Hastening from Forum Three, Hatch took himself off to the
Combat College's cure-all clinic, and was shortly bending over the
patched-up body of Scorpio Fax, and endeavoring to rouse Fax to
wakefulness.
        "Can you hear me?" said Hatch, uncertain whether Scorpio Fax
was resting, sleeping or sunk in a coma.
        Fax's eyes flickered, opened.
        "Grief," said Fax. "That dorgi."
        "Give you a hard time, did it?" said Hatch.
        He recalled that the dorgi had been sulking in its lair when
he had last entered the Combat College. After such sulks, it often
challenged people with a ferocity just short of the homicidal.
        "A hard time?" said Fax. "Did it ever! I came through the
lockway, I was - I was cut up bad and it - you can imagine."
        "I can imagine," affirmed Hatch.
        The dorgi was a constant cause for worry. These sentry-
machines were deliberately designed to be slightly erratic,
marginally unpredictable and most definitely stupid. The random
elements in their behavior were (in theory) supposed to make it
difficult for any intruder to plan a path past them with
confidence.
        So dorgis made good perimeter guards (in theory, at least),
but on account of their inherent and progressive instability they
were supposed to be checked out by a machine psychologist at least
once every three years. The beast which guarded the lockway was
more than twenty thousand years overdue for such a check, and was
getting more and more eccentric with each passing century.
        Hatch suspected that, had the Chasm Gates not collapsed, all
dorgis would soon have been done away with, for surely the Nexus
authorities would have realized that a machine created in the
image of erraticism was not a good idea. But the closure of the
Chasm Gates had made every passing technological caprice of the
Chasm Gate era into a semi-permanent fixture of the Combat
College.
        Semi-permanent, rather than permanent, because everything
wears out sooner or later. The Combat College dorgi should have
worn out long ago, since it had a design life of only seven
thousand years. But this one was still going strong, and sooner or
later it would kill one person - or several. Hatch was sure of it.
        "Well," said Fax, "get on with it."
        "Get on with what?" said Hatch.
        "You didn't come here just to admire the scenery, did you?
You want something. You want Lupus dead."
        "No," said Hatch. "Not Lupus."
        "Who, then?"
        "Gan Oliver."
        "Why Gan Oliver? Why not Lupus?"
        "I trust to my judgment," said Hatch.
        Lupus Lon Oliver was 27, a man full-grown by the reckoning of
some societies, but in Dalar ken Halvar he counted as no more than
a boy, for he done nothing in life except to indulge himself in
his own education. Manfred Gan Oliver, on the other hand, was aged
57, and so was approaching the prime of political life. Those he
had grown up with were in positions of power, and Gan Oliver had
cultivated them as they eased themselves into those positions. He
had, too, the authority which comes with age, for people would
listen to him when they would never listen to a boy.
        Furthermore, Hatch judged Lupus to be a romantic and Gan
Oliver to be a realist, and on that account alone he feared Gan
Oliver the more.
        "You're sure it's Gan Oliver you want?" said Fax.
        "Lupus I can handle myself," said Hatch, hoping this was so.
        "So why ... why should I favor you with Gan Oliver's death?"
said Fax.
        So saying, Scorpio Fax looked up at Hatch, looked up from his
sickbed and remembered. Scorpio Fax remembered how Asodo Hatch had
recruited him to kill Impala Fax, the Butcher of Shintoto. Fax had
done as much. And remembered. Blood on his hands, blood on the
floor, blood daily and nightly in waking dreams and sleeping.
        "We are at war," said Hatch. "At war, with Dalar ken Halvar
the prize. If Gan Oliver wins, we're dead men, both of us. You
must strike him down to save your own life. What more reward could
you want?"
        "I want - "
        Fax knew just what he wanted, but could not bring himself to
say it. He was not sure how Hatch would react, but suspected the
big-built Frangoni would be angry, maybe murderously so.
        "Kill me Gan Oliver," said Hatch, "and you can have anything
you want. Anything."
        "Even your sister?"
        "My sister!" said Hatch, startled.
        "Yes," said Fax, who looked positively terrified as he made
the confession. "I - I'm in love with Penelope."
        "Grief of gods!" said Hatch.
        "You - you've chosen another? As - as her husband, I mean? Is
she betrothed?"
        "Penelope," said Hatch, who thought it would be unfair to
conceal the complications from the infatuated Fax, "is betrothed
to no man, though Lupus Lon Oliver has declared her love for him.
Furthermore, Penelope has declared her reciprocal love for Lon
Oliver."
        "Well," said Fax, with sturdy resolution, "she can hardly
love him once he's dead."
        "Quite so," said Hatch. "But if you're going to kill Lon
Oliver, then strike him down in secret, else Penelope will have
your testicles by way of revenge."
        "It's as good as done," said Fax fiercely.
        "But if you're going to kill young Lupus Lon Oliver," said
Hatch, "then you do so on your own account. Remember it's the
father I want. Manfred. Kill Manfred, and I'll give you my sister
- at least to the extent that she's mine to give."
        "Manfred, then," said Fax. "But - how dod I kill him?"
        "That's over to you," said Hatch. "But do it soon!"
        Then Hatch took his leave and headed for the combat bays. One
the way he met Lupus Lon Oliver. Following close behind the
redskinned Ebrell Islander was the grayskinned Combat Cadet of
Janjuladoola race, the ever-reticent Jeltisketh Echo. Hatch
immediately deduced that Echo had been recruited as Lon Oliver's
bodyguard.
        "Hail fellow, well met," said Lupus. "Are you ready for the
singlefighters?"
        "Singlefighters?" said Hatch. "Who told you we'd have
singlefighters?"
        "It's a guess, of course," said Lupus. "But I'm right, I'm
sure of it."
        "Maybe," said Hatch, hoping that they would not be dueling
with singlefighters.
        "Definitely," said Lupus. "You'll go down in flames, Hatch.
Then they'll kick you out. And my father will be waiting for you
when you get kicked out."
        Hatch made no reply to this, because he could quite easily
imagine this exchange of pleasantries escalating quite suddenly
into bloody battle. Rather than risk a brawl, he kept his lips
sealed, strode through the open doorway of the nearest functional
combat bay and settled himself in the initiation seat. It sighed
faintly as it took his weight.
        In the open doorway, a sheet of kaleidoscope started to form,
then collapsed into hissing slob. Hatch swore, and leapt out of
the initiation seat. He was certainly not going to sit helplessly
in an initiation seat while he was exposed and vulnerable to his
enemies. A new sheet of kaleidoscope started to form in the
doorway. Slowly, slowly. It hesitated, wavered, then consolidated
itself. Hatch kicked his way through the cold and swiftly
disintegrating slob, reached the door, put his weight against the
kaleidoscope - which was slightly warm to his touch - and pushed.
Hard. He threw his whole weight against the door. It held.
        Okay.
        Hatch went back to the initiation seat and settled himself.
He glanced at the countdown telltale. It had not yet started to
count down the last pulsebeats.
        "Worried, were you?" said Paraban Senk, appearing on the
combat bay's display screen.
        "Very," said Hatch frankly.
        "But now you're safe. Very well. You know the dual viewpoints
of this combat session will be relayed to the Forum Three."
        "Of course," said Hatch. "Hi, Shona. Hi, Dog. How's things,
Manfred my old friend?"
        "Clowning is not in order," said Paraban Senk, frowning.
        "No," said Hatch. "Of course it isn't. I apologize."
        "Your apology is accepted."
        "Very well," said Paraban Senk. "We are gathered here today
to observe the combat between Lupus Lon Oliver and Asodo Hatch.
The prize is the instructorship of the Combat College. To the
victor, the spoils."
        There was a pause. Hatch assumed that Paraban Senk was saying
something to Lupus Lon Oliver. Then:
        "Are you ready to receive your first combat assignment?" said
Paraban Senk.
        "I am ready," said Hatch.
        A flickering motion attracted his attention. It was the
countdown telltale.
        There was a pause. Hatch assumed that Lupus Lon Oliver was
being given the combat assignment. Then:
        "Asodo Hatch," said Paraban Senk. "You will duel with Lupus
Lon Oliver with the Scala Nine singlefighter."
        Hatch almost flinched, but restrained himself. But even so:
he did not like this idea one little bit. The singlefighter was a
small and turbulent flying machine designed for solo combat
missions within a planet's atmospheric envelope. To use it
effectively in combat, one required razor-sharp reflexes, and
there young Lupus most definitely had the edge.
        For a brief moment, Hatch indulged himself in notions of
despair. Then steadied himself by bringing to mind memories of the
desert and the gasping thirst and bleeding leather of real war -
real war which he had endured and survived.
        The task ahead was only a game, for all the seriousness of
purpose which attended it. Win or lose, he would still walk from
the combat bay with all four limbs intact. Here you could die and
it would not matter.
        Hatch wished, above all, that he was not so alone, not so
isolated. But he was himself alone, alone and unaided, with nobody
to help him, guide him, support him, advise him.
        - To survive.
        Hatch remembered.
        The High Priest of the Great God Mokaragash, old Sesno
Felvus, had said something about survival. But what? Hatch thought
back to their encounter in the precincts of Temple Isherzan.
        - To survive is victory sufficient.
        True, true, but Hatch had always known that, it was a
platitude, a nothing-statement, proof of the ancient teaching
which holds that wisdom is often but hair from the idiot. If Lupus
was an idiot, if Hatch himself was an idiot ... but of course they
were idiots, they were both of them idiots to be wasting their
time dueling in skies of imagination while the city of the flesh
wailed through the agony of its burning.
        To survive.
        To survive is victory sufficient.
        Hatch glanced at the countdown telltale and saw he had but
ten pulsebeats to combat. He watched the clock-counter pulse.
Once. Twice. Thrice.
        As if calmed by the very countdown itself, Hatch found
himself lucid, clear. In his lucidity, he remembered one of the
brevities of Jeneth Odette, a practitioner of Dith-zora-ka-mako
who had once lectured on her method by saying:
        "I took a worm and turned it inside out."
        - To survive is victory sufficient.
        Turned inside out:
        - To die is victory sufficient.
        Suddenly Hatch remembered. He remembered the evasion exercise
he had so recently undertaken when paired with Lupus Lon Oliver.
Pursued by a hunter-killer, Hatch had jumped over a cliff, taking
a death-plunge which had allowed him to survive to the end of the
exercise.
        He glanced at the countdown telltale.
        Three pulses remained.
        Hatch grinned, fiercely, for now he knew, now he understood,
now he saw a way to wreck young Lupus and win.
        Two pulses.
        One.
        None.
        And Paraban Senk said:
        "Let combat begin."
        The world went red. The world went white. The world flickered
through the spectrum, then blurred into unintelligibility. Then
steadied. As the world steadied, Hatch found himself sitting
frozen in the cockpit of a Scala Nine singlefighter in a
monochromatic world. A world without color, a world of black and
white. A world of silence unbroken except for the slightest
background hiss.
        Caught in a world of monochromatic paralysis, Hatch reviewed
his plan. Then color flooded the world, stasis ended, and he was
thrust back into his seat by the force of a full five gravities of
acceleration, hurtling through the lower atmosphere in a Scala
Nine singlefighter.