'I told you!' said Hatch. 'I told you to get yourself back to the Combat College. I thought you were going there! If I'd thought for a moment that you were – '
'He's your enemy, Hatch! Polk's your enemy! I thought – '
'Come on,' said Hatch. 'I've no time for listening to speeches.'
Here Hatch was true to his breeding, for the Frangoni have ever preferred making speeches rather than listening to them.
Having thus cut short Fax's excuses, Asodo Hatch took Fax down the Backsteps which descended the western slopes of Cap Uba.
'So what happens to me at Na Sashimoko?' said Fax, unable to conceal his fear for his own future.
'We dungeon you,' said Hatch.
'The emperor has no dungeons,' said Fax.
'Not at his palace. But the Grand Arena is not so terribly distant.'
'You don't gain by threats,' said Fax. Trying to play the part of the brave revolutionary. Then, suddenly: 'Hatch. Hatch. It would be the easiest thing to let me go. A moment's work. There's no witnesses here, not now, not in the dark.'
'You don't like this game?' said Hatch. 'That's easy, then.
The Dead Mouth is but a stone's throw distant. Oh, I can let you go, if that's what you really want.'
The Dead Mouth was as close as Hatch said it was. And it was deep. Even in the brightest of sunlight, to look down into it was to see darkness falling to darkness for what looked like eternity.
It was quite impossible to see the bottom. While Hatch presumed that the Dead Mouth did actually have a bottom, legend held it to be depthless, and in practice it was, for no rope of mortal make could measure out more than its merest lip. It was, naturally, an irresistible attraction to suicides.
In the face of that threat, Scorpio Fax fell very quiet, and Hatch led him through the stumbling dark toward the palace of Na Sashimoko.
But they were still far short of the palace when they met Umka Ash, he of the uncertain breeding – his piebald skin a mass of white and black blotches, and birthmarks in both red and in purple.
'Hatch!' said Ash.
'What is it, Combat Cadet?' said Hatch.
Then Umka Ash gave him the bad news. In the face of a revolution by the Unreal, the Free Corps had joined with certain officers of the imperial guard in launching a coup to 'stabilize the situation'.
'A coup!' said Hatch, in disbelief. 'What do you mean by a coup?'
'I mean,' said Ash, 'that they said they were making a coup, and killed three men who were fool enough to disagree with them.'
'Killed?' said Hatch.
'Yes,' said Ash. 'Unless you believe a man can have his head chopped off and still live, they were killed. I saw it.'
'But,' said Hatch, still at a loss, 'what do they hope to achieve by this – this coup?'
'I am going back to the Combat College to write you a formal paper on the analysis of that very point,' said Umka Ash dryly.
'Wah!' said Hatch, trying to absorb the implications of this news of a coup. 'A real night for lunatics!'
'So what are you going to do with me?' said Scorpio Fax.
'We'd best be back to the Combat College,' said Hatch. 'Both of us.'
'Does this mean I'm pardoned?'
'Am I the emperor, to be giving pardons?' said Hatch. 'Come on. Let's be gone.'
So Scorpio Fax and Asodo Hatch started back to the Combat College, in company with Umka Ash. But they had not gone far when Fax suddenly broke away and fled into the night.
'Fax!' roared Hatch. 'Come back! I'm ordering you!'
But it was no use.
Fax was gone.
'What now?' said Umka Ash.
'We proceed to the Combat College,' said Hatch. 'There you can write your paper of analysis, but I for my part intend to rouse our fellow students out for action.'
The readiness with which Hatch said this disturbed Ash greatly, who said:
'Sorry,' said Ash. 'I've been thinking, and my family…'
'Go, then,' said Hatch.
Ash went, and Hatch continued to the Combat College on his own, trying to work out what to do. Rouse students for action? it was easily said. But who could he rouse, and exactly what could they do to bring the city to order?
Asodo Hatch was on his own, with no communications and no access to any kind of data flow. His emperor was missing. A group of over-excited soldiers and Free Corps types had declared themselves masters of Dalar ken Halvar. A half-coordinated revolution was in progress in the city.
Hatch was tolerably certain that his family would be safe enough on the Frangoni rock, at least for the moment. He decided that he should push on to the Combat College, set up his own command center, send out scouts to bring him information, organize the information on a battle-map, and find volunteers who would be prepared to act under his command and restore order in the city once the rioting burnt itself out.
So to the lockway went Asodo Hatch, and found it a scene of burnt-out wreckage, for every stall on Scuffling Road had been smashed, looted, wrecked and burnt. The kinema, the amphitheater outside the lockway, was lit by the lurid light of the Eye of Delusions, which was showing a cartoon in which the gross and hideous savages of one of the Wild Tribes – savages who gibbered in the triumph of their bloodlust – were cutting out the hearts of hapless victims.
Tonight, nobody was in the amphitheater watching the Eye. The attractions of the city were greater.
'A bad business,' said Hatch.
He strode toward the lockway itself. The lurid cartoon-light of the Eye flickered across the red dust of the Plain of Jars, dust which was rucked with scuffled footprints, and stained and besplattered with darkness.
Hatch halted.
Something was wrong. The – the lockway! The outer door was gone! There was no kaleidoscope, no slob, no nothing. The mob had – no, that was impossible. No mob could encompass the breach of such a barrier. Rather – well, the obvious alternative was worse.
The door had failed. It no longer worked. It had ceased to function.
Hatch entered the outer chamber of the airlock, which was smeared with blood. The central door still stood firm, but its kaleidoscope dissolved away to nothing as he entered. It reformed behind him, trapping him within the airlock, which was bathed by an unearthly green light. Green light? This was new, weirdly so.
Hatch experienced a moment of claustrophobic dread. What if the airlock malfunctioned terminally and trapped him here?
'Our culture is our greatest treasure,' said the platitudinous voice of the airlock, maintaining its habitual custom of idle lecturing in complete disregard of the realities of the moment. 'Have you listened to an original musical composition recently?'
Blood everywhere. Blood underfoot and blood on the walls.
Smeared handprints. Bloody scrabblings. What the hell had been going on?
There was a hiss of air under pressure. Then the airlock began listing compositions which Hatch should listen to, only to have its lecture interrupted by the dissolution of the innermost door. Hatch stepped through, entering the tunnel which led deep into the depths of Cap Foz Para Lash.
The customary white brightlight of the tunnel had failed.
Instead, the tunnel was lit by a dim emergency pink, by which Hatch saw the bloody footprints which tracked their way to the bloody bundle of – no, not a bundle. A body. But small, so, so – Hatch stooped to the body, shook it by the shoulder, and it flopped, revealed its face. Lucius Elikin. Combat Cadet. Aged 11.
And dead, quite dead.
'Lucius,' said Hatch, in the loud and demanding voice used to challenge fatigue and stupor. 'Lucius, wake up!'
