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.
        As Hatch watched, tubes sprouted from the wall and crawled
into Fax's nose to feed him oxygen. A surgeon descended from the
ceiling and hung just above Fax's face, suspended by a thick and
flexible hose of fluorescent orange. The surgeon was a globular
machine which sprouted scalpels and suction tubes, and it got to
work on Scorpio Fax right away, cutting and slicing, sucking and
dicing, squirting out flesh-paste and moulding it into position.
        "I've seen enough," said Shona. "Come away."
        Hatch lingered just a moment longer, then began making his
way back to Forum Three in Shona's wake.
        "Well, Hatch," said Manfred Gan Oliver, as Hatch entered
Forum Three. "Are you ready to die?"
        "Die?" said Hatch, startled and confused. "Did you come here
to murder?"
        "I came here for the pleasures of the Season," said Gan
Oliver.
        "This is no Season," said Hatch. "This is but - "
        "I spoke as a poet," said Gan Oliver. "A poet of blood,
though I have no words to my name. As for what this is or is not -
don't lecture me, Hatch. Here I trained. Here I grew from boyhood
to manhood. I know this place as well as you or better. My son
will see you dead in this Season of ours."
        "The illusion tanks - "
        "I'm not talking illusion!" said Gan Oliver. "Once you leave
this place, you're marked for death. The Free Corps is going to
put an end to the Frangoni, Hatch."
        "The emperor - "
        "The emperor is gone, Hatch. Missing or dead. We've
overthrown him."
        Hatch was fast losing track of what had actually happened in
Dalar ken Halvar, or what was claimed to have happened.
        "You might have grabbed the palace for the moment," said
Hatch, presuming from Gan Oliver's lordly attitude that the man
had reason to think himself the master of the city, "at least in
the night's confusion, but tomorrow - "
        "Hatch, you fool," said Gan Oliver. "The Free Corps has been
planning its coup for the better part of a generation. We were
waiting for the moment, that's all. This revolution, so called, it
gave us our moment. Make it easy for yourself, Hatch. Find
yourself a sword, then fall on it."
        This was almost too much for Hatch to absorb at once. What
was happening here? Had the Free Corps truly seized effective
control in Dalar ken Halvar? And did the Free Corps think it could
hold the city permanently? Would Gan Oliver really have Hatch
murdered once he left the protection of the Combat College, or was
that threat merely an exercise in psychological warfare?
        "You're pirates," said Hatch, hoping to push Gan Oliver into
self-revelation. "And pirates tainted with treachery at that."
        "We are the bringers of a new age," said Gan Oliver, with
what sounded like level-headed sincerity.
        "Not while I have anything to do with it," said Hatch.
        "You don't have anything to do with it," said Gan Oliver.
"You don't and you won't. My son Lupus will kill you in battle in
the world of illusions. Then you will leave the Combat College.
Then I will kill you for real. Our swords are waiting in the
kinema, Hatch. Once you step outside the lockway, you're dead."
        "Kill me you may," said Hatch, giving way to his inborn love
of rhetoric. "But the blood that lives will seek vengeance."
        "Who will revenge you, Hatch?" said Gan Oliver, sneering at
this sally. "Your sister? Your brother? They're doomed to the same
fate, Hatch. Once the Free Corps has won Dalar ken Halvar, we will
cleanse Cap Uba and have done with the Frangoni."
        "You would not dare!" said Hatch, hoping that Gan Oliver
would not dare, and hoping that this twice-repeated threat of
genocide was sheer bluff. "We have a Treaty."
        Here Hatch spoke of course of the Treaty between the Silver
Emperor and the Frangoni people. That Treaty made all Frangoni
males in Dalar ken Halvar the slaves of the Silver Emperor, but
also safeguarded the rights of the Frangoni to enjoy peace and
safety on their own rock on the western side of the city.
        "You had a Treaty," said Gan Oliver, emphasizing the past
tense. "But your Treaty was with the Silver Emperor, who is
missing, believed dead."
        "We had a Treaty, yes," said Hatch, "and have a treaty now."
        "And I," said Manfred Gan Oliver, "have a fist."
        Gan Oliver's easy confidence was as inscrutable as anything
else Hatch had ever had to deal with. It was impossible to know
whether the man was serious. Hatch needed information, lots of it,
and fast. How many men had the Free Corps rallied? How many
officers of the Imperial Guard had thrown in their lot with the
Free Corps? Where were the revolutionary leaders? What exactly had
happened at the silver mines?
        "Well, Hatch?" said Gan Oliver, as Hatch counted his question
marks. "What do you say to that?"
        "Asodo Hatch has no time left for argument," said Paraban
Senk, intruding on this debate. "The arc is half-gone and combat
begins at the end of the arc. Combatants should now proceed to the
initiation seats. Asodo Hatch. Lon Oliver. Proceed to the combat
bays."
        - Half an arc?
        - Time enough.
        So thought Hatch.
        But he knew he would have to hurry.