Asma: dominant computational machines of the Nexus. To observe reality is to change reality; and, as an intelligent observer, an Enabled asma can manipulate reality by processes analogous to those used by the wizards of the Confederation.
Reality manipulators typically use Screens to protect themselves against destruction and Enhancers to boost their powers. To Enable an asma, its makers equip it with actual physical devices designed to fulfill these functions, though other approaches are possible. Wizards, for example, use the Meditations of Balance to build protective metashells to serve as Screens; through the Meditations of Power each Enhances his strength by drawing upon those resources which are available to him through his alliance with one or more of Those Who May Not Be Named.
The asma which runs Dalar ken Halvar's Combat College – the entity known to the world as Paraban Senk – is a machine of Medium Enablement. The Combat College also contains other asma (the word is both singular and plural) of Minor Enablement, and these perform such minor miracles as the fabrication of food (though some are misperforming in their old age, and others have expired entirely as a consequence of twenty thousand years of neglect).
None of the asma in the Combat College are of any great consequence, for even Paraban Senk himself is but a mosquito in his powers when compared to one of the world's Great Dragons, such as the delinquent asma self-named Jocasta. Fortunately for the world, the delinquent Jocasta – an asma of Maximum Enablement – is currently held prisoner by Anaconda Stogirov in the Temple of Blood in the far-distant city of Obooloo, an ocean away from the city of Dalar ken Halvar, and hence of no consequence whatsoever to this particular history.
Upon the pool there lies
A sun tricked out as sun,
Though truth in truth the lair -
And step you to illusion to think
Its weight sustain you?
Again the burning sun, again the downstrike, again the wrenching turn, again the searing explosion, again the downfall of the enemy. Lupus Lon Oliver had done this for what seemed like a lifetime, pitting himself against machine-generated enemies time and time again. But what good would any of this training do him? None, if he failed against Hatch. And he could still fail, he knew it. He could fail, wasting a lifetime's chance, the unexpected opportunity of a lifetime.
As the wreckage of his latest machine-generated opponent fell through the burning sky, Lupus circled, thinking of Asodo Hatch and the murder-in-the-fact which had stained the Frangoni warrior's blade. As if in image of Lupus's own inner turmoil, the clouds writhed pink and purple. Bulbous. Swollen. Brutal. The image of a monstrous indigestion.
Fearful of those writhing clouds, fearful of the possibility of some idiosyncratic illusion tank glitch plunging him into a living hell, Lupus aborted the training sequence with a curt command. When he found himself back in the initiation chair, Lupus looked at the communications screen built into the combat bay. Paraban Senk's face did not appear there, which implied that the Teacher of Control had not been monitoring this training session. Instead, the screen was dominated by the combat bay's own identification logo.
Lupus Lon Oliver addressed the communications screen, giving the combat bay his next command:
"I'm logged to train with Dog Java on the MegaCommand. Give me Dog Java's status."
Dog Java was a Combat Cadet who was by birth one of the Pang. As a redskinned Ebrell Islander, Lupus Lon Oliver usually had little to do with the brown-skinned Pang, for he thought them his racial and social inferiors. Certainly Dog was a social inferior, for Dog belonged to the Yara, Dalar ken Halvar's Unreal underclass. But Lupus was cultivating Dog for a special purpose. As it says in the Book of Battle: even a broken stick can be used to kill.
"Dog Java is waiting for you on your MegaCommand Cruiser," said the combat bay.
"Then take me there," said Lupus.
The world melted, buckled – and Lupus found himself standing on the bridge of a Galactic Class MegaCommand Cruiser in deep space. Dog Java was there, but Lupus did not at first acknowledge Dog's existence. Instead, Lupus stood studying the star patterns shown by the big visual display screen. Studying the star patterns, and covertly watching Dog for signs of intimidation. He wanted Dog to be intimidated. To be pliant. Obedient. Reliable. A sure and secure tool for his purposes.
"You're late," said Dog Java, with an emphasis which owed nothing whatsoever to intimidation.
"Such impertinence ill becomes a Combat Cadet when he addresses a Startrooper," said Lupus Lon Oliver, with all the scorn at his command.
This was not much scorn, for, unlike the Frangoni, the Ebrell Islanders are not natural orators. Amongst the purple-skinned Frangoni, a man can win great renown through the strength of his boast, so the making of speeches has been brought to a high art; but the Ebrell Islanders have ever preferred to demonstrate their manifest superiority through the deed.
"Why do you call me impertinent?" said Dog Java, brown-skinned child of the Pang. "I thought we were co-conspirators – not idiots playing Startrooper games."
"It's not a game!" said Lupus, shaken by such a rage of anger that he almost smashed the unfortunate Dog.
"Dog Java backed off.
"I'm sorry," said Dog. "I misspoke myself."
Now Dalar ken Halvar was a regular hell-broth of incompatible races and religions, with divisions of class and caste further complicating the social divisions of the city, which divisions were amplified by the linguistic diversity of the peoples there resident. But the students of the Combat College did not usually clash with each other in anger, for they were united by their common loyalty to the Nexus. So Dog was taken aback to find Lupus Lon Oliver so angry with him, for Dog had failed to realize the extent to which Lupus had imported the prejudices of Dalar ken Halvar into the confines of the Combat College.
"I apologise," said Lupus, with some effort. "I'm very sorry. I was wrong to speak to you in anger. You're my valued colleague, and I hope you know it. It's just – it's just that there's so much at stake. It's not you, it's Hatch who's making me angry. I'm very sorry I used that tone of voice to you."
Lupus spoke thus because he had seen the patent shock and pain on Dog Java's face. In the city of Dalar ken Halvar, a lordly Ebrell Islander in his redskinned pride would never have apologised to one of the lowly Yara – though he might conceivably have essayed politeness in the presence of one of the Yara, a member of the rich and therefore Real upper class of the people Pang. But Lupus realized that the habits of Dalar ken Halvar could be fatal to his purposes, so he would have to control himself, and use the techniques of identification, encouragement and motivation which had been so carefully taught to him by Paraban Senk.
They worked, those Nexus techniques. But – they were so alien! It hurt Lupus to parley with this Yara creature as if it were almost an equal. But he had to – in order to serve his purpose.
With apologies done with, Lupus Lon Oliver and Dog Java got down to business. The business was simple. Lupus Lon Oliver was endeavoring to persuade Dog Java to murder Asodo Hatch. By now the last year of Lupus Lon Oliver's training had come to an end, sliding away in a dream-daze of eternal study, training and physical preparation – the physical preparation being essential, because the savagery of the mentally exhausting theoretical examinations would be quite sufficient to ruin the health of anyone who was not in peak physical condition. Those savage theoretical examinations had already begun, and were almost complete. The results were confirming was everyone in the Combat College had suspected for a long time.
Three years earlier, following the murder of Hiji Hanojo, it had been generally thought that a half-dozen elite students had a serious chance of winning the instructorship of the Combat College in competitive examination. Of those six, Darius Flute and Sefton Ten Guy were dead. Scorpio Fax had suffered a nervous breakdown, from which he had only recently recovered, and that had set his training back severely. And as for Son'Sholoma Gezira, why, he had been expelled from the College for arson and attempted rape.
That left the Frangoni warrior Asodo Hatch and the Ebrell Islander Lupus Lon Oliver to duel it out for the instructorship.
In the theoretical examinations, Lupus had proved to have an edge in pure mathematics, physics and mechatronics, but Hatch had surpassed him in linguistics, applied politics and non-coercive conflict resolution. When it came to military tactics and strategy, nothing separated the two. The end result was that both were proving equally qualified for the instructorship, so decision by combat was called for.
When it came to the question of a physical resolution of the competition for the instructorship, Lupus Lon Oliver preferred the certainties of murder, but was too intelligent to strike down Hatch with his own hand.
Hence this conspiracy with Dog Java.
The two had to meet inside the Combat College, for any connection between the two would certainly excite public comment if it took place in the city of Dalar ken Halvar itself. In public in Dalar ken Halvar, Lupus had ever held himself aloof from the Yara, even those who were fellow-students in the Combat College, and so any change in his habits would be noted.
Yet to conspire in the Combat College was difficult, since Paraban Senk could see and hear much of that which took place in most parts of the College.
However, there were, it was known, certain conditions under which the Combat College could not monitor student activity. When students met in the laboratory, for instance – since that great cave at the rear of the Combat College remained but a hollow in the living rock, untenanted by any of the machineries of the Nexus.
Furthermore, the illusion tanks themselves were an ideal venue for a conspiracy – under certain circumstances. When the illusion tanks ran a war program, Paraban Senk had the option of monitoring everything, count by count. But when the same tanks ran a peace program, Senk could only guess at what was happening. This was an idiosyncracy of the system. Either a design flaw, or something which had been deliberately arranged to give the students the psychological comfort of having some private sphere of action free from the overlording surveillance of the Teacher of Control. Certainly this idiosyncracy of the system was very convenient for those engaged in conspiracy.
Naturally, with twenty millennia of experience to back its judgment, Paraban Senk could often guess what was going on, and with some accuracy. Particularly when a student was doing, for example, a freetime run of that peace program program known as Backstreet Beds, or the related program known as Harem Lord, for in both of these illusion tank peace programs the range of options was strictly limited. But Lon Oliver and Dog Java had the freedom of an entire MegaCommand Cruiser, so Paraban Senk could only guess whether they were buggering each other or burning the Great God Mokaragash in effigy.
For the purposes of conspiracy, Lupus Lon Oliver had chosen to meet with Dog Java on the MegaCommand Cruiser in the environment generated by that peace program known as Routine Cruise. It was a tried and tested guidebook program which was free from glitches and caprices, a program in which it was guaranteed that nothing would go wrong. Nothing would attack, engulf, corrode, implode or otherwise imperil the illusionary MegaCommand Cruiser on which Lupus and Dog were busy with conspiracy. The crew would not fight, mutiny or orgy. Unless pressed hard for a reaction, both crew and ship would ignore the wandering students.
So.
The MegaCommand Cruiser.
In deep space.
Here the stars were an alien white. Even now, Lupus could well remember when he had first seen those white-bright stars, and had thought their lack of color to be a defect of the programming. Though Lupus had lived out his childhood under a white sun, he had still been surprised to learn that the white suns were the Standard Stars of most of Known Humanity, that these cold ice-chip lights were the dominant luminaries of the night skies of any planet in any universe in the Standard Probability Range, and that the Nexus seldom opened a Chasm Gate into a cosmos configured otherwise.
"Pretty," said Dog Java, watching the stars.
"Pretty?" said Lupus.
Whatever doubts he had about Dog Java were confirmed by that one word.
Still, Lupus pushed on, and made his final offer to Dog Java. As has already been stated, Dog was a member of the Yara, the Unreal underclass of Dalar ken Halvar's dominant people, the Pang. Dog wanted to join the Free Corps, but membership of that august body was largely restricted to Ebrell Islanders and members of the Chem, the wealthy upperclass of Dalar ken Halvar's Pang.
"The Brick has reconsidered your application," said Lupus.
"And?" said Dog.
"It has been agreed that you will be accepted into the Free Corps if you kill Hatch. Kill him and you can become Real."
"Good," said Dog, simply. Then said: "Abort."
With that word, Dog exited from the simulated MegaCommand Cruiser, leaving Lupus Lon Oliver alone with his anxieties. Dog was a poor tool. Lupus would much rather have employed someone with a streak of desperation in his nature – like Yolombo Atlantabara, the Frangoni deserter who was known to be living a precarious and criminal life somewhere in Dalar ken Halvar. If Lupus could only get Atlantabara, then – then he might have a serious hope of seeing Hatch dead. But Dog? Lupus was dubious about Dog's abilities.
Hence his anxiety.
For Lupus, winning the instructorship – by fair means or foul – was desperately important. It would mean wealth. And status.
And more.
In the years which Lupus had devoted to his studies in the Combat College, he had integrated himself with the life of the Nexus. In many ways, he had become one of the more intellectual and philosophical of the citizens of the Nexus, and in some ways this had made him a stranger in his own homeland.
So while it is true that Lupus ruthlessly pursued his ambitions because he desired influence, and power, and the satisfactions of mastery, it is also true that he sought a permanent position in the Combat College as an instructor because he did not want to be exiled from his home.
For Lupus, the Nexus was now home; and in a practical sense, for him the Combat College was effectively the Nexus. And he was possessed of a great and half-acknowledged fear of being exiled, of being cast out, of being driven from his home, of being cut off from his people and his culture and all the works and philosophies of that culture.
And Lupus knew that unless he triumphed over Asodo Hatch in the combat trials which were to come, then in a very few days he would indeed be driven out of the Nexus, and the gates of return would be forever barred to him, and he would then be fated to endure a life of exile in an alien land until the end of his days.
Lupus Lon Oliver could not bear the thought of being exiled for a lifetime to Dalar ken Halvar, the benighted City of Sun which lived and died in the dust, which fed itself on rice and polyps and which garbled its days away in primitive tongues bereft of computerized memory. In his dreams, Lupus stood on a high place in Dalar ken Halvar, and looked out across that city and looked out across the red dust of the Plain of Jars, and wailed:
– This is hell.