He walked out to the machine, with Hector beside him. Their footsteps echoed hollowly in the sepulchral chamber. Leoh stopped at the nearer booth.
“Now remember,” he said, carefully, “I will be holding the emergency control unit in my hand. It will stop the duel the instant I set it off. However, if something should go wrong, you must be prepared to act quickly. Keep a close watch on my physical condition; I’ve shown you which instruments to check on the control board—”
“Yes sir.”
Leoh nodded and took a deep breath. “Very well then.”
He stepped into the booth and sat down. The emergency control unit rested on a shelf at his side; he took it in his hands. He leaned back and waited for the semihypnotic effect to take hold. Dulaq’s choice of this very city and the stat-wand were known. But beyond that, everything was locked and sealed in Dulaq’s subconscious mind. Could the machine reach into that subconscious, probe past the lock and seal of catatonia, and stimulate Dulaq’s mind into repeating the duel?
Slowly, lullingly, the dueling machine’s imaginary yet very real mists enveloped Leoh. When the mists cleared, he was standing on the upper pedestrian level of the main commercial street of the city. For a long moment, everything was still.
Have I made contact? Whose eyes am I seeing with, my own or Dulaq’s?
And then he sensed it—an amused, somewhat astonished marveling at the reality of the illusion. Dulaq’s thoughts!
Make your mind a blank, Leoh told himself. Watch. Listen. Be passive.
He became a spectator, seeing and hearing the world through Dulaq’s eyes and ears as the Acquatainian Prime Minister advanced through his nightmarish ordeal. He felt the confusion, frustration, apprehension and growing terror as, time and again, Odal appeared in the crowd—only to melt into someone else and escape.