The Worshippers and the Way

by Hugh Cook

  "But will there be fighting?" said Onica.

  "Like me with Lon Oliver?" said Hatch. "Of course not."

  "It would be easier if you were there with us," said Talanta.

  "Well," said Hatch, "that's | | wait. Wait, and I'll see if that's possible."

  So it was that Asodo Hatch shortly entered one of the combat bays, seated himself in its initiation seat, and found himself transposed to an illusion tank scenario designed to train Combat Cadets in the military applications of ecology. The scenario featured a planet devastated by war. On this planet there was one bubble-complex, big enough to contain an environment which could not be fully explored in less than three days. This bubble-complex

  contained a complex ecosystem ranging from a micro-miniature coral

  reef - complete with tropical fish - to a dense rainforest.

  Here Hatch was joined by the Lady Iro Murasaki, by Talanta, and by Onica. He showed them the crew-quarters, and was surprised

  by the speed and ease with which they habituated themselves to those quarters. But of course, though Hatch had earlier unconsciously condescended to the Lady Iro Murasaki by talking of the Combat College in terms of "demons", she, like Talanta and Onica, had learnt much of the Nexus from watching the Eye of Delusions.

  "So," said Hatch. "Here you'll be safe. No maverick Combat College student can damage you, so I'll be free to work for the Combat College."

  "What are you going to do?" said Onica.

  "Something," said Hatch, "of great difficulty."

  Great difficulty indeed, but by the time Hatch was transported back to the world of the Combat College, Paraban Senk had already started doing what was necessary. Senk was using the Eye of Delusions to broadcast to the kinema and the world the news that the Chasm Gates had opened, that a long age of darkness was at an end, and that the long-benighted planet of Olo Malan was at last reunited with the transcosmic civilization of the nexus.

  Shortly, Senk used a communications screen to access the dorgi's lair and talk to that recalcitrant beast.

  "Guardian," said Senk, addressing the dorgi by its formal title. "I have a message for you from Charabanc."

  The dorgi did not respond.

  "Charabanc," said Senk. "You know. The Nexus planet. The Stormforce command planet. Are you listening?"

  "I am listening," said the dorgi, in a low-pitched growl. "I am listening. But understand one thing. This had better not be a joke."

  "Who do you think I am?" said Paraban Senk sharply. "Particle Basp? I am the Combat College. I do not indulge in jokes, and I will not be spoken to in that manner."

  There was a long pause, then the dorgi said, grudgingly:

  "Your are speaking in an information mode. I concede the point. Furthermore. You may designate protocols. That is your right. I concede that point also. What is the password?"

  "The password is a standard three-phase. Component one:

  hippopotamus. Component two: junket. Component three: destroyer.

  Acknowledge."

  "Acknowledged," said the dorgi. Then, abrupting from a growl to a thunder-rock roar: "URGENT! URGENT! INTRUDER APPROACHING!

  BREAK CONTACT! BREAK CONTACT!"

  "I break contact," said Paraban Senk dryly.

  And the dorgi went roaring out of its hiding hole and lurched to a halt just a fraction of a fingerlength in front of the female Startrooper named Shona.

  "HALT! HALT!" screamed the dorgi. "YOU MUST HALT! NOW! NOW!

  OR I WILL BLOW YOUR HEAD OFF! HALT AND UNDRESS!"

  "Go screw yourself," said Shona.

  "TAKE OFF YOUR CLOTHES!" said the dorgi. "NOW! NOW! DO WHAT I SAY! OR I WILL KILL YOU! TAKE OFF YOUR CLOTHES!"

  "Go bugger yourself with a dog turd," said Shona.

  She did not speak to the dorgi like this because she was crude but because the machine's brain was so limited that it found it very hard to comprehend any insult which was much advanced beyond the scatological.

  "YOU CAN'T TALK TO ME LIKE THAT!" said the dorgi, having taken the small pause necessary to check its comprehension of her last remark. "I HAVE THE PASSWORD AND YOU DON'T! I CAN KILL YOU THIS TIME, I REALLY CAN."

  "You're shit out of luck, brick-brains," said Shona, "because I've got the password too."

  "TELL IT!" said the dorgi.

  "Hippopotamus," said Shona, who had been briefed by a Combat College communications screen while she was still a hundred paces distant from the dorgi's lair.

  "HIPPOPOTAMUS!" screamed the dorgi in rage.

  "This is a three-phase password," said Shona calmly, "and you have made an error with the middle phase. I am going to report you and you are going to be punished. I'm not kidding."

  "BITCH," said the dorgi sullenly.

  "I will report you for that too," said Shona warmly.

  "YOU DARE," said the dorgi.

  "That's three reports," said Shona.

  "JUNKET!" said the dorgi, seeing that this was getting out of hand. "JUNKET! JUNKET! THAT'S WHAT IT IS! THAT'S THE MIDDLE PHASE!

  QUICK! QUICK! THE RESPONSE! THE RESPONSE! OUT WITH IT! RIGHT NOW!

  OR I'LL BLOW YOUR HEAD OFF!"

  And it trained all three of its seven-snout zulzers on Shona's head and made ready to make good its threat. Three official complaint reports! This was disastrous! So the woman must die.

  "Destroyer," said Shona.

  And the dorgi groaned, untrained its zulzers, and went lurching into its hideaway. And as it did so the inner door of the lockway opened and Umka Ash stepped through.

  "Hippopotamus," said Ash, the blotch-faced Combat Cadet whose mixed skin of white and black, of red and purple, made the truth of his race quite impossible to determine.

  Ash had been briefed on the password as he came through the lockway, for Paraban Senk had over-ridden the customary lecturing voices of the lockway to give Ash a quick and vital briefing.

  "Junket," said the dorgi sourly, speaking in a low and reverbrating voice, and speaking without bothering to come out from its lair.

  "Destroyer," said Ash.

  "Up yours too," said the dorgi.

  Then the normally withdrawn and silent Ash grinned and stepped forward, and Shona saw him coming and grinned too, and they embraced, and went dancing down the corridor together. Then they broke apart. And Ash whooped. And Shona yelled.

  "Open!" said Shona in jubilation.

  "Open!" responded Ash.

  "Planets!"

  "Stars!"

  "Opera magnificat!"

  "Holidays on Vulip!"

  "Ecstasy amplifiers!"

  "Ice!"

  "Jerkaram!"

  "Particle Basp! In the flesh!"

  "OH DO SHUT UP," said the dorgi, speaking in dull-grumbling

  thunder. "YOU'RE HYSTERICAL. THE PAIR OF YOU."

  "Why shouldn't we be?" said Shona.

  "Yes, why not?" said Ash. "The Chasm Gates are open. And you know what that means."

  "WHAT?" said the dorgi, which could not even begin to guess.

  "Psyche therapy for a certain dorgi," said Ash. "Psyche therapy urgently overdue, a good ten millennia overdue."

  At which the dorgi, goaded beyond endurance, came roaring out of its lair, zulzers swiveling. But Ash and Shona just stood there and laughed at it - laughed and laughed, exhilarated beyond all words.

  And Hatch?

  Asodo Hatch came striding down the cream-colored corridors of the Combat College, striding along in company with Beggar Grim,

  Master Zoplin and the mighty Lord X'dex Paspilion. Hatch strode along at such a pace that the three beggars had to positively scuffle to keep up with him. Hatch gave the password to the dorgi with an uncommon curtness, brushed aside the greetings he received from Shona and Ash, then entered the lockway airlock with his beggars.

  "Let's plan our families together," said the lockway.

  "Planned parenthood is the maximum most in happiness. Your pharmacist or your family physician is the best person to advise you further."


  Hatch heard yet did not hear the words. He was thinking, thinking, thinking of what lay outside the lockway. Thinking of the city and the Free Corps, and what he must to seize control of Dalar ken Halvar and then to consolidate that control.

  Chapter Thirty

  Lupus Lon Oliver: sometime Combat Cadet and Startrooper now graduated from the Combat College and hence effectively exiled from the world of the Nexus. Son of Manfred Gan Oliver and a leading light of the Free Corps of Dalar ken Halvar. Note that Lupus Lon Oliver means "Lupus, the hope of the family Oliver", while Manfred Gan Oliver means "Manfred, the strength of the family Oliver."

  If dreams came true -

  If monsters from the lusts of night

  Drenched their claws,

  And through her perfumes conjured -

  Then nospeak dares to say -

  Yet still in dreams we conjure,

  And thus must risk -

  The walls elapsing, and one world

  Drenching its scorpions in waves into the other.

  Yet I dream too.

  Asodo Hatch ventured out of the Combat College with the intent of spreading the news of the opening of the Chasm Gates, but found there was no need for him to take any steps in that direction. In a city at peace, the news of the opening of the Chasm Gates might have taken a while to spread. But Dalar ken Halvar was a city poised for war, its leadership of the moment in nerve-edge readiness for trouble, its sentries posted, its couriers running messages routinely through the streets, its people acutely tuned to the faintest rumblings of the rumor-mill.

  Consequently, the news of the reopening of the Chasm Gates struck with something of the swift-shock speed of news breaking in a high-tech inter-wired society. And Hatch very shortly returned to the Combat College to participate in a conference in Forum Three.

  Given some of the murderous passions which were then unleashed, Hatch had cause to be very glad that the three people closest to his heart were safe in the illusion tanks, seated in the combat bays and walled in by unbreachable walls of kaleidoscope. Most murderously passionate of all people on that day was Lupus Lon Oliver.

  When Lupus heard that Hatch was to be the Nexus-appointed ruler of Dalar ken Halvar, he was incensed. And when Lupus heard that the Nu-chala, the religious leader based on the holy planet of Borboth, had additionally appointed Hatch to be his deputy in Dalar ken Halvar, then Lupus was so enraged that he almost suffered a terminal melt-down.

  "Nu-chala-nuth!" said Lupus, using that word as an obscenity.

  "Are we to set the Yara free to rabble in their superstitions?"

  "Twenty thousand years have not extinguished the power of the

  Nu-chala-nuth in the Nexus," said Hatch. "If we prosecute a pogrom

  against the Yara here in Dalar ken Halvar, then we will make problems for ourselves and for the whole of the Nexus. The Yara must be free to worship the Way if they so choose."

  So spoke Hatch, though the pogrom he feared was not a killing of the Yara but a killing of the Frangoni.

  Lupus knew as much.

  "You have the whip-hand for the moment," said Lupus, in momentary concession, "but don't think you can keep it forever."

  That of course was not the end of Lupus Lon Oliver's dissent.

  When Startroopers and Combat Cadets - past and present -

  were packed into Forum Three and queued in the corridors outside, then Lupus made a strident effort to denounce and dethrone Asodo Hatch. Hatch was a barbarian, a murderer, a cheat, a fraud, a shyster. He was the son of a suicide. All this said Lupus, and more. But he was brought to order very quickly by General Dorth.

  In Forum Three, the general gazed down on Lupus from the main display screen and said:

  "Halt! Stop right there! I've heard enough out of you! I am General Dorth of the Nexus and I will not stand for this mutinous talk!"

  The figure shown on the display screen, the putative General Dorth, was a big man in a uniform of gray trimmed with silver.

  Whereas Paraban Senk had perfect voice control, General Dorth had to struggle from keeping his wrath from breaking into an upper-

  octave squawk. Hatch thought this was a nice touch of verisimilitude.

  "Right now I am speaking by Instantaneous Transmission from Charabanc," said General Dorth. "But in ninety days, when quarantine ends, I will personally be coming to Olo Malan to take control of the planet. At that time I will be relieving Asodo Hatch, and if you fail to give him all due assistance in the meantime then you will personally answer to me for your delinquencies. Do you understand?"

  "Yes," said Lupus. "Yes - yes sir."

  Lupus had the shaken aspect of a small child whose playtime games have abruptly been interrupted by the encroachments of full-

  grown adults. The Ebrell Islander could not help but display a touch of fear, and this to Hatch confirmed the fact that Lupus was a True Believer. He believed the truth of this scenario absolutely.

  "So I confirm the appointment of Asodo Hatch as military governor of - of Dara - " Here Dorth broke off, glanced down, as if at a prompt screen hidden out of sight, then got it out and got it right: "Of Dalar ken Halvar."

  "It is a great honor," said Hatch stolidly, letting his rivals interpret that stolidness as they might.

  "This is only a temporary measure," said General Dorth. "But the fact is that Asodo Hatch is the most senior officer of the Stormforce currently on Olo Malan. As for the rest of you, all Combat Cadets and Startroopers, past and present, you are all to present yourself for a midnight briefing in the Combat College -

  tonight. Meantime, here is a brief update of what has happened in the Nexus in the last twenty millennia | | "

  By the time General Dorth was finished, Lupus Lon Oliver looked positively shellshocked, as well he might. But he was persuaded. The other Free Corps veterans were similarly persuaded.

  And so it was that Asodo Hatch left Forum Three with half a hundred troopers of the Free Corps as his guard of honor. They filtered out through the lockway airlock, formed up in the kinema under the gaze of the Eye of Delusions, then set off down Scuffling Road.

  Bodyguarding Asodo Hatch, the Free Corps troopers marched through Actus Dorum, marched past the Grand Arena, scaled the heights of Cap Ogo Blotch, and entered the palace of Na Sashimoko.

  There in Hall in the heart of the Shrine of Shrines, Asodo Hatch seated himself upon the throne of the Empire of Greater Parengarenga, and declared himself emperor.

  "The official title is, of course, military governor," said Hatch. "And I have no objection if members of the Free Corps and others choose to so call me. However, we must remember that the vast mass of the population of Parengarenga consists of ignorant peasants who know nothing of the Nexus, therefore it is fitting that I choose a title which fits their limited conception of the world."

  "What now?" said Lupus.

  "I have much to do before I join you in the Combat College for the midnight briefing," said Hatch. "The first thing is the Treasurer. Berlin, that's the one. I appoint him my deputy. Bring him here."

  "But he's one of these - one of these savages!" protested Lupus. "Your deputy, it - it should be a Free Corps appointment."

  "The Free Corps has the whole planet to think about," said Hatch. "The Free Corps are few and the needs of the moment are many. We can't have talented trained men wasting themselves on sorting out the petty bureaucracy of Dalar ken Halvar. Berlin's the man for that. He's not exactly my favorite person, but we can work together, at least in the short term. Lupus, it's hardly an appointment made to gratify my own heart, is it?"

  That ended that argument, for it was common knowledge that Asodo Hatch did indeed have good reason to hate Nambasa Berlin, the noseless Treasurer who had ever maintained a gross prejudice against the "purple filth" of the Frangoni rock - which prejudice was consequent upon the circumstances surrounding the loss of his nose.

  Nambasa Berlin was brought from the closely-watched imprisonment in which he had been kept since being overthrown by a coup l
aunched by Imperial Guards and Free Corps troopers. Berlin was briefed, and absorbed the news of the opening of the Chasm Gates with an uncommon degree of calm. But then - Berlin had been expecting to be executed, and in the face of death all lesser shocks lose their power to disconcert.

  Thus it was that Hatch seized control, bloodlessly, and worked throughout the day to consolidate that control. He sought out people like Berlin who were competent, who were accustomed to the exercise of power, who knew their jobs and who were not aligned with the Free Corps. These Hatch placed in positions of trust, so by evening he had a skeleton administration in place.

  Late at night, when he was sure that almost all the Free Corps people were safe within the Combat College - and soon to be sealed into that College and held there as prisoners - Asodo Hatch presided over a meeting of selected Frangoni in the palace of Na Sashimoko.

  The meeting took place in Na Sashimoko's map room, where there was a big table on which it was possible to assemble large-

  scale maps showing (or at least purporting to show) the geography of the entire empire. As wizards have a great love of maps, and as the Silver Emperor known to the world as Plandruk Qinplaqus had been a wizard of Ebber (and was a wizard of Ebber still, assuming that he still lived), a great deal of love had been spent on the elaborations of this map room. It had leather-upholstered seats sufficient for all the Frangoni who came to sit at that big table.

  Hatch's elder brother Oboro Bakendra was at that meeting.

  So was Son'sholoma Gezira, the apostate Frangoni who had once offended Hatch by accosting him on the Frangoni rock, and by asking him to assist in teaching the doctrines of Nu-chala-nuth.

  Hatch at the time had been shocked. Hatch had thought the preaching of the doctrines of Nu-chala-nuth would be a disaster for his city, his people and the empire he served. But here he was! Asodo Hatch! Masquerading as the deputy of the Nu-chala of Borboth! Here he was, Asodo Hatch, seeking to secure the city of Dalar ken Halvar for the Nu-chala-nuth, to unleash the forces of an intolerant militant religion, and to use that religion as a weapon against his enemies.