'The meeting will settle,' said Paraban Senk.
It took more than saying it to make it happen, but eventually Forum Three came to order in obedience to Senk's commands. Hatch took a seat next to Talanta, who took his arm.
'You were brave,' she said. 'You were very brave.'
She was still trying to give to him.
All through their marriage she had done her best, giving him her body, giving him her services, and now, in extremis, in pain and dying slowly, giving him her praise when she had nothing else to give. Hatch experienced a crushing guilt, knowing himself to be an adulterer, a blaspheming apostate. His name would soon be scandal on the lips of every Frangoni in Dalar ken Halvar, and how would Talanta cope with that?
Hatch had already done the unforgivable, and was sure that he would do far worse before the year was out. He believed, now, that he could only survive the enmity of the Free Corps by linking himself with the revolutionaries who thought of themselves as practitioners of Nu-chala-nuth. And what then would be Talanta's fate? Surely as the wife of an apostate she would find herself ostracized by the Frangoni community, would find herself an exile on the very Frangoni rock itself.
Thinking of this, Hatch felt an enormous pity for the woman and her sufferings. But he knew that two cannot be made one by pity: and that, in a way, his pity was a measure of his estrangement from his wife.
Then Hatch thought of his wife no more, for Paraban Senk was addressing Forum Three.
'The graduating class has come to the end of its combat studies,' said Paraban Senk. 'I am pleased to say that we have a one hundred per cent pass rate. Those who have been unable to take their final examinations have been passed on the basis of an assessment of their work through the year and their performance in past examinations. We have of course one promotion to formally announce: Asodo Hatch is promoted to the post of resident instructor.'
Again there were mingled shouts of acclamation and derision, but the shouts were not as forceful as before. This drama had played itself out, and those in Forum Three were now starting to worry about the greater drama: the battle taking place for the control of Dalar ken Halvar.
'Members of the graduating class,' said Paraban Senk, 'should clear their rooms and exit from Cap Foz Para Lash.'
'And if we don't?' yelled someone.
'That needs no answer,' said Paraban Senk. Then, urgently:
'Scorpio Fax! What are you doing? Put down that knife!'
That gave Gan Oliver the moment's warning he needed. He turned as Fax struck. Gan Oliver knocked the knife aside, elbowed Fax to the floor, then brought his bodyweight slamming down on top of Fax. Gan Oliver grabbed Fax by the hair and started slamming his head against the plax of the floor.
With that, Forum Three abrupted into violence, as Free Corps supporters and Frangoni began to fight each other. A clutch of Free Corps loyalists slammed into Asodo Hatch.
Taken by Dog Java, by Lupus Lon Oliver and by Jeltisketh Echo, Hatch went down hard. Lupus got hands to his throat and started to strangle him.
'I,' said Lupus, tightening his grip, 'am going to kill you.'
This was for real, death for real, no lyrical illusion tank dream, no simulated fakery staged on the Eye of Delusions, but the terminus, the breath-fight, the lynch-note panic of flesh against flesh.
And Hatch was losing, was going under, sliding under the blackness as the ceiling – The ceiling of kaleidoscope abruptly came crashing down, breaking in huge gobs of slob as it collapsed. The slob was COLD!
Lupus Lon Oliver broke from the slob, gasping for air, and Shona kicked him in the head, elbowed Echo, spat in Dog Java's face, then reached into the slob and rescued Hatch, dragged him free and hauled him out of Forum Three.
In the corridor outside, Onica was screaming, clutching tight to her mother, who was herself being supported by the Lady Iro Murasaki.
'I hate this place!' sobbed Onica. 'I hate it! I hate it! I want to leave!'
Hatch comforted and calmed her as best he could, knowing that leaving was the last thing they could do with Dalar ken Halvar in the grip of riot.
'Enough of that!' said Shona, thinking this was no time for comforting. 'Let's get out of here!'
And she led them one and all to the shelter of her own room, into which security they packed themselves, until Paraban Senk accessed the room via its communications screen, and assured them that the Combat College was once more safe and orderly.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Nu-chala-nuth: a fanatic religion of the Nexus. Asodo Hatch, long a student of Nu-chala-nuth, has abandoned his own faith for that of the People. True, he declared himself for Nu-chala-nuth in an illusion tank. But all things are one as far as the gods and their worshippers are concerned – an illusion tank being no more Real or Unreal than that greater illusion known as the World of the Flesh and the Fact. As far as the Frangoni are concerned, Asodo Hatch is now an apostate, a blasphemer, accursed of his birth, his fate linked not with the Frangoni but with the People of the Nu-chala-nuth.
Deny the gods? Then die!
For who denies the gods denies
The mother-father-family, the all – Which then to live were blasphemy, the unclean flesh Defiant of its death, but doomed to die.
With riot subdued and order restored, those scheduled to leave the Combat College packed up, then took their final pay and spent it. With the last of their Combat College pay they bought goods freshly fabricated by the marvelous machineries of the Nexus: books, bolts of cloth, blocks of chocolate, toys and such minor medicines as could be freely bought from the canteen. Then for one last time they made their way through the cream-colored corridors to the lockway. After an earlier lapse, the lighting near the lockway had been restored to normal. But as for the dorgi – ah, that was quite abnormal, for that mechanized dog-beast had withdrawn to its lair, where it was sulking.
The inner airlock filled with members of the graduating class and their possessions. Once full, it closed.
A scattering of Combat Cadets, Startroopers and guests were left to wait for the next cycle. Among them, Manfred Gan Oliver and his son Lupus.
'I will see you shortly,' said Gan Oliver pleasantly, addressing his comment to Hatch.
Lupus said nothing. Trying, perhaps, not to cry.
'We will meet when we meet,' said Hatch, wishing to see the man gone, 'but I have some sleep to catch up on before I think of leaving here.'
'You and yours will necessarily leave the Combat College soon,' said Gan Oliver. 'I will be waiting for you. I will be waiting to supervise your deaths.'
This was said in an everyday conversational tone.
'I'm sure you will prove a most competent executioner,' said Hatch, matching Gan Oliver in tone.
Asodo Hatch was far too tired to be originating style. Had Gan Oliver screamed and yelled, then Hatch would have matched him in his histrionics.
When Gan Oliver had been cycled through the airlock, Hatch began to feel safe. He made his way to the Combat College cafeteria, to which his wife had been taken by Shona. Hatch found Talanta upset. She was crying. From the intensity of her grief, Hatch immediately divined that someone had told her what Hatch had done – had told her that he had rejected his god.
'Love,' said Hatch, trying to persuade himself that she was, or had been, or could be his love.
'Go away,' she said.
Where was the rhetoric when Hatch needed it most? Where were the great speeches? Where was the flowing eloquence? In the face of this most intimate and most personal emotional crisis, he found himself almost mute.
'My love,' said Hatch, touching Talanta lightly, lightly on the arm.
