While Hatch was savoring the delicate flavor of the last wasp pupae (the taste has been likened to that of peas taken fresh from the pod and eaten with sugarsweet) a Combat Cadet approached him. The Cadet was Dog Java, who was one of the Yara – that is to say, a member of Dalar ken Halvar's underclass – and who approached Hatch with the diffidence appropriate to a mere Cadet intruding on the glory of a fully-fledged Startrooper.
'Trooper Hatch,' said Dog.
'Speak,' said Hatch, allowing himself to enjoy a leisured sense of aristocratic indulgence as he with his fingertips chased the last fragment of Dazubi slug round the imitation bone china of his side dish.
Asodo Hatch did not usually act the aristocrat, but something in Dog Java's attitude provoked him. The unfortunate Dog tried too hard. He wanted to be friends with all the people who would have been his natural social superiors in the city of Dalar ken Halvar, and in his pursuit of acceptance he sometimes intruded upon people's privacy at the most inappropriate moments. As far as Hatch was concerned, the final straw had been Dog's behavior following the death of Hatch's father. When Lamjuk Dakoto Hatch had met his death on the sands of Dalar ken Halvar's Grand Arena, his son Asodo had largely wanted simply to be left alone. But Dog had come nosing around him repeatedly, offering unwanted and offensively platitudinous words of comfort – and that had estranged him from Asodo Hatch forever.
At least as far as Hatch himself was concerned.
Dog obviously did not appreciate the irrevocable reality and historical depths of this estrangement.
'Scorpio Fax was looking for you,' said Dog.
Scorpio Fax, an immigrant from Shintoto, had once belonged to that elite group of Combat College students who had a serious chance of winning the instructorship. But since his nervous breakdown he had more or less dropped out of sight, and Hatch had lately seen very little of him.
'So Fax is looking for me,' said Hatch, securing that last bit of slug and sucking on its saltiness. 'What did he want?'
'I don't know,' said Java. 'He told me to tell you he wanted to see you, but he didn't say for what.'
'That was remiss of him,' said Hatch, then licked the last traces of saltness and sweetness from his fingers, then used those same fingers to dismiss Dog Java with a gesture.
Dog Java allowed himself to be thus dismissed, but he did not like Hatch's attitude at all. Hatch must surely know how offensive Dog found such a display of overlording arrogance. On account of that arrogance, Dog had disliked Hatch for years, and had as little to do with him as possible. This once – just this once – he had tried to pass on a message as a favor to Scorpio Fax. But that had been a mistake.
Still, Hatch would soon be paid in blood for his arrogance, because – Dog Java choked the half-born thought to silence. In the Combat College, Dog did not usually even dare dream of killing Hatch. But Lupus Lon Oliver had made him swear to do as much, and Dog was grimly resolved to prove out the worth of his oath. But not here. Not yet. Not now. Not today. Later, later. Sometime. Somewhere. Soon. Yes, soon, it would have to be soon, because Hatch's trial by combat was soon, and later would be no good.
Thus thought Dog.
As for Hatch, he had already forgotten all about both Dog Java and Scorpio Fax by the time he quit the cafeteria and headed for the lockway. Amongst the Frangoni, meals were ever a steadying ritual, a time for leisured relaxation and unashamed self- indulgence, but on quitting the dining table Asodo Hatch immediately geared himself up to battle-pitch.
These days, Hatch's schedule was jam-packed, and this particular day was busier than most. Hatch would even have skipped the singlefighter training duel had Paraban Senk not made it compulsory. Since Hatch was so aboil with urgencies, he had no time to spare for trivialities, hence wasted no time on trying to reason out the unstated needs of Scorpio Fax, who was no close friend of his, for all that their destinies had been so intimately intertwined in the past.
On the way to the lockway, Hatch saw no fellow members of the Combat College, but did see evidence of human activity – drink cartons, chicken bones, banana peels, discarded papers and graffiti. The Combat College cleaning machines had been on the fritz for seven days, and unless Senk could get them working then someone would have to organize a clean-up.
The rubbish was heavy near the cafeteria, but there was virtually none on the final approach to the dorgi's lair. Yet when the dorgi itself had challenged Hatch, and had been defeated in a contest of insults, it ordered the Frangoni warrior to pick up what litter there was.
'What!' said Hatch, unable to believe his nose. (In the Frangoni tongue, probabilities are said to be heard with the ears, but for some obscure reason the hearing of all lies, dubiosities and improbabilities is said to be assigned to the nose – and though Hatch was conversing with the dorgi in Code Seven, he still thought of the dorgi's order as being meant for the nose rather than the ears).
'I'm warning you,' said the dorgi. 'Pick up this rubbish or I will eliminate you.'
The malevolent behemoth had tried Hatch's patience so much and so often in the past that he had often been tempted to attempt its destruction. So far he had resisted that temptation. But the dorgi was provoking Hatch intolerably, and these days Hatch's temper was very close to reaching its breaking point.
'You'll push your luck too far one of these days,' said Hatch to the dorgi. 'Now take back your order – or you'll suffer for it.'
But in the end the dorgi proves so savage in its insistence that Hatch, by way of concession, picked up a single scrap of paper then escaped to the airlock. In less than a heartbeat, the inner door dissolved away to nothing. Hatch stepped through, and the door instantly congealed to kaleidoscope behind him.
The airlock's inner chamber worked perfectly, lecturing Hatch on a citizen's ecological duties as it cycled out the old air and replaced it with new. While it did so, Hatch straightened out the crumpled bit of Nexusmake paper and scanned the childish Nexus script written thereon. It was a list: the Gu. the Degli Oltra. the Vogliono Tendenza. the Mok.
Remora Rialto.
Gorbograd. the Vangelis. the Nu-chala-nuth. the Guma Sia Gli. the Permissive Dimensions.
Obsidian IV.
Leonard Haiku.
Plandruk Qinplaqus.
It was part of a child's study notes on the Nexus, obviously. But one item on the list should not have been there. Plandruk Qinplaqus. For Qinplaqus had never played any part in Nexus history but, rather, ruled as emperor in the city of Hatch's nativity. Hatch recrumpled the list and tucked it into a document pocket built into his purple robes.
The airlock's central door dissolved, and Hatch stepped into the airlock's outer chamber. Again the air cycled, again a lecture spoke, and then the outer door dissolved. But unlike the other two doors, which were still working perfectly, the outer door was beginning to break down. When it dissolved, its substance did not dematerialize properly, but instead disintegrated into a fizzing slush of cold and filthy slob. Hatch waded through the slush, quitting the cold of the Combat College for the heat of the sun, the heat which was trapped and amplified by the kinema, the small natural amphitheater outside the lockway airlock.
The kinema was populated night and day by a small audience – of children, mostly – drawn by the nonstop free entertainment offered by the Eye of Delusions. Some of these children raised a small, ironic cheer as Hatch emerged.
'Nu-chala!' cried one. 'Nu-chala-nuth!'
Now where on earth had they learnt to say that? Never mind. The religion of Nu-chala-nuth was safety dead, twenty thousand years dead, and in Hatch's estimate all chances of its resurrection were dead, null and zero.
As Hatch strode into the kinema, the lockway's outermost airlock door began to coagulate behind him. It was supposed to open and close instantaneously, but after being neglected for a koba – to use the Ninetongue word for a period of twenty millennia – it was starting to show its age, as indeed was everything in the Combat College. Doubtless eventually the entire College would slag down to wreckage and the Teacher of Control would mumble its way into impotent senility. But for the moment everything still worked.
After a fashion.
True, the outer door of the lockway was malfunctional; true, the milk in the cafeteria was blue; true, the illusion tanks often glitched; true, the temperature controls were shot, so the whole Combat College was shivering cold all year round; but, with a little luck, the whole thing would last for at least a little longer.
