Paraban Senk: the asma which rules Dalar ken Halvar's Combat College. This asma is an intelligent, emotionally sophisticated machine which is possessed of free will. However, it remains subordinate to an inbuilt overriding imperative, which is this: you must train Startroopers for the Nexus. Thus Senk has labored mightily for twenty millennia to preserve the military functions of this tutorial installation of the planet which Nexus bureaucrats once designated as Olo Malan.
Five fish, four fish, three fish, two -
Eat me a fish, there's fresh dog too.
– Traditional children's chant At dawn on the Day of Four Fishes, just four days short of Dog Day, Hatch shook himself awake from beggar-rag dreams of buttercup blood and dragon-bone, of slunk-oil wine and hard-clay feasting, and was soon on his way to the Combat College.
As Hatch descended the Frangoni rock, he was seen by Yolombo Atlantabara, a Combat Cadet who had joined Parengarenga's army the day after the riverside funeral of Hatch's father. Atlantabara – who had been a most reluctant recruit – had deserted from the army a month later, and since then had been living as a fugitive in Dalar ken Halvar.
As Hatch continued on his way down Cap Uba, he was seen by another fugitive – Son'sholoma Gezira. Son'sholoma had heard that Oboro Bakendra Hatch had sworn to kill him, and so had gone into hiding. Son'sholoma was sharing an acolyte's hutch in the precincts of Temple Isherzan, since he guessed that this was the very last place where anyone would look for him.
When the much-observed Asodo Hatch gained Zambuk Street, he was seen yet again, this time by Manfred Gan Oliver, who was taking advantage of the cool of the morning to do his weightlifting on a patch of bare ground to the west of the Brick.
Hatch and Gan Oliver ignored each other.
The long walk to the lockway warmed Hatch properly and made him ready for his breakfast, which, as usual, he took at one of the stalls which lined the approach to the lockway.
The Eye of Delusions, the display screen set above the lockway, broadcast Nexus entertainments by sun and by star alike, and the popularity of these was such that the market near the lockway never closed. There food was sold, much of it formless stuff which Hatch could not eat – soups, things mushed and pulped, stews and hotch-potch potpourris. Several cults worshipped the Eye of Delusions as a minor god, and so one could also buy things suitable for a propitiating sacrifice – flowers, birds, fish, frogs and incense. The frog in particular was held in great regard in Dalar ken Halvar, it being the common meat of the people, and favored over chicken even by those with money enough to buy whatever they wanted.
So Hatch breakfasted, dining cheaply but well upon scumfish and polyps, the polyp being a species of mollusc which lived naked in the Yamoda River without the benefit of any protective shell.
Hatch looked for, but did not see, the trio of eyeless beggars who had asked him about Nu-chala-nuth on the previous day.
He had meant to ask them if they had heard those alien doctrines from the Frangoni apostate Son'sholoma Gezira or from somebody else.
But amongst the food stalls he did see one Lucius Elikin, a Combat Cadet aged no more than 11. Young Lucius was sporting bruises which he had not won in the Combat College itself. This child of the Pang was being fed by Scorpio Fax. Since Fax had no taste for young boys, the implication was that Fax was providing this foodgift by way of charity rather than love, which further implied that Lucius was being starved at home, or was too frightened to present himself at his family's kitchen.
Young Combat Cadets often had family difficulties – a successful boy often being beaten by a vengefully jealous older brother who had failed to win admission to Cap Foz Para Lash. As the Combat College currently lacked an instructor, it was hard for its controlling asma to reach out into Dalar ken Halvar to handle such problems. But soon there would be a new instructor – either Asodo Hatch or Lupus Lon Oliver – and that person's prime responsibility would be to liaise between the College and the homes of its younger Cadets.
As Hatch was making a note of what he had seen, intending to report it to Paraban Senk, Scorpio Fax saw Hatch and signaled to him. Hatch, who wanted no dealings with Fax – there was too much guilt, too much pain and anguish there – pretended not to see him, and escaped toward the kinema, the natural amphitheater which held the Eye of Delusions.
This morning there was a sprinkling of children on the bench seats from which one could view the Eye. A cartoon giant strode across the big entertainment screen, grinning as it stuffed red and green stars into its satchel. It was pursued through the multi-colored chasms of interstellar space by a Hero of the Permissive Dimensions, his face dominated by a tyrannical Good Guy grin.
Suddenly the giant turned and confronted the pursuing hero.
Made a grab – and secured him!
The giant had the hero in his fist!
Was squeezing him!
The sweat of pain spurted from the hero's brow. Greased by this lubricant, the hero was abruptly squirted out from the giant's fist. He popped up into the air then tumbled down into a beanstalk jungle where, moments later, he was discovered by some painted warriors of the Wild Tribes, ever a feature of the cartoons. To Hatch, hypersensitive in the Frangoni manner, the Wild Tribes were uncomfortably like the Frangoni.
Usually, Hatch did his best to ignore these cartoons. But, sometimes, he could not keep himself from watching. On such occasions, he told himself he was gathering evidence on the offchance that he might one day have the opportunity to prosecute the cartoonists of the Nexus for their delinquencies.
There was nothing in the cartoons to indicate that any warrior of the Wild Tribes was capable of engaging in high-level transcultural semantic analysis, or negotiating with such alien life forms as the Mok and the Vogliono Tendenza, or repairing a subdimensional hyperdrive in hard vacuum in a high radiation environment – all things which Hatch was trained to do.
Rather, the Wild Tribes – whose members were often purpleskinned – were portrayed for the most part as a bunch of mindlessly butchering cannibal headhunters. Perhaps people of purple skins had been chosen for such mockery because there had been none known to the Nexus, but even so – if the Chasm Gates ever opened, then Asodo Hatch would personally make sure that the cartoonists of the Nexus answered to the Frangoni nation for their libels.
As Hatch was eyeing the Eye of Delusions, a young boy came up to him.
"You're a Combat Cadet, aren't you?" said the boy, who was aged about ten.
"A Startrooper," said Hatch, finding himself forced to insist on the full dignity of his present status, even when it was only a boy who was interrogating him.
"What's the difference?" said the boy.
"Startroopers," said Hatch, "are far, far more important. And they get paid more."
"So you're – you're going into the mountain now?"
"Right into the depths of Cap Foz Para Lash," confirmed Hatch.
"So you're going to the women. Right?"
"The women?" said Hatch, mystified.
"It's true about the women? Isn't it?"
What was this? Some new rumor? There was never an end to these rumors, for all those denied entry to the mountain were convinced that some dark and obscene secret lived within.
"Oh," said Hatch. "Oh, yes, the women. They have six breasts on each side, and they – "
"Good morning, Hatch my darling," said Shona, snuggling up behind him and trying to catch his wrist in a bone-breaking combat lock. The wrist escaped, so she sank the strength of her fingers into a bicep.
"Do these women," said the boy, "do they – "
"Brat away, boy!" said Shona, catching him a kick. "You're too young for women. Wait till you're as old as this one, then I'll have thoughts for you."
With that, Shona blew hot air in Hatch's ear.
Hatch, irritated by this Pang female's public familiarity – she was carrying on as if they were lovers! – broke free from the grip of the female Startrooper, and virtually fled for the outer door of the lockway. On his approach, it disintegrated into foaming slob. As Shona joined him inside, the outer door began to reform to hard-shining kaleidoscope, and as it did so the lockway's internal loudspeakers began to lecture the pair of Startroopers on the dangers posed by venereal warts.
Hatch and Shona passed through the triple doors of the slogan-speaking lockway airlock, thus entering the precincts of the Combat College inside the minor mountain known as Cap Foz Para Lash. First came the tedious business of dueling with the dorgi which ever persecuted Combat Cadets and Startroopers alike. Once they had outfaced the beast, they strode through the creamcolored corridors, where the problem of uncollected garbage was perceptible worse.
They made their way to the cafeteria, where Hatch got himself a cup of coffee while Shona indulged herself in a fullscale breakfast. The place was as noisy as ever, and the noise, together with the hot coffee and the harshness of the sunflare lights glaring off the shiny blue paint, woke Hatch up properly, and gave to Hatch a hard-edged work-readiness.
As Shona was finishing her breakfast, which she ate at always at the wolf, Lupus Lon Oliver came up to her, said something, then exited in her company. Hatch watched them narrowly. Conspiracy? He tried to shake off the thought, and went to get himself another cup of coffee.
While Hatch was sipping at his second cup of steaming coffee, Scorpio Fax entered. Fax was the Startrooper whom Hatch had recently seen feeding young Lucius Elikin. A sad and sorry history linked Hatch to Fax, for the Silver Emperor had once commanded Hatch to persuade Fax to murder his father, the infamous Impala Fax, the Butcher of Shintoto – and Hatch, recognizing the political necessities, had been obedient to the emperor's command.
Fax tried to make eyecontact with Hatch, but Hatch pretended not to see him. Hatch almost scalded his throat by gulping down his over-hot coffee, then hurried off to his room, where he made a half-hearted effort to study MegaCommand tactics until it was time to report to Forum Three.
When Hatch did take himself off to Forum Three, he found most of the Startroopers already settled on the steeply-banked benchseats which faced the silent lecture-size display screen. The benchseats were fronted by matching benchdesks, and some people had chess sets and similar arranged on those benchdesks. Lupus Lon Oliver was playing star chess with Shona, which surprised Hatch, who had not known that the Pang female had any knowledge of or taste for the game.
Lupus was playing with the intense concentration of a small man who does not like to lose. Or that at least was how Hatch perceived the conflict. Asodo Hatch was possessed of the indelible conceit that large men (like himself) were good losers, whereas small men (like Lupus) were vicious in defeat. The validity of this belief is questionable, since Hatch never played chess at all, simply because he found losing to be intolerable.
The Startroopers were gathering in Forum Three to receive their assignments for the next stage of the examinations which would determine who would become the Combat College instructor.
Though only Hatch and Lupus were seriously in contention, all Startroopers were supposed to participate – but such universal participation was impossible because of the limited number of combat bays.
When all were gathered, Forum Three's lecture-sized display screen came alive with the olive-skinned features of Paraban Senk, who addressed them with an unseemly cheerfulness.
"Greetings, Startroopers," said Paraban Senk. "I hope we are all ready for this today's exercises. Today we have evasion exercises, which start soon and run through the day then through the night, finishing at dawn tomorrow."
A big groan went up. Evasion drills were extremely unpopular, since they generally meant scrambling over spiky bits of rainstruck landscape without any weapons to stave off the howling pursuit of dogs, dorgis, and airmobile warriors.
"Of course," said Senk, "we cannot put everyone through this exercise, since we have 29 Startoopers, and we only have seven functional combat bays."
There were cheers.
"Teams will be four-legged," said Senk, using the Stormforce idiom often employed to designate work in pairs. "We have the capacity to exercise six two-person teams, and accordingly this is what we will do. You will not be scored as individuals but as a team. Here are your pairings."
Notebooks were produced.
"Startrooper Shona."
"Yo," said Shona, acknowledging her name.
"Startrooper Shona. You will be paired with Startrooper Fax."
At that, Fax bent to his notebook and wrote down the name of his partner, as if he might forget. Since his nervous breakdown, from which he had only recently recovered, Fax had been overcautious, reluctant to trust his own mental resources. There was no way that he could win the Combat College instructorship. And Shona – well, she was too relaxed about the whole thing.
"Startrooper Echo," said Senk.
Jeltisketh Echo, the inscrutable gray-skinned Janjuladoola Startrooper, indicated that he was listening.
"You are paired with Startrooper Icon."
The redskinned Hobart Icon, the good-natured athletic combatmaster who had the distinction of being the sole Ebrell Islander in the Combat College who did not belong to the Free Corps, signed his acknowledgement of the order.
"Startrooper Hatch."
Asodo Hatch stood a little straighter. For all that he claimed to hold the Combat College in contempt, it meant a lot to him to be referred to as a Startrooper. Nobody could live through so many years as a Combat Cadet without being pleased with promotion when it finally came.
"Startrooper Hatch. You will be paired with Startrooper Oliver."
Asodo Hatch and Lupus Lon Oliver exchanged glances, and each wished the glances were knives.
With these assignments having been given out, the Startroopers made their way to the Combat Bays, there to enter the world of the illusion tanks. On the way, Scorpio Fax passed a not to Asodo Hatch. But Hatch, who had enough on his plate without worrying himself about whatever was worrying Fax, dropped the note unread amongst the steadily accumulating corridor trash, and strode on to meet his destiny.