exposed and vulnerable to his enemies. A new sheet of kaleidoscope started to form in the doorway. Slowly, slowly. It hesitated, wavered, then consolidated itself. Hatch kicked his way through the cold and swiftly disintegrating slob, reached the door, put his weight against the kaleidoscope – which was slightly warm to his touch – and pushed.
Hard. He threw his whole weight against the door. It held.
Okay.
Hatch went back to the initiation seat and settled himself.
He glanced at the countdown telltale. It had not yet started to count down the last pulsebeats.
'Worried, were you?' said Paraban Senk, appearing on the combat bay's display screen.
'Very,' said Hatch frankly.
'But now you're safe. Very well. You know the dual viewpoints of this combat session will be relayed to the Forum Three.'
'Of course,' said Hatch. 'Hi, Shona. Hi, Dog. How's things, Manfred my old friend?'
'Clowning is not in order,' said Paraban Senk, frowning.
'No,' said Hatch. 'Of course it isn't. I apologize.'
'Your apology is accepted.'
'Very well,' said Paraban Senk. 'We are gathered here today to observe the combat between Lupus Lon Oliver and Asodo Hatch.
The prize is the instructorship of the Combat College. To the victor, the spoils.'
There was a pause. Hatch assumed that Paraban Senk was saying something to Lupus Lon Oliver. Then:
'Are you ready to receive your first combat assignment?' said Paraban Senk.
'I am ready,' said Hatch.
A flickering motion attracted his attention. It was the countdown telltale.
There was a pause. Hatch assumed that Lupus Lon Oliver was being given the combat assignment. Then:
'Asodo Hatch,' said Paraban Senk. 'You will duel with Lupus Lon Oliver with the Scala Nine singlefighter.'
Hatch almost flinched, but restrained himself. But even so: he did not like this idea one little bit. The singlefighter was a small and turbulent flying machine designed for solo combat missions within a planet's atmospheric envelope. To use it effectively in combat, one required razor-sharp reflexes, and there young Lupus most definitely had the edge.
For a brief moment, Hatch indulged himself in notions of despair. Then steadied himself by bringing to mind memories of the desert and the gasping thirst and bleeding leather of real war – real war which he had endured and survived.
The task ahead was only a game, for all the seriousness of purpose which attended it. Win or lose, he would still walk from the combat bay with all four limbs intact. Here you could die and it would not matter.
Hatch wished, above all, that he was not so alone, not so isolated. But he was himself alone, alone and unaided, with nobody to help him, guide him, support him, advise him.
– To survive.
Hatch remembered.
The High Priest of the Great God Mokaragash, old Sesno Felvus, had said something about survival. But what? Hatch thought back to their encounter in the precincts of Temple Isherzan.
– To survive is victory sufficient.
True, true, but Hatch had always known that, it was a platitude, a nothing-statement, proof of the ancient teaching which holds that wisdom is often but hair from the idiot. If Lupus was an idiot, if Hatch himself was an idiot… but of course they were idiots, they were both of them idiots to be wasting their time dueling in skies of imagination while the city of the flesh wailed through the agony of its burning.
To survive.
To survive is victory sufficient.
Hatch glanced at the countdown telltale and saw he had but ten pulsebeats to combat. He watched the clock- counter pulse.
Once. Twice. Thrice.
As if calmed by the very countdown itself, Hatch found himself lucid, clear. In his lucidity, he remembered one of the brevities of Jeneth Odette, a practitioner of Dith-zora-ka-mako who had once lectured on her method by saying:
'I took a worm and turned it inside out.' – To survive is victory sufficient.
Turned inside out:
– To die is victory sufficient.
Suddenly Hatch remembered. He remembered the evasion exercise he had so recently undertaken when paired with Lupus Lon Oliver.
Pursued by a hunter-killer, Hatch had jumped over a cliff, taking a death-plunge which had allowed him to survive to the end of the exercise.
He glanced at the countdown telltale.
Three pulses remained.
Hatch grinned, fiercely, for now he knew, now he understood, now he saw a way to wreck young Lupus and win.
Two pulses.
One.
None.
And Paraban Senk said:
'Let combat begin.'
The world went red. The world went white. The world flickered through the spectrum, then blurred into unintelligibility. Then steadied. As the world steadied, Hatch found himself sitting frozen in the cockpit of a Scala Nine singlefighter in a monochromatic world. A world without color, a world of black and white. A world of silence unbroken except for the slightest background hiss.
Caught in a world of monochromatic paralysis, Hatch reviewed his plan. Then color flooded the world, stasis ended, and he was thrust back into his seat by the force of a full five gravities of acceleration, hurtling through the lower atmosphere in a Scala Nine singlefighter.
Chapter Twenty
Illusion tanks: computer-generated environments allowing people-in-the-flesh to interact with each other (or with software artefacts) in a subjective world which lacks all objective existence.
If in a world of dreams we fight The bloodstained shadows of the cranking steel Which grinds the bones of monsters then grinds ours – Then wake and find The blood which gapes and grins upon the pillow – The softness like a rope around my neck – But this 'but if' is but – So forced by five gravities he burnt low across a sea of green, a sea not grass but tarnished water. Slammed through the lower atmosphere beneath a sky of burnished copper.
'Hatch,' said Lupus, over the vidrolator's open channel. 'I see you, Hatch.' Hatch ignored him. 'Hatch! Hatch! It's me! It's me! You can run, Hatch. You can run, but you can't hide.'
Hatch had heard that before. When? Oh yes. Standing outside the lockway, waiting for the outer airlock to open. Some entertainment hero had said as much to some entertainment villain on the Eye of Delusions.
'Idiot,' said Hatch.
Then a pig-panic squeal from the singlefighter alerted him to danger. Lon Oliver's attack systems had acquired, had locked on, were ready to blast Hatch to oblivion. Hatch blurted a quick command: 'Prison!'
Obedient to this command, Hatch's singlefighter sheathed itself in a force-field which sealed out the world. Now his singlefighter was sealed off from the outside world, safe from attack, for the moment invulnerable. But to maintain such a forcefield would cost Hatch dearly. The corrosion cells which powered his singlefighter would soon be drained by the cost of maintaining the force-field. But in the meantime Hatch was protected from anything Lupus
