The Halls of Valhalla turned out to be a club for the wealthiest and most influential members of the middle classes. What had been known as Cocoon clubs in Loach's day after the fabled club in Frankfurt that had become the model for dozens of similar venues all across the world by the late twenty first century.

     Aristocrats didn't go there. They had their own places in the inner districts of the city, and the common workers like the oiler he'd seen earlier would never be allowed in. It was a place for people with money but no titles. A place for people who had earned their place in society instead of having been born there. As a result, they had a pride in their accomplishments that made them hated by the aristocracy. The Lords and nobles of the city would have loved to see the place shut down, the commoners put in their place, but it was the middle classes that had the real power in this city, and in the whole of Saxony for that matter. They had money, and that counted for a whole lot more than titles, no matter how grand sounding they might be.

     Loach knew he'd have a hard time getting in with his tatty, second hand clothing, but he was counting on being able to impress the occupants with his head phone enhanced martial skills. If they were the kind of people he thought they were, they would be on the lookout for people like him and would want to recruit him. Then it would just be a matter of moving up the ranks, one step at a time.

     The small mugger led him along streets and around corners until they came to a building that was, to all appearances, no different form any of the other buildings in this part of the city. A great, angular block of brick and stone with only a few token attempts at ornamentation. The doors were open, though, allowing light to spill out onto the cobbled street, and two butch looking guards were standing there keeping a wary eye on passers by whom they would encourage, with hard eyes and a casual nod of the head, to keep on moving. Every so often, though, a man and a woman dressed in leather and silk would walk up to the door and just go through with neither they nor the guards appearing to even notice the other's existence.

     The guards were mainly watching a pair of policemen standing a little way down the street, Loach saw. They were standing directly under one of the oil street lamps as if they wanted to be seen, as if they wanted the owners of the club to know that they were being watched. They wanted the guards to see the light reflecting from the silver badges on their tall, wooden hats, telling them that the aristocrats were watching them and would seize on any opportunity to send the troops in and arrest everyone inside.

     The police work for the aristocrats, Loach realised. They were enforcers for the nobles who used them to keep a close eye on any commoners who grew too popular and powerful. The aristocrats are afraid, Loach thought with an inner smile. They feared an uprising, with mobs pouring into their mansions and palaces and dragging them out to hang from the nearest lamppost. Maybe it had happened before. Maybe in this country, maybe in other parts of the world. They had forgotten the lesson, learned by the men with power in the twenty first century, that the secret to keeping power was to keep the masses content. People rebelled when conditions became intolerable, but if you gave them just a little money, food and entertainment, enough for them to be just comfortable enough, then casting down the people who had put the iron collars around their necks seemed like just too much bother.

     Loach was satisfied. If this wasn't where Badger was to be found, it was one of the most important places he ran and that was good enough. "Okay," he said to the small mugger. "Go find a priest." The man nodded gratefully and scurried away before he could change his mind.

     He couldn't make a scene out in the street, he knew. The police were probably just waiting for something to happen so they'd have an excuse to go tearing in and bust up the place. If Loach gave them that excuse, Badger would probably have him killed. He needed the man to see him as an asset rather than a liability. He emerged from the shadows, therefore, and walked across the street to the entrance.

     The guards saw him coming and moved to block his way, but Loach pushed past between them, into the entrance foyer. The guards let him pass. They also wanted to avoid a public ruckus. They followed him in, though, and another pair of guards waiting inside moved to block Loach from going further in. One of them shut the doors leading into the main part of the club and one of the guards behind him shut the doors back out into the street. The girl who ran the clock room dashed through a little side door and shut it behind her, leaving the five men in the reception room.

     "Leave," said one of the guards. "Leave quietly and we'll let you go."

     "I want a job," said Loach. "I want to work for Badger."

     "Never heard of him. Go. Now."

     Loach activated the combat app. The military grade extension to his head phone that allowed it to take partial control of the motor cortex of his brain. Highly illegal for civilians, but it had saved his life more than a few times back in his old life. As always, it felt strange as his body fell into a crouching posture of its own accord, ready to strike out in any direction. It was as if a demon had entered his body and taken possession of it. His head turned under the control of his head phone to watch one of the men behind him, the man that sophisticated algorithms calculated would make the first move. His eyes fed information directly to his head phone, which calculated how to move his limbs and body to meet the threat most efficiently.

     The guard pulled a cudgel from his belt and lashed out with it, crouching to aim the blow on the back of his knee. If the blow landed, Loach would be driven to his knees and the other guards would close in to batter him repeatedly until he passed out. They would then carry his body out the back way and dump him in an alley somewhere, to comtemplate his mistake when he regained consciousness.

     The blow never landed. Acting seemingly of its own volition, Loach could only watch in fascination as his body spun around and his foot lashed out, catching the guard's arm and breaking his elbow with an audible snap of bone. Loach hurriedly dialled down the app's aggression setting. He didn't want to cause them serious injuries. He wanted them to see him as a valuable new addition to their crew, but permanently maiming these men would only cause anger and resentment.

     The other three guards froze in surprise, and the combat app took advantage of their hesitation by hurling his body forward towards the two men in front of him. His fist lashed out at the first man's jaw, the app calculating the exact angle and force required to render him unconscious without breaking the bones in his hand. The man fell, but the other man was swinging his cosh at his head. Loach blocked the blow by bringing his forearm up against the guards forearm, deflecting his arm sideways. Then he stepped forward, grabbed the man bodily by the shoulders and threw him at the fourth man, who'd been closing in from behind.

     Both men fell in a tangle of arms and legs but jumped back to their feet, dropping their coshes and drawing wicked looking daggers instead. Loach turned off the combat app and raised his empty hands in a gesture of peace. "I didn't come here to fight," he said. "I came here looking for a job. Your boss can use me. I've shown you how good I am in a fight. All I want is an introduction."

     The two guards glared furiously at him. On the ground, the guard with the broken arm groaned miserably. One of the two standing guards started forward and Loach prepared to turn the combat app back on again, but the second guard grabbed the first guard's arm. "Mebbe we shoud kick this epstairs," he said. "Let Machine decide."

     The way he said it, Loach gathered that Machine was a man's name. If machines were considered sinful in this society, then it would be the equivalent of a man in his time calling himself Lucifer or Beelzebub. Probably one of Badger's leiutenants. Loach felt satisfaction, but he had a role to play. He couldn't appear to know too much about how a crime organisation operated, in case Badger saw him as too ambitious. A possible rival. Loach had to play dumb.

     "I said Badger," he said therefore. "I want to work for Badger."

     "There's two ways ye leave this place," said the guard. "Working fer Machine or feeding the rats. Which'll et be?"

     Loach felt a glow of triumph, but he forced his face to remain expressionless. He waited a few moments as if considering the offer, then nodded and rose back to his full height, standing easy. The guards did the same. "Okay," said Loach. "Take me to him."

     The two standing guards glanced at each other as if wondering whether they were doing the right thing, but then they put their knives back in their sheaths. "This way," said the first guard, indicating another side door. He then stood there, waiting for Loach to go through first. Loach deliberately made himself wait a moment longer as if considering, then reached for the door handle.

☆☆☆

     On the other side of the door was a small ready room with four chairs against the walls and a table against the fourth wall. Two cups half full of cold tea were sitting on the table beside a plate with half a dozen fancy, expensive looking sweetcakes on it and a deck of cards. The cards were shiny and new and Loach guessed that they were identical to the ones being used in the casino. The room had no window, but there were no fewer than four oil lamps lighting the room as brightly as an overcast midday. In the corner was an iron grate in which logs of wood were burning with a pleasing, contented sound.

     There was no-one in the room, and Loach guessed that he was supposed to go on through the door in the ready room's far wall. That room was an office, and there was a mousy looking man sitting behind a desk writing in a book. He looked up as Loach entered. "Who'se yez?" he asked, rising nervously to his feet.

     "Get Machine," said the guard, entering the room after Loach. "Tell him we've got a prospect."

     "A prospect, eh?" said the clerk. He grinned nastily. "We'll see, won't we?" He came out from behind the desk and went through yet another door.

     Five minutes later he came back accompanied by a man who reminded Loach of one of the professional wrestlers he'd liked to watch on television. He was big and stocky, nearly as wide across as he was tall, and had a deep scar across his face, from a knife fight if Loach was any judge. He stared at Loach as if he'd caught him trying to steal from him. "This him?" he asked.

     "Yay," replied the guard. "He broke Kenny's arm an' laid Tyler out like a cold kipper. Sez he wants ter work for us."

     "I want to work for Badger," Loach corrected him flatly.

     "If ye works here, ye'll work fer me, an I only hires the best, so what meks ye think yez good enough?"

     He's challenging me to fight him, Loach thought. If he beats me too easily they'll toss me out on the streets and laugh, but if I beat him he'll see me as a threat and he'll have me killed. I have to be good in a fight, but not too good. I'm going to have to let him beat me. The idea didn't bother him too much. He'd been beaten up before, it was an occupational hazard in his line of work, especially in the early days when he'd still been working his way up through the ranks of the crime syndicate. He'd taken it then, he could take it again.

     He turned his combat app on again, therefore, but this time he turned the aggression all the way down to zero. He would supply the aggression himself. The app would act purely defensively. It would only make sure that he didn't suffer too much bodily injury. He didn't dare suffer an injury that would require a visit to a priest. Also, a blow to the head ran the risk that his head phone might be damaged and he couldn't risk that. Then, moving quickly as if he was trying to catch Machine off guard, he delivered a powerful punch to the man's belly.

     Machine bent forward as he accepted the blow, but then he straightened again and laughed as he threw a punch back at Loach. The combat app analysed the trajectory of the other man's fist and sent signals to the muscles of his neck to move his head in just the right way. The result was that the other man's fist glanced off the side of his head instead of breaking his jaw. Loach staggered back and the combat app stabilised him so that he was able to deliver another punch faster than Machine expected.

     This time he aimed at the man's face. Again the combat app calculated the exact amount of force required to cause maximum damage to his opponent without doing more than superficial damage to his hand. This time it was Machine who staggered back and Loach followed up with another blow to his stomach in an attempt to wind him. The man's stomach was solid muscle, though, and Loach doubted that he even felt it.

     If Loach had been fighting in a serious attempt to win he would have aimed at the other man's throat. Crushed his windpipe and then stood back while he choked to death. He confined his blows to Machine's stomach, though, and as the other man regained control and steadied himself Loach danced around to Machine's side to aim a blow at his kidney. This time Machine felt it and grunted with pain, but then he was standing again and throwing another punch at Loach. Machine was big and strong, but he was also slow. The combat app would have allowed Loach to dodge the blow, but Loach overrode it and made only a token effort to shield himself.

     The blow landed in Loach's stomach and drove all the wind from the former mob boss's lungs. He was helpless to keep himself from doubling over, gasping for breath, and Machine's next blow landed on his chin. Loach was thrown back across the room to fall through the door back into the ready room.

     Loach fell to the floor and Machine followed him in, striding like a colossal beast from ancient mythology. Loach scrambled in an attempt to get his feet back under him, but Machine reached down and wrapped his thick, meaty fingers around his throat. He hauled Loach back to his feet and pulled his fist back for another massive blow to his head.

     Loach's head was spinning, he could barely think. He tried punching Machine again, this time aiming for the throat, but there was no strength left in his arms. He tried to bring his knee up into the other man's groin, without success. Then Machine's fist flew, straight at his face...

☆☆☆

     As Loach struggled back to consciousness, the first things he was aware of were a pounding pain in his head and another pain in his lower chest that experience told him came from one or more broken ribs. He was warm, though, and the surface he was lying on was soft. He wasn't lying in an alley. That was promising.

     He opened his eyes to find himself stretched out on a long sofa, a pillow under his head. Machine was standing nearby, watching him with interest. Loach struggled up to a sitting position and raised a hand to his face. As he expected, he felt puffiness. He probably looked awful in a mirror.

     "So," he said. "Do I get the job?"

     Machine laughed. "You fight well," he said. "If I could be sure you weren't a woodentop I'd hire you straight away. The way you just pushed your way into the club, though. Makes me think you might be a spy, looking for dirt on Badger."

     Woodentop? thought Loach in bafflement. Then he remembered the tall, wooden hats worn by the police. "I'm not with the police," he said. "What can I do to convince you of that?"

     "Just one little thing," said Machine. He smiled evilly, making the scar on his face move like a squirming snake. "Bring me the head of a policeman."