The Worshippers and the Way

by Hugh Cook

  And, as Hatch waited for the Frangoni at the meeting to settle to order, he found himself appalled at the future which was opening in front of him. But what else could he do? Surrender Dalar ken Halvar to Lupus Lon Oliver and the Free Corps? Let Manfred Gan Oliver and his son Lupus gather the strength they needed to launch a pogrom against the Frangoni?

  "Well?" said Oboro Bakendra, looking hard at his younger brother. "Are you ready to enlighten us? To tell us what's really going on here?"

  "Ah, what do you think's going on here?" said Hatch.

  "I don't know," said Oboro Bakendra. "But the very fact that this meeting is taking place suggests something foul afoot. You and me, what have we got to say to each other? You need something from me, brother, but I can't see that you'd need anything at all from me if the Chasm Gates really had opened. If the Nexus really had reclaimed us. If you had suddenly been bounced to sainthood, a saint beloved of the Nu, a saint in his purple graces - well, is a poor and barbarous Frangoni worshipper of the Great God Mokaragash to sit at table with the Nu-chala's deputy?"

  Hatch forced himself not to flinch from the whiplash in his brother's voice.

  "Brother mine," said Hatch, "I had to make a choice. The Frangoni under the Nu-chala-nuth or the Frangoni under the Free Corps. There was no third way."

  With that said, Hatch looked around at the assembled Frangoni. Some were slow on the uptake, but it was obvious that most were absorbing the implications of his words.

  "So," said Son'sholoma slowly, "you've - you've - what have you done, Hatch? You've schemed up - well, Senk must be in on it.

  And the whole thing, this - this - it's a charade, is it? The Chasm Gates, the - oh, Hatch, I really believed! How could you -

  this whole - is this but a ploy to win a war with the Free Corps?"

  "I have at stake the lives of my people," said Hatch stolidly. "All of my people, not excepting my wife and my daughter."

  Then Hatch detailed the truth of their situation for his fellow Frangoni, ending by saying:

  "So, it being now about midnight, the Free Corps is held prisoner by Paraban Senk. Senk will hold the Free Corps for long enough for me to consolidate my rule in Dalar ken Halvar. I will consolidate that rule by uniting the city under the banner of Nu-

  chala-nuth."

  "That," said his brother Oboro Bakendra, "still leaves the fate of the Frangoni undecided."

  "I will give my people what protection I can," said Hatch.

  "But if we are to unite Dalar ken Halvar as a city of the Nu-

  chala-nuth, then it follows that the Frangoni must necessarily take that religion as their own."

  "I'd rather die," said Oboro Bakendra.

  "Then you will die," said Hatch flatly. And, as his brother half-rose from the table: "And if you kill me here, then you and all Frangoni will die of a certainty. The Yara are using the night to arm themselves against any possible change in their political fortunes. The Unreal are organizing themselves, my brother. I am their head for the moment, but whether I can remain so is something that remains to be seen."

  Oboro Bakendra seated himself, but glowered, and said:

  "You really are riding a tiger. What happens if you fall off?

  You persuaded Paraban Senk to your cause. But what if Lupus Lon Oliver unpersuades him? What you have done against Lupus, Lupus

  can do against you. You tell me that Senk won't let out the Free Corps troopers until they're ready to swear their loyalty to you, but who could trust oaths given under such duress? And as for the Frangoni, our own people - how long will we last? The Yara hate us, the Yara are of the Pang, the Pang are the Pang, Real and Unreal alike, they're one people and we're another. Once this Chasm Gate illusion is a thing of the past, Hatch, the Pang will push you off your throne in a few days or less, they're the majority, they'll want one of their own to rule."

  All this said Oboro Bakendra, and more. Hatch listened, then said, heavily:

  "Everything you have said is true. The Frangoni are a minority. At the moment I rule by illusion, but we will need more than that in the future. I cannot trust the Free Corps so I must destroy the Free Corps. The Pang have no reason to like or trust the Frangoni, so we must give them a reason. We must destroy the Free Corps in the name of Nu-chala-nuth. We the Frangoni."

  "Nu-chala-nuth!" said Oboro Bakendra.

  He used the word just as Lupus Lon Oliver had used it earlier - as an obscenity.

  "By so destroying the Free Corps," said Hatch, pursuing the ruthless logic of his politics to its conclusion, "we the Frangoni write ourselves into the religious history of this planet. We the Frangoni become the people who destroyed the enemies of Nu-chala-

  nuth at a time when that religion was weak.

  "We.

  "Not the Pang.

  "The people Pang, the Yara, the Unreal, they made a revolution in the name of Nu-chala-nuth, but they failed, they failed absolutely. They failed the god to whom they gave nothing but a fleeting lipservice backed up by no more than a transitory spasm of rioting. But we, we the Frangoni, we through our armed discipline smash the enemies of Nu-chala-nuth, install the True God, and thus write ourselves into history forever. We write ourselves into history in blood."

  So spoke Asodo Hatch, giving way to that love of rhetoric and speeches which ever characterizes the Frangoni. Then Asodo Hatch looked on his brother Oboro Bakendra and said:

  "Brother mine, we the Frangoni, in Dalar ken Halvar our fate is fragile. We are few, the Pang are many. We are not of this place, we are not of this city. We must consecrate our relationship with the Pang with the blood of battle. We must write ourselves into the holy history of Nu-chala-nuth to make our people inviolate. We must become the holy ones, the beloved of god, or else - well, you were the one who said it. Unless we can secure our position, our fate is to be destroyed. Make your choice, my brother."

  Oboro Bakendra sat. Glowering. He saw the dreadful necessity of choice which was upon them. But. He had made his commitments to the Great God Mokaragash. He had made his commitments to the priesthood. He had won status there - of a kind. A position there - of a kind. A place there - of a kind. If he threw in his lot with the Nu-chala-nuth, then he would have to give up that position, that place, that status.

  Still, he had made such a change once. Three years earlier, Oboro Bakendra had left the Combat College, automatically excluded from its corridors when he reached the end of his years of training. At first he had been very despondent, but then he had got religion, and had found in religion a consolation for what he had lost.

  Which raised an obvious question. Oboro Bakendra had known

  for years that his life in the Combat College would automatically end when he was 34 years of age. So why hadn't he started laying the groundwork of an alternative career earlier? Paraban Senk, the Teacher of Control who ruled the Combat College, thought for some bizarre reason that Asodo Hatch had murdered Hiji Hanojo, the previous Combat College instructor.

  Asodo Hatch had been possessed of motive.

  But Oboro Bakendra, on the verge of being exiled from the Combat College, had been possessed of a much stronger motive.

  Oboro would have stood a good chance of winning the instructorship

  had not Senk postponed the examinations for three years.

  And ....

  "The Great God Mokaragash is my life," said Oboro Bakendra.

  "Is that so?" said Hatch, choosing his words with care. "If religion is your life, is it also to be your death? There was a man, once. Lamjuk Dakoto."

  "That man has nothing to do with me," said Oboro, who had long ago renounced his father.

  Lamjuk Dakoto Hatch, father of Asodo and Oboro, had killed himself on the sands of the Season. Lamjuk Dakoto had killed his own brother in gladiatorial combat. With the killing done, Lamjuk Dakoto had fallen upon his own sword in full view of Dalar ken Halvar.

  "Our father, hence our fate," said Hatch remorselessly. "For what is the son if not the reflection of the father?"
>
  "He renounced his religion," said Oboro. "He renounced his people, his god."

  It was true. Lamjuk Dakoto had turned away from the Frangoni faith, the worship of the Great God Mokaragash. A bitter dispute over this renunciation had led to Lamjuk Dakoto fighting and killing his own brother.

  "He remains our father," said Hatch.

  "He's dead, Hatch," said Oboro, speaking with a wrench-note of agony, of grief.

  So the son who had spurned the father still mourned him.

  Oboro was racked by concealed grief - grief unreconciled. Tears unwept. Laments deep-stocked in silence.

  "He's dead, yes, dead," said Hatch. "And you as his son will die for the same reason, because death is your choice."

  "If I must die," said Oboro, "then I die for my god and my people."

  "It is the common wisdom of all who study such matters," said Hatch, "that any man who kills himself hands a sharp sword to his son. If you die, then you die because your father killed himself.

  And for no better reason."

  "My god," said Oboro. "My people."

  "Then what," said Hatch, flaring, "what was your god to you when you murdered Hiji Hanojo? Your people, what, you killed him good, you killed him clean, you murdered because you wanted the Nexus, you wanted to stay!"

  There.

  It was out.

  Hatch had accused his brother Oboro Bakendra of killing Hiji Hanojo to open up a chance of winning the instructorship.

  Oboro breathed slowly.

  Breathed deeply.

  Then said:

  "Are you accusing me of murder?"

  "It is Paraban Senk who accuses you," said Hatch coldly.

  "Yesterday I was victorious in battle. I won the instructorship.

  My first move was to consult all those files which had till then been hidden from view. Naturally I wanted to know who had killed Hiji Hanojo."

  "So Senk says ...."

  "You should have been able to work it out for yourself," said Hatch, riding the dynamic of his bluff, taking it through to its logical conclusion. "Paraban Senk knew full well that you murdered Hiji Hanojo. You had motive. Means. Opportunity. I saw your psychological profile, there's no secrets hidden. So. Senk decided to punish you.

  "So.

  "Senk denied you the chance to compete for the instructorship. Senk declared a three-year moratorium on the competitive examinations. Because. Because Senk knew. Senk knew that I would win. And Senk knew. Senk knew that would be the greatest punishment. For you to see your younger brother succeed where you failed.

  "And that's why you chose your god, your Great God Mokaragash, because you wanted a career, power, status, position, something to replace the Combat College. And that's why you, you wanted me to leave, no more College, no, come to the Great God, little brother, you wanted to wreck me down, you were jealous, you saw I'd win, you couldn't stand it, as soon as you were out of the College you wanted my training wrecked and ruined.

  "So.

  "So that's how it is, Oboro, and if you, death, if it's death, if you're going to die then it's because that's what you want, your father handed you a sword, spite and jealousy, jealousy and thwarted ambition. That's all there is, Oboro. Well. Make your choice. Stand by your Great God and die. But know why you die. Not from piety but from selfish spite. Your Great God is a sword. If you want to fall upon that sword, then do so. But I - I will not die just because my father killed himself!"

  Thus Hatch.

  Then silence.

  Then, very slowly, Oboro Bakendra's face buckled. His shoulders began to shake, and he wept. Hatch watched him, watched

  him weep. Then went to his brother's side and comforted him in the agony of his grief.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The Chasm Gates: the transcosmic junction which once linked the local universe to the rest of the Nexus. Some 20,000 years ago, the Chasm Gates collapsed, isolating the local cosmos from the rest of the Nexus. War followed. Even after twenty millennia, dim memories of that war persist in the form of those legends concerning what is now known as the Days of Wrath.

  But if from their steps of stone in flesh

  The gods should step -

  And sliding from the clouds unseat -

  And grapeskin humans with their feet -

  "What do you think?" said Oboro Bakendra.

  "It's a bluff," said Hatch. "Of course it's a bluff. It would be too much of a coincidence for any such thing to happen now."

  The two brothers were in the kinema, the natural amphitheater outside the lockway. The Eye of Delusions, the big entertainment screen set above the lockway, was screening the image of a strangely mutated human with insectile mandibles. This thing was -

  or so it alleged - the current ruler of the Nexus. It claimed that the Chasm Gates had opened, and that the Tulip Continuum which contained the city of Dalar ken Halvar and its Combat College was again reunited with humanity's grandest transcosmic civilization.

  "You will surrender your authority to that of the Combat College," said the human-insect thing.

  Not for the first time.

  It had said as much a full three dozen times already, without moving either Asodo Hatch or his brother Oboro Bakendra in the slightest.

  "You have to admit," said Oboro Bakendra, "the thing looks almost authentic."

  "Admit?" said Hatch. "Brother mine, you forget my imperial status! I have made myself emperor, and an emperor admits nothing."

  Nevertheless ....

  The accents of the presumptuous mandible-equipped human which dominated the Eye of Delusions did suggest some of the distortions which might reasonably have been expected to befall the Nexus Ninetongue in the course of twenty millennia. Though of course the Ninetongue had been designed to be impervious to linguistic drift - divided up into nine separate task-specific dialects and supported by the standardizing resources of an affluent machine culture.

  To that degree the thing was authentic.

  But Hatch was not prepared to publicly admit even that much.

  "Senk's improvising," said Hatch, "but the improvisation is fairly desperate."

  Hatch was right. The insect-human which was trying to menace Dalar ken Halvar, and to bring that city to order by exercise of terror, was a tenth-rate derivation of one of the standard monsters of the Nexus entertainments so commonly screened by the Eye of Delusions. Paraban Senk lacked the imagination required to think up something new. A human in authority who was characterized by tact, sensitivity and flexibility, for example - that would have been something new. Hatch might even have been impressed by

  it.

  "So what will you do?" said Oboro Bakendra, elder brother conceding initiative and authority to the younger.

  "Do?" said Hatch.

  "About Senk," said Oboro Bakendra. "About the Combat College.

  Do we ignore it? Or what?"

  "I'll go in there soon," said Hatch. "I have to. Senk still has my wife, my daughter ...."

  "And your whore," said Oboro Bakendra, unable to restrain himself from making this unfavorable observation.

  "The Lady Iro Murasaki still enjoys the protection of the Combat College," said Hatch agreeably.

  Asodo Hatch had lately been through far too much to get upset simply because someone chose to impugn the honor of the Lady Murasaki.

  "And what about our sister?" said Oboro Bakendra.

  "Our sister?" said Hatch absently.

  "Yes, yes, our sister, our sister Joma, otherwise known to the world as Penelope. Penelope Flute. Remember her? A girl, Hatch, a big girl, a girl as tall as a man, purple in her skin and turbulent in her temper. What have you done with her, Hatch?"

  "I don't know that I've done anything with her!" said Hatch.

  "Well, she certainly went into the Combat College," said Oboro Bakendra. "There's plenty of proof of that. You must have seen her yourself."

  "I - I have some recollection of that," said Hatch.

  Yes. Hatch dimly remembered seeing Penelope at
some time during the turbulent period when refugees of all descriptions were boiling into Forum Three.

  In the lead-up to Hatch's series of duels with Lupus Lon Oliver, Paraban Senk had asked Hatch to name those guests whom he chose to invite into the Combat College to watch him fight. Hatch had been in no mood to trifle with such trivia; and so, rather than drawing up a guest list, Hatch had simply told Senk to admit anyone who asked for admission in his name.

  Consequently, when riots had broken out in Dalar ken Halvar, numerous refugees had been able to find sanctuary inside the minor mountain of Cap Foz Para Lash by quoting Hatch's name. Hatch's wife, daughter and mistress had won admission to the mountain, and, yes, Penelope too.

  But.

  "But," said Oboro Bakendra, driving home the point remorselessly, "that's the last that anyone knows of her. You appear to have lost her."

  And in the end Hatch had no option but to confess that he had indeed mislaid his sister, which was doubtlessly very remiss of him. He had excuses, of course, for the recent past had been turbulent - and, while dueling his enemy and commandeering a religious revolution, Hatch had not found it possible to keep track of the delinquent Penelope. But Oboro Bakendra made it clear that he thought this no excuse.

  "You don't seem concerned," said Oboro Bakendra.

  "Frankly," said Hatch, "I'm more concerned with the absence of Lupus Lon Oliver than with Penelope. We've made a great heap of corpses, but Lupus is not to be found on that heap."

  "His face may have been disfigured," said Oboro Bakendra.

  "Perhaps he lies incognito beneath the sun."

  "There is the matter of stature," said Hatch. "Lupus was built quite close to the ground, as you remember. Had the rat's flesh been in amongst its companions, I'm sure I would have recognized it by the length of its legs and the modest bulk of its torso. I've had occasion to watch it closely of late."

  "It may well be that Lupus and Joma have fled the city together," said Oboro Bakendra. "In which case they are of no account. Lupus is no danger once detached from his warforce, and thus detached he is - for I warrant that very few Ebrell Islanders of military age are left alive in Dalar ken Halvar."