Evensong

The ocean pier has maglevs running up and down its length; and, of course, it’s easy to defend. The New Anglicans make a lot of money from it. It’s a world-class commercial centre.” Transcripts of Rafiq’s speeches showed that he spoke exactly as a good writer would write. They were like passages from William Hazlitt. Measured sentences of meticulous construction. Grammar like precision engineering.

“So: our hosts, the New Anglicans...” Anwar touched his wrist implant and paused the briefing. At his gesture the hologram died and his living room reappeared. He walked around the black and grey and silver Bauhaus interior, playing the last Tournament on a wallscreen. It hadn’t gone well, and he wanted another look at it.

It had taken place two weeks ago, in a large dojo in the UN complex near Kuala Lumpur. It was a six-monthly event, Rafiq’s idea. Sometimes Consultants needed actual combat between missions, to supplement their standard exercises.

It was open to all comers, inside or outside the UN: Special

Forces, mercenaries, martial artists, and anyone else who could satisfy the exacting criteria. The kind of opponents they would most likely encounter on actual missions.

Each Consultant was assigned six opponents by lottery, and had to face them simultaneously and unarmed.

Opponents were allowed any weapons except firearms, and could kill or injure, or try to. The Consultant couldn’t; he or she could only disable.

Tournament fees were large, with bonuses for every member of a group who killed or injured a Consultant. Stories circulated from time to time about injuries inflicted and bonuses paid—all untrue, but Rafiq found them useful urban myths. Reality was different. It was proven, in real missions, that a Consultant had a near-100 percent chance of defeating six proficient opponents, even if one or more had a gun.

Tournaments, however, remained oversubscribed.

Anwar fast-forwarded to the replay of his own combat. He was addressing his six opponents. His voice sounded strange because of the effect on his face of the Idmask, a nanobot injection which altered the configuration and proportions of his features. The alteration lasted only two hours, enough to mask him during a Tournament, and was random and different each time.

“You must genuinely try to kill or injure me. If I think you haven’t,” he kept his face straight, partly out of a liking for deadpan remarks and partly an effect of the Idmask, “Rafiq will do something worse than I ever could. Sue you for material non performance of contract.”

A couple of them smiled briefly, then it began.

A lot was written, some of it pretentious, about martial arts being a mirror for life. Anwar’s fighting style, however, exactly mirrored his life. It was cautious, measured, contained. He liked counterattack. He liked to come out of safety, strike, and return to safety—a pattern which characterized all his missions, and all his relationships such as they were. His maxim was to do nothing risky or unexpected—at least, by Consultancy standards, though to ordinary opponents he was frightening, inhumanly fast, and strong. Like most of The Dead, when he fought he stayed silent.

Original martial arts moves were transformed by The Dead into moves that were impossible for anyone without enhancements. Over the years The Dead had given these moves new names, often ironic or obscure, sometimes obscene. Like The Penumbra for Shadowless Kick, The Circumnavigator for Roundhouse Kick, The Flying Fuck for Heart Kite. And others, for which no previous equivalent move existed: The Verb, The Compliment, The Gratuity, The Abseiling Pope.

Unusually, the six opponents Anwar had drawn were all armed: a katana, a quarterstaff (Anwar’s own favourite weapon), various knives, even a flail. He circled among them.

His first instinct was to analyse them, to assess what they were; and it was wrong. His first instinct should have been to attack and disable them, because whatever they were, he outmatched them.

To any observer, he was a blur while they moved normally. To himself, seen through his own ramped-up senses, he moved normally while they were stationary or wading through treacle, expressions of shock at what he could do forming like geological processes on their faces, exclamations at his speed and strength oozing out of their mouths in low bass notes. But he’d only been starting cautiously, waiting to assess and counterattack.

Use speed first, his enhancement maxims told him. With speed, everything else is possible. The other “S” categories— strength, stamina, even skill—are secondary. But he didn’t follow the maxims. His speed was actually quite good, approaching that of the highest-performing Consultants, but his instinct was always to step back and take stock; it was why his rating was merely average. Still, it was enough to leave his opponents aghast.