That is your right. I concede that point also. What is the password?'
'The password is a standard three-phase. Component one: hippopotamus. Component two: junket. Component three: destroyer.
Acknowledge.'
'Acknowledged,' said the dorgi. Then, abrupting from a growl to a thunder-rock roar: 'Urgent! Urgent! Intruder approaching!
Break contact! Break contact!'
'I break contact,' said Paraban Senk dryly.
And the dorgi went roaring out of its hiding hole and lurched to a halt just a fraction of a fingerlength in front of the female Startrooper named Shona.
'Halt! Halt!' screamed the dorgi. 'You must halt! Now! Now!
Or I will blow your head off! Halt and undress!'
'Go screw yourself,' said Shona.
'Take off your clothes!' said the dorgi. 'Now! Now! Do what Isay! Or I will kill you! Take off your clothes!'
'Go bugger yourself with a dog turd,' said Shona.
She did not speak to the dorgi like this because she was crude but because the machine's brain was so limited that it found it very hard to comprehend any insult which was much advanced beyond the scatological.
'You can't talk to me like that!' said the dorgi, having taken the small pause necessary to check its comprehension of her last remark. 'I have the password and you don't! I can kill you this time, I really can.'
'You're shit out of luck, brick-brains,' said Shona, 'because I've got the password too.'
'Tell it!' said the dorgi.
'Hippopotamus,' said Shona, who had been briefed by a Combat College communications screen while she was still a hundred paces distant from the dorgi's lair.
'Hippopotamus!' screamed the dorgi in rage.
'This is a three-phase password,' said Shona calmly, 'and you have made an error with the middle phase. I am going to report you and you are going to be punished. I'm not kidding.'
'Bitch,' said the dorgi sullenly.
'I will report you for that too,' said Shona warmly.
'You dare,' said the dorgi.
'That's three reports,' said Shona.
'Junket!' said the dorgi, seeing that this was getting out of hand. 'Junket! Junket! That's what it is! That's the middle phase!
Quick! Quick! The response! The response! Out with it! Right now!
Or I'll blow your head off!'
And it trained all three of its seven-snout zulzers on Shona's head and made ready to make good its threat. Three official complaint reports! This was disastrous! So the woman must die.
'Destroyer,' said Shona.
And the dorgi groaned, untrained its zulzers, and went lurching into its hideaway. And as it did so the inner door of the lockway opened and Umka Ash stepped through.
'Hippopotamus,' said Ash, the blotch-faced Combat Cadet whose mixed skin of white and black, of red and purple, made the truth of his race quite impossible to determine.
Ash had been briefed on the password as he came through the lockway, for Paraban Senk had over-ridden the customary lecturing voices of the lockway to give Ash a quick and vital briefing.
'Junket,' said the dorgi sourly, speaking in a low and reverbrating voice, and speaking without bothering to come out from its lair.
'Destroyer,' said Ash.
'Up yours too,' said the dorgi.
Then the normally withdrawn and silent Ash grinned and stepped forward, and Shona saw him coming and grinned too, and they embraced, and went dancing down the corridor together. Then they broke apart. And Ash whooped. And Shona yelled.
'Open!' said Shona in jubilation.
'Open!' responded Ash.
'Planets!'
'Stars!'
'Opera magnificat!'
'Holidays on Vulip!'
'Ecstasy amplifiers!'
'Ice!'
'Jerkaram!'
'Particle Basp! In the flesh!'
'Oh do shut up,' said the dorgi, speaking in dull-grumbling thunder. 'You're hysterical. The pair of you.'
'Why shouldn't we be?' said Shona.
'Yes, why not?' said Ash. 'The Chasm Gates are open. And you know what that means.'
'What?' said the dorgi, which could not even begin to guess.
'Psyche therapy for a certain dorgi,' said Ash. 'Psyche therapy urgently overdue, a good ten millennia overdue.'
At which the dorgi, goaded beyond endurance, came roaring out of its lair, zulzers swiveling. But Ash and Shona just stood there and laughed at it – laughed and laughed, exhilarated beyond all words.
And Hatch?
Asodo Hatch came striding down the cream-colored corridors of the Combat College, striding along in company with Beggar Grim, Master Zoplin and the mighty Lord X'dex Paspilion. Hatch strode along at such a pace that the three beggars had to positively scuffle to keep up with him. Hatch gave the password to the dorgi with an uncommon curtness, brushed aside the greetings he received from Shona and Ash, then entered the lockway airlock with his beggars.
'Let's plan our families together,' said the lockway.
'Planned parenthood is the maximum most in happiness. Your pharmacist or your family physician is the best person to advise you further.'
Hatch heard yet did not hear the words. He was thinking, thinking, thinking of what lay outside the lockway. Thinking of the city and the Free Corps, and what he must to seize control of Dalar ken Halvar and then to consolidate that control.
Chapter Thirty
Lupus Lon Oliver: sometime Combat Cadet and Startrooper now graduated from the Combat College and hence effectively exiled from the world of the Nexus. Son of Manfred Gan Oliver and a leading light of the Free Corps of Dalar ken Halvar. Note that Lupus Lon Oliver means 'Lupus, the hope of the family Oliver', while Manfred Gan Oliver means 'Manfred, the strength of the family Oliver.'
If dreams came true -
If monsters from the lusts of night
Drenched their claws,
And through her perfumes conjured -
Then nospeak dares to say -
Yet still in dreams we conjure,
And thus must risk -
The walls elapsing, and one world Drenching its scorpions in waves into the other.
Yet I dream too.
