The Worshippers and the Way

by Hugh Cook

"Sequence continues," said Hatch.

  "Continue sequence."

  "Ejection is simultaneous with liberty."

  "Continuation received," said the singlefighter. "You will be ejected immediately we have liberty."

  As the command "prison" directed a singlefighter to seal itself inside a protective force-field, so the reverse-word "liberty" commanded it to unseal itself.

  "Very well then," said Hatch. "Liberty!"

  The singlefighter shed its protective force-field and ejected Asodo Hatch. Blasted free by his ejection sheet, he was slammed up and out. The air smashed him. He heard the taut crack as his back broke. He was slammed to a whirl-shock of buffeting turbulence as the world slammed, as the world burst black and blue, blasted by a double-crash of thunder, of thunder pitched for the shatter. The visible spectrum split into sub-harmonics of pain, and then -

  Then Hatch was in the clear, free from the turbulence, and given the grace of a lucid moment in which he felt the summer of the blossoming heat from below. He caught a brief glimpse of the crumpling fire expanding below him, of the billowing bloom of destruction.

  He could not say or speak, but thinking was still in his power. Though only just.

  - Wah!

  Thus thought Asodo Hatch.

  Then thought no more, for he was falling. Lucidity gone, he fell. He toppled. Down through the gulfs he plummeted. His ejection seat's parachute did not open. Strapped into that seat, he dropped downward, doomed down to destruction, his back broken, his four limbs wrecked and useless.

  Falling, he hit turbulence. Hitting turbulence, he was whirled sideways, tossed, corkscrewed, cocktailed in a gigantic blood-shaker, falling wrecked and ruined, a wreck falling toward wreckage, falling toward the wreckage of the world.

  And then -

  Falling, the seat steadied.

  And, seated on the arc of his downward slide, seated on the smooth arc of the longest rollercoaster slide in the history of humanity, Asodo Hatch glimpsed two cinders blistered with flames, two cinders falling, trailing smoke as they arced down toward the blazing sea. One of those two charred meteorites was his abandoned singlefighter. The other was Lupus Lon Oliver's craft, caught in the flamesmash fireball as Hatch's craft blew itself up.

  - Marshmallows.

  Thus thought Hatch, thought he had no idea why he thought it.

  Then there was time for no further thoughts, for he was falling, and the smooth arc of his slide was breaking up as he hit turbulence again, and slammed by the buffeting turbulence he went shockbursting down toward the green. And now at last he found his voice. A scream was wrenched from his mouth a moment before impact, then impact -

  The shock was lethal.

  So he was dead, dead, seated dead in the initiation seat, eyes starting, panic shuddering in his throat, hands clutching at the armrests, flesh shuddering.

  "The illusion tank sequence is over," said Paraban Senk, with those words telling Hatch that his waking dream was done with, that he was back in the world of the living.

  Hatch moved his jaw cautiously. Tested his tongue.

  Heard himself question with a word, a word which sounded as if spoken by someone else, spoken by a machine:

  "Result?"

  "Partial point in your favor," said Paraban Senk, as calm as an accountant.

  "Details," said Hatch.

  "You died, but you outsurvived Lon Oliver. You win a partial point. You win 0.0000057 of a point."

  "Good," said Hatch. "Good."

  "However," said Paraban Senk. "However ... wait one moment.

  Ah yes. Lon Oliver is contesting this decision."

  "Contesting?" said Hatch. "What do you mean, contesting?"

  "He claims you have no right to your partial point. He claims that partial point is contrary to reason. He says there must be an error in the adjudication software."

  "He thinks I won through computer error?" said Hatch.

  "Precisely," said Paraban Senk. "So he has demanded that the partial point be wiped."

  "Wah!" said Hatch.

  "I have decided to let Lon Oliver argue his case in Forum Three," said Senk. "I will then arbitrate on this matter."

  "Will I be able to make my own case?" said Hatch.

  "Not if you sit here all day talking to me," said Senk. "I think you had better be going."

  So Hatch hastened to Forum Three. He used a side-door which gave him admission to the small stage which faced the steep-banked tiers of seats. On that stage was Lupus Lon Oliver.

  Lupus was giving a speech, playing to the gallery for all he was worth. The speech was not just for the benefit of Paraban Senk, for Lupus would ultimately be judged not just by the Teacher of Control, but by his family, his peers, and the Free Corps as a whole. Manfred Gan Oliver sat stonefaced on one of the tiered benches, watching his son and passing judgment.

  " - as a warrior," said Lupus, glancing sideways at Hatch.

  "But Hatch threw his life away, thereby winning - "

  "My life is as you see it," said Hatch, interjecting staunchly.

  "He threw it away!" said Lupus. "Threw it away, and so, so won a cheating point from the derelict machineries of judgment.

  Had this been a real war with a real death to match it, what would he have won? Only our mutual extinction. In the Season, we count it a victory only when one walks away. Did Hatch's father walk away? No. He killed himself."

  "My father!" said Hatch, flashing white-hot with rage.

  "Your father!" said Lupus. "Do you deny it? The whole city saw it. And - and it is said that any man who kills himself hands a sharp sword to his son. Hatch has accepted the sword. Having accepted the sword, he has killed himself once already before your very eyes. As he killed himself in the illusion tanks, so he will kill himself in the world of the real. And this - this walking corpse - it thinks it has a future? I see for it a vibrant future as a suicide."

  The vehemence of Lupus Lon Oliver's attack was such that it silenced the whole of Forum Three. Hatch was aware that everyone was watching him, seeing how he would react. His anger was so extreme that he durst not move, durst not speak, lest he do or say something extreme.

  - Not yet. Not yet.

  So thought Hatch, distancing himself from the scene, managing to make himself cold, immobile, stonefaced and continent.

  Yet he knew he would kill Lupus on account of what had been said. Till then, Hatch had been concerned with the father, not the son. He had primed Scorpio Fax to kill Manfred Gan Oliver because the father was a danger, while the rat spawned by that father -

  well, it had sharp teeth, admittedly, but it was still a very small and inconsequential rat.

  But now it was a doomed rat.

  As good as dead.

  "Asodo Hatch," said Paraban Senk. "Are you ready to plead your case?"

  Hatch breathed deeply.

  Then:

  "I am," said Hatch.

  "Then speak," said Senk.

  "Very well," said Hatch. "This young colleague of mine, Lupus Lon Oliver, he, he speaks from his youth - and in his youth he is enamoured with the romantic vision of two men engaged in combat to the death. He is drunk - "

  "Drunk!" protested Lupus. "I haven't had a drink - "

  "Drunk with machismo," said Hatch, steamrollering over the interjection. "Intoxicated with visions of the triumph of muscle and nerve, the victory of brute as brute. But we are not animals training to die in the Season. Rather, we train for war.

  "In war, merely to outsurvive the enemy can be an advantage.

  He who survives can communicate his outsurvival to headquarters, meaning that the masters he serves will know of the outcome of his struggle even if he dies shortly thereafter. All things being otherwise equal, intelligence determines the outcome of wars.

  "By outsurviving Lon Oliver in combat I demonstrated the ability to - potentially at least - give my headquarters an edge in intelligence. The fractional point awarded to me may be construed as being in recognition of the fact that simply to o
utsurvive the enemy is of potential military benefit."

  Was this making sense? Hatch hoped so. The truth was that the games played in the illusion tanks were just that: games. So all that mattered was to win within the rules. But to say as much would make him sound like a child too fond of its own cleverness, and so would be quoted against him. So: so he had to pretend to take these games absolutely seriously.

  "If that fractional point serves to win me the position of instructor," said Hatch, "then I say the position is rightly won, for I achieved my fractional point not by pursuing delusional dreams of glory in combat, but by applying a mature understanding of the process of war. I won out of my maturity: out of my mature understanding. I won as a man wins when in combat with a child, however monstrous the child in its viciousness."

  "I'm better than you!" said Lupus, shouting. "You fight me man to man and you're a dead man! You want to fight? Fight me, then! Fight me, and I'll tear you apart with my bare hands!"

  Hatch smiled. This was good, very good. The boy-child was tender in his dignity, and was making a fool of himself by his fist-shaking histrionics.

  "You think this is funny, do you?" said Lupus, advancing on Hatch.

  "Lon Oliver," said Paraban Senk. "Back off. Back off - now!

  Leave the stage and seat yourself."

  With some reluctance, Lupus obeyed. Hatch wondered if Lupus realized he had made a fool of himself. Asodo Hatch was a very large and well-coordinated mass of muscle and bone, a monster of a warrior big enough and bad enough to give the burliest brawler a fright in a fight. If Lupus Lon Oliver and Asodo Hatch were to fight it out in Forum Three, it was more than likely that any smashing of skulls, rending of limbs and extinguishing of life would be done by Hatch, with young Lupus the probable victim.

  As Hatch watched Lupus seat himself, he was tempted to comment on his own bigness and Lupus's smallness. He was tempted to glory in his brawn and muscle, in his undoubted physical prowess. It was, after all, a severe blow to his ego to admit that Lupus was the better fighter pilot, faster of reflex and more adroit in his aerial tactics.

  "There Lupus sits," said Hatch, yielding to temptation.

  "There Lupus sits - "

  He brought himself up short. It was all too easy to play the game of man against man, to play at being a gladiator, a thugfist brawler, a streetfighter. But Hatch and Lupus were not gladiators or streetfighters. They were players in a political struggle which would decide the future of Dalar ken Halvar. In this struggle, there was more than Hatch's ego at stake. The entire Frangoni nation might be endangered if the leaders of the Free Corps found themselves firmly in control of Dalar ken Halvar.

  So Hatch reconsidered, and in a moment saw what he had to say.

  "There sits Lon Oliver, sulking like a child because I will not match my weaknesses to his strengths. Well, why should I?

  If I were to meet him here and now he would doubtless kill me, for he is much the bigger man. Bigger he is, and stronger. Look at him! Admire him! Gan Oliver was a very dragon the night he sired young Lupus!"

  Lupus sat glowering at Hatch, arms folded, shoulders hunched.

  Lupus was no Frangoni, and the Combat College staged no moots, so

  Lupus was unused to the rough-and-cut of public debate. Hatch's sarcasm was telling on him.

  Hatch grinned.

  "Thus," said Hatch, "we see Lupus gigantic in his height, threatening poor me with massacre. Doubtless he could kill me if he tried - could swat me down with one obliterating strike of that yon watermelon he calls his fist. But it is wrong for him to take such pride in his physical supremacy, for we are not barbarians seeking to prove who is the stronger brute, who the bloodier animal. Young Lupus was not born into one of the Wild Tribes of the entertainments of the Eye of Delusions. Hence his atavistic yearning for their lifestyle is no more than self-indulgence.

  "We are not primitives. Rather, we are representatives of the Nexus, the most sophisticated civilization which ever was - and we must conduct ourselves accordingly."

  With his speech done, Hatch gave a small and formal bow to his audience, then seated himself. He had spoken in quest of confirmation of his fractional point, but he had also spoken for another purpose. He wanted to identify himself with the Nexus, and to undermine Lupus's credibility with the Free Corps by portraying him as a would-be primitive, a closet sword-swinger, a dreamer mentally attuned to the mores of a dark age of bloodglutted barbarism.

  Everyone in the Free Corps was pledged to the Nexus way, to the path of rational progress, and no dissenter from the myth of progress had much of a future with that bunch of pseudoscientific fanatics.

  "I have heard the arguments," said Paraban Senk, speaking from the big display screen mounted over Forum Three's stage. "Now hear my decision. I rule - "

  But Senk did not rule, for there was a disturbance at the main entrance to Forum Three. Several people were entering, some injured, others not. Hatch recognized his sister Penelope, tall and unbowed. And his wife Talanta, shocked and staggering.

  "Order," said Paraban Senk, as students and spectators began to mob those entering Forum Three. "Order. Order!"

  But Senk was ignored.

  Hatch joined the mob himself, and pushed and shouldered till he got to his wife.

  "Asodo," said Talanta.

  He enfolded her in his arms. She smelt of smoke. Hatch held her tight, then realized someone else was clamoring for attention. It was his beloved daughter Onica. There were scratches across her left cheek, and her hands -

  "Let's see your hands, child," said Hatch.

  Onica tried to snatch her hands away, but Hatch had them already. There was blood and skin beneath the fingernails.

  "Who was it?" said Hatch.

  "It's nothing," said Onica, still trying to pull away. "He didn't do anything. Not when mama hit him."

  "You hit him?" said Hatch to Talanta, still not knowing who the him in question might have been.

  "Oh, she hit him all right," said Polk the Cash, thus bringing himself to Hatch's attention.

  "How did you get in here?" said Hatch to the moneylender.

  "As your guest, of course," said Polk. "Thank you. I'm glad to be here. If not here, I might be with my house. It's ashes, Hatch. They burnt it. Can you believe it? They have burnt down my house."

  As the story of the mounting disorder in Dalar ken Halvar began to emerge in disordered statements, in stammering blurts, in broken recollections of panic and fear, Hatch saw the Lady Iro Murasaki - entering Forum Three at the stagger. He broke away from Polk the Cash and went to her assistance.

  "Stand aside!" said Hatch sharply, dismissing a couple of Combat Cadets who sought the pleasure of aiding the lady.

  Hatch himself took the Lady Iro Murasaki by the arm and led her to a seat. She sat, dressed in the disarray of a refugee. She had been struck near the eye, perhaps by a stone; there were tatters of blood on her cheek. She too was pungent with smoke.

  "Are you all right?" said Hatch.

  "I - I think so," said Murasaki. Then: "The city, it - it's -

  half of Scuffling Road is burning."

  Amidst a great confusion of questioning and babbling, some details began to emerge. A mob had stormed the Frangoni rock. Some of the Frangoni had stayed to fight, using Temple Isherzan as the bastion of their defenses. Oboro Bakendra, Hatch's elder brother, was leading the defense of the temple. Others, including Talanta and Onica, had fled.

  For her part, the Lady Iro Murasaki had fled from her house when the Yara invaded Cap Gargle and began to loot and burn the fine houses on that miniature mountain.

  "It was difficult," said Murasaki. "The city - there's gangs, mobs, burning - but there was nobody at the lockway."

  "Of course not," said Hatch. "There's nothing worth looting there. Not now."

  "But there were some Free Corps people," said Murasaki. "Some of them - Asodo, I've heard that some of them are waiting there to kill you."

  "I wouldn't be surprised," said Hatch. />
  Then he disengaged himself from the Lady Iro Murasaki, because Paraban Senk was calling Forum Three to order. The Teacher of Control was about to announce the results of the adjudication of the fight between Asodo Hatch and Lupus Lon Oliver.

  Hatch seated himself.

  Then Senk gave his decision.

  "The situation is simple," said Senk. "Asodo Hatch ejected from his singlefighter. That war machine then blew itself up.

  Lupus Lon Oliver's singlefighter was close to the explosion. It was destroyed. Lupus died instantly. Hatch was mortally injured, but nevertheless lasted for a little longer, thereby outsurviving his opponent. The military value of such outsurvival in this particular instance was doubtless zero. Nevertheless, Hatch displayed resource, initiative, ingenuity and daring. He was thinking along the right lines, whereas there is no evidence to suggest that Lon Oliver was thinking at all. Accordingly, I confirm the partial point awarded to Asodo Hatch. His score:

  0.0000057 of a point. Lon Oliver's score: nothing. Combatants should now proceed to the combat bays for the second round of this competition."

  "The second round!" said Hatch.

  "Do you wish to participate in the second round or not?" said Senk. "You have the option of dropping out. If you wish. Victory will then of course be automatically awarded to Lupus Lon Oliver."

  "Forget I spoke," said Hatch. "Of course I'll fight."

  Then, in obedience to the dictates of the Combat College, Asodo Hatch and Lupus Lon Oliver proceeded to the combat bays and entered the world of the illusion tanks.

  Hatch could only stay in the Combat College if he won the instructorship. If he lost his battles with Lupus then he would be forced to leave with his guests, and then he would die outside the lockway as surely as an outclassed gladiator dies in the Grand Arena of the City of Sun.

  When Hatch entered the combat bay, he made sure that the door sealed itself before he sat in the initiation seat.

  "You have more visitors," said Senk, as Hatch seated himself.

  "Visitors?" said Hatch.

  "Some beggars."

  "Where are they?" said Hatch, wondering if someone from the outside world had sent a message to him by such a medium.

  "They are being washed," said Paraban Senk. "Do you wish to talk with them? I can delay combat."