She punched herself a second cup of coffee--black with Saccha--and opened the pamphlet again.

"If you failed," the booklet began, as though antic.i.p.ating her anger, "it was, as I warned you, through human error, and not on the part of this Kit. Was your murder a success?"

"No!" she answered, in a consummate pique.

The pamphlet was silent for an instant, as though refraining from taking offense. Then it began: "If you have not succeeded, attribute your failure to one of the following: "One. You snagged your Animaux Tube and it was not fully inflated, or later lost air.

"Two. You did not allow the Essence to fill the Tube completely. Perhaps you spilled a portion.

"Three. You prepared your rabid dog for the scent improperly.

"Four. You did not attach your Essence vial properly, causing irreparable damage from leakage.

"Well, does one of these fit your case?"

The pamphlet waited, and she remembered the few drops of substance that had trickled free in her eagerness to set the dog loose on Carl. She mumbled something.

"What?" asked the pamphlet.

"I said: I spilled some!" she confessed loudly, shamefacedly, toying with the sip-tip of her coffee bulb.

"Ah so," the pamphlet agreed. "Undoubtedly, certain vital organs were not properly formed and stabilized, thus causing a malfunction of the pseudo-beast."

Recollections formed of the evening before, and she saw the rabid animal again, froth dripping from its viciously-spiked jaws...limping and whining. So that was it. Well, it wouldn't happen again. She would follow the instructions more carefully in the future.

Madge Rubichek was a methodical woman.

"What do I do now?" she asked.

The pamphlet seemed to make a snickering sound, as if it were acknowledging her loss of annoyance at it, and her own recognized sense of failure, her inferiority. It might be said the pamphlet was its own brand of sn.o.b.

Then its snideness disappeared, and the booklet advised, "Remove the Deadly Nightshade from your Kit.

Be careful not to spread it out. Repeat, do not unfold it!"

She knew at once what was meant. The black sheet with the horrible feeling of dead flesh.

She hesitated to touch it, so repulsive was the tactile impression it offered; nonetheless, she reached into the Kit and brought out the layer of softly-folded, unbelievably black, ghastly-feeling material. She dropped it at her feet.

"Are you ready?" asked the pamphlet.

She started violently. It was uncanny the way that thing knew what and when and how and oh well...it was supposed to, wasn't it? But so creepy/"Yes, thank you."

"Excellent. Now this second method allows less room for Human error. However, it is more dangerous, and more complex. Your three methods of murder are offered in order of increasing effort and danger. Sequentially, they are held so the simplest can be allowed to work first, thus denying the element of failure and discovery as much as possible.

"Your Deadly Nightshade is nearly flawless. If you follow my instructions to the exact letter precisely--and I cannot stress this enough--you will have accomplished your desire by morning.

"Your Deadly Nightshade is a copyrighted, patented--" and it reeled off, in a bored voice, a string of Guatemalan Patent Authority designates, "--exclusive with the Do-It-Yourself Murder Kit." She realized at once that the voice was huckstering out of necessity, that it found such commercialism odious, vulgar and tedious.

"It will provide night," the pamphlet said. "Night for the purpose you seek. Here is how it is used: "Place it in the bedroom of the one you wish to eliminate. It is very important that this be done precisely as directed. On no account should you, after placing the Deadly Nightshade in the bedroom, re-enter it before the intended victim. The Deadly Nightshade acts as a controlled form of narcolepsy, by the release of hypnotically-keyed visual and mental depressants. The intended victim is cast into a hypnotic spell of long night. In three days he or she will sleep all life away. The room will be a place of perpetual darkness to him or her and slowly the vital bodily functions will fail and cease, beginning with the flow of blood to the brain.

"However, it is very important that you place the Nightshade in the intended's room evenly and without wrinkles, stretching it out under the bed or somewhere else where it will escape observation. And...you must not re- enter the room once you have placed the Deadly Nightshade. Exposure begins once the sheet is spread."

She shook it out like a chenille bedspread and laid it out neatly, placing it very carefully under the bed, once again precautionarily laying out newsfax to avoid any later unpleasantness to the floor. She tidied the bed, tucking nicely, the blankets as tight as those on the bunk of an army King/Sgt. She spread the Deadly Nightshade in a tight, wrinkle-free sheet.

She missed seeing the socks, somehow.

They were on the floor, just peeping out from under the bed, half-under the Deadly Nightshade.

She caught them out of the comer of her eye, just as she pulled the door to behind herself.

Carl's filthy, filthy socks. A pang of hysteria went through her. He always left them where they fen. She could not understand how she had failed to see them when she had tidied that morning, nor more important, when she had stretched out the Deadly Nightshade. Per,. haps the excitement of the night before, and the fervor of now.

She remembered the instructions clearly.

"...you must not re-enter the room once you have placed the Deadly Nightshade. Exposure begins once the sheet is spread..."

Well! She certainly wasn't going to chance that.

As it was, she would have to invent a reason for coming to bed after he had retired. Perhaps the Midnight Movie on tri-V.

Nor was she going to foul it up as she had with the Animaux Tube. But just the same...those stinking socks.

On a level far deeper than any conscious urge to murder Carl, the training of a lifetime, the murmured words of her Mother, and the huge distaste of her Father for litter, sent her to the broom closet.

She re-opened the door, and yes...just by holding the broom tightly at the sucker-straws, by keeping her wrist flexed and tight to maintain rigid balanced control, she was able to snag the socks, one by one.

--and withdraw them.

--without entering the room.

--and close the door again.

Madge congratulated herself, once she had slung the stench-filled socks into the dispop. She busied herself in the kitchen, punching out a scrumptious frappe dessert for Carl's dinner. His last dinner on this Earth. Or anywhere.

Not that he'd notice, the big b.o.o.b, not that he'd notice.

Nor did she notice the great wrinkle in one end of the Deadly Nightshade. Caused by the prodding of the broom handle.

He was yawning, and it looked like the eroded south forty getting friendly.

"Jeezus, Madge honey, I nearly overslept. Whyn'tcha wake me? I'll be late for my shift. "

She gawked, stricken. Twice!

"I ain't never seen nothin' like it, honey. I was enjoyin' the best sleep of my life, but this here bright, real bright streak of light was in my dreams, y'know? An' I couldn't rest easy, y'know. I kept squintin' and tossin' andfinally hadda get up, cause I mean, Jeezus, it was painful. Piercin', y'know? So I got up, an' a lucky thing, too, or I'd'a missed my shift. Whyn'tcha wake me, huh?"

She mumbled a reply, her face hot and her hands constantly at her mouth; she had the urge to clamp down hard with her teeth, to keep from shrieking.

She continued to mumble, punched-out a hurried breakfast, and summarily ushered him off to his expressway.

Then she sank into a chair and had a good, deep cry.

Later, when she was certain she had control of herself, she got out the pamphlet again.

This time there was no mistaking the annoyance in the pamphlet's voice.

"You failed again. I can tell from your emanations. Very seldom does anyone need two of the methods provided by our Kits...you are the first one in nearly eight thousand Kits that has needed all three. We hope you are proud of yourself."

"His dirty socks," she began, "I had to get them out. I just couldn't stand the thought..."

"I do not wish apologies. I want attention! The third method is very simple--even a dunce--"

"There's no need to get nasty about it!" she interrupted.

"--even a dunce cannot fail with it," the booklet plowed on ruthlessly. "Take out the last article contained in the Kit. The heart-globe. Do not agitate it as it is a sympathetic stimulator of the heartbeat--"

Then the sound came to Madge, and the knowledge that someone was near. Listening. She flipped the pamphlet closed, but it was too late.

Much too late.

Carl stood at the door. He showed his decaying teeth in a brown smile without humor. "I came back," he said. "Felt so d.a.m.n tired 'n beat I just couldn't go to work..."

She fluttered a little. She could feel the tiny muscles jumping all through her body. Muscles she had never known she had.

"So that's what's been goin' on, huh Madge? I shoulda guessed you'd get up the gut one day soon. I'll haveta think back an' see if I can figger out what this Kit included. It'll be fun. My three was real wowzers, y'know."

She stared at him, uncomprehending. Had he found her Kit, and had she not noticed?

"I rekcanize the pamphlet," he explained with a wave of his meaty hand. "I sent for one of them things over three months ago." His voice altered with incredible swiftness. Now casual and defacing, now harsh and bitter as sump water. "But how'n a hen could I of used it around someone like you...you'd of noticed the first lousy little trap that I'd'a set...you'd of vacuumed an' swept an' pried an' found it.

"I know you've hated me--but Gawd A'mighty, how I've hated you/ You straighten an' pick an' fuss till..."

he summed it an up, and ended it all, eleven years of it, "...till a guy can't even come home an' enjoy a belch!"

He smiled again...this time with dirty mirth. '.your G.o.ddam floor's gonna get filthy today, Madge." He drew out the long, shiny knife. "Had one of the guys in Steel Molding make this for me...a real do-it-yourself."

Then there was pain and a feeling of incompleteness and she saw the blood begin to drip on the rug that she had kept so immaculate. A great deal of blood, a sea of blood, so much blood.

Madge Rubichek had been a methodical woman...

So she could not check the dying statement that came bubbling to her lips: "There's...a...double...money...back..."

His voice came from far away. "I know," he said.

And in the electronically-keyed mechfiles of the Guatemalan Patent Authority, deep in the heart-banks, three a.s.signed designates were cancelled out. Three patents drawn on a firm called simply DoMur Products, Inc A firm that had only a few seconds before filed bankruptcy proceedings with the Midwestern Commercial Amalgum. A firm called simply DoMur Products, Inc A firm that had unfortunately operated on a very, very narrow margin of profit.Simply put, an adventure. A fable of futurity. A pastiche of men in conflict, in another time, another place, where the strength of the inner man counts for more than the bone and muscle and cartilage of the outer man. A swashbuckler and a fantasy, perhaps, but in the final a.n.a.lysis, when all the geegaws, foofaraws and flummery are cleared away, don't we all fight our own particular, contemporary, pressing problems in a kind of half-world of thought and phantasmagoric perception like.

The Silver Corridor

"We can't be responsible for death or disfigurement, you know," reminded the Duelmaster.

He toyed with the Company emblem on his ceremonial robe absently, waiting Marmorth's answer. Behind him, across the onyx and crystal expanse of the preparation chamber, the gaping maw of the Silver Corridor opened into blackness.

"Yes, yes, I know all that," snapped Marmorth impatiently. "Has Krane entered his end?" he asked, casting a glance at the dilation-segment leading to the adjoining preparation room. There was fear and apprehension in the look, only thinly hidden.

"Not quite yet," the Duelmaster told him. "By now he has signed the release, and they are briefing him, as I'm about to brief you, if you'll kindly sign yours." He indicated the printed form in the trough, and the stylus on the desk.

Marmorth licked his lips, mumbled something half-heard, and flourished his signature on the blank line.

The signing was done hurriedly, as though he was afraid he might forget his name, should he hesitate.

The Duelmaster glanced quickly at the signature, then pressed the stud on the desk top. The blank slipped out of sight in the trough. He carefully took the stylus from Marmorth's unfeeling fingers, placed it in his pouch.

They waited patiently for a minute. A soft clucking came up through a slot in the side of the desk, and a second later a punched plastic plate dropped into a basket beneath it.

"This is your variation-range card," explained the Duelmaster, lifting the plate from the basket. "With this we can gauge the extent of your imagination, set up the illusions, send you through the Corridor at your own mental pace."

"I understand perfectly, Duelsman," snapped Marmorth. "Do you mind getting me in there! I'm freezing in this breechclout!"

"Mr. Marmorth, I realize this is annoying, but we are required both by statute of law and rule of the Company to explain thoroughly the entire sequence, before entrance." He stood up behind the desk, reached into a cabinet that dilated at the approach of his hand.

"Here," he said, handing Marmorth a wraparound, "put this on till we've finished here."

Marmorth let breath whistle between his teeth in irritation, but donned the robe and sat back down in front of the desk. Marmorth was a man of medium height, hair graying slightly at the temples and forelock, a middle-aged stomach bulge. He had dark, not-quite-piercing eyes, and straight plain features. An undistinguished man, yet one who seemed to have a touch of authority and determination about him. An undistinguished man, a middle-aged man, a man about to enter a duel.

"As you know--" began the Duelmaster.

"Yes, yes, confound it! I know, I know! Why must you people prolong the agony of this thing?" Marmorth cut him off, rising again.

"Mr. Marmorth," resumed the Duelmaster patiently but doggedly, "if you don't settle yourself, we will call this Affair off. Do you understand?"

Marmorth chuckled ruefully, deep in his throat. " After the tolls Krane and I laid out? You won't cancel."

"We will if you aren't prepared for combat. It's for your own survival, Mr. Marmorth. Now if you'll be silent a minute, I'll brief you and you can enter the Corridor."

Marmorth waved his hand negligently, grudging the Duelsman his explanation. He stared in boredom at the high crystal ceiling of the preparation chamber.

"The Corridor, as you know," went on the Duelsman, adding the last phrase with sarcasm, "is a supersensitive receptor. When you enter it, seven billion scanning elements pick up your thoughts, down to the very subconscious, filter them through the banks, correlating them with your variation-range card, and feed back illusions.

These illusions are matched with those of your opponent, as checked with his variation-range card. The illusion is always the same for both of you.

"Since you are in the field of the Corridor, these are substantial illusions, and they affect you as though theywere real. In other words, to ill.u.s.trate the extreme--you can die at any moment. They are not dreams, I a.s.sure you.