Forum Three was quiet. Silent. The empty banks of seats
sloped steeply down to the stage on which Asodo Hatch and Lupus
Lon Oliver had so recently dueled each other in debate. Above that
stage was the big display screen which had shown to the world the
battles in which Hatch and Lupus had dueled each other with
singlefighters and MegaCommand Cruisers.
        The screen was blank.
        Silent.
        "Senk?" said Hatch.
        No answer.
        No response.
        Very well.
        Hatch could play this waiting game.
        Hatch sat himself down, folded his arms, and closed his eyes.
Shortly, a brightening of the room made itself apparent through
his eyelids. Hatch opened his eyes. The big screen above the
lecture theater's stage was now dominated by the chosen face of
Paraban Senk.
        "Welcome, Hatch," said Senk.
        "And to you, welcome," said Hatch.
        Which was a token of the stress he was under, for Hatch was
guest rather than host, therefore it was not for him to extend
hospitality to Senk.
        "Have you come for your daughter?" said Senk. "Or for your
wife? Or is it perhaps the Lady Iro Murasaki whom you seek?"
        "I seek all of those," said Hatch.
        "Well I for my part," said Senk, "I seek Manfred Gan Oliver
and his colleagues and companions."
        "They will be produced in due course," said Hatch.
        "Don't test my wits!" said Senk. "My spies have given me a
full account."
        "Your spies?" said Hatch.
        "Call them what you will," said Senk. "But many have come to
the kinema to witness the disaster. Messenger boys and others."
        "You trust to messenger boys for strategic information?" said
Hatch, endeavoring to ape amazement.
        "Hatch," said Senk, "this is no time for jokes. I am grossly
upset with you. Unless you have mastered the fine art of the
resurrection of the dead, you are shortly going to find out just
how upset I really am. You have slaughtered almost all those
Startroopers I trained. Have you even the slightest excuse for
your actions?"
        "I had to think of the political stability of Dalar ken
Halvar and the fate of my people," said Hatch, as staunchly as he
could.
        "That's not good enough," said Senk. "You'll have to do
better than that, or I'll tear the hostages apart."
        "Tear apart?" said Hatch, struggling to stay calm.
        "You wife Talanta," said Senk. "Your daughter Onica. Your
whore. Tear them apart, Hatch. That's what I'm going to do."
        "This is scarcely a constructive approach to the demands of
the moment," said Hatch, with the calm that comes upon a man when
he realizes the inevitability of his own death.
        "Constructive approach!" said Senk.
        Senk was positively apoplectic, enraged beyond belief by
Hatch's sanguinity. But the more Senk's rage wrathed up, the
calmer Hatch got - that very calm feeding Senk's fury all the
more.
        "For a computational device," said Hatch mildly, "you have
quite a large emotional range. Have you considered the possibility
that perhaps that range is excessive?"
        "In my vengeance I am human," said Senk. "As I will prove
when I deal with my hostages in my vengeance."
        "I trust you will deal with your hostages in a civilized
manner," said Hatch, struggling to keep his voice level and
unemotional. "We are civilized, are we not?"
        "Civilized!" said Senk. "You drench your hands in murder, you
kill in defiance of all our agreements, you betray a trust, you
break your oath to the Nexus, and after all that - "
        "I am but a poor barbarian from one of the Wild Tribes of the
Permissive Dimensions," said Hatch, in an effort at leisured self-
depreciation. "You cannot expect the high conduct of the Nexus to
be reflected in the life of a barbarian such as myself. But you at
least have the capacity, surely, to be truly civilized. And is not
mercy the greatest of civilization's aspects?"
        "Jokes!" said Senk, responding with fury to Hatch's suave
sally. "A time like this, and you indulge yourself in jokes. Very
well! Then indulge yourself in this!"
        And with that, Paraban Senk's olive-complected features faded
from the display screen in Forum Three. Glowing green lines
divided that screen into three separate frames. And in those
frames there came to life -
        Onica.
        Talanta.
        And the Lady Iro Murasaki.
        All three were standing on the sands of a rumpled desert of
red dust. They were being observed by a group of tourists who
appeared to have climbed out of a hover vehicle. The hover vehicle
was garishly adorned with bright-sign glyphs and graphics, amongst
which Hatch saw a fleshpink vulva, a grinning orange sun, a
dolphin spouting orangejuice, and a sign in Nexus script which
identified the vehicle as the property of an organization known as
Happy Hunting Tours.
        All three women looked grossly unhappy, and the reason
appeared to be because all three were rapidly sinking into the
sands of the desert. As Hatch watched, the desert floor rocked.
Onica screamed. Ants were swelling from the desert, cascading into
hugeness, their mandibles razor-sharp.
        "Watch, Hatch!" roared Senk, in a grotesquely amplified
voice-over.
        But Hatch did not watch. His hand was moving, had a life of
his own, was reaching, was drawing. Not a sword but a knife. A
knife, but knife enough. His hand clutched, struck, disembowelled.
Down went Hatch in the agony of spillage, his hand griping and
writhing as the intolerable pain sent it into spasm.
        - Properly. Do it properly.
        So thought Hatch in his agony.
        And, falling, Hatch steadied the knife, and speared it into
his body as he fell, driving home the blade with the full force of
his earthly collapse.