Hugh Cook: The Worshippers and the Way

"I know," said Hatch.

He knew, he knew.

A Scala Nine singlefighter could shield itself from observation with a force field. But only at a cost. By the time a singlefighter shed such a shield, it had expended so much energy that it was temporarily helpless, unable to defend itself.

"When you chanced that turn," said Senk, "I naturally thought you must have had his shield-shedding in mind. You know your singlefighter was barely a hair from breaking up."

Hatch knew. The savagery of the turn, the savagery which had made him clutch the muscles of his stomach, had been an artefact. A warning. Nexus singlefighters were engineered to cancel out all effects of sound, turbulence, acceleration, deceleration, heat and light – then all these informational resources were engineered back into the machine to give the pilot survival data.

"So you almost destroyed your machine." said Senk. "Through such risk you got your rival in your sights. Helpless. Yet you hesitated. What were you thinking of?"

"I was thinking the – the thing I saw, I was thinking it might have been a second drone," said Hatch. "I didn't want to be, to – I didn't wanted to waste out my ammunition and be left – I didn't want to be helpless."

"So you chose to be dead instead," said Senk. Then, when Hatch made no answer: "I quote the Stormforce Combat Manual. Quote. An apparent enemy will be treated as a real enemy. Unquote. Engrave it on your heart, Hatch."

"The master speaks," said Hatch, speaking briskly as he tried to shake off his despondency by an act of will. "The student hears. To hear is to obey. I have but one question – who was I up against?"

"Data unavailable," said Senk, imitating the basic-speech curtness of a much simpler machine.

"Oh, come on!"

"It's not material."

"But I'd like to know."

"It's not material," said Senk.

Since the Teacher of Control was far better at stonewalling than any human-in-the-flesh, Hatch gave up the unequal struggle and quit the combat bay. In the cream-colored corridor outside, other Combat College students were patiently queuing, most seated with study-manuals in their hands. Initially the Combat College had been possessed of twenty combat bays, but now, with only seven remaining functional, there was almost always a queue of students waiting for their turn in the illusion tanks.

The first person in the queue outside Hatch's combat bay was Jeltisketh Echo, a Startrooper who had the distinction of being the one and only person of the gray-skinned Janjuladoola race to be a student in the Combat College. He promptly replaced Hatch in the combat bay. A brief quickstep down the corridor, Lupus Lon Oliver was exiting from a similar combat bay, yielding that facility to Umka Ash, a piebald Combat Cadet of uncertain breeding.

Lupus Lon Oliver turned to face Asodo Hatch, and the mystery of the identity of the person who had defeated Hatch in that last singlefighter training duel was immediately solved, for the big grin on Lupus Lon Oliver's face was eloquent of triumph.

"Hi, Hatch!" said the Ebrell Islander. "Have fun?"

"Lots of fun," said Hatch sourly, thus betraying his own defeat, and so confirming what Lupus had already guessed.

"Lots and lots of fun," said Lupus, mocking Hatch as the iron-pumped Frangoni warrior strode past him.

Hatch turned on the smaller man, looked down on his redskinned adversary, breathed heavily, resisted the temptation to smash Lupus to a bloodknuckle pulp then and there. With temptation resisted – just! – Hatch headed on down the corridor.

"Have a nice day, now," said Lupus, mocking his retreat.

At that, Hatch almost halted, almost turned. But Paraban Senk might well be monitoring this confrontation, and any loss of self- control would count against Hatch, and he knew it. So he continued on his way in peace.

On the way to his room, Hatch passed a few fellow Startroopers in Standard Gray, a gaggle of Combat Cadets in their Junior Blues, and a couple of individuals in mufti as various as papyrus skirts and dogskin coats. None spoke to him, for his face had a forbidding aspect. A huge musclepumped Frangoni warrior with his height exaggerated by the uncut topknot of his kind is not the most reassuring of sights, particularly not when it is in a bad temper.

On entering his room, Hatch saluted his father's ashes, which had found a temporary resting place in that refuge since they were welcome nowhere else. If Hatch lost the competition for the instructorship, then he would be exiled from the Combat College, and those ashes would have to go with him.

At the moment, Hatch was by no means certain that he could win the all-essential competition, since Lupus Lon Oliver was proving to have a definite edge in their combat training.

Hatch began to strip himself of his clothes. In the Combat College, Hatch sometimes wore the purple robes which were his habitual garb in Dalar ken Halvar itself. However, these days he was tending to wear a Startrooper's Standard Gray more and more often while he was inside the minor mountain of Cap Foz Para Lash. He was trying to dress like a citizen of the Nexus, to think like a citizen of the Nexus, to be like a citizen of the Nexus – and thus to maximize his chances of winning the instructorship in the trial-by-combat which was so shortly to commence.

But Hatch had never yet worn his Standard Gray out into the sunlight, and he had no intention of ever doing such a thing. In Dalar ken Halvar, he would always and ever wear the purple of a Frangoni warrior – or so he was resolved.

As Hatch wrenched his purple-skinned Frangoni flesh free from a Startrooper's Standard Gray, he repeated Lupus's words:

"Lots of fun."

Oh yes. Lots of fun. Incredible amounts of fun. The training had got really exciting of late. So exciting, in fact, that Hatch had quite lost track of the number of times he had been shot up, shot down, exploded, bombed, disintegrated and burnt alive.

And for what purpose?

Since Hatch was a Frangoni warrior and not a member of the Free Corps, he had no transcendental faith in the virtues of the Combat College. He had never had any illusions about the Combat College to lose. Even so, he somehow managed to feel decidedly disillusioned as he shed his Standard Gray and pulled off his Weathertreads.

Though Hatch was trying his best to be in and of the Nexus, he nevertheless found it to be always a relief to get dressed in the leather sandals and purple robes of a Frangoni warrior, and this he did once he had shed his Nexus wear. To put on his clothes was to put on his true culture. His true identity. His true strength. The world of the Combat College was the world of maya, illusion; and sometimes Hatch felt that the time spent inside its cream-colored corridors was but a form of living death.

Once dressed in the way of his Frangoni people, Hatch exited from his room and strode through those corridors of cream, making for the cafeteria.

The blue-painted cafeteria was bright with harsh sunflare lights – wake-up lights, hurry-up-and-eat-and-get-moving lights – and it was noisy with a babble of Startroopers and Combat Cadets, many of whom were busy buying and selling Nexus stocks. Amongst other things, the cafeteria functioned as an informal bourse, in which the script of Nexus companies was freely traded. This activity was entirely speculative because:(i) Since the Chasm Gates linking Ola Malan had been sundered for over 200 centuries, commercial data on the stocks in question was similarly timespan degraded, so there was no telling whether the companies involved were now fabulously valuable or were long since bankrupt and forgotten; (ii) The very Nexus itself might have fallen to ruin at some stage in the last twenty millennia, succumbing for instance to the rigors of a disastrous war with the Vogliono Tendenza; (iii) Even assuming that the Nexus still survived and that all the companies being stocktraded inside Cap Foz Para Lash were still prosperous, the true value of the script could not be realized unless transcosmic communications between the world of Dalar ken Halvar and the Nexus were restored, which was thought to be unlikely.