The False Mirror

  "I doubt it." The Kizzmati leader and his companions exchanged amused glances. "You see, we're all here." He nodded toward the now distant end of the partition.

  "What are you talking about?" Tourmast looked uneasy.

  "All twenty-five of us. All five squads. We just blasted through the main entrance and kept moving as fast as we could, figuring you'd split up to try different passages. That way we'd be in shape to overwhelm any opposition."

  Tourmast was shaking his head. "That's old, outmoded strategy. Nobody fights like that anymore. It's too predictable, too easy to defend against."

  The squad leader's grin widened. "Sure is. That's why we figured it'd be the last thing you'd be expecting."

  "A concerted defense could have pinned you down here long enough for one of our squads to take your headquarters," Ranji pointed out.

  His opponent nodded. "Sure could. But it hasn't, and now it won't. Your squad can't do a damn thing now. All our remaining forces are between you and your headquarters. You're finished."

  "In real combat a single burst could have wiped out your entire group," Tourmast observed angrily.

  "This isn't real combat. Neither side has access to heavy weapons. All we're given are these." He held up his light pistol, which had automatically deactivated the instant its owner had suffered his fatal "injury." "You modify tactics to adapt to local conditions." He turned his attention back to Ranji.

  "I'm estimating from our speed of advance that the body of our group is more than halfway to your headquarters, with nothing between them that is capable of stopping them. You're fast. . . faster than any group we've ever fought. But it won't do you any good. Because the rest of your people are advancing in expectation of encountering resistance, and there isn't any. We're all here, in one place."

  "That means your headquarters is completely undefended," Ranji observed.

  "Unless I'm lying to you." His opponent was clearly enjoying himself. "Are you going to base strategy on the words of a 'dead' opponent? Not that it matters. I was watching your face when I made my guess. We are more than halfway to your headquarters. Which means that you're less than halfway to ours. There's no way you can get there first.

  "If you've any sense at all you'll have left one squad behind to defend. There'll be at least ten to fifteen of us attacking. The outcome's inevitable. Why not register your surrender now?" The Kizzmati stretched. "The sooner we march out of here and off Trial rations, the more pleasant it'll be for all of us."

  "Not a chance," Tourmast growled.

  Their opponent looked disappointed. "Oh, well. Prolong it if you must."

  Ranji turned to leave, hesitated. "How can you be so sure your group will get to our headquarters before any of our people can reach yours? Maybe this isn't the shortest route through the Maze. Maybe your other squads will wander around for days in search of the right intersection."

  The squad leader put his hands behind his head, leaned back. "Oh, this is the shortest route, all right. You see, six days ago we were finally able to bribe the member of the Trials committee we'd been in contact with to provide us with a map." A stunned Ranji noted that this confession was uttered without a hint of embarrassment or regret.

  "You can't do that. It will invalidate the results!"

  "Think so? The Trials are supposed to simulate real combat conditions. That means you win by any means possible short of inflicting actual physical injury on your opponents. There's nothing in the rules against bribery. At worst we'll have to repeat the Finals in a new Maze. Myself, I think we'll gain merit for innovation.

  "The teachers aren't interested in methodology. Their sole concern is turning out winners, survivors. For all you and I know, this is the standard tactic previous Finals winners have employed."

  Ranji walked off to confer with his two surviving companions.

  "He can't be right . . . can he?" Weenn looked dazed. "Knowing the route through the Maze would give them an unbeatable advantage."

  "No wonder they felt safe in keeping their whole strength together," Tourmast muttered. "Surely the judges won't uphold this."

  "Unless the Kizzmati is right and they're only interested in who wins, and not by what means." Weenn looked less than confident.

  "I don't know." Ranji was thinking furiously. "If we could get in touch with Squads One and Five we could bring them into the fight, but it would mean searching parallel partitions. We don't have near enough time. With Birachii's people out of the way they'll be on our headquarters before we could catch up with them." His gaze rose.

  "If they can use unconventional tactics, so can we."

  "What do you mean?" Weenn asked.

  "Everybody has their cutter?" His companions checked their service belts for the tool, which was intended to help them in downing and shaping vegetation for defensive fortifications and shelter.

  "We're going on, into the next partition. And watch yourselves. Like their squad leader said, he might've been lying."

  They left their smug opponents behind. They would be restricted to the place where they had been removed from the competition, their weapons and instrumentation deactivated.

  "If there are fifteen to twenty of them operating together and they know exactly where they're going, why are we wasting our time?" Tourmast struck angrily at a protruding branch. "We're going to have to rely on the determination of the judges."

  "I'm not relying on anybody but myself," Ranji shot back.

  The next partition was filled with cool, dry deciduous forest. While his companions kept puzzled watch, Ranji circled trees until he found what he wanted.

  "Get out your cutters," he ordered, making three marks on the nearest trunk with his own. "Cut here, and here. Everybody pick a side."

  "What's the point of building a barrier?" Weenn demanded to know even as he set to work.

  "We're not making a barrier." Smoke rose from the trunk. "Just do as I say."

  Working in unison, they soon had the tree felled. Ranji pocketed his cutter and started climbing. Tourmast gaped at him.

  "You can't do that, Ranj. This is cheating, too."

  His squad leader looked down at him. "If they're going to invalidate this Trial, it might as well be with equanimity. Are you coming or not?"

  Tourmast and Weenn exchanged a glance. Then Weenn started up the slanting trunk. His companion followed.

  Strange to be standing atop a partition wall. It was barely as wide as his boot, Ranji noted. Just wide enough to walk . . . provided you put one foot carefully in front of the other, had no fear of heights and superb balance.

  Below and to his right lay the partition of deciduous forest. Behind them haze rose from the temperate desert until it was blocked by the artificial atmospheric inversion layer of the Maze. His left hand hung over wave-tossed water thick with the smell of salt: an oceanic environment. Lucky they hadn't chosen to enter that one. If he fell he wanted to make sure it was to his right. Better bruises and broken bones than immersion.

  Demonstrating their unsurpassed training to the full, the three Ciilpaanians headed north, running along the crest of the narrow wall.

  It all looked so easy, so simple from up here, Ranji reflected as he ran. Habitats which on the ground would have blocked or hindered their progress slipped rapidly past.

  Once, they observed figures slogging through a low, boggy environment, advancing in a familiar diamond pattern. He recognized Gjiann's squad and wanted to call out to her but did not, knowing she could not hear him. Each partition was sealed for sound as well as ecology, to prevent groups in neighboring partitions from communicating with one another by the simple means of shouting over the barriers. He ran on.

  The number of walls decreased as they progressed, until Ranji ordered a slowdown above a partition filled from one side to the other with a field of tall golden grain. A compact complex of monitoring instrumentation, the Kizzmati headquarters lay at its far end. They had reached the last partition, the north end of the Maze. The unit's internal lig
hts were on, indicating that the distant Ciilpaan headquarters continued to function. A Kizzmati banner fluttered overhead.

  Beyond the headquarters Ranji thought he could make out a couple of senior referees, standing in the shade and chatting idly. They did not see the three Ciilpaanians who crouched atop the wall for the simple reason that there was no reason for them to look up.

  "The Kizzmati didn't lie," Tourmast murmured. "I don't see any defenders."

  "That doesn't mean they didn't install some kind of defense." Ranji pointed.

  Stretching in a sweeping curve from one wall to the other immediately in front of the headquarters instrumentation was an exquisitely camouflaged ditch. Ranji admired the workmanship. At ground level it would be quite invisible. An attacker getting this far and seeing no defenders in sight would likely rush across the last open space to touch the switch on the beacon mast and proclaim victory, only to stumble into the wonderfully well-concealed trap. The entire Kizzmati team must have set to work in an orgy of excavation the instant the Trial had begun, moving out only after it had been completed. They'd had the time to install such a complex defense only because they'd known from the beginning the shortest path through the Maze.

  Though you couldn't design something whose intent was to physically injure an opponent, he suspected that anyone falling into the ditch would not find it a simple matter to climb out.

  "See," Weenn was saying as he pointed. "It goes all the way from one wall to the other, and it's too wide to jump. Cozzinza's squad could have made it all this way only to be trapped or stopped at the last minute."

  Ranji was nodding to himself as he studied the layout. "No trees in this partition; only grains. Nothing to build a bridge with. No wonder their squad leader was so confident. They were sure they had an unstoppable offense and an impregnable defense."

  Weenn shook his head slowly. "No way we could have won with normal tactics."

  "So we'll use abnormal ones."

  Tourmast was frowning. "Not only is there nothing to build a bridge with here, there're no trees to climb, either. How do we get down?"

  "Quickly." Ranji squinted south through Maze haze. Having long since overwhelmed Birachii's squad, the Kizzmatis were doubtless moving fast toward the Ciilpaani headquarters.

  The internal walls of the Maze were perfectly smooth, perfectly vertical. An insect could not find a purchase on that slick surface.

  Ranji rose from his crouch to regard his companions. "Weenn, cross around. I'm going to have the two of you drop me."

  "I dunno, Ranji." Tourmast was estimating the height of the drop. "It won't do us any good if you break both legs."

  "It won't do us any good to squat up here wondering, either." Turning, he knelt and gripped the edge of the wall as best he could with both hands, then lowered himself over the edge.

  His companions lay down on their stomachs and pressed their thighs and knees against the opposite side of the wall. Each took one of Ranji's wrists in their hands and lowered him another half body length toward the waving, beckoning grain below. It was at that moment that one of the referees spotted them. Ranji decided that the look on his face was worth everything it had taken to get to this point, even if he and his friends were eventually disqualified.

  Shutting his eyes, he ran through a series of relaxation exercises. When he was through there was nothing more to be done but to do it. "Okay," he whispered brusquely. The restraining pressure on his wrists vanished.

  It seemed a million minutes to the ground. He flexed his knees as he struck, but the impact was still considerable. The shock ran from his feet all the way up to his neck and he crumpled onto his right side.

  When he tried to stand, the shooting pain that blasted through his left leg brought him back to the ground. Whether it was broken or simply badly twisted he didn't know. He crawled for a while, then managed to straighten by using the unyielding wall as a brace against his back. Limping severely, pain dulling his vision, he stumbled toward the Kizzmati headquarters beacon.

  His friends had dropped him behind the defensive ditch, so the only thing that was stopping him from flipping the switch on the beacon was the pain that threatened to overwhelm his senses. He knew Tourmast and Weenn must be cheering him on, though he couldn't hear them. They were above the inversion layer.

  Having stopped at the Maze entrance, the two senior referees stared openmouthed at the advancing limping figure. Ranji could hear people running toward the site, though the pain made it impossible for him to identify individual shapes. There were a few cheers, but mostly the air was dense with stunned silence.

  He felt himself weaving and swaying and fought to stay erect and keep moving through the pain. It was entirely up to him, he knew. Neither Weenn nor Tourmast could take such a fall.

  He wondered how close the Kizzrnatis were to his own headquarters as he threw himself forward to slam an open palm against the beacon switch. He was very careful to hit it the first time because he sensed through fading thoughts that he would not be able to muster enough strength or control for a second try.

  As it turned out, they beat the Kizzmatis by less than four minutes.

  3

  To say that the outcome of that particular Finals Trial was controversial was to say that the monsters were somewhat incorrect in their opposition to the tenets of civilized society. Debate roiled the general population as well as the Trials committee for days thereafter.

  In the end it was decided that since the rules barred only physical violence from the competition, everything else must be allowed. And since the Kizzmatis had been the first to utilize what the committee referred to euphemistically as "unorthodox tactics," they could hardly object to the Ciilpaanians responding in similar fashion.

  Ranji's group was declared winner.

  The decision produced no animosity among the losers. There was no shame in finishing second in a worldwide contest, and after all, their ultimate aim, the advance of civilization and the conversion or defeat of the monsters, remained the same. The Kizzmati group leader went out of his way to congratulate Ranji on his inspired leadership.

  "We were lucky," Ranji told him. "Extremely lucky. I could just as easily have crippled myself."

  "In the end we underestimated you," the Kizzmati replied. "We were convinced we had devised a plan that could not fail. I now believe that plans of that nature are inevitably doomed to failure."

  They sat together in a young persons' eating establishment, sharing strategies and stories as though both groups had won, which indeed they had.

  "Wouldn't you have been confident? We had overwhelming firepower, a map of the Maxe, and a solid defensive scheme."

  "I sure would." Ranji was gracious in victory.

  The Kizzmati leader sipped from a cup. "The one thing we didn't count on was an opponent capable of thinking more perverted than ours." He grinned and they all laughed softly together.

  Except for the ever somber Weenn. "I wonder what fighting the monsters will be like?"

  "It doesn't matter." The last Trial over, Ranji was brimming with confidence and self-esteem. "We will defeat them no matter what stratagems they may choose to employ."

  "They win a lot of battles." The Kizzmati second-in-command gazed into his drink. "It's said that in one-on-one combat they can't be beaten."

  "They've never met anything like us," Tourmast shot back. "Our great Kouuad says that we're as good as them, maybe better, and he should know. He fought them for years."

  "I'm sure we'll get the chance to find out," Ranji murmured.

  "Myself, I can't wait." Tourmast made a melodramatic show of raising his cup. Comrades together now, Kizzmati and Ciilpaani toasted their future.

  The future arrived sooner than they expected, immediately following their official graduation the following year to warrior rank, and in a manner that surprised them all.

  Those who had achieved high scores expected to be promoted to officer status and given command of fighting units. Instead, the top h
undred achievers were combined into a unique fast-attack group, to be utilized in special situations. Disappointment was minimal, as it meant that childhood friends would stay together instead of being spread across the cosmos.

  Despite all his training, despite years of anticipation, Ranji was surprised to discover how upset he was at the prospect of leaving Cossuut.

  They were a year older. Faster, stronger, smarter, he and his friends were confident of their ability to handle anything the monsters could send against them. They were all impatient to test their skills in real combat.

  Their destination was a planet called Koba, a lightly populated world where recently settled monsters had established a foothold against the forces of civilization. In such conditions a small, irresistible force could hopefully achieve results all out of proportion to its size.

  They had real weapons now, explosive and energy both. No more training pistols. No more simulations and partitions and mazes. No more toys. Ranji had been appointed second-in-command after the Kizzmati veteran Soratii-eev, perhaps because of the difference in their ages. Ranji did not feel in the least slighted. Soratii was a clever and accomplished commander, and it would be an honor to serve under him.

  If the new soldiers were intimidated by anything, it was the confidence far more senior soldiers placed in their prospects.

  As they prepared for emergence from Underspace and the subsequent rapid drop to Koba's contested surface, Ranji found he was surprisingly calm. Regardless of what they might face on the surface below he had unlimited confidence in his colleagues, no matter whether they hailed from Ciilpaan, Kizzmat, or elsewhere on Cossuut. Together they constituted a cohesive fighting unit the likes of which civilization had never seen before.

  Furthermore, they were motivated by something few others possessed: a desire, a need, for revenge.

  Ranji wasn't thinking of that as the Underspace emergence warning sounded. He was thinking of his parents; of his younger brother Saguio who was now undergoing the same testing Ranji had passed in such accomplished fashion. Of his little sister Cynsa, and of his birth parents. Others might fight to protect their friends, to defend the cause of civilization, but he would fight so that he could return to those he loved.