Hector had ducked away. Odal turned and chased after the Watchman, trying to follow him as he flickered in and out among me dozens of tri-di images that were dancing, urging, laughing, drinking, eating, taking pills, worrying….
“You coward!” Odal screamed over the babble of sales talk.
“Why should I fight you?” Hector hollered back from somewhere across the room.
Odal squinted, trying to see through the gyrating tridi figures. “You tricked me in the dueling machine but now there’ll be no tricks. I’ll find you, and when I do, I’ll kill you!”
The flash of a black-and-silver uniform among the fashion models, overweight women, underweight men, scientific demonstrations and new, new, new products. Odal headed in that direction.
“And what about Leoh?” Hector’s voice cut through the taped noise. “He killed you without any tricks. But you’re afraid to go after him now, aren’t you?”
Odal laughed. “Do you really believe that old man beat me? I could have destroyed him at any time I wished.”
He ducked under the arm of a well-preserved matron ho was saying, “WHY LET ADVANCING AGE WORRY YOU, WHEN A REJUVE.. ..” There was Hector, edging slowly toward the door.
“You deliberately lost to Leoh?” Hector’s face, in the reflections of the tri-di images, looked more puzzled than frightened. ‘To make it seem….”
‘To make it seem that Leoh is a great hero, and that Kerak is populated by weaklings and cowards. All his duels were designed for that purpose. And while he lulls the Acquatainians with his tales of victory, we prepare to strike.”