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  String was a joke! A hangover from antiquity clinging on to existence in a few gardens where the odd mad traditionalist still used it to tie back plants and the like: “a gentle restrainer for natural fragility”. But it wasn't something you used in the real universe. Not for a real job. Not for making any sort of real device! Never!

  But here he was, training to enter one of the most sophisticated organisations of all time, trying to join sticks together with this very same stuff. And trying to join them together so that they stayed together - firmly. It was clearly impossible. The rigid contraption shown in the book, bound together by tightly drawn coils of this antique string nonsense could, in reality, only exist as a flexible mess of sticks and stringy swellings - string wound upon itself over and over again, forming large balls where the woody components met, and providing about as much rigidity as a set of universal joints.

  Then Renton tried to secure his stolen stick in the ground!

  The ground was forest floor, thin dry earth and pine needles sprinkled over solid rock. The stick was willowy and tapered into the spindly. The tool for knocking the stick into the ground was a stone, a heavy stone that was quite difficult to grasp, let alone to use as a tool. In short, Renton had at his disposal a list of ingredients for no more than a concoction of the impossible. But one not achieved without some drama in the process, most noticeably a shattering of the stick and a battering of the stick-hitter's thumb.

  Renton let out a loud wail.

  He fumed.

  The illustration in the handbook was obviously a sick joke, one of those two-dimensional representations of a three-dimensional absurdity. Something that could only ever exist as a drawing, destined never to inhabit the real universe full of irritatingly dogmatic three-dimensional requirements. The swinging pot-holder was quite clearly nothing more than a well drawn illustration designed to fill half a page of a survival handbook that would otherwise have remained blank. It was not, nor could it ever be, a serious attempt to assist any survivor anywhere to construct an apparatus on which he might swing a pot over a fire - which was its maliciously advertised purpose in the aforementioned manual.

  'Fuggin' stupid bloody thing! It's useless! Totally bloody useless. What a waste of time! What a waste! That bloody Sondo! I should stick it up his…'

  'Ah! Mr Tenting,' interjected Sondo, the troop leader and instructor who had set Renton his task for the day, 'having a bit of trouble, are we, eh?'

  His voice was a smirk that belied the innocent smile on his face. It infuriated the already infuriated Renton.

  'Yes, we are actually! This pot-holder thing's impossible! And I think you know it! It's just not fair. I'm just not doing it! I've had enough! Understand?!'

  'Ah,' beamed Sondo, 'not quite got the hang of it, eh?'

  'Hang of it? Didn't you hear me? It's impossible! It won't work! It's a joke, a bad joke!'

  'Oh dear, that's a bit of a shame, isn't it? And with all those points resting on it. And it being a dual module as well. I mean, you'll lose both of them, won't you? Such a shame.'

  'What d'you mean, both of them? That's totally unfair. How can I… I mean, how am I supposed… I mean…' Renton paused and stared menacingly at Sondo. 'OK,' he said slowly, 'how much time have I got?'

  'Oh, you've got half an hour or so yet,' replied Sondo, still beaming. 'Plenty of time, I'd say. Yes, plenty of time, plenty of time.'

  This absurd opinion was met by total silence on Renton's part, but Sondo didn't seem to notice. He merely continued with some equally absurd encouragement.

  'So, Renton, over to you again, I reckon. And we'll see how you get on, eh?'

  He beamed more widely than ever and Renton still said nothing.

  'That's the spirit, Renton. Test the old resilience. Give it a work out, eh?'

  And with that, he turned and walked slowly away, leaving his student feeling close to murderous.

  However, a minute or so later, Renton had composed himself. And a minute after that, he'd gathered himself for what he still needed to do: make another assault on the steep face of the impossible. Nothing less than a gruelling climb to the summit of swinging pot-holder technology. Functioning swinging pot-holder technology.

  And lo! Forty minutes later he stood at the peak! And there with him were his fellow trainees - and Sondo - who had all gathered round the results of his renewed efforts - to gaze on its form. And what a form on which to gaze!

  A second stolen stick, considerably thicker than its mangled predecessor, now stood proudly vertical, held in place by a small hillock of boulders. The unyielding earth had been excluded from the construction process entirely. The rather brittle second twig had also been discarded and a more robust partner found for the original supple, albeit misshapen one. And the two of them, locked tightly together, swung as required from the top of the stick. And suspended from the end of this free-swinging limb was, as prescribed, a pot. A quite large, outdoor-type, cooking pot.

  The assemblage was far from an accurate copy of the illustration in the survival handbook - and, it could be suggested, was not even a distant relative of the “standard” version of the device. And it had consumed twenty times the amount of string designated for the standard version. And it looked as though it had consumed two hundred times the amount. But it was a swinging pot-holder. A functioning swinging pot-holder. Success at last!

  And the success would have been complete if Sondo hadn't then insisted that what he now wanted was something more than a functioning swinging pot-holder. The specification, it now transpired, was for a functioning swinging pot-full-of-something-holder. And that something was leek and quechit soup. Some very heavy leek and quechit soup.

  As the soup-and-the-pot and the wood-and-the-string both collapsed into the flames to the accompaniment of hoots of laughter, Renton had mixed emotions. His trying had redeemed one of the modules. Sondo had told him. But the results of his efforts weren't going to salvage the other. One more blasted module down the pan. So he was a little relieved but not a little disappointed.

  Oh, and he was a little amused as well. Because the collapse of his edifice with its hot, soupy fallout had been triggered by Sondo and a newly whittled soupspoon. For which interference, Sondo had been squatting near the pot-holder. He therefore got most of the leek and quechit in his lap, a part of the male form, which, of course, contains within its bounds some special equipment, not known for its resilience to the effects of heat, and onto which it has never been recommended to pour still-cooking soup. And that was why, for the first time that day, Sondo stopped beaming.

  And that was almost worth all the effort. Almost. And for a little while it even distracted Renton from the implications of another failure on the course. Another missed module.

  …another test gone up in flames…

  3.

  Renton sat in the small auditorium. He was a tiny island of subdued reflection. While all around him swirled the depressingly gleeful buzz of success. Other people's success. Other people's success in modules on unarmed combat, on comms studies, on command psychology - and on blasted reaction modulation and on blasted core survival skills. Success which Renton couldn't share.

  True, he had passed a reasonable number of modules on his way through this course, but not enough. He was in the relegation zone and he knew it. And if he didn't raise his game substantially he'd end up with an ignominious exit from the League - before he'd even been admitted to it. And he just didn't know how he was going to avoid such an outcome. How he could possibly do better.

  And that wasn't all. His failures were taking their toll in other ways as well. He was sleeping badly, a state of affairs just about unheard of in the Tenting diary of life. As was the poor appetite he was now enduring. But worst of all he was showing aggression; he was becoming argumentative. And it was mostly the instructors who were on the receiving end. Like Sondo, the survival sage. It just wasn't Renton, not the Renton Renton knew, nor the Renton Renton wanted to know. He'd rather keep the original ve
rsion, thanks, the one for whom confrontation was desperation, the last thing he'd ever do under any circumstances - as was apparent on some of his earlier flunked modules…

  And maybe the only way he could redeem the original version was to drop out. Quit the course now and call it a day. After all, his motivation to continue was already alarmingly low on fuel, and it might soon stutter to a complete stop anyway. So surely better to bring it to a controlled halt while he still could. While he could still manoeuvre the thing. More dignified that way. Less painful for everybody concerned.

  Renton looked around at his fellow trainees and sighed.

  'What a miserable bastard I must look,' he thought to himself. 'And they're all so happy looking, shiny polished happy, happy with success. I'm not even sure I should stay for the show. I feel like a fraud sitting here.'

  But before he could put this thought of leaving into action, the show was under way. The lights were already dimming and the main feature of the evening was about to commence. And what a feature!

  This little band of trainees was about to receive a holo-filmed address from none other than the Senior Knight himself. Provided especially for them. Just for them! It was an event they'd been looking forward to for days. Well, most of them had anyway. Renton's own state of mind had ruled out any sort of anticipation on his part, and in his present mood all he could muster was a little mild curiosity. Could this man, the Senior Knight, the leader, provide him with any inspiration to drag him out of the mire of his despondency? Unlikely. Very unlikely. But you never knew. And he was stuck here now anyway. So he might as well sit it out and listen to the oracle - and satisfy his curiosity, if nothing else.

  And now a holo figure had appeared on the empty stage of the hall. It was the man himself. Knight Kanker. Top chap. Number one dude. His Godship. But for all his commanding importance, his appearance was ordinary. Remarkably ordinary. His build was average humanoid. His height a little short of average. And his stance slightly awkward. And his dress was conventional to the point of instant forgetability - except for a pinched blue and yellow cravat, tied sloppily around a slightly creased collar. And above the slightly creased collar was a slightly creased face - bespectacled and uninteresting, fringed by a head of thin wispy hair. It was all dull, standard-issue stuff.

  For a while the eerily lifelike image said nothing. It just stood there, facing the audience with a precisely neutral expression on that desperately uninteresting face - unblinking, as if the image were a freeze-frame representation of the real thing. But despite this ordinariness and the expressionless passivity, it was as obvious as it could be that every member of that audience had begun to feel that he or she was being observed. Somehow, that man Kanker was looking at them through his image. So much so that Renton gulped - albeit he was now prone to gulping, being likely to gulp under even the most marginally stressful situations.

  Then Kanker spoke. For it was no longer an image in that auditorium. For the audience, it was Kanker himself. Without a doubt. 'You are in the middle of your induction course now and you are beginning to understand what's involved in being a knight.'

  'Mmm,' thought Renton, 'factual, but a bit abrupt. Not exactly the warmest greeting I've ever heard.'

  And then, as though the image had picked up Renton's very thoughts, its face smiled. It smiled with a smile that had either been learnt or borrowed for the occasion. It was a foreigner in foreign parts and it showed. And it showed even more as Kanker continued his address. 'No doubt your instructors have been teaching you all about how an Intergalactic Chivalrous Knight operates in the field, how a Knight conducts himself, how he fights, how he wins.'

  'What about how he or she fights and how he or she wins?' thought Renton. 'This guy's a bit chauvinist chivalrous by the sounds of it. He won't impress the ladies in the room if he goes on like that…'

  'You will have learnt weapon craft, intelligence methodology, communication techniques, command techniques, combat tactics, combat strategy and so on and so on. A whole list of things. And all very necessary. All absolutely essential.'

  He paused momentarily to adjust his smile-mask. It had slipped a bit. And then he went on.

  'We run the biggest and the best… in fact, the one and only effective security organisation that spans the whole of the known universe. And you'll need all these skills to play your part in our work - whether you're on an anti-banditry patrol or on a protection mission - or on some exploration sortie or whatever. You'll be able to meet the standards of the League only if you've mastered all the skills you've been taught on this course. You'll only survive,' he added pointedly, 'if you've mastered all these skills.'

  Renton mused on the significance of this statement, and then on his blindfold-in-the-asteroid-field skills - and he gulped again.

  'But that's only part of it, as I'm sure you realise,' continued Kanker, just a hint of a sneer seeping into his ersatz smile. 'We are not and never will be just a bunch of mercenaries. We are professionals! And we are professional businessmen as well as professional adventurers! And never forget it!'

  He paused in his address, the borrowed smile stretching into a ghastly grin.

  'I'd hate to see this chap laugh,' thought Renton. 'Mind, I suppose that's pretty unlikely.'

  Then the grin was gone and Kanker was back into smiling vocal mode. 'But I'm sure you won't forget,' he resumed. 'I'm sure you're more than aware of the sort of organisation we are. And I'm sure you're more than aware of the sort of organisation we must remain. The prime security business in the universe! Better than anything else by light years! An outstanding enterprise, which our beloved old Patheringfan would be truly proud of, if he were alive today.

  'We can only thrive my friends…' he intoned, the smile giving way to a look of pompous sincerity (which he was better able to fake), '…if we balance our thirst for adventure with our sense of what makes for good business practice. I like to think of it as "action with acumen", always being conscious not only of the enjoyment of our work, but also of its worth - and the worth of exceeding our clients' expectations, the premium that comes from delivering excellence.

  'Never let any of your colleagues down in a fire-fight. And never, never let them down as your partners in our business.'

  The smile returned and after a brief pause, he went on. 'But I know I'm preaching to the converted. If you're as close to joining our ranks as I know you are, I'm confident that you are all sitting there now, nodding in agreement with everything I've said.'

  The smile slipped into the sickly.

  Renton wondered whether he should nod. He hadn't seen anybody else nod so far, and he was sure he hadn't. In fact, he became concerned that he may even have shaken his head in disbelief on a couple of occasions.

  'So I won't keep you any longer now. I'm sure you've some more studying to do - or you've planned to help one of your fellow trainees with his studies…'

  'Or her studies,' mumbled Renton.

  '…and you want to get on. So I wish you well and I wish you success. And I look forward to meeting you in person one day, when you yourselves are Knights. When you yourselves are part of Our Great Enterprise!'

  The smile was beginning to degenerate into a dazed-idiot expression as the rarely used muscles holding it together began to fail, one by one. The end to his performance was rushed - as though he knew the mask was on the point of collapsing. And he just managed a hurried 'so good luck and goodbye' before the holo image froze and then faded into nothingness. His briefest of briefings was now at an end.

  Somebody in the audience clapped, but stopped within the three seconds it had taken him to realise he was on his own. It wasn't Renton. He was staring at the empty stage considering how comprehensively his curiosity had been satisfied. He now knew that Kanker had no lifeline of inspiration to throw him, nothing that would rescue him from that dreadful swamp of despondency. No, he had come along with something quite different: a close fitting pair of concrete boots that he'd slipped onto Renton's feet with prac
tised dexterity. And now Renton was slipping deeper into the mire. He was overcome with gloom. Totally.

  Not only was he clocking up too many failed modules on this preparatory course, but also his preparation was for an organisation that he now wasn't sure he wanted to join - even if he could. This Kanker chap had painted a picture of the League that bore little resemblance to his own idea of what it was all about. It had been more to do with how much it was a business and how much value could be squeezed from it for the knights' own purpose - for the knights' own reward. And he didn't like the sound of that at all. And he certainly didn't like the sound or the look of Kanker himself. He was a real turn off.

  However, he had helped Renton make up his mind. He knew now. Definitely. He was going to quit.

  4.

  Renton Tenting had once been an accountant. For years he had toiled away under the yoke of double-entry, constantly stung by the lash of triple-tedium as he dragged his way forward for the odd crust of bread…

  Well, OK, maybe it wasn't quite that arduous, and maybe the rewards meant that sometimes there was a little jam on the bread. But, nevertheless, accountancy for Renton did have one huge negative: it appeared to nourish his celibacy. Whatever it was with debits and credits, they didn't seem to improve his performance with women - or indeed the number of opportunities that presented themselves for a performance of that sort. And eventually he'd had enough - or more precisely, he'd not had anywhere near enough. And he decided to forsake accountancy and apply himself in another area of endeavour where he hoped to secure himself a host of new experiences and a host of new challenges, and in due course, a host of new women.