Hugh Cook - The Worshippers and the Way

"Did?" said Hatch. "Do you believe the emperor dead?"

"I have it on your own authority that the emperor is not available," said Senk, giving Hatch the impression that some matter of either fact or rumor was being concealed. "It may well be that the emperor will remain unavailable. If that is the case, will you treat with the city's new ruling powers on my behalf if you become the instructor?"

"Without any hesitation," said Hatch.

"And I likewise," said Lupus.

"Then," said Senk, "I find you both fit to hold the instructorship, and rule that you must fight for the position this very night. Are you both agreeable to this proposition?"

"I am," said Lupus promptly.

"And I," said Hatch, forcing himself to an imitation of an equal readiness.

In truth, there were all kinds of further protests, caveats and reservations that Hatch wanted to make known. But he restrained himself. Without a doubt, he had angered Senk once already. Any repetition of that angering might see Senk disqualify him from contention for the instructorship.

As for Dalar ken Halvar's fate -

What could Hatch do on his own?

Less, surely, that he could do if he won the instructorship.

If he could win quickly, then he might persuade Senk to order the Combat College's student body to place itself under his command, and then he might be able to do something to restore order in the city.

"Good," said Senk, on hearing the prompt replies from Lupus and Hatch. "The pair of you will prove your worth as warriors by fighting against a background of war."

As Senk was so saying, Hatch heard a scuffle behind him, but paid it no heed, until he heard Shona say:

"What's monkey got?"

"Let me go!" said an anguished voice.

The voice was that of Dog Java, the Combat Cadet who had so recently tried to knife down Hatch. At that voice, Hatch turned sharply, and saw Dog Java trying to break free from Shona. Shona had come up behind Dog Java, and had seized Dog's arm in a grip a vice would have envied, and had got a lock on Dog's wrist.

As the human vice-rivaler exerted herself further, Dog was forced to drop the knife he had been holding. Then he cried out, for, rather than releasing her grip, Shona tightened it. Paraban Senk watched from the screen but made no move to intervene.

"Shona," said Hatch.

"Yes, Hatch my darling?" said Shona. "Shall I break his wrist? I'll do it for free. Just say the word."

"If he'll give you his and agree to keep the peace in the Combat College," said Hatch, "then you can let him go free."

"Well, Dog?" said Shona. "What do you say?"

When Dog Java made no immediate reply, Shona bit his ear.

Hard. Drawing blood. At which Dog cried out anew. As if in answer, cries were heard from outside Forum Three, and then a knot of Combat College students burst into that lecture theater. Amongst them was Scorpio Fax, his face a mask of blood, his scalp lacerated. Hatch pushed toward Fax, and was in time to catch him just before he collapsed.

Then someone else entered Forum Three.

It was Lupus Lon Oliver's father: the formidable Manfred Gan Oliver, head of the Free Corps. And Hatch, as he lowered Fax to the ground, heard someone cry out in astonishment:

"It's Gan Oliver! But what's he doing here!?"

A legitimate question, for Manfred Gan Oliver had been forcibly ejected from the Combat College when he graduated from that institution at the age of 27, and had been denied entry to the precincts of the College for the last 30 years.

Manfred Gan Oliver: "Manfred, the strength of the family Oliver." An orphan who, at the behest of his uncle, sat the entrance examination for admission into the Combat College at age 11, demonstrated the necessary aptitudes, and thereafter lived as a Combat Cadet.

Gan Oliver's uncle died when he was 13, after which he did not leave the precincts of the Combat College until he graduated and was forcibly ejected at age 27, a citizen of the Nexus now forever exiled from the world which had once been his home.

Doomed to live out his days in Dalar ken Halvar, Gan Oliver vowed that his son would succeed where he had failed, and would win an instructor's appointment in the College. Gan Oliver is now aged 57. His son, Lupus Lon Oliver, is aged 27 years and some days.

If as light at dawn is resurrected -

If likewise thus the flesh -

Why is it that these unstrung bones

Find purpose unrefreshed by sleep -

This sky so surely good as air

Though far from home and alien.

There was no big mystery about the presence of Manfred Gan Oliver. Guests were allowed to enter the Combat College to observe the gladiatorial combat of those who were fighting for the instructorship. Lupus Lon Oliver had earlier given Paraban Senk a list of his guests, and so, when Senk had despatched messengers to summon Lupus and Hatch for combat, Senk had sent messengers likewise to summon the invited guests.

On entering Forum Three, Manfred Gan Oliver looked around with a positively seigniorial eye.

Then said to Shona:

"Startrooper Shona! What are you doing with that Combat Cadet?"

"I haven't quite decided," said Shona, keeping a tight grip on the delinquent Dog Java. "But if he doesn't agree to keep the peace then I'm going to break his wrist."

"Agreed!" said Dog, who was sweating hot agony.

"What's agreed?" said Shona. "That you behave yourself? Or that you get something broken?"

"I'll be good," wailed Dog, his last reserves of courage and dignity broken.

"Yes, well," said Shona, giving Dog a little shake, and almost breaking his neck in the process. "I hope so. Because I'll be watching you."

Then she let him go, so suddenly that he went sprawling to the floor. Shona stooped, secured Dog's knife, then went to help Hatch, who was administering first aid to Scorpio Fax. Meantime, Manfred Gan Oliver moved to join his son, and father and son embraced.

"What's wrong with him?" said Shona, as Hatch checked out Scorpio Fax.

"He's been beaten badly," said Hatch, stating the obvious.

"Other than that, I can't say. Help me move him, and we'll shift him to the clinic."

Half a dozen people, Shona included, helped shift Fax to the Combat College cure-all clinic. It was small, a six-berth unit, hence easily overloaded if general disaster saw too many smashed and maimed bodies brought gasping to its rescue. But for the moment it was clean, bright and empty. Several Combat College students had undergone running repairs in that clinic that night, but for the moment it was unoccupied apart from Fax.

And so the cure-all clinic claimed Scorpio Fax, lulling his pain to a dark nothing with the balm of an extinguishing anaesthetic, needling for his veins then pumping into those veins an artificial substitute for the lost blood.

When the cure-call clinic was close at hand, so much that was murder elsewhere was of little ultimate consequence. So smashed fists so broken bones so eyes gone missing so bloodloss – all fixable, all granted remedy. Thus like the heroes of the animated cartoons of the Eye of Delusions, the combatants rucked and mauled by the most outrageous brawls could be patched up to the point of perfection, could lie back grinning in perfect confidence of the reliable mercy of the supporting machinery. Like any entertainment hero, they too would live to fight another day.

But Fax was not grinning, for he was too full of pain. And even after the cure-all clinic had punched him full of peace, he had nothing spare for bravado.

"You'll come out as good as new," said Hatch, unsure whether the anaesthetized Fax could hear him. It mattered not: his words were, after all, more to reassure himself than to reassure Fax.

The body could be mended, so physical injuries could in theory be lightly dismissed, but the shock of having one's fellow citizens turn animal-ape was not so easily sidestepped. Hatch presumed that Fax had been caught by a hostile mob of the Unreal, the Yara, the underclass of Dalar ken Halvar, and systematically beaten.