“A duel?”
“Choose your weapons!”
“This is nonsense,” Halpern said. He began to turn away from her.
But Roxanne Harte grabbed him by the sleeve and with her other hand delivered a resounding slap to Halpern’s face.
“Choose your weapons,” she repeated.
Halpern stood there, his cheek burning. The doorman and cloakroom attendant were staring at him. John Nottingham came through the door from the club’s interior and stopped, sensing instinctively that something was wrong.
“Well?” Ms. Harte demanded.
“I can’t fight a duel with you,” Halpern said. “You’re only a woman.”
“That’s the attitude that makes this duel necessary, isn’t it?” she said, practically snarling.
Drawing himself up to his full height, Halpern said, “I have every advantage over you. I am taller, heavier, stronger. You couldn’t stand up to me in a duel.”
“What about pistols?” Ms. Harte replied immediately. “Back in the Old West they called the Colt six-gun the Equalizer. How about a duel with pistols?”
Halpern was about to point out to her that he was the club’s champion pistol shot for the past three years running. But he stopped himself. Why should I tell her? She wants to fight a duel against me. She’s the one who suggested pistols.
Nodding, Justice Halpern said through clenched teeth, “Very well, then. Pistols it will be.” And he added silently, You little fool.
News of the duel spread through the club almost instantly, of course. By the following afternoon, as Justice Halpern stepped into the Men’s Bar for his customary libation, every man there got to his feet and applauded.
Halpern tried to hide the pleasure he felt as he made his way across the room to the table where Franklin, Gorton, and Nottingham were sitting.
“The defender of our rights and privileges,” Franklin said, beaming, as the judge sat down.
“By golly,” said Gorton, “I’ve got to hand it to you, your honor. It’s high time somebody stood up for what’s right.”
Nottingham was a bit more subdued. “From what I understand, you have agreed that the outcome of this duel will decide whether or not the women’s petition will be accepted.”
“That’s right,” Halpern said, as the Hispanic waiter placed his brandy and soda in front of him. “If she wins, the Men’s Bar will be opened to women.”
“But she won’t win,” Gorton said. Then he added, “Will she?”
“How could she,” Franklin said, “against the club’s best shot?”
“You’ve agreed on the setting?” Nottingham asked.
“A frontier saloon in the Old West,” said Halpern as he reached for his drink. With a smile that was almost a smirk he added, “She’ll have to come in through the ladies’ entrance, I expect.”
The following morning Halpern had his chauffeur drive him back to the shopping mall where the VR Duels, Inc. facility was. Franklin, Gorton, and Nottingham were already there, even though he arrived scrupulously on time. Ms. Harte was nowhere to be found.
Typical woman, Halpern said to himself. Late for the appointment. Then he thought, Maybe she won’t show up at all. The idea pleased him immensely.
Franklin and the others looked very serious as they stood in the anteroom waiting for his opponent.
“Relax,” Halpern told them. “The purity of the Men’s Bar will not be defiled.”
At that moment Ms. Harte burst into the room, looking rather like a worried high school student who’d been sent down to the principal’s office for discipline.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said, avoiding Halpern’s stern gaze.
Halpern felt growing impatience as the same bright-smiling technician carefully went over each and every detail of the duel, the sensor suit, and the helmet he would have to wear. Get on with it! he railed at her silently. But he kept his face and demeanor perfectly polite, absolutely correct. He allowed himself to show no hint of impatience.
“You’ll have to stand on your feet for this duel,” said the technician just before she closed the door of the booth, leaving Halpern clothed in the nubby sensor suit and unwieldy biker’s helmet. The helmet felt heavy, and he couldn’t get over the feeling that some kind of loathsome bugs were worming their way under his skin.
The technician shut the door at last. Halpern stood alone for a long moment that seemed to stretch indefinitely. The booth was narrow, confining, its walls smooth and bare.
“Okay,” he heard a man’s voice in his helmet earphones. “Activating Halpern-Harte duel.”
The world went completely dark for an instant, then a brief flare of colors swirled before his eyes and he heard a muted rumbling noise.
Abruptly he was standing at the bar of an Old West frontier saloon, crowded with rough-looking men, bearded and unwashed, smelly. Over in one corner a man who looked suspiciously like Rick Gorton was banging away at a tinny-sounding piano. It can’t be Gorton, Halpern said to himself. Looking at the piano player more closely, Halpern saw that he had a bushy red beard and his fingernails were cracked and dirty.
“What’re you having, Judge?”
Halpern turned and saw the bartender smiling at him. The man looked a little like Herb Franklin, but much younger, more rugged, his beard darker and rather bedraggled. A badly stained apron was tied around his ample middle.
“Judge?” the bartender prompted.
