Kill Me If You Can!

Bartol stood on the balcony of the Grand Palace and waved, smilingly, at the throngs of people below. He couldn't help it; he struggled silently against the implanted hypnotic commands, but it did no good. He waved and smiled. And the crowd cheered automatically for their Autarch.

And then the energy bolt slammed against the metaglass window that separated him from the cheering crowds. It only took a fraction of a second for the beam to burn through, but in that fraction of a second, the automatic protection devices took over.

Bartol dropped as the floor beneath him dissolved, plummeting him into a tubular chute that slanted back into the Grand Palace. The beam sizzled hotly above his head, filling the balcony with blue-white light, and then Bartol was in darkness.

He was sliding down the polished metal of the chute, dropping and curving away from the balcony floor. Then, quite suddenly, a light appeared ahead of him, and he slid out of the tube onto a polished floor.

The Commander was standing nearby. A half smile played over his hard, thin, gray face. "You look very undignified for the Autarch of Apollyon. Get up."

But I'm not the Autarch! Bartol thought. I'm just plain Rad Bartol!

But he couldn't speak the words. The hypnotic injunction in his mind prevented him from ever denying that he was the Autarch or even acting as though he were not.

The Commander knew who he was, of course. As Bartol stood up and straightened his gaudy uniform, the Commander said: "So far, we've fooled them. The Autarch will reward you handsomely for this, Bartol. You've done well." He waved at a nearby screen. "The attack has stopped already. We haven't spotted the Assassin yet—but we will eventually.

"Now, if you will excuse me for a moment—" there was deep sarcasm in his voice "—I will check the progress of the search."

Bartol stood there in his gaudy red-and-gold uniform, waiting for further orders from the Commander, trying to break the bonds that held his mind.

It had been nine days ago that Bartol had been arrested—secretly. The android robots of the Peace Administration had come to his apartment in the middle of the night and taken him into custody. He was only a common citizen of Apollyon, and had done nothing—at least, nothing that he could remember.

But instead of being taken before an ordinary Peace Administrator, he had been taken before the Peace Commander himself.

The blank-faced robots had held him, gently, but firmly in their rubbery hands, while the Commander had looked him over.

"Almost perfect," he had said at last.

"What am I accused of?" Bartol asked. "I demand to know the charges!"

For an instant, the Commander's face had blazed with anger. " Demand? What right has an arrested man to demand anything? As a citizen of Apollyon, it is your duty to submit to authority." Then his face softened. "But, come, citizen Bartol; relax. There are no charges."

"Then why—"

"No questions. You will learn."

He had learned, all right. The Commander had selected him as a double for the Autarch himself! Every citizen of the planet Apollyon had his mental and physical characteristics on file in the Master Records of the Grand Palace. To select a double for the Autarch, it was only necessary to feed the physical characteristics of Apollyon's absolute ruler into Master Records. The computer compared his total appearance with everyone else on the planet and had come up with the one man who most closely resembled him.

Rad Bartol.

Bartol had asked: "But why is this necessary? Why not use an android double?"

Feeling in a somewhat expansive mood, the Commander explained. "Because there are instruments which can tell the radiation of a human brain from the coarser vibrations of a metal-colloid brain. No robot could pass; you can.

"Now, I don't want you to feel that we are sacrificing you, so to speak. Every effort will be made to save your life. But we feel that it is better for the Benevolent Society of Assassins to nail you than for them to nail the Autarch. Don't you agree?"

Bartol most definitely did not; he had no more intention of dying for the tyrant dictator of Apollyon than he had of running away. But he smiled and said: "It would be a citizen's greatest privilege."

"You may wonder," the Commander had continued, "why we take such precautions against the Benevolent Society of Assassins. It is, after all, their sworn duty to attempt to assassinate the Autarch every five years. It is the democratic way of doing things, in order to change Autarchs.

"However, this time we are taking extra precautions because it is rumored that the Galactic League is secretly aiding the Society. They wish to inaugurate the Free Planet of Apollyon into their stupid League.

"They are, of course, too cowardly and chicken-hearted to attempt to do so by force—the warrior's way. So, they are attempting to do so by infiltrating our planet with spies and saboteurs. And this time, we have reason to believe they are behind the BSA."

Bartol had listened silently. The Commander was handing out the same line of propaganda that had been handed out by Autarchs and their cohorts for fifty years. It was nothing new.

"Now, of course," the Commander explained, "you must submit to hypnotic treatment; this must be done perfectly."

The hypnosis and the slight surgery that had made Bartol into an almost perfect replica of the Autarch of Apollyon had taken nine days.

And on the ninth day, he had made the balcony speech in which he had formally accepted the challenge of the BSA. One attempt had already been made on his life.

The rules of the Benevolent Society of Assassins were strict. One man and one man only was permitted to attempt the assassination of the Autarch. If he succeeded, he became Autarch. If he did not—he died.

Success depended partly on the loyalty of the Peace Administration. If its Commander were inefficient, weak, or disloyal, the Autarch might die. But an Autarch always killed the old Commander, so there was no chance of disloyalty. But inefficiency, stupidity, and weakness were another matter.

The first attempt on his life had failed. But there would be more. Bartol stood there, resplendent in his uniform, while the Commander watched the screens.

There were about a dozen androids in the room, moving here and there, dispatching orders as the Commander gave them.

Finally, the Commander turned. His face looked quite calm. "The BSA androids have started their attack on the Palace. My own androids are holding them off so far, of course, but that is only part of the diversion. The real, human assassin may get into the Palace by trickery. After that, it will be up to you."

He walked over to an arms cabinet. "Your personal equipment is here. Force-field belt, cutter beam—everything. And may I say—good luck."

A moment later, Bartol was seated in the private citadel of the Autarch himself, waiting for a murderer to come after him.

He rubbed his temples, trying to think. There was something he was supposed to do. What? It kept nagging at the corner of his mind, but it wouldn't come out into the open. Damn the Commander and his hypnotic compulsions!

What was it he kept trying to remember? Something he must remember! It was something about the Galactic League—was it something the Commander had told him?

The Galactic League was made up of some of the most powerful governments in the Galaxy. Their sole law, throughout the Galaxy, was that any planet could have the kind of government it wanted, except a government imposed by force.

And yet, the League never enforced that law—at least not by using space battleships and atomic bombs. They could send directives and remonstrances, but the Autarchs of Apollyon had been ignoring those for fifty years, and would go right on doing so.

Bartol shook his head again. He couldn't remember what was so important about the League. Probably some order that the Commander had given him which would become operative at a crucial moment. It was more deeply buried in his subconscious than the other orders.

The little speaker imbedded in his ear crackled. "Autarch! There's a disturbance on the fifth level! The assassin has entered the Palace!" It was the Commander's voice.

Suddenly, something clicked in Bartol's mind. He glanced down at his bright uniform and then looked at the plain gray of the android guards.

"You! Guard! Strip off that uniform! Quickly!"

Automatically, the android robot obeyed. At the same time, Bartol took off his own clothing. He changed with the guard and re-armed himself.

"Neither of you know where I am going. You will forget seeing me leave."

They nodded. He was the Autarch, as far as they knew; they would obey every order.

Quietly, he walked over to the heavy door that guarded the citadel, opened it, and stepped out into the corridor.

The assassin was on the fifth level. Seven levels above him! The citadel was buried deep beneath the surface.

"We have two semiportable blasters aimed at him," said the voice in Bartol's ear. "We—wait! Too late! He burned his way through the wall! Get that gun around to the other hall! Cut him off!"

The Commander's voice kept on. In his excitement, he had forgotten that Bartol could still hear him.

Bartol listened for a moment smiling. His job was to get his enemy before that enemy killed him. He was not going to wait in the citadel to be killed.

Faintly, he could feel the vibration of heavy beam-rifles as they fired at the fast-moving assassin.

"He's wearing a force shield!" the Commander said. "But what a force shield! Hand guns have no effect, and even a beam-rifle doesn't bother him!"

Bartol kept listening, but he started doing some fast moving himself. First, to the elevator. The elevator was locked, but Bartol burned the door open, wondering whether the car was above or below him. It was below, just as he had expected. One flash of his cutter beam, and the cables parted. There was a faint crash from far below as the automatic brakes grabbed, holding the car in place.

He still had to move fast. There was death waiting for him, and it might yet overtake him. If only the Commander kept busy with the assassin!

He listened. The Commander was still in his citadel, trying to stop the BSA killer. Only heavy-duty guns would knock the assassin out, and they were clumsy and hard to move. The BSA man had to take a roundabout route, but he was working his way steadily toward the citadel of the Autarch, where an android in a gaudy uniform was waiting for him.

The assassin charged through a group of androids armed with handguns. He bowled them over and kept on running. Bartol wished he could follow the action with a vision screen, as the Commander was.

As he listened, Bartol was running down the corridor toward a second elevator. He burned open the door. This time the car was above him. He leaned into the shaft and fired a beam upwards. There was a flare and a grinding crash as the second elevator was destroyed.

Then he stepped into a nearby closet and carefully burned a hole in the floor. The heat was intense in the little room, but his own body shield protected him.

As soon as the hole in the floor was big enough, Bartol dropped through it to the level below. There was no one in the room.

He smiled grimly to himself as he ran down another corridor. There were only a few human beings in the Palace; all the others were androids. One of those humans was trying to kill him, the others didn't care whether he died or not, so long as his objective was achieved.

At the end of the corridor, he came abruptly on two android guards. One of them stopped, then the other. There was a look of confusion on their faces. The first one said: "It is forbidden to have two assassins. And yet, you are human. You—"

Bartol burned them both down before they could go any further. He didn't want them spreading the alarm any sooner than necessary.

He ran on, still listening to the buzzing in his ear. The two dead androids hadn't recognized his face as that of the Autarch, but they'd known there was something wrong.

The earpiece was still giving orders.

"He's over the Autarch's citadel! That doesn't give us much time. Autarch! Get out of that room! He's burning a hole through the roof!"

He was addressing Bartol, of course, but Bartol kept moving. The Commander didn't know that his phony Autarch had already left the citadel.

Bartol dodged into a bathroom. No android would be in there—they didn't need to. He burned another hole in the floor, dropped through it into another bathroom. Again he burned through the floor.

"Autarch! Get out of that room! Leave the citadel immediately! It's your only chance!"

I knew that several minutes ago , Bartol thought.

He only had seconds now.

The assassin blasted his way into the citadel and cut down both the guards. Then he blasted the figure in the gaudy uniform.

"That wasn't Bart—uh—the Autarch!" the Commander's voice came.

Damn right it wasn't! Bartol thought. He sprinted down a stairway. In the lower sublevels of the Palace, the lighting was widely spaced. Here were the storage levels, and the power supplies. He wanted to stay away from the power rooms; they would be heavily guarded.

"Autarch! Where are you! Answer! Where are you! The assassin knows that wasn't you! He's heading downward! Where are you?"

He's getting panicky , Bartol thought with grim amusement. He knows I wouldn't dare answer. The assassin can tap these communications.

The assassin, whoever he was, must have weapons of tremendous power to be able to burn his way into the Autarch's citadel so easily. He could move downward from floor to floor a lot more rapidly than Bartol could.

Bartol knew exactly where he was going—if only he could get there in time!

He ran through the dimly lit halls which were piled high with crates and boxes. At last he came to a wall which looked like any other wall—but Bartol knew it was different.

"Autarch!" the ear speaker crackled. "What are you doing down there? Why are you in the storage compartments?"

"I'm hiding," snapped Bartol. He knows where I am now. I'll have to work fast.

He pressed his thumb against a hidden niche in the wall. A tiny device recorded his thumbprint, checked it against previous patterns, and then clicked. A panel slid aside. Within it was a curiously shaped helmet.

Bartol could hear the pounding of android feet all around him. Nearby, a wall started to smoke. He slammed the helmet on his head, locked the chinpiece into place, and activated the mechanism within the dome.

"Where are you? What was that helmet? The assassin is coming down!"

Evidently, the now-panicky Commander was watching him in the vision screens. He wouldn't see anything now; Bartol was invisible to infrabeams.

Unfortunately, he was still visible to normal vision. The nearby wall cascaded outward with a splash of molten metal, and an android stepped through, firing a heavy beam-rifle. The beam struck Bartol with a glare of blue-white light—and splashed.

With the helmet on, Bartol was just as impervious to ordinary beams as the assassin who was even now burning his way down through the Palace. Like the assassin, all he had to do was avoid anything as heavy as a semiportable.

Bartol stepped directly into the blazing muzzle of the rifle. The tremendous energy being reflected from his body shield dazed the android. Bartol jerked the rifle from its hands and burned it down. He swung around just as two more of the things rounded a nearby corner. They, too, went down before the white-hot beam of the rifle.

Then he stepped toward the wall. Under the tremendous power of the special body shield, the wall flowed like wax in a candle flame. It hardly slowed him at all.

He stopped for a moment, concentrating. Where was his enemy? Dimly at first, then with greater power, the intricate amplifier of the helmet picked up the brain radiations of the man he was looking for.

In his ear, the speaker was still gibbering.

Bartol stood a moment longer, synchronizing the helmet with the signals. Then, having located his enemy, he began to move again.

He headed for the elevators. There was only one. The other ended two levels above. It must be the one.

He pushed his way through the door and dropped down the open shaft. The antigravity field allowed him to drop rapidly, but not too rapidly; even that marvelously designed helmet couldn't do everything. It would slow his fall somewhat, but it couldn't lift him.

His feet struck the top of the elevator car whose cables he had cut. He changed the polarity of his field and the force was applied vertically instead of radially. His feet melted their way through the top of the car. He reversed the polarity again before he touched the floor of the car.

The assassin upstairs was running amok, burning down everything in his path and working his way downwards.

Bartol hesitated just for a second before he went onward. The elevator bar had dropped only a few feet before its brakes had stopped it. Bartol lifted himself up to the level of the floor, burned his way through the elevator door, and stepped out into the corridor.

He saw the heavy-duty beam-cannon just as the android behind it fired. It was to his right, a few yards down the corridor. The blast of energy roared down the corridor, narrowly missing Bartol as he threw himself back into the elevator. It swung downward, gouging gobbets of flaming metal from the wall, aiming straight for Bartol.

There was only one way out of the trap. Bartol switched polarity again and turned his generators up to maximum. It wasn't enough to stop that heavy beam, but—

He leaped over the coruscating beam and literally dived headfirst into the wall on the other side of the corridor. It melted and gassified before him, hardly slowing his plunge.

He rolled over and landed on his feet. He kept on running toward the rear wall—through it. He circled through the next room and the next, dodging twice the heavy-duty beams aimed at him. The whole section was becoming a raging inferno; without his body screen, the heat would have been unbearable.

At last he came to the wall he was looking for. It shimmered slightly, due to the force field that surrounded it. Just in front of the wall, two androids were swinging a heavy-duty cannon around toward him. He fired his own weapon, but they were shielded by more than the portable shields they wore. This section was really fortified!

He dived toward the androids, sliding under the barrel of the projector just as it blazed into white-hot hell.

He jumped to his feet and landed a punch on the jaw of the nearest android. It reeled backwards, and the other jumped him. Bartol flipped the second android over his head, slamming it into the face of its partner. They both went down. With two quick blows, he knocked their skulls against the floor. The metal skulls didn't break, but the metal-colloid brain within ceased to function because of the shock.

Now came the crucial part. He stepped over to the wall and touched its shimmering surface. It was an ordinary KF-4 field; it had no reactive surface, as did his own. Good! It could be analyzed.

The mechanism in the helmet went to work, carefully synchronizing its own vibratory frequency with that of the wall. It was slow work; it would take a full twenty seconds, and in that time, plenty could happen.

It was stupid not to build all the walls with force-fields that would make them impervious to beam guns. But then, the whole set-up on Apollyon was stupid. These petty Autarch-Assassin games could only have been set up by a madman.

Five android guards ran into the room, firing their beam-rifles. Bartol ignored them; the beams couldn't touch him. Two more started to pull in a wheeled semiportable. They got it in through the door and swiveled it toward Bartol.

At that moment, the mechanism in the helmet synchronized with the wall's force field. Bartol slid through the field, melted through the wall, and stepped through to the other side.

He hurled himself to the floor instantly as two coruscating beams of ravening heat met at the spot where he had stood. There was another semiportable inside the real citadel of the Autarch of Apollyon.

Before the Autarch could swivel the gun, Bartol had leaped on him, slamming him to the floor.

"Don't kill me!" screamed the man. "I'll do anything! Just don't kill me!"

On the other side of the wall, the androids found themselves helpless. The force field was still up, and they had been forbidden to enter the citadel.

"I don't intend to kill you," Bartol said. "Not unless you act up."

He cut off the man's body shield and pulled the handgun from his holster. Helpless and disarmed, the man cowered on the floor as Bartol stood up.

He had never seen this man before. The Autarch didn't look anything like the man Bartol had been doubling for. The Autarch was thin and old-looking. Hatred and fear blazed in his eyes.

"So you're Lavod Quom," Bartol said. "Alias the Autarchs of Apollyon, alias the Peace Commander."

"How did you know that name?" the man almost screamed, his voice was so shrill. "Where did you hear it?"

"We have our ways," Bartol said. "But never mind. I'm here to tell you that you are under arrest in the name of the Galactic League. The charges are planetary slavery and mass murder."

"But—but—how did you do it?" He lay there on the floor, still shivering.

"It took a lot of thinking," Bartol told him. "We've known what you've been doing for a long time now. You set up this little dictatorship so that you could play God with its people. We knew that the Commander was a remote control robot—operated by you. So were all the Autarchs who made public appearances.

"Then, every five years, you had the Benevolent Society of Assassins pick out someone to kill the Autarch. At the same time, you picked someone to double for the Autarch. Your twisted mind liked to watch two men fight to the death.

"It didn't matter which one won. If it was the phony Autarch, you simply put him under suspended animation for use five years later. If it was the assassin, he was immediately killed and an android was made up to duplicate him. Either way, you were safe."

"But you couldn't have known!" Lavod Quom said. "You couldn't have!"

"We did, though," Bartol said bluntly. "But we had to do it legally—we had to stop you according to your own laws. That is the Rule of the League.

"We've had that helmet planted in your palace for two years, waiting for this moment. The Autarch android was studied carefully, and the agent who looked most like him—myself—was sent here. Your records were tampered with so that it would look as though I had always been a citizen of Apollyon. I was put under deep hypnosis, and false memories were implanted. It had to be deep so that your own hypnosis wouldn't dig anything up. But my compulsion vanished as soon as the assassin entered the Palace.

"It was all perfectly legal, you see. One human assassin is allowed. That was me. It's perfectly legal to use trickery. The other assassin which is causing so much trouble upstairs is an android—a special job, like your Peace Commissioner. It's controlled by a League man. But that android hasn't killed anyone but androids, anymore than I have."

Quom sat up. He giggled foolishly. "You mean I set it up? I brought you here? I picked you out? Why, that's wonderful! Nobody but me could defeat me—and I did it! That was quite a performance, young man; quite a performance. I'll see that you're properly rewarded. I'll make you Autarch! Yes! And give you a medal, too! I have lots of pretty medals! And I'll make you another uniform—with more gold on it!" Then he looked up, almost wistfully. "And this time, can I wear a pretty uniform, too?"

As he had been babbling, Bartol leaned over and gently grasped both his hands.

"Sure you can have a uniform."

"With gold on it?"

"With diamonds," said Bartol. And then the special energy flowed through his hands from the helmet, and the old man collapsed into painless unconsciousness.

Bartol released him and said softly, "Only I don't think you'll want anything that gaudy when the League psychiatrists finish with you."