So then despite the crowd
        He was alone.
        Despite the sweat which waited, bloody-eyed -
        The sweat and skin:
        A living weapon, bladed,
        Hooked and barbed,
        And he the same, identical, and yet -
        Not quite the same, for only one would walk.
        Two futures waited, and the crowd -
        Then came the Sign.

        And so his father died, expiring on the sands in the Season, but Hatch was not going to die likewise, no, he refused that death, though everyone knows the son may follow when the father dies. At least when the father dies in that manner. But no, he would not, not now! Now the singlefighter was singing, now Hatch had his enemy in his sights, now he fired.
        "Burst away," said the singlefighter. "Burst away."
        The explosive shells hit home. Shells, brute metal and high explosive, primitive but reliable, just as a knife is likewise primitive but eternally reliable. Fire blossomed within fire. The wreckage wrenched itself apart and fell. The victorious singlefighter analysed an image-record of the attack and pronounced:
        "Drone destroyed. Drone - "
        "What?" said Hatch, in startled shock.
        " - destroyed."
        Yes. Yes. Surely. Hatch knew the trick. The singlefighter he had just savaged had been no more than an illusion gimmicked up by a drone. But drones were far too small to be swift. No drone could possibly match the speeds at which Hatch had hunted his enemy. He had arrowed high and far in pursuit of his quarry, blistering through the stratosphere at speeds impossible for anything short of a singlefighter to match.
        Which meant -
        Which meant the drone had recently been launched.
        So his true enemy was near.
        "Enemy behind us," said the singlefighter.
        So Hatch slammed the fighter into a wrenching turn, a turn so savage he had to tighten his stomach muscles to keep himself from passing out.
        And there was his enemy.
        In his sights.
        The enemy for real? Or a drone?
        Hatch hesitated, just for a moment, and a moment was far too long. His fighter screamed:
        " - hit hit hit - "
        And already Hatch was lost, was gone, was wrecked and doomed, his singlefighter smashed and ruined, the machine skidding, tumbling, losing control, spinning through the sky, screaming as it fell.
        "Abort," said Hatch. "Abort. Abort!"
        But his voice was lost in the howl of his wounded machine, or else the programming was glitched, glitched again, and whatever it was he was falling, falling, lancing down toward the burning sea, diving toward the -
        - the -
        - the blur -
        - the freezing freeze-framed -
        - the frozen blur of the sea, green fading, blue denying, yellow phasing, passing, fading, gone -
        Gone.
        The world wavered in silence, and Hatch felt as if he was deep under water, held deep by a pressure too great for him to speak or breathe or feel or think -
        - think -
        What did he think?
        - the sea -
        Then the wavering sea-deep silence was nothing but a memory, and he was back in the Combat College, back in the initiation seat, back in the combat bay, his heart pounding and his uniform wet with sweat. Hatch put his face in his hands and kneaded his eyes with his fingers.
        It was some time before Asodo Hatch raised his head again and looked at the screen. The screen displayed the olive-skinned face of Paraban Senk.
        Since Paraban Senk was an asma, a computational device, Senk was not actually encumbered by anything so grossly inconvenient as a body, so did not possess a face in the fact of the flesh. But for the last twenty thousand years, the unembodied Senk had ever displayed the one and the same unchanging olive-skinned visage on the screens of the Combat College.
        "Critique," said Senk. As per usual, the Teacher of Control was calm, neutral, remote, disinterested. When Hatch did not respond, Senk amplified the command. "Critique. Critique your own performance. Come on, Hatch, what's wrong with you?"
        "I'm a trifle tired," said Hatch.
        "You're a Startrooper, trained and tested," said Senk.         "Startroopers don't worry about trifles. The critique. Please."
        "I was fooled," said Hatch heavily.
        "Certainly something went wrong," said Senk. "You had him in your sights. He shed the shield and you had him."
        "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.
        Nevertheless, the stock-trading had gone on for generations, and some of this activity spilt out of the Combat College to continue in Dalar ken Halvar itself.
        While some traded, others gossiped; or played chess (either the star chess of the Nexus or the more conventional dragon chess played throughout Parengarenga); or wristwrestled; or wargamed arcane encounters between mathematical constructs presumed to be fighting each other in time-space continua which had more than the conventional twenty-seven dimensions of the Associated Cosmic Orders; or studied sabotage techniques, crewstrength synergetics, bodywork psychodynamics, Thaldonian Mathematics, metallurgy, cosmology, origami (or the related discipline of plandami, which involves folding skeins of color inside a Grade IV plastic microcosmos), or studying such dull but necessary bureaucratic manuals as the Protocols of Engagement for Stormforce assault ships.
        Others ate.
        There was food in plenty, such as the meat of many whales (ever in demands by the Ebrell Islanders), and there was drink, such as the notorious blue milk for which the Combat College was so widely famed.
        Such food and drink was fabricated by the Combat College's servile asma of Minor Enablement, which created drink and viands of all descriptions through the manipulation of probability. This was a fraught and dangerous process, since an overuse of such manipulation could easily endanger the very fabric of reality itself. Furthermore, since the Asma Minor were undergoing a slow but remorseless deterioration - twenty thousand years is a long time, even in the life of an asma - the purity of Combat College provender could no longer be relied upon.
        Consequently, Hatch preferred to limit the amount which he ate in the College. But today he was pressed for time, so indulged himself in the convenience of a cafeteria breakfast, choosing to eat fried penguin served with steamed broccoli and baked yams, with a touch of konohachi on the side. The konohachi (a delicacy once much enjoyed by the Imakatari, the professional aesthetes of the Musorian Empire) consisted of the larvae and pupae of several wasps fried up with segments of Dazubi slugs, and was served on a small side dish, which was painted in a light blue streaked with red and white, as if in imitation of the dragonsky pottery of Tang.
        While Hatch was savoring the delicate flavor of the last wasp pupae (the taste has been likened to that of peas taken fresh from the pod and eaten with sugarsweet) a Combat Cadet approached him. The Cadet was Dog Java, who was one of the Yara - that is to say, a member of Dalar ken Halvar's underclass - and who approached Hatch with the diffidence appropriate to a mere Cadet intruding on the glory of a fully-fledged Startrooper.
        "Trooper Hatch," said Dog.
        "Speak," said Hatch, allowing himself to enjoy a leisured sense of aristocratic indulgence as he with his fingertips chased the last fragment of Dazubi slug round the imitation bone china of his side dish.
        Asodo Hatch did not usually act the aristocrat, but something in Dog Java's attitude provoked him. The unfortunate Dog tried too hard. He wanted to be friends with all the people who would have been his natural social superiors in the city of Dalar ken Halvar, and in his pursuit of acceptance he sometimes intruded upon people's privacy at the most inappropriate moments. As far as Hatch was concerned, the final straw had been Dog's behavior following the death of Hatch's father. When Lamjuk Dakoto Hatch had met his death on the sands of Dalar ken Halvar's Grand Arena, his son Asodo had largely wanted simply to be left alone. But Dog had come nosing around him repeatedly, offering unwanted and offensively platitudinous words of comfort - and that had estranged him from Asodo Hatch forever.
        At least as far as Hatch himself was concerned.
        Dog obviously did not appreciate the irrevocable reality and historical depths of this estrangement.
        "Scorpio Fax was looking for you," said Dog.
        Scorpio Fax, an immigrant from Shintoto, had once belonged to that elite group of Combat College students who had a serious chance of winning the instructorship. But since his nervous breakdown he had more or less dropped out of sight, and Hatch had lately seen very little of him.
        "So Fax is looking for me," said Hatch, securing that last bit of slug and sucking on its saltiness. "What did he want?"
        "I don't know," said Java. "He told me to tell you he wanted to see you, but he didn't say for what."
        "That was remiss of him," said Hatch, then licked the last traces of saltness and sweetness from his fingers, then used those same fingers to dismiss Dog Java with a gesture.
        Dog Java allowed himself to be thus dismissed, but he did not like Hatch's attitude at all. Hatch must surely know how offensive Dog found such a display of overlording arrogance. On account of that arrogance, Dog had disliked Hatch for years, and had as little to do with him as possible. This once - just this once - he had tried to pass on a message as a favor to Scorpio Fax. But that had been a mistake.
        Still, Hatch would soon be paid in blood for his arrogance, because -
        Dog Java choked the half-born thought to silence. In the Combat College, Dog did not usually even dare dream of killing Hatch. But Lupus Lon Oliver had made him swear to do as much, and Dog was grimly resolved to prove out the worth of his oath. But not here. Not yet. Not now. Not today. Later, later. Sometime. Somewhere. Soon. Yes, soon, it would have to be soon, because Hatch's trial by combat was soon, and later would be no good.
        Thus thought Dog.
        As for Hatch, he had already forgotten all about both Dog Java and Scorpio Fax by the time he quit the cafeteria and headed for the lockway. Amongst the Frangoni, meals were ever a steadying ritual, a time for leisured relaxation and unashamed self- indulgence, but on quitting the dining table Asodo Hatch immediately geared himself up to battle-pitch.
        These days, Hatch's schedule was jam-packed, and this particular day was busier than most. Hatch would even have skipped the singlefighter training duel had Paraban Senk not made it compulsory. Since Hatch was so aboil with urgencies, he had no time to spare for trivialities, hence wasted no time on trying to reason out the unstated needs of Scorpio Fax, who was no close friend of his, for all that their destinies had been so intimately intertwined in the past.
        On the way to the lockway, Hatch saw no fellow members of the Combat College, but did see evidence of human activity - drink cartons, chicken bones, banana peels, discarded papers and graffiti. The Combat College cleaning machines had been on the fritz for seven days, and unless Senk could get them working then someone would have to organize a clean-up.
        The rubbish was heavy near the cafeteria, but there was virtually none on the final approach to the dorgi's lair. Yet when the dorgi itself had challenged Hatch, and had been defeated in a contest of insults, it ordered the Frangoni warrior to pick up what litter there was.
        "What!" said Hatch, unable to believe his nose.
        (In the Frangoni tongue, probabilities are said to be heard with the ears, but for some obscure reason the hearing of all lies, dubiosities and improbabilities is said to be assigned to the nose - and though Hatch was conversing with the dorgi in Code Seven, he still thought of the dorgi's order as being meant for the nose rather than the ears).
        "I'm warning you," said the dorgi. "Pick up this rubbish or I will eliminate you."
        The malevolent behemoth had tried Hatch's patience so much and so often in the past that he had often been tempted to attempt its destruction. So far he had resisted that temptation. But the dorgi was provoking Hatch intolerably, and these days Hatch's temper was very close to reaching its breaking point.
        "You'll push your luck too far one of these days," said Hatch to the dorgi. "Now take back your order - or you'll suffer for it."
        But in the end the dorgi proves so savage in its insistence that Hatch, by way of concession, picked up a single scrap of paper then escaped to the airlock. In less than a heartbeat, the inner door dissolved away to nothing. Hatch stepped through, and the door instantly congealed to kaleidoscope behind him.
        The airlock's inner chamber worked perfectly, lecturing Hatch on a citizen's ecological duties as it cycled out the old air and replaced it with new. While it did so, Hatch straightened out the crumpled bit of Nexusmake paper and scanned the childish Nexus script written thereon. It was a list:

        the Gu
        the Degli Oltra
        the Vogliono Tendenza
        the Mok
        Remora Rialto
        Gorbograd
        the Vangelis
        the Nu-chala-nuth
        the Guma Sia Gli
        the Permissive Dimensions
        Obsidian IV
        Leonard Haiku
        Plandruk Qinplaqus