Intelligence can be a defect, since intelligence can be bluffed. Consider the dangers of negotiating a passage past the guardians of an interdicted door. Dogs will give you no chance – they will tear out your throat regardless of your arguments. Human guards, on the other hand, can be bluffed or beguiled, or possibly bribed. Thus dogs are valued for their very stupidity, for with intelligence comes autonomy – and autonomy is very much a doubleedged blade. – from the Book of Negotiations Dorgi-dog, dorgi-dog, Catch me if you can;
Dorgi-dog, dorgi-dog
I'm the fastest man.
– Lupus Lon Oliver (at age seven) Asodo Hatch slept through the afternoon of the Day of Two Fishes, and slept solidly through the night that followed. At dawn on the Day of the Last Fish, the day before Dog Day, Asodo Hatch lay dreaming of Thaldonian Mathematics, of equations breeding and mutating in a warm sea of dogfish-ducks, of seagull-sharks and floating skulls. The skulls were purple, and, as the quills of shellfish plucked themselves to deliquescent music, the skulls became warthogs, and sunbloated smoothly into the brown melt of chocolate.
The sea smelt of opium.
The sea caressed his breasts, which were seven in number. He opened his mouth, his teeth ejecting themselves from his jaw as he did so. Just before plunging into a wash of blood, each tooth fired retro-rockets, first slowing itself, then disintegrating. A rain of small crabs came smattering-splattering down to the blood.
What was that bloodwash?
The blood was the bluesky of morning, the day's dawn's bluesky revelation. A pulsing sun of lemons and limes was heaving itself up over the rim of the world. It was – Morning?
Hatch woke himself, and found himself lying fully-dressed on his narrow bed in the cramping enclosure of his room in the Combat College, deep in the heartrock of Cap Foz Para Lash. Deep in the rock. He felt the weight of rock in his head.
"Wah!" said Hatch, lamenting the necessity to wake, to get out of bed and face the necessities of the future.
But he struggled out of bed and made his to the nearest ablutions block, where he woke himself properly with a stinging needle-shower. Then Hatch, who found himself possessed of a ferocious hunger, hastened to the Combat College cafeteria, which was strangely empty now that the graduating class had been exiled from Cap Foz Para Lash.
With the graduation ceremonies over, everyone else was theoretically on holiday. Some few had stayed, hiding out in the Combat College for fear of the violence which had lately been unleashed in Dalar ken Halvar, but most had returned to the world of the sun, compelled by either an eager excitement or a concern for their nearest and dearest.
At a table in the center of the canteen sat three familiar faces: Beggar Grim, Master Zoplin and Lord X'dex Paspilion, master of the Greater Tower of X-n'dix in the far-off land of X-zox Kalada (which distant land, in Hatch's long-considered opinion, was strictly imaginary).
"Hatch!" said Beggar Grim, greeting the new lord of the instructorship. "Our Teacher of the Way!"
"What?" said Hatch. "Are we not rid of you yet?"
"Your Combat College told us to go," said Grim. "But we reminded the thing that we are your honored guests."
"And?"
"It said it would consult with you then kick us out regardless."
"The kicking out I understand," said Hatch, "but the consultation seems needless."
"A plague on you, then," said Beggar Grim cheerfully. "May stones grow from your toenails and worms from your teeth."
"May you be infested with lampreys and may blind mice gnaw your sandals," said Master Zoplin.
"They despise you because they are commoners, not aristocrats," said the great Lord Paspilion. "As a ruler, I offer you the favor of the broad strath of X-zox Kalada. In that valley fair, all that flourishes is yours, and the welcome of the Greater Tower likewise."
"The welcome of breakfast is all I need for the moment," said Hatch.
Then the much-famished Hatch chose from the array of food which was laid out for the common delectation. There was everything from delicate Janjuladoola cuisine to a whale steak some four times the length of a man – this last a specialty prepared for the delight of the Ebrell Islanders. There were many things from the Nexus, in particular tofu – white, soft, tasteless, repulsive. Hatch chosen from the range of food cooked in its given form: chose rice which had been cooked as rice and frog cooked as frog.
While Hatch was choosing his breakfast, his daughter Onica entered the room, his wife Talanta with her.
"Talanta," said Hatch.
But neither wife nor daughter responded. They would not so much as acknowledge his existence. As for the Lady Iro Murasaki – there was no sign of her.
So Hatch, feeling himself a de facto widower, went to sit with the beggars. Lord X'dex was eating a bowl of tofu, and seemed to be acquiring a liking for the stuff, a phenomenon which Hatch thought truly remarkable. Every time Hatch saw tofu, he was glad he had not been born and bred in the Nexus, for by all accounts tofu had been one of the staple foods of that transcosmic civilization. Tofu was fabricated from soya beans. The beans themselves Hatch knew well – in fact, he often ate roast soya beans by the handful. But something truly dreadful must have been done to those beans to make that tofu stuff.
"Why so grim, so silent?" said Beggar Grim.
Hatch told him.
Hatch laid out his problems, upon which Grim laughed.
"Lupus is just a wasp," said Beggar Grim. "Trap him in a bottle then drown him."
Hatch, who was not prepared to sit still for any more such nonsense, scraped down the last of his breakfast, then rose from the table and burped his way back to his room. Hatch seated himself and the hot weight of his over-generous breakfast in front of his room's display screen, activated that screen, and found Paraban Senk waiting for him.
"Well?" said Senk. "What's your plan?"
"I'll tell you soon," said Hatch. "But first, we need an agreement."
"We?" said Senk, sounding amused.
"We both have a vested interest in stability," said Hatch, doing his best imitation of a bureaucrat. "Therefore, it is in our mutual interest to ensure that no further killings take place in Dalar ken Halvar. To this end, we need to give sanctuary to those refugees who are currently sheltering in the Combat College."
Senk laughed.
"It's not that easy, Asodo," said Senk. "If you can give me a plan for bringing order to Dalar ken Halvar, then I'll give refuge to your wife, your daughter – and even your whore."
"The Lady Murasaki is not – "
"A plan, Hatch!" said Senk, switching abruptly from personal name to family name, from softness to harshness.
Hatch was taken aback. In the whiplash of Senk's demand, in the abruptness of the mood-shift, there was something positively glandular.
"A plan!" said Senk.
Pushing.
Demanding.
"I don't have a plan," admitted Hatch.
"Of course you do!" said Senk. "I know it for a fact."
"How do you know that?" said Hatch.
"Because you're a genius," said Senk. "You murdered Hiji Hanojo and got away with it. It was years before I worked out that it was you! And you – you outfought Lon Oliver when everything said it was impossible. I know you've got a plan, Hatch. And I want it. Now!"
Hatch, knowing himself to be no murderer – an executioner on occasion, yes, but he had never stooped to murder, and certainly had never laid a finger on Hiji Hanojo – took no comfort in this vote of confidence in his genius.
"Have you considered the possibility that you might be going senile?" said Hatch.
"I am flawless," said Senk. "Perfect in an imperfect world."
"Then tell me, oh perfect master," said Hatch, so weary that he was reckless enough to taunt the lord of the Combat College with sarcasm, "what vision of perfection do we wish to impose upon this imperfect world? Tell me what you want and I will deliver it."
"You promised me the service of Nu-chala-nuth," said Senk.
"You promised. You promised to make the Combat College a temple, a holy place, with the whole of the city sworn in subservience to that temple. It's breaking down, Hatch! The things are breaking down! The doors, the cleaners, we can't keep them up forever. We need power, machines, a mending, a cleansing. But with Plandruk Qinplaqus, that's impossible, any bright person – he kills them."
"I understand," said Hatch.
He did understand.
Hatch was right in his earlier assumptions. The Combat College was disintegrating, and Paraban Senk knew as much – even though it was hard to admit.
Hatch had tempted Senk with the prospect of a continent united by a fanatical religion – a continent dedicated to the service of the Combat College. Hatch had been thinking in terms of the mission to which the Combat College was dedicated: the training of startroopers. But Senk was concerned with something more compelling: personal survival.
From the few words which Senk had spoken, Hatch saw that Paraban Senk envisioned a technical renaissance centered on Dalar ken Halvar, a technical renaissance which would in time allow the Combat College to be repaired, strengthened and made mighty.
In the past, Plandruk Qinplaqus, the Silver Emperor who had long ruled Dalar ken Halvar, had organized the covert execution of any mad scientist fool enough to attempt to organize any such thing.
But in the future – Hatch shook off thoughts of the future. He had to deal with Lon Oliver first. But how?
What did the beggar say?
A wasp, that was it. Beggar Grim had compared Lupus Lon Oliver to a wasp. And had suggested… trapping him in a bottle then drowning him.
"I can give you the city," said the Hatch slowly. "But you must do as I say."
"Speak," said Senk.
And Asodo Hatch took a deep breath, paused, hesitated, realized he had to breathe again, did so, then said:
"You must tell the world that the Chasm Gates have been reopened."