right eye socket was empty as his body spasmed backward in a tetanic arch. His arms lashed apart, flinging the woman to one side and the butcher knife to the other.
Johnnie took a deep breath and loaded a fresh magazine from the pouch on his left hip, where it balanced the weight of the pistol. The holographic ambiance faded, leaving behind a large room whose walls were gray with a covering of vitalon, a super-cooled liquid which absorbed bullet impacts within its dense interior.
A red light glowed on the wall above the door. Somebody was in the anteroom, watching the sequence through closed-circuit cameras.
The muscles of Johnnie's lean face set in a pattern scarcely recognizable as the visage of the good-looking youth of a moment before. He holstered his weapon and touched the door control.
"Well," he said as the armored door rotated and withdrew, "are you satisfied, Sena—"
The man in the anteroom wore a Blackhorse dress uniform, with the gold pips and braid of a commander. His only similarity to Senator A. Rolfe Gordon was that both men were in their mid-forties—
And they'd been brothers-in-law before the Senator's wife ran off with a mercenary not long after she gave birth to Johnnie.
"Uncle Dan!" cried Johnnie. He started toward Commander Daniel Cooke with his arms wide . . . before he remembered that what was proper for a boy of nine should have been outgrown by nineteen. He drew back in embarrassment.
Uncle Dan gave him a devil-may-care grin and embraced Johnnie. "What's the matter?" he demanded. "Did I develop skin-rot since I last saw you?"
He stepped back and viewed the younger man critically. "Though I won't," he said, "offer to swing you up in the air any more."
"Gee it's good to . . . ," Johnnie said. "I wasn't expecting to see you."
"I have a meeting with the Senator this morning," Dan explained. "And I thought I'd come a little early to see my favorite nephew."
"Ah . . . shall we go somewhere comfortable?"
"If you don't mind," replied his uncle, "I'd like to watch you run through a sequence or two."
Dan's smile didn't change, but his voice was a hair too casual when he added, "The Senator comes to watch you frequently, then?"
"No," said Johnnie flatly. "Not often at all. But too often."
His face cleared. "But I'd love to show you the set-up, Uncle Dan. The screens in the anteroom—"
"I'd prefer to be in the simulator with you," Dan said. He lifted his saucer hat and ran his fingers through his black, curly hair. "Though I won't be shooting."
"There's some danger even with the—" Johnnie began until his uncle's brilliant grin stopped him.
Right, explain the danger of ricochets to Commander Daniel Cooke, whose ship took nine major-caliber hits three months ago while blasting her opponent in Squadron Monteleone to wreckage.
"Sorry, Uncle Dan."
"Never apologize for offering information that might save somebody's life," Dan said. "Got a jungle sequence in this system?"