And Hatch – Asodo Hatch had no thought for the last twenty thousand years or for the next, since his fate would be settled, one way or another, in the course of the next few days.
Behind the purple-skinned Frangoni warrior, the airlock door hardened at last to the iridescent beauty of kaleidoscope. The lockway's triple airlock doors of kaleidoscope ever protected the Combat College, forbidding entry to the unwanted. Thus that institution had for twenty thousand years been able to continue its rightful mission: to train Startroopers for the Stormforce of the Nexus. Deep in the heart of the mountain lay the Combat College, deep in the heart of Cap Foz Para Lash. But Hatch was outside, outside in the sunlight, standing on the red dust of the Plain of Jars, standing on the fringes of Dalar ken Halvar: the City of the Sun.
City and Combat College.
Two worlds.
Two worlds – each an illusion to the other.
'I vote for this one,' said Hatch.
But while he voted for Dalar ken Halvar, he was still contending for dominance in the world of the Combat College.
And – Back in the world of that College, the redskinned Ebrell Islander named Lupus Lon Oliver was conferring with Dog Java in the shadowy privacy of the rock-walled laboratory, and was demanding that Dog explain to him why Hatch still lived, as yet unmurdered, unassassinated, and all too strong fit and dangerous.
Chapter Five
The Chem and the Yara: the rich and the poor. In Dalar ken Halvar's Pang, the word for wealth is the same as that for reality. The Chem are those who control the city's wealth, and hence its realities. The poor, the Yara – the underclass of the People Pang – are by definition Unreal, imaginary, dream-delusions formed in the shape of people.
The fingertips, my chaffinch,
Burnt to a flinch, and thus – The world unhanded, humming-bird denied.
All light charade, all voices
In flesh but charnel shadows -
Shadows with shadows scented.
Yet – It was mid-morning when Hatch exited from the lockway. Polk the Cash, the noseless moneylender who had lately assumed such a dominant place in his life, should have been there to greet him, but was not, which irritated Hatch intensely. In these days of tension, irritation was becoming Hatch's dominant operating mode. Which was understandable. He was desperately busy, and right now he wanted to make a deal with Polk, to hurry himself to House Jodorunda, then push on to Temple Isherzan to keep his appointment with the High Priest.
So where was Polk?
With the moneylender being nowhere in evidence, and with the Eye of Delusions showing one of the more offensive cartoon entertainments about the mythical Wild Tribes, Hatch retreated a short distance down Scuffling Road, where he sheltered the bulk of his purple in the shadow of a sugar juice stall. He took particular care to make sure that his stuffbag was safe in that shadow.
Time passed.
Sunbeat and heartbeat.
Shadow and sun.
An oxcart lumbered past, its wooden wheels digging deep in the soft rutted dust of Scuffling Road. More than one Combat College graduate had suggested paving the roads, but any such extravagance would have drained Dalar ken Halvar's treasury of the profits of three generations. Water spilt from the barrels loaded on the oxcart, which had uplifted that water from the Yamoda River and was taking it to sell to those watching the Eye.
Dog Java went by, still dressed in the Junior Blues of a Combat Cadet. He cast a half-glance in Hatch's direction then hastened down Scuffling Road as if fleeing from an unwelcome dental appointment.
Hatch scarcely noticed him.
In the slow sweating desolations of his impatience, Hatch began to attend to the conversation of three much- familiar beggars, the ragmen Grim, Zoplin and X'dex (allegedly Lord X'dex) Paspilion. They seemed to be arguing about a dog. And about a certain set of teeth.
'Pass me the teeth,' said Beggar Grim. 'This dog's rough as tough for the gums.'
'You can't eat dog,' said Hatch, incontinently intervening from the shade of his sugar juice shelter, which was scarcely a flea's jump distant from Grim and Grim's lice.
Hatch was surprised at his own forwardness, for he usually exercised the discipline of silence when in the presence of beggars. But Grim showed no corresponding surprise, and replied, as if their converse were the most natural thing in the world:
'Oh, I can eat him right enough – if Master Zoplin be kind enough to pass me the teeth.'
So saying, Grim beat his tattered rags in frustration, to the great discomfiture of his fleas. A little of the red dust of the Plain of Jars stirred around him in consequence of his efforts.
'Your forte is forgetting,' said Hatch. 'The Festival of the Dogs is shortly upon us.'
Having spoken thus, Hatch began to regret his speech, for by rights a captain of the Imperial Guard has too much pride in his status to dabble in a dialog with beggars. Similarly, a Frangoni true to the traditions of his kind ever ignores the Pang, who are born without caste and who live to their deaths in the same condition. Hatch was both captain and Frangoni; Grim and his companions yet beggars and Pang. Hence the regrets of Asodo Hatch.
Still, the warning was rightly given, for it was the Day of Five Fishes, which falls just five days short of Dog Day, and so for the moment all dog-slaughter was forbidden.
Everyone knew that.
But Grim, either addled in his wits or arguing for the mere love of disputation, chose to dispute it.
'A festival comes, does it?' said Grim. 'Wherefore does that quench my appetites? Am I to eat anticipations or baste my stomach with the salt of the same?'
Hatch, whose speech was ever slowed by the burdens of responsibility, made no attempt to wit a quick answer to the querimonious loquacity of Grim's nimble-skilled interrogation. But one of Grim's fellow beggars answered in Hatch's despite.
'He means,' said Lord X'dex, Lord X'dex Paspilion, master of the Greater Tower of X-n'dix in the far-off land of X-zox Kalada, 'he means, dear Grim, that you breach not your appetites upon the poor lean corpse of that yon-there pariah dog but by the breach of the law.'
'Pardon?' said Grim.
'Friend Dex has the giblets again,' said Master Zoplin.
Hatch, restless with an over-much listening to the babbling of beggars, looked around for his contact for the thousandth time. But there was still no sight of Polk. Hatch wanted to be gone, but did not dare abort this appointment. Polk had made it clear that he had almost reached the end of his patience, and Hatch could not risk antagonizing the moneylender any further.
But in the absence of Polk, there was Dog, Dog Java, returning up Scuffling Road. Reluctance was written clear in his countenance, so that Hatch immediately supposed that Dog had remembered leaving something of importance in the Combat College – study notes, perhaps – and was unenthusiastic about venturing through airlocks and past dorgi to retrieve what he had forgotten.
Dog halted.
'Yes?' said Hatch, presuming that Dog Java meant to ask him something.
'Ha!' said Lord X'dex, guessing at someone's arrival from the single-word question. 'Hatch has been catching! He's got him a stranger! Who is it?'
'It's nobody,' said Hatch. 'Only Dog Java.'
'Java!' said Dex. 'The very man! Come close, Java. Come coffee our conversation. Come worm to our honey, rot to our wood. I smell blood!'
And with that, Lord X'dex Paspilion abruptly scuffled through the dust and grabbed Dog Java by the ankle.
'Blood?' said the over-nervous Dog, shaking his ankle in an ineffectual attempt to kick free the beggar. 'What
