TEMPLATE
A Novel of the Archonate
Matthew Hughes
Chapter 1
The tall skinny one and the one with the shaved head kept circling to Conn Labro’s right. When they came at him their attack was well coordinated, the points of their epiniards darting in at different angles, aimed at different parts of his body. Now they came again and Conn timed the double parry exactly, riposted against the skinny one so that he had to block the thrust in a way that hindered his partner’s recovery.
But it was the third opponent who bothered him. The fat one kept circling widdershins to the others only to leap into the fight seemingly at random, not thrusting but flailing with the long thin epiniard while shouting what sounded like nonsense syllables. Conn would have to duck or leap back in an ungainly manner. Then the other two would come smoothly in and he would have to flick and click, parry and thrust again, trying to find their rhythm then turn it against them.
He soon realized that there was no rhythm to be found. The fat one was actually very good. He was capable, as very few are, of a truly asymmetrical attack, able to resist the unconscious urge to find a rhythm with his partners.
It was turning out to be an interesting contest. Conn surmised that the three must have practiced against a simulation based on some of his past fights. He knew that his employer, the impresario Ovam Horder, sold such artificial experiences to those who could never afford the fee required to meet Conn in the flesh or by remote connection. The trio must have augmented the simulation by factoring in other matches recorded from public performances, then using sophisticated means to meld all into one.
Now here came the two coordinated attackers once more, but this time there was a tiny disharmony to their movements. The skinny one was a quarter-beat behind his partner, meaning Conn must extend his parry an equally small interval of time past perfection before binding the skinny one’s blade and sliding the point of Conn’s epiniard over the wrist guard.
As he executed the move, he expected the fat one to come in swinging and burbling from his blind side. Instead, as Conn turned his head enough to bring the third man into his peripheral vision, he found the rotund attacker silently sliding toward him, crossing the smooth floor on his plump belly, the point of his weapon aimed at Conn’s ankle.
Again, Conn had to make a less than graceful escape, leaping clear over the supine swordster, only to find the other two rushing at him once more. But they came on two different tangents this time, their flexible blades whipping and thrusting from all angles, so that Conn must exert near maximum speed to beat off the attack. And meanwhile, the fat one was coming in between the others, but this time he was actually on his knees, again aiming for Conn’s ankles.
Conn felt a flash of irritation and automatically summoned the mental exercise that dissipated the feeling. He heard Hallis Tharp’s voice speaking from his memory: He who loses his temper loses all, and again he spoke within his mind the syllables of the Lho-tso mantra that restored calm.
He flicked his point at the fat one’s eyes, knocked away the bald man’s thrust and sidestepped a slash from the thin one. He had to give the three of them credit for a novel strategy: they had known they could not win on skills — they were adequate swordsters, but even three of them were no match for one of Bay City’s premier house players — so they had instead closely analyzed Conn’s temperament. They must have thought that if they could annoy him enough, if they could bring him to anger…
The three were preparing for another attempt. He saw their eyes signal to each other as they readied themselves, and he looked closely at the fat one. And there it was, plain to be seen: the calculation behind the seeming randomness, and the way the man looked at Conn from the corner of his eye, weighing up the results so far.
Conn realized how the bets must be laid. That was why their attacks lacked true brio and why the fat one behaved like a clown. They were not out to win, nor even to draw, which would have been the best they might expect. Instead, they were intent on annoying and frustrating him to the point where he departed from his legendary equanimity.
He smiled. The moment his lips showed his amusement he read the signs in the others’ faces and knew he had won. They stepped back and lowered their epiniards. “Will you continue?” Conn asked.
“To what point?” said the fat one.
“It was a good attempt,” Conn said, lowering his weapon and officially signaling to the house integrator that the match was over. The three contestants had chosen for the setting of their duel a deserted stretch of Bay City’s docks at night, and now the warehouses and waves disappeared. He stood in one of the private rooms of Horder’s Unparalleled Gaming Emporium.
“Where did we err?” said the skinny one.
Conn thought for a moment. “Too much foofaraw in his style,” he said, indicating the fat one. “Or too much deliberation behind the zaniness. The incongruity was just a little too sharp to be convincing.”
The skinny one spoke to his plump colleague, “I told you it would not be so easy.”
The fat one shrugged. “Still, we have gained an important insight and we have a fine tale to tell over ale at the tavern tonight.”
“But the insight has come at no small cost,” said the thin pessimist. “I said we were wagering more than we could afford to lose.”
“But you agreed the plan was sound.”
“No, I said any plan appears sound until it leaves its creator’s desk and confronts the tap-tip-and-tup of phenomenality.”
The plump man’s brows contracted. “I remember a different set of remarks altogether.”
“I take no responsibility for your memories,” said the thin man. “In any case, we did not lose so much that we now face indenture.”
“Whatever,” said the tall one, reaching into his pouch and producing a card. “We will pay what we owe.”
“Not to me,” said Conn, waving away the card. “Your debt is to Ovam Horder. I am not empowered to receive for him, only to game as he directs.”
“I apologize,” said the man, putting the card away. “But we will include a gratuity to express our thanks for the experience.”
Conn bowed. Then he pressed a control at his waist. The three men disappeared. Somewhere, the skinny man was inserting his card into a reader which would conduct one end of a long-distance financial transaction with Conn’s employer. The details were no concern of his.
The three hunters might be anywhere on the planet or even in one of the orbital communities that glittered in the night sky of Thrais, a modest-sized world midway along the arm of the galaxy known as The Spray. Conn was where he almost always was during working hours: in a small room whose walls were densely packed with percepts and sensors that connected to the main integrator of Horder’s Gaming Emporium.
Horder’s enterprise was among the foremost of the many sporting houses along high-arching Blue Sky Concourse, a hill-climbing thoroughfare that rose to the commercial acropolis of Bay City, the planet’s commercial capital. Gaming was the most significant industry on Thrais, where the citizens shared a passion for risking sums large and small on contests of skill or turns of chance.
The gaming business also drew contestants from other worlds, even sometimes from Old Earth far down The Spray. Some contestants came with their brains packed with elaborate systems they believed would overcome house odds in games of luck, others brought finely honed skills to try against house players like Conn.
Most went away with their purses lightened. A few risk-addicted plungers bet more than they could afford, gaming on credit extended by Ovam Horder and his ilk. These unfortunates never departed the planet again. On Thrais, said the law, if your purse could not settle a debt, your person would. The most unsavory tasks, such as the removal of street waste, were performed by indentured bankrupts. On some mornings, the waste would include the body of a plunger who had chosen to “stand out” from one of Bay City’s tall buildings rather than face a life of indentured service.
Not all indentures led to insalubrious occupations. Many of Thrais’s professionals — physicians, intercessors, organo-architects — had come to the planet driven by a pathological need to fling themselves into games of chance in which they lacked the skill or judgment that brought victory. They exchanged the grip of a gambling addiction for the grasp of an indenture contract, their debt being sold to whichever of the planet’s several autonomies needed practitioners of their vocations. Free Thraisians supported the system wholeheartedly. They acquired many of the skilled professionals a developed society needed without the expense of educating them.
Occasionally, a bankrupt whose talents were almost, yet not quite, good enough to best the top house players would see his losses translated into indenture to Horder or one of the other sporting house owners. The new house player would spend the rest of his days contending against gamesters whose abilities were adjudged to be beneath his own. Each new indentee began his service clutching a fragile hope of amassing from gratuities the funds to regain freeman’s rank; but as the days wore into years the scant hope would grow ever thinner, until one day its bearer would notice that it had evaporated, leaving only a faint mark on his inner being.
Conn was not one of those forcibly recruited from the ranks of the failed; he had been delivered as an unwanted infant to the doorstep of Horder’s Gaming Emporium. A scan of his still developing synaptic articulation promised that he might, with training, become an exceptional house player. An account was opened in his name and regularly debited through the years of his upbringing until, by the time he was ready to begin his career in the games rooms, he was irredeemably obligated to Ovam Horder.
In theory, the sums he had won for his employer had long since repaid the debt. But on Thrais theory ran a distant second to practice. As soon as Conn had begun to win substantial purses — remarkably early in his career — Horder had taken advantage of a loophole in Thraisian law which allowed employers to use the debited funds indentees owed them to bet against their own house players. Every time Conn won for Horder, he lost for himself. But he could not offset those paper losses by betting on his own performance. Another cynical wrinkle in the planet’s jurisprudence forbade it.
Stripping off the head-to-toe suit of pliofilm that he had worn to be challenged by the three duelists, Conn dressed in modest tunic and britches and pulled on knee hose and half boots. He adjusted the house player’s insignia he wore at his collar, straightening the several hanging beads that testified to his proficiency, then spoke to the wall beside him. “I will go now to the Capricotte Salon and play paduay with the old man.”
“Hallis Tharp has not come today,” replied the emporium’s integrator.
Conn was surprised. “He always comes the first day of the week.”
“Today he has not come.”
“Have you contacted him to find out why not? Perhaps he is ill.”
“Yes. There was no reply.”
“Did you contact any of his neighbors?”
“What would be the point of that?”
The house integrator exactly reflected the views of its proprietor. Horder stood to gain nothing from inquiring after the welfare of an old man, therefore no inquiries would be made. Likewise, there was nothing to be gained by Conn in seeking to know what had befallen his regular partner — opponent was not quite an accurate term — at the gentle game of paduay. Yet he felt an unaccountable urge to find out.
“Summon an aircar,” he said. “Charge it to my account.”
“Your time has been reallocated,” said the integrator. “A customer has engaged you for a full-flesh contest of epiniards.”
“Who is it?”
“He gave his name as Hasbrick Gleffen.”
“He is not local.” Conn knew all the Thraisians who might seek a full-flesh encounter.
“No, an offworlder. He has pre-paid from a bank draft from Old Earth.”
The integrator’s remark recalled a disremembered fact to the front of Conn’s mind. “Hallis Tharp paid in advance, years ago,” he said. “Is his permanent contract for my services still in force?”
The integrator made no reply.
“Is not our paduay session already paid for?” Conn insisted.
There was a pause, then the integrator said, “Yes.”
“Then I am on the old man’s time. Summon the aircar.”
“I cannot. You must speak with Ovam Horder.”
“Connect me.”
A moment later his employer’s overfleshed face appeared in the air before him. Conn made no ceremony but stated his intentions in a cool way.
Subtle marks of vexation disturbed the smooth hummocks of flesh that were Horder’s features. “It would be better if you stayed to deal with the offworld contestant.”
Conn was surprised to discover that his first reaction was to consider open defiance. He had leverage, if he chose to use it, but had never yet found himself in circumstances that warranted an all-out clash. As one of the most capable house players on Thrais, ranked grand master in a variety of competitive arts, he was regularly approached by other sporting houses. Any other indentor could purchase his contract by paying Horder the total of his accrued debt plus a percentage. But the transaction required Conn’s concurrence.
The situation made for an interesting relationship between Conn and Horder. Within a certain range, the valuable player could extract concessions from his proprietor. The limits of Conn’s leeway had never been fully tested, and the present disagreement over the fate of an old man ought not to constitute grounds for serious head butting. Yet he was strongly motivated to find out about his missing paduay partner, though he could not account for the source or strength of the impulse.
In less time than it took him to blink he sorted through optional strategies in response to Horder’s statement of preference and chose to slip the confrontation rather than respond to it.
“I am concerned about Hallis Tharp,” he said. “If I can allay my disquiet I will be better able to acquit myself against this offworlder in a live contest.”
“Hmm,” said Horder.
“To what degree is the bout with this Gleffen?”
“Blood or breakage.”
“Do we know his form?”
“No,” said Horder. “He claims to have trained at a private school. There is a whiff of aristocratic amateur about him.”
“Then he may be good. I will need to be at my peak, without distractions,” said Conn.
“That is so.”
Having moved his opponent to weaker footing, Conn increased the pressure. “And besides, our paduay sessions are always lengthy, whereas a live contest is usually brief, once the formalities are over.”
“True.”
“So I could take an aircar to the old man’s house, ease my mind about him, and return in ample time for the contest.”
Horder moved his porcine features in a way that signaled the matter was of no concern. Conn recognized that his employer was conceding defeat without acknowledging that there had ever been a contest.
“Why do you care about that old man?” Horder said.
“I do not know. It puzzles me.”
The proprietor affected a look that said the issue was beneath his notice. “Return soon. I will entertain Gleffen with accounts of your victories.”
“That will either unsettle him or impel him to greater efforts,” Conn said.
“The latter, I hope,” said Horder. “He may feel an urge to increase his wager.”
The aircar collected Conn on the third floor landing stage of the gaming house, which reared up fifteen stories from the ground level arcade, through several tiers of private gaming rooms of various dimensions to the employees’ living quarters on the upper levels and Horder’s luxurious penthouse. The roof, artfully landscaped and covered by a retractable transparent dome, was for private contests such as the scheduled bout with Hasbrick Gleffen, where the contestants met, not through remote sensor telemetry, but in their own vulnerable flesh.
Though he had known Hallis Tharp for as long as he could remember, Conn did not know his address. The time that he had spent outside the sporting house since he was delivered to it as an infant would not amass to a single day. But when he gave his paduay partner’s name to the aircar it consulted its records and lifted off. Conn clung to a stanchion and shifted his feet on the impermeable floor as the vehicle banked and accelerated. If Ovam Horder had ever deigned to hire a public conveyance he would have summoned a spotlessly clean phaeton with plush seats and deep pile carpeting. But even a renowned house player rated no more than a utilitarian flying platform.
The aircar inserted itself into the east-west flow of aerial traffic and hummed toward a row of vast but anonymous residential blocks that indented the skyline in the Skrey district. The most charitable characterization of the area was that it was Bay City’s least fashionable suburb; it would be more accurate to say that it was simply not fashionable to any degree. Its inhabitants pursued lives of desperation, never farther away from indenture than one missed rent payment.
The vehicle let Conn off at a ground floor entrance of a massive edifice built of synthetic stone, whose designer had conceived of it solely as a box in which to keep people. Every line was straight, every angle at ninety degrees and every surface unadorned. The building’s entry was heavily fortified by metal bars over transparent shatterproof doors whose surfaces had been occluded by daubed initials and symbols. Conn knew that parts of Skrey were afflicted by criminal organizations, the residents being able to afford only the most rudimentary police services.
“Remain until I return,” he told the aircar.
“If it is in my interest,” the vehicle replied.
“I will pay a ten per cent premium.”
“Agreed, but the contract is void if unsavory elements interfere.”
There was a who’s-there set into the wall beside the building’s entrance. Conn identified himself and told it he wished to see Hallis Tharp. Time stretched through several long moments while he waited, then the who’s-there said, “He does not answer.”
Conn said, “You did not say he was not at home, only that he did not answer.”
The device made no reply.
“Is he there or not? He may be ill.”
“I am empowered to violate residents’ privacy only in an emergency.”
“Then consider this an emergency. Examine Hallis Tharp’s residence and tell me what you see.”
There was a briefer delay, then the who’s-there said, “Hallis Tharp sits in a chair facing the window.”
“Compare him to the last image you have of him. How does he now seem?”
“Parts of him are missing,” said the device. “Also, he does not appear to breathe.”
A pang passed through Conn. He could not account for it. “Let me in.”
“I should summon the incumbent,” said the who’s-there, referring to the neighborhood’s resident agent for police services.
“Who will pay his fee?” said Conn. “Hallis Tharp is in no condition to meet the obligation.”
“His estate must pay.”
“Do you see any valuable possessions in his room?”
“No. His circumstances are sparse.”
“And death tends to diminish his worth as an indentee.”
“That is so.”
“So your proprietor, the building’s owner, will be liable for the incumbent’s charges,” said Conn. “Is he likely to welcome them?”
“No. He prefers not to incur obligations.”
“Then let me in. Perhaps this matter can be resolved without complications.”
The door buzzed and swung open.
“Which unit?” Conn said.
“West fourteen-eleven.”
“Is it locked?”
“Yes.”
“Then unlock it and show me the way.”
The tiny lobby had a sour and musty smell. There was an ascender but when Conn placed his hand in it he felt no uplift. He climbed the stairs to the fourteenth floor then followed the building’s baseboard lighting directions through a labyrinth of corridors and passages that brought him to a cul de sac and a bare metal door in a wall whose paint was peeling. He pressed the control stud and the door slid sideways into the wall. He stepped through the opening and it closed behind.
Hallis Tharp was bound to an unpretentious chair under the light from the room’s single window. There was blood in his disordered white hair and bruising on his face. His age-spotted hands lay upturned in his lap like two small dead animals. Some of the fingernails were missing.
Conn examined him. None of the injuries were life threatening nor did they seem to be extensive. But the old man’s mouth drooped on one side, as if he had suffered a massive stroke. Conn suspected that he had died suddenly in the midst of the torture. It must have been a disappointment to whoever had subjected him to such mistreatment.
“Integrator,” he said to the air, “who has visited Hallis Tharp today?” There was no response. He realized that the building’s system had to be manually activated and looked about for the control. He found it on a wall. It required the insertion of a coin before it would respond. When the connection was made he repeated the question.
“He has had no visitor today,” said the integrator.
“Nonsense.” Conn put his hand on the old man’s neck. The flesh was still slightly warm. “His assailants left here not long since.”
“I saw nothing.”
Conn examined the percept set in the room’s low ceiling. “Does this detect only visual light?”
“And high-temperature heat sources, in which case the fire suppression system activates.”
Elision suits, Conn thought. Their fabric bent light around itself, letting the wearer move about unseen. He had used their virtual equivalents in contests. He corrected himself: he had been automatically assuming it would require at least two attackers to catch and immobilize the old man without drawing attention; but an elision suit would allow a single capable man to do the work.
He might even still be in the room.
Conn assumed a defensive posture, turned this way and that, tilting his head at various angles to examine the room from the corners of his eyes. Looked at straight on, the light-bending suit conferred invisibility, but peripheral vision would detect a shimmer of motion. He saw nothing.
His rotation had left him facing away from the door, so it was the swish of its opening that spun him around. A young woman, slight of figure and dark of hair, stood in the doorway, her startlingly green eyes wide as they moved from Conn to the corpse in the chair.
She dropped the bag she had been carrying, spilling vegetables and packages across the threshold, and fled. Conn pursued her and caught her at the door of another room that was opening to her touch. She fought him energetically but naively until he applied pressure to a point on her throat.
He carried her into the room, giving it a quick inspection before he placed her on a rudimentary couch made of sturdy cartons and foam insulation. The space was as tiny and almost as bare as Hallis Tharp’s, but brightened by a colored print of a landscape affixed to the wall. Conn glanced at it, drew an impression of trees, rolling hills, a gabled white house, a mottled blue sky. Offworld, he thought. There was a tattered poster on another wall advertising Chabriz’s Traveling Show, an itinerant exposition that had broken up on Thrais some time before.
The young woman gave a sharp intake of breath and regained consciousness. In one blink her eyes went from dazed to panicked. She made to rise from the couch but Conn was beside her, one hand pressing her down with a grip intended to remind her of how their former struggle had ended.
He was adept at reading eyes. It was a necessary skill in his profession. He saw fear mingled with outrage, then saw both transpose into sorrow. “Why did you kill Hallis Tharp?” she said.
“I did not.”
“I saw what you did to him! Why would you do that?”
“I did not,” Conn repeated. “We were to meet today. When he did not come I grew concerned. I came and found him dead.”
Her eyes changed again. “You are Conn Labro,” she said.
“Yes.” He was surprised but did not show it. “Who are you?” he said.
“Jenore Mordene. Let me up.”
He saw that she was no longer afraid of him and that she intended neither to fight nor flee. He relinquished his grip. She rose and crossed the room to a small cupboard, opened it and withdrew a large, flat box of polished wood. Conn recognized it immediately.
She said, “He said if anything ever happened to him that you would come and I was to give you this.”
Conn took the familiar object but did not open it. He sat on the couch and rested the box on his knees. He was conscious of a powerful sense of loss, as if he had been thrashed in a contest. The emotion confused him, seemed out of place.
Her voice broke into his thoughts. “What is that thing?”
Conn looked up. “His paduay set. We played for two hours each week at Horder’s Gaming Emporium.”
She looked at him as if he had told her that the old man orchestrated moonbeams. “He played games? How could he afford the stakes? He lived on one meal a day and that no more than soup.”
The issue had never occurred to Conn, but he thought about it now. “We did not wager on outcomes. And he bought a lifetime contract for my services when I was still a child and not costly.”
“But why?”
“He did not play games with you?” he asked.
She gestured to the window. “In Skrey, people have more pressing business than trying to defeat each other in artificial settings. Real life is contest enough.”
“Paduay is not a contest,” he said. “The game is about cooperatively opening and closing spaces, theoretically without conclusion. It is unusual in that each player’s goal is to prevent the other from being unable to continue.”
“And he played this every week?”
“Our current match has been going on continually for almost two years. I can show you the dispositions.”
“Spare me,” she said.
Conn ignored her. He would open the set. But when he set his fingers to the catches that would unlatch the box he felt a strong urge not to see again the miniature pieces, the grids of straight and curving lines that could intersect each other in a variety of different spatial dimensions, depending on which of several modes the players invoked.
It was an unsettling burst of emotion. His analytical function recognized that it was tied somehow to Hallis Tharp, not just to the old man’s death, but to their long association: all the Firstday mornings they had sat on opposite sides of this apparatus of wood and metal, ever since Conn’s boyhood. It was not a memory he now wished to explore.
He handed the paduay set back to Jenore Mordene. “Here,” he said, “I will have no further use for this.”
“But he wanted you to have it.”
“It does not matter what he wanted. He no longer exists.”
She took the box and held it to her breast. “I don’t understand you people,” she said. He could see that she was resisting tears. For some reason, her emotion made him uncomfortable. He stood up and said, “Well,” then turned to the door.
“What are we going to do about him?” the woman asked, her moist eyes indicating the wall beyond which the old man’s corpse sat in the chair.
“What was your relationship to Hallis Tharp?”
“We were friends.”
The term had several meanings on Thrais. When applied to the connection between a solitary old man and a young woman, it was usually a euphemism for intimate transactions that the participants preferred not to discuss in bald language.
Conn nodded then saw the expression on her face change again to anger. He had somehow offended her.
“Not like that!” she said. She folded her arms across her chest and gripped her elbows. “What is the matter with you people? Do none of you know what friends are?” She flung her arms wide and said, “Does it always have to be about this?” She touched the first two fingers of one hand to its thumb and rubbed them quickly together.
Conn was not sure what the gesture signified. He was moved to inquire but at that moment his communicator called for his attention. It was Ovam Horder.
“Where are you? Hasbrick Gleffen inquires if you are ready to engage him.”
“Has he arrived?”
“Not yet. But he wishes to arrive at the contest venue before you do.”
“That is contrary to etiquette,” Conn said. “He has challenged me and should enter after I have agreed to receive him.”
“He is an offworlder. Perhaps this is how things are done where he hails from.”
“It might be intended as a subtle insult.”
He heard Horder sigh. “I will levy a surcharge and credit it to your account.”
It was a reasonable response. Conn said, “Very well. I am on my way.” He put away the communicator.
“Wait,” said Jenore Mordene. “What are we to do about…” Something impeded her speech and she gestured toward the hallway.
“Was he a member of a funeral society?”
She shook her head. She seemed to be resisting tears.
“Then the building will summon a recycler. They will take care of things.”
“They will want to be paid,” she said, and he detected an uncalled-for bitterness in her tone.
“Sell the paduay set, if you wish.”
He saw her hands tighten on the box. “No.”
“There will be enough value in his… attributes to cover the recycler’s cost.”
“His attributes?”
It was not a subject usually discussed in blunt terms. “His materials,” Conn said. “What he is made of.”
She made a gesture that again he found hard to interpret, but he had neither the time nor the inclination to seek a clarification. “I must go,” he said and made for the door.
“Wait,” she said.
He stopped and turned, puzzled. She indicated the paduay set in her hand. “How can you not want this?”
“I cannot imagine playing paduay again,” he said. “My time is too expensive and the demand for the game is scant.”
She appeared to be about to say something else, but instead she turned to the window and gazed out at the harshness of Skrey.
* * *
The aircar was no longer at the curb. It had elevated itself to a height several stories above the street, out of range of a half dozen bubblers congregated around the building’s entrance. The young men looked Conn over as he stepped through the portal, their faces and body language equally obscured by the semitransparent armor of synthetic material which covered their entire forms like suits of overlapping bronze bubbles.
Conn looked back at them impassively. He had fought in the armor and against it many times. Well-bred gamesters enjoyed taking on street toughs, at least in virtual encounters. He knew the bubbler’s strengths and weaknesses and had no doubt that he could deal with a group of young amateurs. They rarely fought amongst themselves, or even against other gangs, reserving their violence for those in the neighborhood who did not pay for their “protection.”
For their part, the bubblers noted the insignia and rank beads on the collar of Conn’s tunic and formed the collective opinion that something much more interesting was probably happening down the street and around the corner. They moved off, though at a deliberately leisurely pace. Conn summoned the aircar and boarded it.
As the vehicle took him back to the center of the city his communicator chirped. It was Horder again. “The offworlder is finicky,” Conn’s employer said. “He wishes to know exactly how long before you arrive at the arena. Meanwhile he insists that I be here in the third garden to dance attendance upon him.”
Conn had to juggle the communication device in order to retain his grasp on the car’s stanchion while the vehicle wove through traffic in three dimensions. ”He is rude,” he said, “even for an offworlder. I have heard no good reports of Old Earth and this man’s conduct confirms my view.”
“You are right,” said Horder. “I will double the surcharge.”
“No,” said Conn. “Say to him that I am in transit now. I will be in the third garden shortly. We will omit the formalities and I will teach this one a lesson.”
“I would prefer you to be of tranquil mind. He may be good. If you are injured, several upcoming engagements would have to be canceled or postponed.”
“I am calm,” Conn said, reflexively applying the Lho-tso technique. “This man will not leave Thrais as ‘one of the few.’” He referred to the scant handful of combatants who had bested or tied Conn in full-flesh combat. It had been a long time since there had been a new addition to the select group. “I am, however, more motivated than usual today.”
“I see. Did you find the old man?”
“I found him dead.”
“Ah,” said Horder, “that will free you up for two hours a week.”
“Yes.”
“I will contact Gleffen immediately and tell him I am in the third garden and that you are expected soon.” He broke the connection.
The aircar swooped and sashayed through traffic that grew denser as they neared the city center. Conn could see the Emporium. The day was warm and moderately humid, as were most days in Bay City — the metropolis sprawled around the littoral of a sheltered bight of the Serpentine Sea close to Thrais’s equator. Horder would have ordered the roof dome retracted as soon as the two suns cleared the surrounding towers.
The third garden was an elongated oval floored with short grass and shaded by mature heaven trees. It would be cool and fragrant at this time of the day, perfect for the lightning quick exchanges that characterized a duel by epiniards. Conn decided he would absorb the first few passages passively, to take the measure of this Hasbrick Gleffen. Then, if he found that the man’s fighting skills did not excuse his personality, he would teach the offworlder a grim lesson.
He recognized that he was allowing himself to become irritated and reflexively performed the mental exercise that expunged the emotion. When his clarity of mind was restored, he sorted through his thought processes and was mildly surprised to discover that the irritant had come from more than just the Old Earther’s arrogance; it also had something to do with what had happened to Hallis Tharp. There was irony in that, Conn knew: strong emotion had often been one of the old man’s topics of conversation while they traded moves in the gentle game of paduay. Conn could replay Tharp’s voice in his head: He who loses his temper loses the contest, was one of his frequent observations, usually followed by, You must never give in to anger. In Tharp’s view, for Conn to accede to any overwhelming passion was an error, but anger was the worst of all.
The aircar dropped lower, slid around the Hi-Flite Tower and angled down toward Horder’s Emporium. Its brakes deployed to slow its descent and Conn had to grasp the stanchion tighter as the vehicle juddered and bounced. He saw the canopy of trees above the third garden and, through a gap in the foliage, the foreshortened figure of Ovam Horder pacing in apparent agitation, his hand to his ear as he spoke into his communicator.
The car decelerated further, aiming for a landing stage near the roof’s center. As it positioned itself for a vertical descent to the hard surface, Conn caught a flash of intense light from the corner of his eye. In less time than he could have formed words to express it, his mind told him that a line of incandescent air had arrowed down from the sky to strike the third garden.
His head turned instinctively toward the movement, but instantly the smeared window of the aircar was rendered opaque by a glaring explosion. Even as it faded, leaving spots of red and black in his vision, he saw the heaven trees in flame and bursting outwards. Then the shockwave of the blast struck the aircar and flung it out and away from the Emporium.
Conn was thrown against the unpadded walls, battered and tossed like a pea in a rattle as the vehicle tumbled through the air for long seconds before its stabilizers could restore equilibrium. When it finally settled, he was sprawled on the hard floor. He checked himself, found no broken bones, but the shoulder of the arm that had been curled around the stanchion had been wrenched almost out of its socket and a cut on his scalp was pouring blood down his face.
Then he looked toward the Emporium. The third garden was surrounded by charred and blasted trees, stripped of their leaves and blossoms, many of them tilted outwards and leaning against each other. And where the grass had been, where Ovam Horder had been, was a roil of flame and black smoke.
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Template will be published by PS Publishing later this year and is the latest Archonate stand-alone novel from Matthew Hughes.
