– Not yet. Not yet.
So thought Hatch, distancing himself from the scene, managing to make himself cold, immobile, stonefaced and continent.
Yet he knew he would kill Lupus on account of what had been said. Till then, Hatch had been concerned with the father, not the son. He had primed Scorpio Fax to kill Manfred Gan Oliver because the father was a danger, while the rat spawned by that father – well, it had sharp teeth, admittedly, but it was still a very small and inconsequential rat.
But now it was a doomed rat.
As good as dead.
'Asodo Hatch,' said Paraban Senk. 'Are you ready to plead your case?'
Hatch breathed deeply.
Then:
'I am,' said Hatch.
'Then speak,' said Senk.
'Very well,' said Hatch. 'This young colleague of mine, Lupus Lon Oliver, he, he speaks from his youth – and in his youth he is enamoured with the romantic vision of two men engaged in combat to the death. He is drunk – '
'Drunk!' protested Lupus. 'I haven't had a drink – '
'Drunk with machismo,' said Hatch, steamrollering over the interjection. 'Intoxicated with visions of the triumph of muscle and nerve, the victory of brute as brute. But we are not animals training to die in the Season. Rather, we train for war.
'In war, merely to outsurvive the enemy can be an advantage.
He who survives can communicate his outsurvival to headquarters, meaning that the masters he serves will know of the outcome of his struggle even if he dies shortly thereafter. All things being otherwise equal, intelligence determines the outcome of wars.
'By outsurviving Lon Oliver in combat I demonstrated the ability to – potentially at least – give my headquarters an edge in intelligence. The fractional point awarded to me may be construed as being in recognition of the fact that simply to outsurvive the enemy is of potential military benefit.'
Was this making sense? Hatch hoped so. The truth was that the games played in the illusion tanks were just that: games. So all that mattered was to win within the rules. But to say as much would make him sound like a child too fond of its own cleverness, and so would be quoted against him. So: so he had to pretend to take these games absolutely seriously.
'If that fractional point serves to win me the position of instructor,' said Hatch, 'then I say the position is rightly won, for I achieved my fractional point not by pursuing delusional dreams of glory in combat, but by applying a mature understanding of the process of war. I won out of my maturity: out of my mature understanding. I won as a man wins when in combat with a child, however monstrous the child in its viciousness.'
'I'm better than you!' said Lupus, shouting. 'You fight me man to man and you're a dead man! You want to fight? Fight me, then! Fight me, and I'll tear you apart with my bare hands!'
Hatch smiled. This was good, very good. The boy-child was tender in his dignity, and was making a fool of himself by his fist-shaking histrionics.
'You think this is funny, do you?' said Lupus, advancing on Hatch.
'Lon Oliver,' said Paraban Senk. 'Back off. Back off – now!
Leave the stage and seat yourself.'
With some reluctance, Lupus obeyed. Hatch wondered if Lupus realized he had made a fool of himself. Asodo Hatch was a very large and well-coordinated mass of muscle and bone, a monster of a warrior big enough and bad enough to give the burliest brawler a fright in a fight. If Lupus Lon Oliver and Asodo Hatch were to fight it out in Forum Three, it was more than likely that any smashing of skulls, rending of limbs and extinguishing of life would be done by Hatch, with young Lupus the probable victim.
As Hatch watched Lupus seat himself, he was tempted to comment on his own bigness and Lupus's smallness. He was tempted to glory in his brawn and muscle, in his undoubted physical prowess. It was, after all, a severe blow to his ego to admit that Lupus was the better fighter pilot, faster of reflex and more adroit in his aerial tactics.
'There Lupus sits,' said Hatch, yielding to temptation.
'There Lupus sits – '
He brought himself up short. It was all too easy to play the game of man against man, to play at being a gladiator, a thugfist brawler, a streetfighter. But Hatch and Lupus were not gladiators or streetfighters. They were players in a political struggle which would decide the future of Dalar ken Halvar. In this struggle, there was more than Hatch's ego at stake. The entire Frangoni nation might be endangered if the leaders of the Free Corps found themselves firmly in control of Dalar ken Halvar.
So Hatch reconsidered, and in a moment saw what he had to say.
'There sits Lon Oliver, sulking like a child because I will not match my weaknesses to his strengths. Well, why should I?
If I were to meet him here and now he would doubtless kill me, for he is much the bigger man. Bigger he is, and stronger. Look at him! Admire him! Gan Oliver was a very dragon the night he sired young Lupus!'
Lupus sat glowering at Hatch, arms folded, shoulders hunched.
Lupus was no Frangoni, and the Combat College staged no moots, so Lupus was unused to the rough-and-cut of public debate. Hatch's sarcasm was telling on him.
Hatch grinned.
'Thus,' said Hatch, 'we see Lupus gigantic in his height, threatening poor me with massacre. Doubtless he could kill me if he tried – could swat me down with one obliterating strike of that yon watermelon he calls his fist. But it is wrong for him to take such pride in his physical supremacy, for we are not barbarians seeking to prove who is the stronger brute, who the bloodier animal. Young Lupus was not born into one of the Wild Tribes of the entertainments of the Eye of Delusions. Hence his atavistic yearning for their lifestyle is no more than self- indulgence.
'We are not primitives. Rather, we are representatives of the Nexus, the most sophisticated civilization which ever was – and we must conduct ourselves accordingly.'
With his speech done, Hatch gave a small and formal bow to his audience, then seated himself. He had spoken in quest of confirmation of his fractional point, but he had also spoken for another purpose. He wanted to identify himself with the Nexus, and to undermine Lupus's credibility with the Free Corps by portraying him as a would-be primitive, a closet sword-swinger, a dreamer mentally attuned to the mores of a dark age of bloodglutted barbarism.
Everyone in the Free Corps was pledged to the Nexus way, to the path of rational progress, and no dissenter from the myth of progress had much of a future with that bunch of pseudoscientific fanatics.
'I have heard the arguments,' said Paraban Senk, speaking from the big display screen mounted over Forum Three's stage. 'Now hear my decision. I rule – '
But Senk did not rule, for there was a disturbance at the main entrance to Forum Three. Several people were entering, some injured, others not. Hatch recognized his sister Penelope, tall and unbowed. And his wife Talanta, shocked and staggering.
'Order,' said Paraban Senk, as students and spectators began to mob those entering Forum Three. 'Order. Order!'
But Senk was ignored.
Hatch joined the mob himself, and pushed and shouldered till he got to his wife.
'Asodo,' said Talanta.
He enfolded her in his arms. She smelt of smoke. Hatch held her tight, then realized someone else was clamoring for attention. It was his beloved daughter Onica. There were scratches across her left cheek, and her hands – 'Let's see your hands, child,' said Hatch.
Onica tried to snatch her hands away, but Hatch had them already. There was blood and skin beneath the fingernails.
'Who was it?' said Hatch.
