The Worshippers and the Way

by Hugh Cook

  Hatch gave it but a moment's consideration, then:

  "No. No. I will fight now."

  "Your combat assignment, then. Singlefighters again. Over the jungles of Iridian Two. You will access the combat scenario to find your fighter stabilized in the upper realms of the jungle canopy. Heavy interference prevails to the extent that all your instruments are dead. Your opponent of course is in an identical predicament, but when interference ends you will be able to seek him out. The scenario starts with the singlefighters not less than ten and not more than fifty luzacs distant from each other."

  "When does interference end?" said Hatch.

  "Shortly. Are you ready?"

  "Yes," said Hatch.

  "Then," said Senk, "let combat begin."

  Chapter Twenty-One

  As the Combat College had the misfortune to be designed during a great Age of Euphemism, when "training for war" had become "studying defense", its designers were constrained by public relations experts who vetoed anything which spoke too clearly of blood and bone, of raw flesh screaming and eyeless mutilation.

  Consequently the College lacks facilities to train its students in blade battle or unarmed combat. Traditionalists lament this deficiency, claiming - and the Teacher of Control has ofttimes indicated its agreement with the claims - that personal combat skills are a valuable adjunct to the development of self-

  confidence, even if they have precious little relevance to the conduct of transcosmic warfare.

  But of course the Combat Cadets of Cap Foz Para Lash come from Dalar ken Halvar, a city landmarked most notably by the Grand Arena. In the City of the Season there is no shortage of blade schools, and likewise no shortage of opportunity to get bruised or cut. Hence those Startroopers who graduate in Dalar ken Halvar are closely acquainted with the intimacies of death, and thus superior to those graduated elsewhere - which implies that we will have a substantial career edge if and when the Chasm Gates are renewed and our rightful destiny granted unto us.

  - from An Essay on Destiny by Glas Glas Nak, preceptor of the Graduate College on the Heights of Learning.

  The Days of Wrath:

  When men flew living blades

  And startled thunder from the skies -

  Swashed through the cities to leave the burning dead

  Awash in molten gold and liquid lead.

  So he was in the singlefighter with the jungle green around him and the sky a moody gray above. All ship telltales were registering nonsense, their functions jumbled by the interference generated by a low-grade probability storm, that storm itself a typical aftermath of a battle involving heavy use of the Weapons Major of the Nexus.

  So Hatch had time to think, to plan and to act - for, equally lost in the probability storm, Lupus Lon Oliver had no way to seek out Hatch. But soon the probability storm would settle, the instrumentation would function again, and Lupus would come hunting for his rival.

  - Do it now.

  - Or do otherwise.

  Hatch did it. He killed his ship with commands both swift and sure, then set the fighter down in the jungle with the aid of its emergency crash-rockets.

  The ship descended through the jungle's triple canopy, branches bending under its weight then whipping back upwards. A shower of things fell from those whiplashing branches. Insects, snakes, dead leaves, parasitic creepers, nests, arboreal snails.

  Hatch glanced at his instrument panel. It was still registering nonsense.

  He was almost down.

  He was -

  He was down.

  Spongy earth groaned, protested, buckled beneath the ship's weight. Earth? No. Not earth, but a kind of swamp-slush. Hatch's ship was mucking down in a swamp. Fortunately, it was being supported by the root structure of the jungle trees, but those far-spreading roots were not designed to take the weight of a Nexus singlefighter.

  The ship settled, canted to one side at a crazy angle.

  Instrumentation?

  Nonsense still: but it was settling. The probability storm was dying away. Best to act quickly, then.

  Hatch grabbed the singlefighter's remote control, then abandoned ship. A clicketing-clicketing hum-roar of insects assailed him as he opened the ship's door. He emerged to the heat-

  soup air and tried to find footing on the interlocked root structure of the jungle trees. He slipped, tottered, and almost fell into the putrid swamp from which the trees arose. He caught hold of a branch and looked down. The roots were patterned in swirling brown and black, and were uncommonly shiny and slippery, looking for all the world as if they had been lacquered.

  Hatch pointed the remote control at the ship and thumbed the OBLITERATE button. Obedient to this command, the ship sheathed

  itself in silence, compressed itself, crushed itself down to the vanishing point, and was gone. Gone beyond recovery. Gone beyond detection. The sudden envanishment of the singlefighter left a temporary depression in the swamp-muck. Very temporary, for almost immediately the glutinous murk-mud of the swamp bletched and blurched, sleebing and sloobing into the depression, burying the evidence in a slurching slooze of ooze, of black saliva, of fever-

  pitch exudate.

  A thick and heavy latrine-and-vomit stench burped upwards from the swamp as it sloozed into the space left by the quick-

  crushed singlefighter. Hatch imagined the consequences of falling into that filth, and shuddered.

  What now?

  Asodo Hatch was marooned in the hot and sweating fever-swamp jungles of an alien planet, with nothing to ensure his own survival excepting his own strength and wit, and the survival skills which the Nexus had taught him.

  First question:-

  How dangerous was this jungle?

  Any entertainment program screened by the Eye of Delusions would have pictured a jungle like this as a ravaging arena of huge carnivores. If a Hero of the Permissive Dimensions were to be dumped down in such a jungle, then within moments a multi-clawed monster would surely manifest itself, drops of corrosive saliva sizzling from its fangs as it came crashing through the trees. But in point of fact, as Hatch knew well, eaters-of-flesh are typically few and far between in any ecology, standing as they do at or near the top of a pyramidal foodchain.

  Even so ....

  A tree would be safest.

  Hatch wiped the bubbling sweat from his forehead and looked upwards into the heights of the nearest tree. An insect bit him on the cheek. He slapped it to its death, and studied the heights above. The trunk of the tree was sheathed in the same smooth and shiny skin of brown and black which protected the roots. But the tree branched at scarcely more than head-height, and thick creepers trailed down its side. Hatch examined the nearest creeper to make sure it was not a snake. He touched it with the back of his hand. Then grasped it and shook it. A few fragments of dead leaf descended, wisping and whispering. Hatch grabbed the creeper with both hands, let it take his whole weight, then bounced as violently as he could.

  A tree-snail fell. As it hit the roots, it broke with a sharp !chick! which was clearly audible above the background noise of clicketing insects. Hatch imagined that he might well be eating such snails before very long. But there was no hurry. He could comfortably go without any food whatsoever for the first two or three days. But what about water? It was so hot in this fever-

  swamp that his water requirements would be prodigious. And he certainly could not drink from the stench-pit of a swamp which spread itself through the green-veil distances as far as the eye could see. Well. He could look for water inside the creepers themselves. Or seek it above - seek it in the crotches of the trees.

  But first - first he should climb.

  For his safety.

  Hatch yanked on the creeper again.

  The creeper held.

  Hatch began to climb, sweating as he did so. By the time he reached a convenient crotch where he could settle down to wait, the sweat was streaming off him, and his Startrooper's Standard Gray was plastered to his skin.

  "Wah!" said Ha
tch, panting, amazed at the speed with which the humidity sapped his strength.

  He was accustomed to dry heat, but had never liked humidity.

  Still, it was not too bad once he settled down to wait and dedicated himself to the task of sweating.

  Doubtlessly Lupus Lon Oliver was sweating also as he hunted the nerveracking skies, waiting for Hatch's singlefighter to burst out of hiding and attack him. Doubtless Lupus would hunt, would circle uselessly, seeking an enemy ship masked against his hunting instruments, and then -

  Why, within three days Lupus's ship would come to the end of its fighting life, and would power down and land automatically, its life support facilities losing all power a bare half-arc later as the ship exhausted its last resources. Upon which Lupus would have no choice but to get out and try to survive in the wilderness.

  - Let him. Let him.

  Lupus would try. Doubtless. And he would die. The mortality of the enemy: ever one of life's reliable satisfactions.

  Then Hatch, reassured by the regular rhythms of the jungle, let his thoughts turned to the City of Sun and wondered if Takabaga, his house on the edge of Cap Uba, had been burnt out in riot. It was not much of a house, but it was his, and he did not like to think of it in ruins, the bamboo charred, his bedding reduced to feathery white ash, and every resident malatothapus fled or dead.

  At least his wife was safe. For the moment. His wife, his daughter, and the Lady Iro Murasaki. And any other refugees who had entered the Combat College as Hatch's guests. By opting to settle himself in the swampland jungles rather than fight with Lupus in the skies above, Hatch had purchased them at least three days of life. As his guests, they could not be expelled from the Combat College until the competition for the instructorship had reached an end, so they were safe till then. And a lot could happen in three days.

  And then Hatch thought about his own body, still seated in the initiation seat in the Combat College while his mind wandered the world of the illusion tanks. The initiation seat would be monitoring the condition of his physical flesh with the utmost diligence. If maintenance became necessary, then the initiation seat, obedient to its programming, would begin to interfere with that flesh, to feed and catheterize it, to clean it and massage it, to exercise the muscles and thus protect the flesh against wasting. Hatch disliked the thought intensely. To be petted, babied and investigated. He imagined his body helpless, mouth ajar, a trace of saliva easing down its chin.

  - But that is there and this is here.

  So Hatch told himself, but he could not free himself from the knowledge that the initiation seat was potentially dangerous. In the last two or three generations, a number of students had been killed by malfunctioning initiation seats which had bungled the medical tasks of body maintenance. The equipment was simply too old, too unreliable.

  And Hatch might be dependent on that machinery for quite some time. For if Lupus Lon Oliver did not die quickly, then this trial by combat might stretch on. And on. And on. How long could they stay in the illusion tanks? There was a legal limit, wasn't there?

  Yes. Hatch dredged up the relevant clause in the Regulations:

  "Combat sequences in the illusion tanks will not be extended beyond twenty-one days." Twenty-one days. A long time.

  - Still.

  - There's no helping it.

  And at least he had a reason for enduring those days. The protection of his wife and daughter ... and his lover.

  - So.

  So Hatch began the diligent practice of conscious relaxation.

  He tried to concentrate on all the things that were good. Here in his tree above the swamp, he was free from all the worries of Dalar ken Halvar. Here nobody could touch him. He was a world away from the City of Sun, and, equally, a world away from the Nexus. He was safe. Beyond all demands. Answerable only to the Great God Mokaragash, and to none other.

  "Wah!" said Hatch, relaxing, reclining, feeling his steel become flesh, his bowstrings become spiderweb.

  Abruptly, the million million clicketing insects of the jungle simultaneously fell to silence. Hatch listened. Heard, somewhere, a rhythmic squelching. A drop-drop-drop of water. Then the insects began to speak again, all at the same moment. What concerted their actions? Telepathy? Or did each incorporate in its makeup some kind of clock? Valid questions, these, for Hatch knew this jungle of illusions to be modeled on a real, literal bone-

  and-water mud-and-blood pollen-and-wood ecosystem on some planet which did or had existed sometime, somewhere.

  So the insects were not random aspects of a computerized fantasia, but accurate models of living creatures which -

  Hatch thoughts were interrupted as the world wavered, melted then abruptly brightened, his body suddenly seated, the hot and moist replaced by the dry and cold -

  For he was back in the Combat College.

  Weirdly disorientated.

  Hatch had made the transition from illusion tank to reality thousands of times before, but never under conditions quite so unexpected.

  "Lupus!" said Hatch, blurting the word.

  Lupus Lon Oliver must have killed him, must have, thus winning their encounter. Else how could Hatch possibly have been plunged back into the world of the Combat College?

  "He demands," said Paraban Senk, speaking from the display screen in Hatch's combat bay.

  "Demands?" said Hatch, bewildered. "Demands what?"

  "What do you think?" said Senk. "He demands adjudication."

  And Hatch felt a shuddering relief. So Lupus had not outguessed him, outfought him, outmatched him. Instead, the young Ebrell Islander was seeking to win this match by legal manoeuvre.

  Well, it would be very interesting to see what he came up with.

  Because as far as Hatch could see, his own position was watertight.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Warfare weakens. It generates chaos, crisis and unknowns in abundance. Battle is apt to compromise both psychic and physical integrity, and a predisposition to favor the enemy may further weaken your resolve to prosecute your duty.

  This last factor is often ignored when we study warfare which sees the warrior locked into machines kept parsecs apart.

  However, while the Nexus does train for intergalactic and transcosmic warfare, the military reality of the last millennium has been that most active operations involve civil interventions undertaken as a response to political or religious extremism.

  Here we must consider the human element: and here note that the tactics of empathy are of particular value when your own resolve is weak.

  Unfortunately humans cannot be taken out of the loop, least of all when dealing with the Nu-chala-nuth, who reject the authority of machines over humans. In any case, one could not, for example, entrust a dorgi with the task of policing the streets of any of the cities of the Nu-chala-nuth in the aftermath of one of the periodic upheavals inspired by that religion. So we rely upon the warrior.

  If you are of the Nu-chala-nuth, then in the supervision of members of your own faith you may find that your discharge of your

  duty to the Nexus is difficult. This is an extreme case, but for any given individual we can wargame a situation in which that individual's loyalties will be divided.

  In pitched battle, this may be of small account, but it matters greatly in civil interventions, which tend to revolve around negotiations. You as an officer of the Nexus may one day find yourself endeavoring to discharge your duty in a situation in which you have a predisposition to support the enemy in defiance of your duty.

  Under such circumstances, you should attend first to the emotional dynamics of the negotiation scenario. If you can befriend your opposite number then that person will tend to refrain from using those tactics which will be most hurtful to you. Here we ask you to understand the first rule of the Characterization of the Enemy: the Enemy is someone to respect. As you come to understand the horrors of total war and the methods which can be used to avoid it, you will begin to understand the importance of this characteriza
tion.

  - from the Book of Negotiations

  So was it then a slip which let

  The hero fall and long odds claim the day?

  Or was the one sword sharper, or the sand

  Made partial by its hungers?

  "So what's Lon Oliver going to argue?" said Hatch.

  "I've no idea," said Paraban Senk.

  "Can we be heard?" said Hatch. "Right now, I mean? By those in Forum Three?"

  "They get to watch you while you're in the illusion tanks,"

  said Senk. "They get a full-color full-sound splitscreen presentation of the battles. But right now you've got a guarantee of privacy."

  "Then while we're closeted together in private," said Hatch, "let's talk about Dalar ken Halvar."

  "Why?"

  "Because there's revolution in Dalar ken Halvar."

  "Why should I worry about that?" said Senk.

  "Because it's going to compromise your ability to fulfill your mission," said Hatch. "Your mission to train Startroopers for the Nexus."

  "So?" said Senk. "I thought I'd made my position on that clear. Some lawful authority will establish itself swiftly in the city, and I will then deal with that authority."

  "So," said Hatch, "let's talk about dealing. Obviously it's something you've got to do, so why not now rather than later? Why not deal with someone you know, someone you trust, rather than someone unknown and untested? Why not manipulate the situation in Dalar ken Halvar rather than taking whatever random leadership gets thrown up by the present disorder? Senk, if you're willing, then I'd like to cut a deal. If you make me the instructor, I'll do my level best to restore order in Dalar ken Halvar and help you fulfill your mission."

  "I thought you didn't want to be instructor," said Senk.

  "What gave you that idea?" said Hatch.

  "Lon Oliver gave me that idea," said Senk. "He told me today that you offered to sell him the instructorship. You invited him to bribe you. Lon Oliver asked me to disqualify you from this competition on that account."