picking up Hatch's thoughts, 'sometimes manhood is a puzzlement even to the best of us. I've known you since – why, since you were born.'
True. Sesno Felvus had been on hand when Hatch was still squirming in his birth-blood. Had initiated him into the outer stages of the worship of the Great God Mokaragash when he was aged but nine. Had married him to the woman of his parents' choice when he was 14. Had blessed his daughters. And had consoled him after his father's death, even though that death had been both sinful and shameful, an unpardonable abomination.
'It is a puzzlement,' said Hatch, in that single sentence admitting the intolerable stress he was under.
With this act of admission, Hatch felt – Hatch felt as if a bubble which had been protecting him from the world had suddenly burst. The intolerable months of training, tension, examination, uncertainty, debt, harassment, pain – it was all too much for him.
His mouth opened and closed, and without warning the tears screwed themselves out of his eyes, and he could not see or breathe or speak.
Such emotion made introspective analysis impossible, though analysis would have served only to confirm that such a crisis was the inevitable result of unrelieved pressure and the long denial of all carefree reward.
Hatch wept. Openly, shamelessly. In complete default of all self-control. Sesno Felvus reached out and took his hand. The High Priest's hands were dry, and bon-hard, and firm in the assurance of their comfort, their acceptance. The comfort remained as Hatch's weeping eased, pure pain turned to a deep-felt grief at the mere fact of loss of self-control.
Then, when Hatch had cleansed himself by weeping – his body calm, relaxed and pliable, as if the collapse of self-control had answered some deep-seated biological need, massaging the tensions from his muscles and from the very linkages of his bones – Sesno Felvus began to deal with him in earnest.
Counseled by Sesno Felvus, Hatch talked his way through his problems, step by step. The pressures and uncertainties surrounding his struggle for the instructorship of the Combat College. The illness of his wife, the illness which had come upon her with full force in the last six months, and which seemed certain to kill her. His sister's delinquencies. His pressing requirements for money.
'Asodo,' said Sesno Felvus, who had never before called Hatch by his given name. 'You have never been happy in the Combat College, have you?'
'No,' said Hatch.
'I remember you as a child. Your father came to me for guidance. You were… you had nightmares which woke the house, and when it was time to go back… '
'I remember,' said Hatch.
In the early years of his training in the Combat College, in the years when he had still been a boy, there were times when he had fled from its cold and cream-colored corridors. His family had several times been forced to hunt for him in Spara Slank and Childa Go, by the swamps of the Vomlush or in the streets of Bon Tray. He remembered sitting out one night on the red dust flatlands south of Cap Foz Para Lash, the night being lit by Yon Yo, the high and cold and inexplicable beacon which had ever ruled the heights of Dalar ken Halvar's southernmost minor mountain.
The boy Hatch had always been caught in the end, and always after his brief-lived truancies he had been forced to return to the Combat College. Always forced. Always compelled. He had never wanted to go back. The memory of that childhood unpleasantness was still very, very clear.
'So,' said Sesno Felvus, 'you're not one of those who welcomed your descent into the cave. And now… now you're scheduled to fight for the instructorship. You need to win that fight because you need the money. But… as for the position itself… as for the Combat College | | '
'If I could walk away from it all then I would,' said Hatch.
'I'd never regret it. I'm not a – it's a playground. That's all.
That's all it is. It's only the Free Corps which thinks it's – what? A vocation. That's what they think. Stormforce. Startrooper.
Nexus talk and Nexus tongue. A life. But it's a nonsense.'
'So you wouldn't regret – '
'What? Whalemeat? Green milk? The Eye of Delusions? I can see the Eye any day, in any case. No. Nothing. I'd have no regrets. If I walked away I'd – but I need the money, I can't walk away from the money. I know the Temple's poor, so I can't, I couldn't – well. You know how it is.'
Dalar ken Halvar was not a rich city, even though it was the capital of the Empire of Greater Parengarenga. As for Temple Isherzan, it was not in any sense wealthy. Sesno Felvus did not have the luxury of being able to offer Hatch charity, and both of them knew it.
'Your problem,' said Sesno Felvus, 'is simple to state, even though it may not be quite so simple to solve. You need money desperately, and so seek to win the instructor's position at the Combat College. If you win, will that be money sufficient?'
'An instructor's pay is generous,' said Hatch. 'It will serve. If I can win the instructorship.'
'So,' said Sesno Felvus. 'So you have set your heart on winning. Selection is by competition by combat. Is that not so?'
'It is so,' acknowledged Hatch.
'A symbolic Season,' said Sesno Felvus. 'A battle in dream for a prize in the flesh.'
'That,' said Hatch, 'describes the combat well. The Combat College was founded in the flesh of the fact – however, little remains but the dreams. That's why – it's folly, the whole thing.
I want my life in the flesh. If I can have it. The flesh of the world and the fact.'
'So you'd like to renounce the Combat College,' said Sesno Felvus. 'But this is your secret. Nobody else knows it. Everyone rumors that it's your dearest wish to be instructor. I've heard that you're an excellent fighter. If rumor holds truth, then there's only one other seriously in contention for the instructorship. Lon Oliver, isn't it? Is that the young man's name?'
'Yes,' said Hatch, registering no surprise at the High Priest's impeccable intelligence.
It was no secret that, with the just-completed competitive theoretical examinations having clarified the standing of those students who were competing for the instructorship, Hatch's only remaining serious rival for the one single instructor position was Lupus Lon Oliver. Who was good. Who was very very good. Who might yet shoot Hatch down in flames. Literally in flames – for they would be dueling not with swords and spears but with singlefighters and MegaCommand Cruisers.
'Now,' said Sesno Felvus, 'Lon Oliver may win, may lose. But one thing we know of a certainty. Since Lon Oliver is the son of Gan Oliver, he has been driven since childhood by his father's ambition. Lupus Lon Oliver is of the Free Corps, hence thinks like his father. You if you lose will still have a life for yourself.
But if Lon Oliver loses – for him, nothing.'
'That is so,' said Hatch.
Money aside, Hatch could walk away from the Combat College with no regrets. But Lupus Lon Oliver, like all members of the Free Corps, had made an emotional alliance with the Nexus, and to lose the instructorship would be a tragedy which would break his life.
'So, Asodo,' said Sesno Felvus, 'isn't it simple? Your friend Lon Oliver wants the job, but all you want is the money. So sell him the job. Let him bribe you. With gold to your credit, you let him defeat you in the instructorship examinations.'
'Wah!' said Hatch, taken aback by the elegance of this solution. 'But – but where would he get the gold? I'd want it in advance, I couldn't trust him to pay me afterwards.'
'Such caution is only wise,' said Sesno Felvus. 'Of course you'd want cash in advance. You'd need gold sufficient to pay off your debts and a healthy surplus to bank with the Bralsh. But that's no problem. Lon Oliver's father, well – talk to the father if you can't get sense from the son. It matters to both of them intensely. The father's got the Free Corp's resources behind him, so – '
'But they might not do a deal,' said Hatch.
'I think refusal unlikely,' said Sesno Felvus. 'From what I hear, the betting in the Combat College runs even on yourself and Lon Oliver. Only a fool would risk losing the instructorship for a point of pride when it could be bought of a certainty at an easily affordable price. Talk to the son. If he's really such a fool, go to his father. They've got the gold, it's no problem.'
'I am in your debt,' said Hatch.
