The Worshippers and the Way

by Hugh Cook

  "That much is true," agreed Hatch, who had entirely shed his earlier impatience now that he was in possession of opium, and who

  still found himself in no great hurry to go to the temple and confront the continuation of his own crisis. "Iron, sand, dust and bone, the matter of each was made in a star. Grim - your question."

  "Is it true," said Grim, "that the Way speaks of brotherhood."

  "The Way?" said Hatch, enjoying the luxury of these moments of folly, these moments of uncommitted idleness stolen out of the day of his commitments. "I know of no Way."

  "He knows only the Wheel," said Zoplin. "Food to be turd then turd to be food, and man born of each and to each returned in turn."

  "Hush down, maggot-bane," said Grim, scowling at Zoplin, who

  caught the sense of the scowl in the words and scowled back in blind response.

  "The eater be eaten, the banquet his benefit," said X'dex. "A dog at it! Where's my forking stick?"

  Bursting to a scream, Lord X'dex punched himself, then bit his knuckles and sucked on the bright red blood which started forth from the ruptured skin.

  "I'm sorry," said Hatch, fearing that X'dex was going to throw one of his fits, "but I must be gone. I have an appointment at the temple."

  But Grim moved, a very snake in his speed, and was over the dust in a slither, striking to clutch, clutching his grime to the purple of Hatch's robes, pulling so hard on the fabric that Hatch was afraid it would tear at the shoulder.

  "Temples, yes," said Grim, starting to babble, venting saliva in a frenzy free from all his customary humor. "Temples and teachings. Teachings the Way. Beggars be men, men be no beggars.

  Beds, holes, whores and a butchering."

  "What are you on about?" said Hatch roughly.

  Despite himself, Hatch was frightened by Grim's garbled desperation, by the violent agony of his clutching, his questioning, his hope.

  Hope!

  In a beggar, that hope was terrifying.

  Yet certainly Grim hoped for something, though Hatch had not yet worked out what it was. Grim hoped for it, lusted for it, and was speaking of it still, though his Pang had grown incoherent in its rupturing, and Hatch could not follow the pacing of it.

  "Grim," said Hatch.

  The curtness of the address silenced the beggar's babbling.

  But only for a moment. Then Grim said, his words a blurting spasm,

  a token of torture:

  "So but. So well. Is it true? Truth? Is it true, Hatch? Are we true? Are we Real?"

  "Grim," said Hatch, trying to be patient, trying to resist the urge to kick the beggar heartily and boot him away, "Grim, I must be gone, so you must unhand me."

  "It's a nonsense, as I said it was," said Zoplin.

  But Grim was not done.

  "The Nu," he said. "The chala. The chala. Was it? Wasn't it?

  Well? Is it true, or isn't it?"

  "He knows you now," said Zoplin. "I see it in his face."

  The Eye glittered in Zoplin's left-hand eye socket, and Hatch realized that Zoplin had got the thing back off Grim while Hatch had been selling his chocolate to Shona.

  "He knows us," said X'dex, dipping a finger in the blood of his knuckles and smearing that blood round his own eye sockets.

  "He knows us, knows it, but won't tell the truth. It's hidden knowledge, that's what it is, just as the man said."

  "What man?" said Hatch.

  "You see!" said X'dex. "He knows!"

  "What man?" said Hatch, suddenly angry. "I charge you to tell me! What man?"

  "You tell us of god," said X'dex. "You tell us of god, and we'll tell you the man."

  "Yes," said Zoplin, waving a piece of his baked yam at Hatch.

  "The god is the truth of it, isn't it? All men to be brothers, that was and that will be. Not some to eat dust and some to eat chocolate."

  "I don't eat chocolate," said Hatch, stung by the accusation.

  "Ho!" said Zoplin. "But you eat what we don't eat when god would eat otherwise."

  "Nu-chala!" said Grim, using the word as a weapon, and thus revealing the import of this dialog. "The Nu, the Nu-chala-

  nuth!"

  "You speak of a religion some many years dead," said Hatch, trying to control his shock, trying to convince himself that his shock was mere surprise and not fear. "It's dead, a dead faith, a faith some - some twenty millennia dead."

  "Ho!" said Zoplin. "So. So you speak for the death of gods, do you?"

  "An undertaker in his spare time," said X'dex. "Laid out the chala god then gutted his entrails for dogmeat"

  "Gutting!" said Grim. "Come burning we'll gut, we'll be gutting."

  "Come burning?" said Hatch, his worst suspicions by now aroused.

  "He talks nonsense," said X'dex, suddenly suave in his graces, as if his earlier knuckle-biting and blood-smearing had been but a play-act. "Accept my word, as one master of men to another. He is but a poor beggar, a thing made Unreal, so what helps him his nonsense?"

  Hatch knew that by rights he should stay and shake Grim till the truth fell out of him. Someone had been talking to these beggars of the Nu-chala-nuth, of the Way of Worship. And Nu-chala-

  nuth - why, Nu-chala-nuth was a Nexus religion which had left billions dead in the Spasm Wars. It was a fanatical Religion Militant which had burnt planets, shattered stars and wrecked the peace of the greatest transcosmic civilization known to human history.

  Nu-chala-nuth!

  That was strong stuff to be feeding anyone, and no stuff to be feeding the beggars of Dalar ken Halvar. Best that such doctrines sleep inside the mountain, inside the Combat College, deep in the depths of Cap Foz Para Lash. What fool had brought them to the daylight?

  Hatch should have asked, should have pressed for an answer.

  Hot tongs and torture. But he just then had too many problems of his own to be investing his energies in the explication of a half-

  hinted threat, even though there was a possibility that the threat was made against the state itself.

  "Our Beggar Grim should talk nonsense less, for he still has a nose," said Hatch.

  Then, in the makeshift contentment of that threat, Hatch set off for Temple Isherzan, the holy of holies which stood atop Cap Uba. He had meant to go first to House Jodorunda, but there was no time for that now. If he went to see Penelope then he would be late for his appointment with the High Priest, and that was something which could never be allowed.

  As Hatch took himself and his worries west of north toward Isherzan, Shona was heading in the opposite direction, her ultimate destination being Kamjo Mojo. She was glad to have been able to help Hatch, for she liked him, for all that he sometimes incited her amiable contempt. Men are so helpless sometimes. Fancy a grown man not knowing the market value of a block of chocolate!

  Round Cap Foz Para Lash went Shona, until she gained the southern side and entered the shackland shanty town of Kamjo Mojo, the frog-hunter's colony by the swamp known as the Vomlush. Here the Yamoda River began to perish in shallows enjoyed by frogs and water buffalo alike. Here water lilies were perpetually in bloom, their red and orange flowers giving off a heavy perfume which, on a calm day, would rival Shona's favored Nudik Martyr.

  But calm days were seldom in Kamjo Mojo, for either the Hot Mouth vented furnace-dry air, or else it would be breathing in, which it did with such a ferocity that it swallowed dust, sticks, straw, stones, and any small dogs or children caught too near its lip. Either way, the Weather of Never tended to make life in Kamjo Mojo uncomfortable, as did the prolific mosquitoes of the Vomlush and the red dust of the Plain of Jars.

  But it was cheap and it was home, and Shona was ever glad to get there after a day spent in the cold cream of the underworld dreamland of the Combat College. Tension, tension, tension: that was what the Combat College was all about. Unremitting pressure and stress. But here she was home, here she could relax.

  She wondered about Hatch. Did he ever relax? Somehow, she doubted it. He was so intense, living
as if he was responsible for everyone and everything. But that was the Frangoni way. The Frangoni had evolved a doctrine of communal and collective responsibility, but had managed to incorporate into this doctrine the notion that each individual had the ability to change the whole, and hence was responsible for the whole.

  Whereas Shona ....

  Shona was of the Yara, the poor of the Pang, so poor that she scarcely existed, for who but the poorest of the poor would live out here in Kamjo Mojo, south of Yon Yo, south of anything which might possibly be thought of as civilization?

  Being of the Yara, being (at least in terms of the beliefs of her people) so Unreal that she counted for no more than a shadow, she had no responsibilities, no debts, no guilts, no burdens, hence lived free. Though life in the Combat College had long ago forced her to accept that there was a strong probability that she did in fact exist, she had not let this prey on her mind, for the very teachings of the Nexus showed her that she truly did not exist, at least as far as time's final outcome was concerned.

  It all burns out, in the end. Flesh, hydrogen, helium. The flesh goes down to bones and the bones to dust, and the stars die out to darkness in the end, burdened with the sands of silicon and a deadweight of iron, and then the stars are torn apart and their iron rebuilt to planets as unburnt hydrogen and helium are cooked anew to fresh-burning suns. So, in the long event of time, we none of us exist - and so, if mortality be accepted, then the mere fact of existence becomes no cause for worry.

  Thus Shona lived carefree, but for the occasional niggle, one of which was the ongoing problem of keeping the secret of their gold from her husband. Shona, being sharp with a bargain and but one year short of graduation, had done well out of the Combat College, trading everything from coveralls to chocolate for forms of more permanent wealth. So far, so good - but if once her husband learnt how rich they were, he would shortly come to believe that he really existed, from which all manner of suffering would follow.

  The chocolate, now. When should she be selling it? It was in blocks of bitter, so it would keep if wrapped in cellophane - of which she had plenty - and stored in the dark in a calabash, sealed against ants, and hung from the bamboo roof-ridge to be out of the way of the rats. But while it would keep it was perishable, so best to be rid of it soon.

  The day before Dog Day, that was the best day to be selling.

  Everyone was shopping that day for delicacies to be feasted upon on the evening of the Festival of the Dogs itself. The Chem spent in abundance then, as did the poorest of the commons in accordance with their means, and chocolate was one of the choicest of all the delicacies known to Dalar ken Halvar. So there would doubtless be a shortage of the stuff, so if the Bralsh was still in the market for it then the price might well quadruple over the norm, at least on the day.

  "Business is good," said Shona to Shona, glad to have been born with a good head for money, and born as a woman, and born into the Pang rather than the Frangoni, and born as Shona, plain Shona, and not as Asodo Hatch, Hatch of the brooding purple, Hatch of House Takabaga, Hatch of the Frangoni rock.

  As Shona was thus gladdening her heart, she noticed some boys scuffling in the dust with spears, hunting an imaginary enemy.

  Then she saw the boys were not boys but men, and the spears were longer and heavier than those usually used for rats, frogs or fish. She wondered what kind of animal they hoped to hunt with those big heavy spears of theirs, and why they were so intense about their practice, and when they would be playing their practice for real.

  Chapter Six

  Nu-chala-nuth: a fanatic religion which, after an organic rectifier was introduced into human affairs, sparked the Spasm Wars (technically known as the Spasm Riots, since no State of Civil War was ever officially declared by the Nexus Council), and thus precipitated the death of billions.

  The Nu is the great lord, ie God. The Nu-chala is the servant of the great lord. The nuth are the worshippers of the servant of the lord - the members of the congregation. Consequently "Nu-

  chala-nuth" may be laboriously rendered as "the congregation which worships the servant of the lord", though a common and far preferable translation is "the Way of Worship".

  Nu-chala-nuth is headquartered on Borboth, holiest of planets and home of the Nu-chala. Contrary to the common belief of the ignorant, the language of this planet is not Nu-chala-nuth (for scholarship acknowledges the existence of no language so named)

  but Motsu Kazuka.

  How shall I send to the wind -

  How shall I send to the sea -

  The bamboo wind of the Elephant Coast -

  The fish of the bamboo sea.

  If one is of the Frangoni - and Hatch was of the Frangoni - then the Elephant Coast is ever one's home, regardless of where one was born. But five generations previously, the people of the Elephant Coast had met defeat in a perishing war which they were as yet far from forgetting, and the burden of that defeat was that the kings of the south paid tribute to Plandruk Qinplaqus, the mindmastering wizard of Ebber whom they acknowledged as emperor, and some of the Frangoni dwelt yet in servitude in Dalar ken Halvar.

  Hatch was born in Dalar ken Halvar, and lived there, and looked set to die there, though dying was not on his mind when he went to Temple Isherzan to seek guidance from the High Priest.

  His problem was not death but life.

  It was early afternoon on the Day of Five Fishes when Asodo Hatch climbed Cap Uba's southern slopes and entered the precincts of Temple Isherzan. At the gateway known as the Passage of Death he beat his sandals against an iron rail to remove the red dust of the Plain of Jars. He stooped to the Waters of Water, which even in reflection still sustained the purple of his features. He dipped a beaker into the water, shattering his own reflection in the ritual which is known to the Frangoni as p'dala m'thara, and which is designed to remind the pilgrim of the transience of the flesh which so briefly sustains us against the inevitability of our deaths. Hatch drank from the Water of Water, drank from that wisdom; then, with lips wet and unwiped as ritual requires, and with a stray drop of water drippling down his chin, he climbed on up the hillpath, passing first the still-smouldering remains of a funeral pyre, then a temple acolyte who was painting a pyramid of heaped-up skulls with fresh blood.

  His father's body should have been burnt here, for this was hallowed ground, and the rightful place for every Frangoni funeral. But the manner of the death of Lamjuk Dakoto Hatch had made such an honorable funeral impossible, for that death had brought shame upon Lamjuk Dakoto, and upon his children, and upon the children of his children. And so he had been burnt by the waters of the Yamoda, burnt like a dead dog, and his ashes had still to find a fitting resting place.

  So, when the acolyte raised his eyes and looked at Asodo Hatch, Hatch did not meet his gaze. He tried to shrug off the memories of his father's death.

  - Death is death, and can I undo it?

  Thus he tried.

  But he was only half-successful.

  Asodo Hatch was wearing manhood's purple robes, but the acolyte wore red and black, for such were the colors of the Great God Mokaragash. Likewise colored were the temple's totem poles.

  Hatch remembered reading that black and red are perennially popular with primitive tribes, since charcoal and ochre are easy to use. He tried to put this thought also out of mind, since the thought was vulgar, and the ground he trod was sacred.

  - This is my God.

  So thought Hatch. But the thought was faked, and he knew it.

  He was trying by an exercise of will to contend against the scepticism bred into him by long years of contact with the Nexus, and he was failing.

  - God of my bones. God of my blood. God of my people.

  Again the thought was forced and fraudulent. But Hatch matched actions to thought, bowing to the first and greatest of the graven images of the Great God Mokaragash, a huge slab of stone carved in the shape of a slovenly, almost amorphous face.

  The only sharply detailed features were the
deep-cut shadows of the eye sockets. Mokaragash is He Who Sees Without Eyes, but He sees to a grim purpose, and the blood which stained the eyesockets was fresh.

  "Lord," said Hatch, addressing his god.

  Amongst the Frangoni, an idol is not a symbolic representation of an entity located Elsewhere. Rather, the deity is presumed to be incarnate in the image. Thus Hatch should have been awed, humble and slightly apprehensive, since he stood in the actual presence of his god. But in truth | |

  Today he could not deny it.

  Today he was seeing Temple Isherzan through the eyes of the Nexus. He could no longer forget the realms of transcosmic science and computerized ethnology simply by exiting from the lockway. The

  tricks of unlearning, of setting aside knowledge, no longer worked. He stood in the temple as a tourist-stranger from the Nexus, and found himself comparing the temple's people to the jabbering barbarians of the Wild Tribes of the Eye of Delusions.

  - I did not choose this.

  That much at least was true. Hatch had never wished to be a stranger amongst his own people - but then, choice had not been a part of his birthright. Asodo Hatch had been born into slavery. He was not free to choose his own destiny, for, like every Frangoni male of Dalar ken Halvar, he was bound forever in servitude to Plandruk Qinplaqus, the Silver Emperor who ruled the Empire of Greater Parengarenga.

  Since earliest youth, Hatch had been attracted to the realm of Final Things. Given free choice, he would have become a priest:

  a master of mysteries, a keeper of numinous secrets, an inner associate of the Great God Mokaragash. But free choice had ever been denied to him, and so he had become a soldier in the service of the Silver Emperor, since that was how the lord of Na Sashimoko wished to be served.

  At the age of 11, Hatch had sat the requisite aptitude tests, had passed, and had entered into the Combat College, and thus had been thrust amongst people who had no caste. From that day forth, everything he used was unclean, tainted by the sweat of a foreign people. The food he ate was demon-stuff fabricated out of shadow.