The Worshippers and the Way coaaod-9

by Hugh Cook

  Lupus Lon Oliver turned to face Asodo Hatch, and the mystery of the identity of the person who had defeated Hatch in that last singlefighter training duel was immediately solved, for the big grin on Lupus Lon Oliver's face was eloquent of triumph.

  "Hi, Hatch!" said the Ebrell Islander. "Have fun?"

  "Lots of fun," said Hatch sourly, thus betraying his own defeat, and so confirming what Lupus had already guessed.

  "Lots and lots of fun," said Lupus, mocking Hatch as the iron-pumped Frangoni warrior strode past him.

  Hatch turned on the smaller man, looked down on his redskinned adversary, breathed heavily, resisted the temptation to smash Lupus to a bloodknuckle pulp then and there. With temptation resisted – just! – Hatch headed on down the corridor.

  "Have a nice day, now," said Lupus, mocking his retreat.

  At that, Hatch almost halted, almost turned. But Paraban Senk might well be monitoring this confrontation, and any loss of self- control would count against Hatch, and he knew it. So he continued on his way in peace.

  On the way to his room, Hatch passed a few fellow Startroopers in Standard Gray, a gaggle of Combat Cadets in their Junior Blues, and a couple of individuals in mufti as various as papyrus skirts and dogskin coats. None spoke to him, for his face had a forbidding aspect. A huge musclepumped Frangoni warrior with his height exaggerated by the uncut topknot of his kind is not the most reassuring of sights, particularly not when it is in a bad temper.

  On entering his room, Hatch saluted his father's ashes, which had found a temporary resting place in that refuge since they were welcome nowhere else. If Hatch lost the competition for the instructorship, then he would be exiled from the Combat College, and those ashes would have to go with him.

  At the moment, Hatch was by no means certain that he could win the all-essential competition, since Lupus Lon Oliver was proving to have a definite edge in their combat training.

  Hatch began to strip himself of his clothes. In the Combat College, Hatch sometimes wore the purple robes which were his habitual garb in Dalar ken Halvar itself. However, these days he was tending to wear a Startrooper's Standard Gray more and more often while he was inside the minor mountain of Cap Foz Para Lash. He was trying to dress like a citizen of the Nexus, to think like a citizen of the Nexus, to be like a citizen of the Nexus – and thus to maximize his chances of winning the instructorship in the trial-by-combat which was so shortly to commence.

  But Hatch had never yet worn his Standard Gray out into the sunlight, and he had no intention of ever doing such a thing. In Dalar ken Halvar, he would always and ever wear the purple of a Frangoni warrior – or so he was resolved.

  As Hatch wrenched his purple-skinned Frangoni flesh free from a Startrooper's Standard Gray, he repeated Lupus's words:

  "Lots of fun."

  Oh yes. Lots of fun. Incredible amounts of fun. The training had got really exciting of late. So exciting, in fact, that Hatch had quite lost track of the number of times he had been shot up, shot down, exploded, bombed, disintegrated and burnt alive.

  And for what purpose?

  Since Hatch was a Frangoni warrior and not a member of the Free Corps, he had no transcendental faith in the virtues of the Combat College. He had never had any illusions about the Combat College to lose. Even so, he somehow managed to feel decidedly disillusioned as he shed his Standard Gray and pulled off his Weathertreads.

  Though Hatch was trying his best to be in and of the Nexus, he nevertheless found it to be always a relief to get dressed in the leather sandals and purple robes of a Frangoni warrior, and this he did once he had shed his Nexus wear. To put on his clothes was to put on his true culture. His true identity. His true strength. The world of the Combat College was the world of maya, illusion; and sometimes Hatch felt that the time spent inside its cream-colored corridors was but a form of living death.

  Once dressed in the way of his Frangoni people, Hatch exited from his room and strode through those corridors of cream, making for the cafeteria.

  The blue-painted cafeteria was bright with harsh sunflare lights – wake-up lights, hurry-up-and-eat-and-get-moving lights – and it was noisy with a babble of Startroopers and Combat Cadets, many of whom were busy buying and selling Nexus stocks. Amongst other things, the cafeteria functioned as an informal bourse, in which the script of Nexus companies was freely traded. This activity was entirely speculative because:(i) Since the Chasm Gates linking Ola Malan had been sundered for over 200 centuries, commercial data on the stocks in question was similarly timespan degraded, so there was no telling whether the companies involved were now fabulously valuable or were long since bankrupt and forgotten; (ii) The very Nexus itself might have fallen to ruin at some stage in the last twenty millennia, succumbing for instance to the rigors of a disastrous war with the Vogliono Tendenza; (iii) Even assuming that the Nexus still survived and that all the companies being stocktraded inside Cap Foz Para Lash were still prosperous, the true value of the script could not be realized unless transcosmic communications between the world of Dalar ken Halvar and the Nexus were restored, which was thought to be unlikely.

  Nevertheless, the stock-trading had gone on for generations, and some of this activity spilt out of the Combat College to continue in Dalar ken Halvar itself.

  While some traded, others gossiped; or played chess (either the star chess of the Nexus or the more conventional dragon chess played throughout Parengarenga); or wristwrestled; or wargamed arcane encounters between mathematical constructs presumed to be fighting each other in time-space continua which had more than the conventional twenty-seven dimensions of the Associated Cosmic Orders; or studied sabotage techniques, crewstrength synergetics, bodywork psychodynamics, Thaldonian Mathematics, metallurgy, cosmology, origami (or the related discipline of plandami, which involves folding skeins of color inside a Grade IV plastic microcosmos), or studying such dull but necessary bureaucratic manuals as the Protocols of Engagement for Stormforce assault ships.

  Others ate.

  There was food in plenty, such as the meat of many whales (ever in demands by the Ebrell Islanders), and there was drink, such as the notorious blue milk for which the Combat College was so widely famed.

  Such food and drink was fabricated by the Combat College's servile asma of Minor Enablement, which created drink and viands of all descriptions through the manipulation of probability. This was a fraught and dangerous process, since an overuse of such manipulation could easily endanger the very fabric of reality itself. Furthermore, since the Asma Minor were undergoing a slow but remorseless deterioration – twenty thousand years is a long time, even in the life of an asma – the purity of Combat College provender could no longer be relied upon.

  Consequently, Hatch preferred to limit the amount which he ate in the College. But today he was pressed for time, so indulged himself in the convenience of a cafeteria breakfast, choosing to eat fried penguin served with steamed broccoli and baked yams, with a touch of konohachi on the side. The konohachi (a delicacy once much enjoyed by the Imakatari, the professional aesthetes of the Musorian Empire) consisted of the larvae and pupae of several wasps fried up with segments of Dazubi slugs, and was served on a small side dish, which was painted in a light blue streaked with red and white, as if in imitation of the dragonsky pottery of Tang.

  While Hatch was savoring the delicate flavor of the last wasp pupae (the taste has been likened to that of peas taken fresh from the pod and eaten with sugarsweet) a Combat Cadet approached him. The Cadet was Dog Java, who was one of the Yara – that is to say, a member of Dalar ken Halvar's underclass – and who approached Hatch with the diffidence appropriate to a mere Cadet intruding on the glory of a fully-fledged Startrooper.

  "Trooper Hatch," said Dog.

  "Speak," said Hatch, allowing himself to enjoy a leisured sense of aristocratic indulgence as he with his fingertips chased the last fragment of Dazubi slug round the imitation bone china of his side dish.

  Asodo Hatch did not usually act the arist
ocrat, but something in Dog Java's attitude provoked him. The unfortunate Dog tried too hard. He wanted to be friends with all the people who would have been his natural social superiors in the city of Dalar ken Halvar, and in his pursuit of acceptance he sometimes intruded upon people's privacy at the most inappropriate moments. As far as Hatch was concerned, the final straw had been Dog's behavior following the death of Hatch's father. When Lamjuk Dakoto Hatch had met his death on the sands of Dalar ken Halvar's Grand Arena, his son Asodo had largely wanted simply to be left alone. But Dog had come nosing around him repeatedly, offering unwanted and offensively platitudinous words of comfort – and that had estranged him from Asodo Hatch forever.

  At least as far as Hatch himself was concerned.

  Dog obviously did not appreciate the irrevocable reality and historical depths of this estrangement.

  "Scorpio Fax was looking for you," said Dog.

  Scorpio Fax, an immigrant from Shintoto, had once belonged to that elite group of Combat College students who had a serious chance of winning the instructorship. But since his nervous breakdown he had more or less dropped out of sight, and Hatch had lately seen very little of him.

  "So Fax is looking for me," said Hatch, securing that last bit of slug and sucking on its saltiness. "What did he want?"

  "I don't know," said Java. "He told me to tell you he wanted to see you, but he didn't say for what."

  "That was remiss of him," said Hatch, then licked the last traces of saltness and sweetness from his fingers, then used those same fingers to dismiss Dog Java with a gesture.

  Dog Java allowed himself to be thus dismissed, but he did not like Hatch's attitude at all. Hatch must surely know how offensive Dog found such a display of overlording arrogance. On account of that arrogance, Dog had disliked Hatch for years, and had as little to do with him as possible. This once – just this once – he had tried to pass on a message as a favor to Scorpio Fax. But that had been a mistake.

  Still, Hatch would soon be paid in blood for his arrogance, because – Dog Java choked the half-born thought to silence. In the Combat College, Dog did not usually even dare dream of killing Hatch. But Lupus Lon Oliver had made him swear to do as much, and Dog was grimly resolved to prove out the worth of his oath. But not here. Not yet. Not now. Not today. Later, later. Sometime. Somewhere. Soon. Yes, soon, it would have to be soon, because Hatch's trial by combat was soon, and later would be no good.

  Thus thought Dog.

  As for Hatch, he had already forgotten all about both Dog Java and Scorpio Fax by the time he quit the cafeteria and headed for the lockway. Amongst the Frangoni, meals were ever a steadying ritual, a time for leisured relaxation and unashamed self- indulgence, but on quitting the dining table Asodo Hatch immediately geared himself up to battle-pitch.

  These days, Hatch's schedule was jam-packed, and this particular day was busier than most. Hatch would even have skipped the singlefighter training duel had Paraban Senk not made it compulsory. Since Hatch was so aboil with urgencies, he had no time to spare for trivialities, hence wasted no time on trying to reason out the unstated needs of Scorpio Fax, who was no close friend of his, for all that their destinies had been so intimately intertwined in the past.

  On the way to the lockway, Hatch saw no fellow members of the Combat College, but did see evidence of human activity – drink cartons, chicken bones, banana peels, discarded papers and graffiti. The Combat College cleaning machines had been on the fritz for seven days, and unless Senk could get them working then someone would have to organize a clean-up.

  The rubbish was heavy near the cafeteria, but there was virtually none on the final approach to the dorgi's lair. Yet when the dorgi itself had challenged Hatch, and had been defeated in a contest of insults, it ordered the Frangoni warrior to pick up what litter there was.

  "What!" said Hatch, unable to believe his nose. (In the Frangoni tongue, probabilities are said to be heard with the ears, but for some obscure reason the hearing of all lies, dubiosities and improbabilities is said to be assigned to the nose – and though Hatch was conversing with the dorgi in Code Seven, he still thought of the dorgi's order as being meant for the nose rather than the ears).

  "I'm warning you," said the dorgi. "Pick up this rubbish or I will eliminate you."

  The malevolent behemoth had tried Hatch's patience so much and so often in the past that he had often been tempted to attempt its destruction. So far he had resisted that temptation. But the dorgi was provoking Hatch intolerably, and these days Hatch's temper was very close to reaching its breaking point.

  "You'll push your luck too far one of these days," said Hatch to the dorgi. "Now take back your order – or you'll suffer for it."

  But in the end the dorgi proves so savage in its insistence that Hatch, by way of concession, picked up a single scrap of paper then escaped to the airlock. In less than a heartbeat, the inner door dissolved away to nothing. Hatch stepped through, and the door instantly congealed to kaleidoscope behind him.

  The airlock's inner chamber worked perfectly, lecturing Hatch on a citizen's ecological duties as it cycled out the old air and replaced it with new. While it did so, Hatch straightened out the crumpled bit of Nexusmake paper and scanned the childish Nexus script written thereon. It was a list: the Gu. the Degli Oltra. the Vogliono Tendenza. the Mok.

  Remora Rialto.

  Gorbograd. the Vangelis. the Nu-chala-nuth. the Guma Sia Gli. the Permissive Dimensions.

  Obsidian IV.

  Leonard Haiku.

  Plandruk Qinplaqus.

  It was part of a child's study notes on the Nexus, obviously. But one item on the list should not have been there. Plandruk Qinplaqus. For Qinplaqus had never played any part in Nexus history but, rather, ruled as emperor in the city of Hatch's nativity. Hatch recrumpled the list and tucked it into a document pocket built into his purple robes.

  The airlock's central door dissolved, and Hatch stepped into the airlock's outer chamber. Again the air cycled, again a lecture spoke, and then the outer door dissolved. But unlike the other two doors, which were still working perfectly, the outer door was beginning to break down. When it dissolved, its substance did not dematerialize properly, but instead disintegrated into a fizzing slush of cold and filthy slob. Hatch waded through the slush, quitting the cold of the Combat College for the heat of the sun, the heat which was trapped and amplified by the kinema, the small natural amphitheater outside the lockway airlock.

  The kinema was populated night and day by a small audience – of children, mostly – drawn by the nonstop free entertainment offered by the Eye of Delusions. Some of these children raised a small, ironic cheer as Hatch emerged.

  "Nu-chala!" cried one. "Nu-chala-nuth!"

  Now where on earth had they learnt to say that? Never mind. The religion of Nu-chala-nuth was safety dead, twenty thousand years dead, and in Hatch's estimate all chances of its resurrection were dead, null and zero.

  As Hatch strode into the kinema, the lockway's outermost airlock door began to coagulate behind him. It was supposed to open and close instantaneously, but after being neglected for a koba – to use the Ninetongue word for a period of twenty millennia – it was starting to show its age, as indeed was everything in the Combat College. Doubtless eventually the entire College would slag down to wreckage and the Teacher of Control would mumble its way into impotent senility. But for the moment everything still worked.

  After a fashion.

  True, the outer door of the lockway was malfunctional; true, the milk in the cafeteria was blue; true, the illusion tanks often glitched; true, the temperature controls were shot, so the whole Combat College was shivering cold all year round; but, with a little luck, the whole thing would last for at least a little longer.

  And Hatch – Asodo Hatch had no thought for the last twenty thousand years or for the next, since his fate would be settled, one way or another, in the course of the next few days.

  Behind the purple-skinned Frangoni warrior, the airlock door ha
rdened at last to the iridescent beauty of kaleidoscope. The lockway's triple airlock doors of kaleidoscope ever protected the Combat College, forbidding entry to the unwanted. Thus that institution had for twenty thousand years been able to continue its rightful mission: to train Startroopers for the Stormforce of the Nexus. Deep in the heart of the mountain lay the Combat College, deep in the heart of Cap Foz Para Lash. But Hatch was outside, outside in the sunlight, standing on the red dust of the Plain of Jars, standing on the fringes of Dalar ken Halvar: the City of the Sun.

  City and Combat College.

  Two worlds.

  Two worlds – each an illusion to the other.

  "I vote for this one," said Hatch.

  But while he voted for Dalar ken Halvar, he was still contending for dominance in the world of the Combat College.

  And – Back in the world of that College, the redskinned Ebrell Islander named Lupus Lon Oliver was conferring with Dog Java in the shadowy privacy of the rock-walled laboratory, and was demanding that Dog explain to him why Hatch still lived, as yet unmurdered, unassassinated, and all too strong fit and dangerous.

  Chapter Five

  The Chem and the Yara: the rich and the poor. In Dalar ken Halvar's Pang, the word for wealth is the same as that for reality. The Chem are those who control the city's wealth, and hence its realities. The poor, the Yara – the underclass of the People Pang – are by definition Unreal, imaginary, dream-delusions formed in the shape of people.

  The fingertips, my chaffinch,

  Burnt to a flinch, and thus – The world unhanded, humming-bird denied.

  All light charade, all voices

  In flesh but charnel shadows -

  Shadows with shadows scented.

  Yet – It was mid-morning when Hatch exited from the lockway. Polk the Cash, the noseless moneylender who had lately assumed such a dominant place in his life, should have been there to greet him, but was not, which irritated Hatch intensely. In these days of tension, irritation was becoming Hatch's dominant operating mode. Which was understandable. He was desperately busy, and right now he wanted to make a deal with Polk, to hurry himself to House Jodorunda, then push on to Temple Isherzan to keep his appointment with the High Priest.