bits of rainstruck landscape without any weapons to stave off the howling pursuit of dogs, dorgis, and airmobile warriors.
'Of course,' said Senk, 'we cannot put everyone through this exercise, since we have 29 Startoopers, and we only have seven functional combat bays.'
There were cheers.
'Teams will be four-legged,' said Senk, using the Stormforce idiom often employed to designate work in pairs. 'We have the capacity to exercise six two-person teams, and accordingly this is what we will do. You will not be scored as individuals but as a team. Here are your pairings.'
Notebooks were produced.
'Startrooper Shona.'
'Yo,' said Shona, acknowledging her name.
'Startrooper Shona. You will be paired with Startrooper Fax.'
At that, Fax bent to his notebook and wrote down the name of his partner, as if he might forget. Since his nervous breakdown, from which he had only recently recovered, Fax had been overcautious, reluctant to trust his own mental resources. There was no way that he could win the Combat College instructorship. And Shona – well, she was too relaxed about the whole thing.
'Startrooper Echo,' said Senk.
Jeltisketh Echo, the inscrutable gray-skinned Janjuladoola Startrooper, indicated that he was listening.
'You are paired with Startrooper Icon.'
The redskinned Hobart Icon, the good-natured athletic combatmaster who had the distinction of being the sole Ebrell Islander in the Combat College who did not belong to the Free Corps, signed his acknowledgement of the order.
'Startrooper Hatch.'
Asodo Hatch stood a little straighter. For all that he claimed to hold the Combat College in contempt, it meant a lot to him to be referred to as a Startrooper. Nobody could live through so many years as a Combat Cadet without being pleased with promotion when it finally came.
'Startrooper Hatch. You will be paired with Startrooper Oliver.'
Asodo Hatch and Lupus Lon Oliver exchanged glances, and each wished the glances were knives.
With these assignments having been given out, the Startroopers made their way to the Combat Bays, there to enter the world of the illusion tanks. On the way, Scorpio Fax passed a not to Asodo Hatch. But Hatch, who had enough on his plate without worrying himself about whatever was worrying Fax, dropped the note unread amongst the steadily accumulating corridor trash, and strode on to meet his destiny.
Chapter Eleven
Illusion tanks: interactive brain stimulators used to train Combat Cadets in everything from riot control to transcosmic warfare. Unfortunately the tank curriculum has one lamentable deficiency: there is no instruction in hand-to-hand combat.
However the tanks do teach Environmental Survival (everything from bushwacking through tropical jungle to living on open ice); Civic Emergency (everything from fire fighting to a Destabalization Emergency); vacuum combat (with special emphasis on the use of radiation weapons); Urban Conflict (starting with riot control, then building by way of Elementary Streetfighting to full-scale city wars involving nerve gas and nuclear munitions); and Aerospace (which involves everything from dueling with a singlefighter to commanding a Galactic Class MegaCommand Cruiser, the ultimate weapon in the realms of transcosmic warfare).
As the computer-generated interactive illusions of the tanks have no actual physical existence, they must be recreated from moment to moment in the human brain. As soon as brain stimulation ceases, the illusion collapses.
A designer's conceit holds the world of the illusion tanks to be subjectively no different from everyday reality, but in fact the constant stimulation of the brain gives rise to the phenomenon known as lyricism – that heightened awareness of surrounding physical phenomena which is consequent upon the constant renewal of the illusion.
The life of the tanks is therefore more vivid, more real than reality, for in reality the eye grows weary and the skin forgets the very clothing it wears, and one so much forgets the truths of one's body that one can become so engrossed by the entertainments of the Eye of Delusions as to quite lose self-awareness.
In the illusion tanks, one is always self-aware, always conscious of the truths of the body, of the reality of the flesh – even though the body one inhabits in the tanks is unreal, its truths mere conceits of advanced mind- manipulation.
The hand implies the knife, and so -
The rose creates the thorn, the thorn – The eye blinks wet, And wet with rainbow, wings the butterfly – And waits.
So it was morning, and a morning unlike any other Hatch had ever known. First rose the ferocious white spark of an intolerably bright sun, a sun so fierce that Asodo Hatch and Lupus Lon Oliver had to shield their eyes against the blistering light. Then up from the sea there slowly lumbered a huge and swollen sun of torrid red, at which the brightwhite star snapped out of existence – a phenomenon Hatch found to be inexplicable unless that superlit luminary be presumed to be artificial.
'Brothers in blood,' observed Lupus, as the two men lay bathed in the senile bloodlight of the big red sun. Then yet another sun began to rise, this one duller yet, its color purple.
'Your tutelary star,' said Lupus.
Hatch found in his weariness that he knew not the meaning of tutelary, and so was unsure whether he was being insulted, so pretended not to have heard.
'Your sister could use such a star,' said Lupus.
'Doubtless,' said Hatch, too tired to know whether Lupus was making sense or was babbling like a beggar.
'But in her absence,' said Lupus, 'I'll serve.'
'You'll serve her well, I doubt that not,' said Hatch, wishing indeed that Penelope was happily consigned to Lupus, and no longer a problem for Hatch.
'With your help,' said Lupus. 'My father as yet needs persuading.'
As Hatch made no answer to that, Lupus started digging into his over-stuffed pockets, searching for breakfast. What he came up with was survival rations of the type known to the Nexus as combast. The choice was between cheese and fish, the fish being a tube of salmon-colored paste. Hatch was not hungry and, in any case, would not eat such food except under the pressure of dire necessity.
Lupus of course was an Ebrell Islander, and as far as Hatch was aware the Ebrell Islanders ate anything and everything, including each other on occasion. But amongst the religious injuctions which ruled the lives of the Frangoni there was one which said: Thou shalt not deform the Given.
This had severe dietary consequences, for it meant that frog must be cooked as frog, fish as fish, flesh as flesh. It might be sliced, and sliced finely, but it could not be squashed, pulped or slurried. Such was the Frangoni way. And whatever doubts Hatch entertained about the might of the Great God Mokaragash, he had shed none of the inhibitions which his stomach had learnt in childhood. He found all combast rations repulsive, particularly the fish: the very thought of reducing a living animal to a pulped ooze then consuming the result made him shudder.
In the distance, there was a dull explosion.
'A little late,' said Lupus, checking the survival-issue time-counter strapped to his wrist.
'A little,' agreed Hatch.
In the course of their illusion-tank evasion exercise, the two men had managed to seize a reconnaissance vehicle. Resisting the temptation to escape in the thing – it was a target easy to track, find and destroy – they had rigged it to self-destruct at dawn.
The echoes of that explosion were still dying away when there came a much larger rock-bang roar – a convulsive blast which made the ground rock. The sun blinked off, then on.
Asodo Hatch and Lon Oliver looked at each other.
