'Do you do marriage counseling too?' said Hatch.
'I am the complete spiritual adviser,' said Senk complacently. 'Go. Live. Sleep. Enjoy. Enjoy the great Festival of the Dogs.'
'Dogday?' said Hatch, momentarily bewildered. 'But that's not till after the examinations.'
'I was joking,' said Senk.
'Joking?' said Hatch. 'You should leave joking to humans.'
'I am human,' said Senk.
Another joke? Or did Senk mean to be taken seriously? Hatch was too tired to work it out. He fell back on one of his people's traditional answers to social conundrums: the elaborate formalities of an immaculate courtesy.
'I salute you on your humanity,' said Hatch. 'I salute you, and thank you for all that you have done for me today. Much is your kindness and much is my debt.'
Speaking thus, he remembered another debt, a literal debt denominated in gold, and inwardly winced.
'There is one more thing,' said Senk.
'Speak,' said Hatch, still in his courtesy mode. 'For whenever you speak, it is the purest pleasure to listen.'
'To listen?' said Senk. 'One hopes on occasion it is also your pleasure to answer. Hatch, I need to know your requirements for the battles.'
'The battles?'
'The illusion tank battles. Your duels with Lon Oliver. The best of three, starting tomorrow.'
Oh. Those duels. At the mention of dueling, Hatch felt a twinge of pain from the deep-driven scar of a real wound, a souvenir of a real battle in the world of the fact and the flesh.
'You wish to know my requirements,' said Hatch. 'Very well.
My sole condition is that I should be given a handicap appropriate to my age.'
A joke. Which Senk ignored, saying merely:
'Do you have any special requirements?'
'Well,' said Hatch, 'I require to know when we're starting, I need to know that to start with.'
'Your duels with Lon Oliver will start tomorrow night,' said Senk. 'So you can rest for all of today, all of tonight and all through tomorrow's daylight. Now – as to my question. Do you have any special requirements?'
'For what?' said Hatch. 'For inspirational music, battle slogans, battle art, or what?'
'Any of those or more,' said Senk. 'I can give you a list of what's permitted, if you want.'
'I want nothing,' said Hatch. 'Except… Senk, make me a simulcrum head. A head of Lupus Lon Oliver.'
'That will cost you,' said Senk. 'The cost will be deducted from your pay.'
'I know,' said Hatch. 'I know.'
But he wanted this head. He wanted to work some black magic.
And so he waited, while Senk fabricated him such a head, which was delivered to his room by means of a transmission tray. Then Hatch took the head, which was a very good resemblance of the Ebrell Islander who was his rival. It was made of a soft rubber-analog, and it was heavy. Hatch sank it on a paper spike.
'What's that in aid of?' said Paraban Senk.
'It's an aid to good dreams,' said Hatch, patting the simulcrum head cheerfully.
'Perhaps you'd like to bathe it in artificial blood as well,' said Senk.
'It's a thought,' said Hatch. 'How long would it take to organize?'
'A few moments,' said Senk. 'But it'll cost a little more.'
'Then – no, scrap that plan,' said Hatch.
He could afford no further indulgences. He needed to save his Combat College pay so he could buy such things as chocolate from the Combat College cafeteria, chocolate which he could later exchange for opium in the great world outside.
'One last thing,' said Senk. 'Do you have a guest list?'
'Guest list?' said Hatch, startled.
'You know,' said Senk, imitating impatience.
'Of course,' said Hatch.
Of course he knew. Those competing for the instructor position were free to invite the guests of their choice to watch the illusion tank battles which would ultimately decide who was awarded that position. To Hatch's knowledge, this was the only occasion on which outsiders could thus be invited into the depths of Cap Foz Para Lash. He suspected it was a surveillance mechanism: suspected that when one increased one's importance by becoming an instructor, one's very friends and acquaintances became a subject of inquiry.
'Well?' said Senk.
'Let in whoever asks in my name to be let in,' said Hatch.
'It would be better if you specified,' said Senk.
Hatch conjured briefly with the notion of his sister Penelope or the Lady Iro Murasaki watching him commanding a Galactic Class MegaCommand Cruiser somewhere in the depths of intergalactic space in a whitestar universe. Somehow he could not imagine it.
'Nobody will come,' said Hatch.
'Perhaps the beggars at the gates,' said Senk.
'If they want to, then let them,' said Hatch.
'They are unlikely to be improved by the experience,' said Paraban Senk. 'An important consideration, this, given our dedications.'
'Our dedications?' said Hatch, puzzled to hear Senk talking incomprehensible nonsense.
'Our dedications to the ethic of the Nexus, which is progress and improvement.'
'That's as may be,' said Hatch, uncertain whether Senk was being serious or mildly ironical.
Then Hatch renewed his efforts to win access to all files on Son'sholoma Gezira, hoping to find in such files information which might perhaps be used to discretely blackmail Son'sholoma into something approximating good behavior.
Failing to win such access, Hatch at last gave up, quit his room, and was soon striding toward the lockway, the triple-door airlock entrance which protected the Combat College.
As Hatch approached the lockway, a huge machine came lurching out of a side corridor. The machine was a dorgi. The dorgi. The one and only dorgi left alive in Dalar ken Halvar. For all Hatch knew, it was the one and only functional dorgi left on the whole planet. And, as far as he was concerned, one dorgi was very much one dorgi too many.
The dorgi braked abruptly, blocking the hallway entirely.
Then it trained its zulzers on Asodo Hatch and it roared:
'Halt! Halt right now! Identify yourself! Identify yourself! Who are you? Don't move or I'll blow your head off!'
'Get out of my way, you overgrown turd,' said Hatch.
The bulbous machine in front of him responded with an earshattering blast of its klaxon.
'Emergency! Emergency! You are in danger of death! You are in danger of death! Identify yourself or be killed!'
'Go step on yourself,' said Hatch.
Usually, when a dorgi gives a warning blast on its klaxon, that final warning indicates that its next move will be to kill someone. But the behavior of this particular machine had been eccentrically erratic for a great many centuries, and as far as anyone could tell it exercised its klaxon simply because it enjoyed uproar for its own sake.
'What is the password?' roared the machine. 'What is the password? Tell me the password. Now! Now!! Or I will kill you!!!'
'There isn't a password, you stupid lunk,' said Hatch. 'There hasn't been a password for the last twenty thousand years.'
The machine, the much-dreaded dorgi which dogged the days of every student in the Combat College, thought about this. The dorgi was not very good at thinking, but it had the advantage of having thought its way through this conundrum many many times before. To its great distress, it always came to the same conclusion.
'You are right,' said the dorgi, in tones so close to the conversational that Hatch was hard put to hear them
