The Worshippers and the Way

by Hugh Cook

  "Hatch!" said Oboro Bakendra, as Hatch emerged from the bathroom and entered upon the outer room.

  "I was just leaving," said Hatch. "Penelope is all yours.

  She's in the bath."

  From the bathroom there came a crash, followed by a scream of female rage. Penelope had started throwing things. As a small girl, she had once knocked out her grandfather with a watermelon, and her temper had not mellowed since.

  "It's not her I'm looking for," said Oboro Bakendra. "It's you!"

  Oboro Bakendra had come to discipline his younger brother, and he had not come alone. Hatch was conspicuously large, and one of the problems of being a big man is that anyone minded to pick a quarrel with you is going to be forewarned of the need for adequate preparations.

  The strength of Oboro Bakendra's preparations became clear as

  others came crowding into House Jodorunda behind him - his sidekicks and backkicks, a group of like-minded fanatics all armed with sticks. These were not snake-breaking sticks or rods for the chastisement of dogs. Rather, they were knurled and knubbly hardwood clubs built for the breaking of men - or the battery of elephants. And Hatch knew at once that he was in trouble. Nexus battle doctrine holds that one can fight six, but not if the six

  have each been trained to fight six - and no adult Frangoni male was innocent of the means of slaughter. Hatch started to think he might be better off back in the bathroom with Penelope.

  "Well, gentlemen," said Hatch. "What can I do for you?"

  "Gentlemen, gentlemen," said Oboro Bakendra. "Flattery, is it? The Age of Flattery is an age long gone, brother mine. This is an Age of Righteousness, an age of punishing wrath."

  Hatch was alarmed by the underlying note of womanly hysteria in his brother's histrionics. Oboro Bakendra was winding himself up through rhetoric, which vice, amongst the Frangoni, has ever been one of the preludes to war. Oboro Bakendra's sidekicks and backkicks were sweaty, tight-knuckled, over-focused, fast-

  breathing. And suddenly Hatch was afraid, afraid of the wood and the iron, the tight-wound sinews and the bunched muscle-backed bone. Vividly he felt -

  He fought his imagination but he felt -

  He felt for a moment his teeth snapped back, his jaw clipped to a gurgling crackle as bones in their breakage -

  "Answer me!"

  Oboro Bakendra was shouting, and Hatch in his fear had lost the thread of Oboro Bakendra's rhetoric.

  Hatch was so badly frightened that his reaction was anger. He felt the emotions of muscle tightening his focus, gearing him up for battle or breakage, for beserker destruction in the Frangoni battle-mode.

  "Answer you," said Hatch, in defiance. Then he caught himself abruptly, and then said - forcing his voice to be soft, to be tender, to be cadenced as a woman's comforting is cadenced -

  "Answer you? Why, brother mine, you're the one with the answers.

  You're older, hence wiser. You have the answers. I need but hear them, for to hear - my brother, to hear is necessarily to obey."

  "What speaks?" said Oboro Bakendra, his anger not one whit diminished. "Hatch speaks, or fear speaks?"

  This was an accusation of cowardice. Hatch was incensed. He shook with a shuddering fury. He had been born and bred to be strong, valorous, war-glorious and victorious in courage. He had been to war and had proved his blood a hundred times over. But now, now in the shadows of a debt-ridden house, his pride was being smirched, his self-image assaulted, and he did not think he could bear it any longer.

  He made as if to move his hand to his lips to kiss it, and thus placate his own anger with ritual. Yet he restrained himself.

  When man confronts man, such a gesture is ever construed as an admission of weakness.

  - The hand.

  In extremis, Hatch remembered a Nexus exercise taught in the Combat College as a measure for controlling rage. He extended his hand, making the fingers light, making them sensitive antennae, conduits of energy. He rested his hand lightly, lightly on the nearest object of convenience - a lacquerwork table, its top richly designed with eels and fish. He let his fingers rest upon the tabletop, stressing their lightness, and imagined his anger running out through those fingers, dissipating, vanishing.

  His anger eased.

  "Is my brother a coward?" said Oboro Bakendra.

  "Tell him your challenge," said Hatch, realizing that mere surrender was not going to get him out of this in one piece. "Tell him your challenge, then you will know him in his nature."

  "The challenge is this," said Oboro Bakendra. "You will call your dog to heel. Or else!"

  "My dog?" said Hatch.

  What was the man riddling about?

  Hatch presumed that no actual member of the canine tribe was being referred to, for certainly (it has been stated once above, and let it be stated her a second time in confirmation of the proof of the fact) he owned none such. In fact, his entire household was dog-free but for the mutt which his daughter Onica had got from the Lady Murasaki, and that small and tender animal had never been any trouble to anyone. But after all literal dogs had been examined and discounted, Hatch still had no idea what his dear brother Oboro Bakendra might be referring to.

  "Your dog Gezira!" said Oboro Bakendra.

  "Son'sholoma?" said Hatch.

  "The same," said Oboro Bakendra. "He's been preaching the Nexus, preaching the Nu. Borboth, Borboth, Motsu Kazuka. Bring him to heel, Hatch! It's blasphemy, and it's your dog which speaks it."

  "That reckless apostate fool is no dog of mine, nor cat neither," said Hatch. "Still, I've already called him to order as best I can, and there's an end to it."

  "Oh no, oh no," said Oboro Bakendra. "He's on the loose, not him but six of them, this Nu, this chala, and all from your thesis. He told me! The blasphemy of gods, you wrote it down. They say - "

  "I know what they say," said Hatch. "Or can guess."

  "Then do something about it!"

  "What can I do?" said Hatch. "I am but the emperor's slave.

  It's not for me to give law in Dalar ken Halvar, not to Son'sholoma, no, nor to any other. I'm a slave, even as you are.

  What I can do, you can do."

  "I've not been within knifestrike of the emperor since my father's funeral," said Oboro Bakendra. "Nor am I likely to be within this month or next. I've not set foot on Cap Ogo Boch for months, whereas you - you're in and out of Na Sashimoko as if it were your second home."

  "If I'm diligent in service," said Hatch, "then what of it?

  Naturally I'm in and out of the imperial palace. On occasion. But so what? Does that make me rich? Powerful? I doubt either. If visiting palaces brings power, then the man who daily searches the nightsoil from Na Sashimoko should be emperor himself by now! But

  for all the wealth of his buckets he's nothing, and I likewise."

  "Don't lie to me!" said Oboro Bakendra, thumping his fist on a lacquerwork table.

  Hatch took a half-step back. Since his earliest youth, he had ever feared his elder brother's temper. And certainly Oboro Bakendra had cause to be angry, for Hatch had certainly been lying. While it was most doubtful that the Silver Emperor would do so much as raise his little finger to help sort out religious disputes on the Frangoni rock, he would still in all probability give Hatch an authorization to resolve this little religious uprising as he saw fit.

  Which would mean that Hatch would be free to discretely murder the apostate Son'sholoma Gezira and his followers at a time and place of his choosing. But frankly -

  "Frankly," said Hatch, "I've no more belly for blood."

  "You bitched your sister's husband good and quick," said Oboro Bakendra. "Why not Gezira, then? He's a fighter, perhaps?

  Is that it? Is that your nature, Hatch? A killer of the unkilling, a coward in the face of killers - that's you. If it's fear, well, we'll give you something else to fear if you - "

  "Brother," said Hatch, again with the grace of a woman, "brother, you came for the family good, for the good of the tribe.

 
Whatever speaks, it speaks for the good which you sought. Speak, that I may know your wish, that I may know your will."

  "You're in a very ready mood today," said Oboro Bakendra, who was searching for a fight rather than for reconciliation.

  "I have been too long away from my family," said Hatch, lapsing into ritualistic formality. "I have been feeling my want."

  "So," said Oboro Bakendra. He clicked his tongue, and his hand went tap-slap-tap against his thigh - both gestures to which he habitually resorted to in moments of indecision, though Hatch doubted that he was aware of his own mannerisms. "So," said Oboro

  Bakendra. "So. You take instruction, do you?"

  Now Hatch was calm. He had lived through his anger, had accepted that anger, and had dissipated it. In the aftermath of his anger, he felt as if he was floating. He felt very calm. Very clear. He thought for a moment to say: I am yours to command. Then checked himself. That was something a citizen of the Nexus might say, but this was not the Nexus. This was Dalar ken Halvar, and Oboro Bakendra was of the Frangoni rock.

  Hatch could simply surrender to Oboro Bakendra and agree to everything Oboro said, but Oboro might think such surrender insincere, or a proof of cowardice. So Hatch decided to again invoke the Frangoni family, the Frangoni blood, the Frangoni nation - and attempt to surrender to that.

  "You are ever the eldest," said Hatch. "So the family has been much your concern. Still, as I am grown to a man's estate, it is fitting that I too should meet the concerns of the family."

  "You say," said Oboro Bakendra.

  Oboro Bakendra was reluctant to concede a truce. Hatch knew what the problem was. The anticipation of conflict is so stressful that one's every resource goes toward gearing for battle. This is why it is very, very difficult to argue an angry man out of his rage: because his rage demands all his resources, and there is no part of him free to consider the possibility of conciliation.

  "I was born to the blood," said Hatch. "Can I unblood myself, unbirth myself, or make myself unmothered? This is my sister's house, my brother's shadow. I am of the family, and you speak for the family."

  "This I should have heard earlier," said Oboro Bakendra.

  And Hatch knew that he had won, or at least was starting to win. This crisis could still end in violence, but Hatch believed he had almost defused it.

  In argument, the natural temptation was always to justify oneself, and the need for self-justification was so much a part of Frangoni culture that it sometimes outranked the organic imperatives of physical survival. But in a yes-no conflict, to justify oneself was necessarily to unjustify one's opponent.

  Hatch had found a third way, yielding to the higher good of the Frangoni family, and leaving his own dignity at least partially intact both in his own eyes and those of his brother.

  As Asodo Hatch and Oboro Bakendra Hatch confronted each other, the pair of them almost but not quite having reached the stage of reconciliation, they heard a voice outside.

  "Hatch!" said the voice. "Asodo Hatch! Are you in there?"

  Hatch knew that voice. It was Lupus Lon Oliver, the bright-

  sharp Free Corps warrior who would shortly be fighting him for the Combat College's instructorship - unless they could make alternative arrangements for the disposition of the job.

  "I'm in here," said Hatch.

  "Then come out! Or may I come in? I need to talk to you. I need to talk to you about Gezira, Son'sholoma Gezira."

  Hatch looked at Oboro Bakendra, who said, roughly:

  "Go to him, then. You see? I'm not alone in thinking your dog needs a beating!"

  So Hatch went outside to meet with Lupus Lon Oliver, wondering exactly how much trouble Son'sholoma had managed to cause by his blasphemous preachings, and wondering yet again whether he would truly be forced to kill Son'sholoma before this thing was through.

  Chapter Eight

  Free Corps: an association of Combat College graduates and their ideological allies. It is currently governed by Manfred Gan Oliver, who has his headquarters in the Brick, a building located on the southern side of Zambuk Street in the gap between Cap Foz Para Lash and Cap Uba. The Free Corps is dominated by Ebrell Islanders.

  In the City of Sun

  In the sun of the Season:

  Two swords and two shadows -

  You know the story.

  Lupus Lon Oliver saluted Asodo Hatch when that Frangoni warrior ventured from the shelter of House Jodorunda; and Hatch for a moment was positively glad to see this enemy of his, so tense had been the confrontation with Oboro Bakendra.

  Though Lupus Lon Oliver had seemed considerably upset by someone or something when Hatch had seen him last in Scuffling Road, the Ebrell Islander had by now recovered his usual confident composure, and boldly informed Hatch that he was wanted at the Brick.

  "My father wishes you to invoke yours demonic features in the Brick," said Lupus, attempting by this jocular elaboration of his message to deny the obviously embarrassing fact, which was that he was being used as a messenger boy.

  Lupus Lon Oliver spoke of course in Code Seven, that dialect of the Nexus Ninetongue which served as the Nexus Commonspeech.

  Since Lupus was an Ebrell Islander, the language of his birth was Dub; but in his daily dealings he ever favored the Commonspeech.

  "Since the Brick lies on my homeward path," said Hatch, "I am agreeable to - to - " Here Hatch pause while he struggled against temptation. Asodo Hatch was direly tempted to say that he was ready "to see the thog", since the day's earlier dealings with the wit of beggars had left him with an indelible awareness of Manfred Gan Oliver's essential thoggishness. But he controlled himself, and concluded: "I am agreeable to granting him an audience."

  With that, the pair set off down Zambuk Street, heading west into the bloodlight of the evening. At certain times of the year, anyone traveling west along Zambuk Street could see the sun set directly between Cap Uba and Cap Foz Para Lash, but in this season

  the setting sun was invisible behind one or the other of those great rocks.

  But which?

  Hatch did not know. He should have known, but had long since forgotten. This was itself a measure of his profound estrangement from his own city, his own times, his own place, his own people.

  He saw the suns of the worlds of the Nexus more often than he saw the local star of his own planet.

  "Were you in there with your sister?" said Lupus, as the two men headed toward the Brick.

  "With my brother," said Hatch. "With Oboro Bakendra. He was talking about Son'sholoma."

  Lupus absorbed that in silence.

  An odd couple they made, Hatch and Oliver. For Asodo Hatch was a Frangoni built over-large; his hair, uncut from birth, was tied in a complex knot on top of his head, and thus made him look taller yet; his sweeping robe was of unbroken purple, and the inevitably effect of the flowing lines of such a one-piece garment is to increase the apparent height of the wearer. In short, Hatch looked a veritable giant, and had exacerbated his bigness by doing so much bodybuilding with weights that the upper half of his body looked as if it had been pumped up with air.

  Hatch, then, bestrode the earth like a veritable collosus, his big feet tromping over the dust, his big meaty hands swinging by his sides like a couple of lethal weapons. Whereas Lupus Lon Oliver was so under-sized that he had to positively scuttle to keep pace with the Frangoni warrior.

  Lupus wore a big wide midriff belt of a leather colored the same red as his Ebrell Island skin, and in a sheath suspended from that belt he carried a big heavyweighted disembowelling knife.

  Hatch maintained a wary awareness of that knife, for he by no means underestimated the young man Lupus. After all, as the Frangoni saying has it: "The smaller the rat, the sharper the teeth."

  As the two men went westward along Zambuk Street, the sun set. They continued in the darkness, not hurrying, but still overhauling the lumbering buffalo carts which labored through the rutted darkness of the dust, the presence of each cart marked by the red-sta
r glimmer of the oil lamp which the law required from every vehicle which chose to travel the city streets after dark.

  The oil which burnt in those lamps was that of the slunk, the notorious grease-eel of the Yamoda River, and as it burnt it gave off a stench like that of burning hair.

  "Lupus," said Hatch, when after a long walk they neared the Brick, "I have a ... a ... "

  How should he put it? How did one go about this business of soliciting a bribe?

  "A proposition?" said Lupus.

  There was a note of not-quite-repressed hope and expectation in Lupus Lon Oliver's voice. Earlier in the day, the young Ebrell Islander had hoped and expected to see the high-muscled Asodo Hatch assassinated by Dog Java, but the cowardly Dog had failed in his task in a truly disgraceful fashion, collapsing in a dead faint at Hatch's feet. As Lupus had been quite unable to nerve Dog to a fresh attempt at murder, and as Lupus deemed it too risky to strike down Asodo Hatch with his own hand, Lupus was quite ready to countenance the possibility of making some kind of bargain with his enemy.

  "A proposition, yes" said Hatch, feeling a slight but inescapable gratitude for the nimbleness with which the Ebrell Islander had divined the nature of his approach. "Precisely."

  "Then," said Lupus, leapfrogging a dozen steps in the bargaining process, "what's your price?"

  "My price?" said Hatch. He had thought to begin by outlining the nature of the offer, but Lupus had already quickfooted his way through all that without a word being spoken. It took more than a moment for Hatch to grasp what had happened, but then he recovered himself and said: "Oh, the price, yes, yes, the price. Scorpions, of course. Gold, in advance. Three hundred scorpions, that should cover it."

  "Fifty," said Lupus promptly.

  "Lupus, Lupus," said Hatch, feeling something of the same exasperation he had felt when he confronted his sister. "Are we two merchants to be haggling over details?"