The Worshippers and the Way coaaod-9

by Hugh Cook

  Disregarding that lapse into platitudinity, Sesno Felvus had wrought a minor miracle of revelation, and Hatch felt almost lightheaded as he started off down Cap Uba, retracing his steps toward Zambuk Street.

  Selling the instructorship outright to Lupus Lon Oliver, allowing his warrior's pride to be bought and sold… the idea was not exactly enrapturing, but… it was a solution! And it was so obvious! Obvious to Sesno Felvus, even though the High Priest was so far removed from the center of immediate crisis. But of course one goes to such a person for advice precisely because such an individual, being free of the turbulence of the moment, is much better placed to consider the options and see the obvious.

  But what if Lupus Lon Oliver refused to bribe Asodo Hatch in accordance with Sesno Felvus's suggestion?

  What if Lon Oliver refused, and Gan Oliver refused likewise, and Hatch had to fight?

  What if Hatch fought and lost? What if he lost and went down in flames, dying in the torn wreckage of a singlefighter? Burning, screaming, falling, down and down, down to the steaming jungles of Cicala or the turbid seas of Yo? What if – "Go-la!"

  Hatch stopped, startled. He was still on the temple precincts, no place for anyone to be addressing him in Nexus Ninetongue. So who – A Frangoni?

  Yes, it was a Frangoni!

  No person of the purple would ever speak anything other than Frangoni upon such sacred soil. Yet here was Son'sholoma Gezira, he who was son of Vara Gezira, and there was no doubt that he had used the Nexus form of address.

  Keeping company with Son'sholoma Gezira were half a dozen young men, all of whom looked anxious. They were barefooted, and wore nothing but loincloths, as befitted their station in life.

  All belonged to the didimo caste, and the didimo were hewers of wood and drawers of water. There was precious little wood to hew in Dalar ken Halvar, but nevertheless the caste distinctions had not weakened in the generations since the Frangoni who now dwelt in the City of Sun had departed from the Elephant Coast, and it was wrong for one of low caste to open a conversation with one of higher status on such sacred soil.

  "May we speak?" said Son'sholoma, still using the Code Seven which served as the Commonspeak of the Nexus.

  "Who speaks to me here speaks to me in the tongue proper to the place," said Hatch, phrasing his anger in Frangoni.

  Only three years earlier, Hatch and Son'sholoma had been peers in the Combat College, but much had changed since then.

  Son'sholoma had disgraced himself, for one thing. Now Hatch spoke roughly, and he spoke in the mode of war, making his anger plain.

  Son'sholoma had breached the protocols fitting to Temple Isherzan.

  Hatch was all the more angry because his faith in the propriety of the customs of his own people was so weak – and weak at a time when he was trying to draw emotional support from his unity with the traditions of his people.

  "Have I offended you?" said Son'sholoma, sounding surprised.

  Son'sholoma Gezira was not prepared for Hatch to be so fiercely the Frangoni, because of course Son'sholoma had no knowledge of the truly strenuous combat of cultures which Hatch was manfully endeavoring to resolve in favor of his Frangoni half.

  "Your tongue is the offence," said Hatch, with an intolerance which rejected all his Nexus training.

  The caste difference he could overlook. After all, when Hatch and Son'sholoma had trained together in the Combat College, they had shared their lives without any regard for caste. But this was not the Combat College. This was Cap Uba, the Frangoni rock, the island of refuge, the place which was theirs and theirs alone in a culture otherwise alien, and nobody should ever compromise the emotional security of that place by speaking there in a foreign tongue.

  "I meant no offence, brother," said Son'sholoma.

  Hatch stiffened, quite shocked. This time his shock was quite genuine. It owed nothing to Hatch's inner conflicts. Hatch was shocked because Son'sholoma had switched languages, abandoning the Commonspeak of the Nexus to phrase his apology in the Motsu Kazuka of the Nu-chala-nuth. Hatch remembered Beggar Grim speaking that very day of brotherhood, of the Way of the Nu-chala-nuth, and he remembered the beggar's terrifying hope. Hope of being first made Real then made equal, and then – most terrifying of ambitions, this – enriched out of his beggarhood into the full liberties of manhood.

  Grim's beggar-babbling had made only a momentary impression on Hatch, but he was shocked rigid to find Son'sholoma Gezira speaking atop the Frangoni rock in Motsu Kazura, the tongue of the Nu-chala-nuth, a religion which should by rights have died out of memory twenty thousand years ago.

  "I give you five words," said Hatch, speaking Frangoni, and again speaking very much in the mode of war.

  In the Frangoni, to offer someone "five words" was a threat.

  The person thus threatened had "five words" in which to explain themselves, with the implication being that dire consequences would follow if the explanation proved inadequate.

  "Brother," said Son'sholoma, still speaking the Motsu Kazuka of the Nu-chala-nuth, albeit haltingly. "I want you to me the teaching. You my teacher, the Way."

  His atrocious accent, his stumbling grammar, the hesitation of his tongue – all these things told Hatch that Son'sholoma had scarcely the barest rudiments of Motsu Kazuka at his command. But Son'sholoma had learnt enough of that language to ask something utterly appalling.

  "I don't understand a word you're saying," said Hatch, in his native Frangoni.

  "Then understand me now," said Son'sholoma Gezira, at last consenting to use that same Frangoni tongue. "I and we, me and mine, myself and these with me, we wish you to induct us into the Way of the Nu-chala-nuth."

  "Then you and yours need some brain surgery courtesy of a heavy rock," said Hatch.

  "This is not a joke," said Son'sholoma. "We're serious."

  "Serious?" said Hatch. "You're seriously lunatic! Motsu Kazuka, Nu-chala-nuth – are you mad? What do you want? Our own homegrown version of the Spasm Wars? This is – if I were to exhaust the thesaurus of lunacy, I could hardly find the words of it. As for me – this is my temple, the temple of my people, the temple of yours."

  "I meant no offence," said Son'sholoma. "But we did not think you came here to worship."

  "What else does one come to a temple for?" said Hatch, rejecting the suggestion that he was in any sense an apostate, an unbeliever, or – perish the thought! – a tourist-stranger beset by ethnological insights. "Why else does one come here? To shit wasps, perhaps? Or bugger rocks with a broomstick? You're mad enough for both, but I'm too sane to waste my time by watching."

  Then Hatch left, or tried to.

  "Wait," said Son'sholoma, stepping in his way. "You know the Way. You have the knowledge. It is written – it's written that anyone who knows the teachings can propagate the same, regardless of their own belief."

  That was true. The religion of the Nu-chala-nuth was strange in the extreme in that it could legitimately be preached even by an unbeliever.

  "Where is that written?" said Hatch, who dearly wanted to know who was preaching Nu-chala-nuth in Dalar ken Halvar.

  "It is written," said Son'sholoma Gezira, "in your own thesis. That is where it is written."

  "My thesis?" said Hatch.

  "Yes! The thesis you wrote to gain your degree."

  "Wah!" said Hatch.

  It was true. It was true. He had written a thesis which had contained an account of such teachings. But he had thought nothing of it at the time. If one writes that some have mastered the art of making the sun explode or of causing the moon to drown itself in a bucket of blood, one does not usually expect such casual reference to the folly of others to lead to disaster in the literal world of the fact and the flesh.

  "You know the teachings," said Son'sholoma, pressing home his advantage. "You know and you wrote. You – "

  "Since when was simple study rash apostasy? To give an account of war, murder, rape, torture, blasphemy, plague, famine, flood and the demolition of the sun is not to
extend a general invitation to the world's madmen to accomplish the fact of the same. Will you stand in my way? Stand, then! I give you five."

  Again the threat. This time, Son'sholoma was being offered a count of five in which to abolish himself, or face the immediate and unlimited consequences of his folly.

  Since Hatch's anger was unfeigned, and since Hatch was built along lines which suggested an ample capacity for the breaking of rocks and the bending of iron bars, and since Son'sholoma knew appearances in this case to be by no means deceptive, Son'sholoma chose to retreat, signing his fellows to accompany him downhill.

  As Son'sholoma Gezira and his half-dozen barefoot accomplices headed off down the hill, Hatch watched them go with some considerable foreboding. There were not so many as a billion people in all of Parengarenga, so the teachings of Nu-chala-nuth could hardly lead to the death of billions. But even so. The Frangoni nation survived in Dalar ken Halvar only because it was socially cohesive, and at the heart of that social cohesion was the worship of the Great God Mokaragash, the tribal god which was theirs and theirs alone. Whether a baleful entity was immanent in the stone of the Inner Idol was beside the point, at least as far as the human realities of the moment were concerned. The alien religion of Nu-chala-nuth could destroy the Frangoni nation, even if it did not spark open revolution in Dalar ken Halvar as a whole.

  But Son'sholoma was reckless, and full of thwarted ambition.

  If he could establish the religion of the Nu-chala-nuth in Dalar ken Halvar, he might thereby win a measure of power, fame and glory, if only briefly, whereas otherwise – what else was there for him?

  "A pity," said Hatch to himself, as he started to follow on after Son'sholoma.

  In the Combat College, Son'sholoma Gezira had been a very promising student, gifted with great intelligence; but he had lacked the ability to master himself, and in the end his disciplinary defaults had caused him to be exiled from the Combat College. Now the lockway was forever closed against him.

  Therefore, since the Free Corps was equally closed to Frangoni, there was no future for Son'sholoma Gezira in Dalar ken Halvar.

  As Hatch descended from Cap Uba and made his way toward his sister's house, he wondered what had made Son'sholoma think it safe to approach him with such a blasphemous proposition. Hatch could only think that his challenge for the instructor's position was being interpreted by some – or by Son'sholoma at least – as a rejection of the Frangoni.

  True, there had never yet been a Frangoni combat instructor.

  For the last five generations the position had always gone to an Ebrell Islander, while previous to that it had usually been held by one of the Pang.

  But even so – "Strange times and dangerous times," said Hatch, wondering if it was Son'sholoma who had been preaching the doctrines of the Nuchala-nuth to the beggars at the lockway, and whether Hatch himself would be put to the necessity of cutting down Son'sholoma before this business was done.

  Chapter Seven

  Inner City: that part of Dalar ken Halvar which lies west of the Yamoda River, south of Na Sashimoko, east of the Dead Mouth and north of Yon Yo. It takes in the rocky upthrusts of Cap Gargle, Cap Uba and Cap Foz Para Lash; the Grand Arena (otherwise known as the Great Arena); the administrative quarter of Bon Tray; the commercial center of Actus Dorum; and the slumlands of Spara Slank.

  So there – one house -

  The toenail with the pubic hair -

  The larynx with the liver.

  Flesh made flesh with separate faces,

  With separate hearts which in pretense

  Are said to sing in single beat -

  To sing to the beat of a single blood.

  With his audience with the High Priest Sesno Felvus satisfactorily concluded, but with some residual anger still remaining from his confrontation with Son'sholoma Gezira, the Frangoni warrior Asodo Hatch descended from the Frangoni rock. He made his way down Cap Uba toward Zambuk Street, the arrowline west-east avenue which ran from the Dead Mouth to the Yamoda, thus dividing the northern commercial area of Actus Dorum from the southern slumlands of Spara Slank.

  As Hatch descended through the sunbeat heat, he considered deviating from his schedule to visit the Brick, the Free Corps headquarters which stood on the southern side of Zambuk Street.

  There he might well find Lupus Lon Oliver – or Lupus's father, Manfred Gan Oliver. They could talk. Negotiate. Make a settlement.

  But it might well be better to negotiate on neutral ground, or to find a third party to do the negotiating.

  Besides – Before Hatch sought to win gold from the Brick, he would have to curb the madness of his sister's spending, otherwise any new wealth which he won for his family would be dissipated in very short order.

  By the time Hatch gained the soft red dust of Zambuk Street, he had decided that negotiations were best postponed. So he set out east toward the Yamoda. But he had not taken so many as three steps when he was hailed from the Brick.

  "Hey, Mister Purple!"

  Hatch glanced at the Brick and saw messenger boys lounging outside, as usual. The one who had hailed him was – he could not be certain of this, but guessed with some confidence – the same boy who had accosted him earlier in the day with a cheating offer from Polk the Cash, who had sought to buy Hatch's chocolate for a veritable impoverishment of opium.

  "You want to buy my sister?" cried the boy. "You sell me your dog, I sell you my sister."

  Since there was no profit to be had from trying to discipline messenger boys, Asodo Hatch – who, for the record, was not then or ever the owner of any dog, though it must be admitted that his daughter Onica was in the possession of such a beast – chose to continue east along Zambuk Street in a mode of deafness. As he did so, he automatically checked the safety of the half-dozen opium balls he had bought from Shona, finding those packages of peace still safe in a tight-buttoned document-pocket inside his robes.

  Initially he lengthened his stride, striving to put distance between himself and the insults of the Brick without actually seeming to hurry; but the sun's heat and the aching length of the dusty road soon persuaded him to a slower pace.

  Zambuk Street was one of the major avenues created by the clearance orders issued by Plandruk Qinplaqus in the first enthusiasm of his rule, which enthusiasm was by now a matter of ancient history. The Silver Emperor had meant such avenues to function as firebreaks, and thereby lessen the frequency with which his bamboo city burnt to the ground. In this he had been only partially successful, for there had been two disastrous citywide fires in Hatch's lifetime alone.

  Hatch was much-dusty with the redness of the Zambuk Street by the time he reached House Jodorunda, which stood on the northern side of the west-east avenue.

  Though small, House Jodorunda was still a place of considerable pretensions, its walls built of a gray stone imported from quarries a hundred leagues distant, and its door made of solid timbers rather than the more customary bamboo weave.

  However, of late the house had been looking much the worse for wear. The skeletal Guardian Gods atop the roof were lopsided, broken or missing, and the Ancestral Faces painted on the door were chipped, faded, or almost elided by sunbeat and weathering.

  That door stood ajar.

  Hatch pushed the door wide open then entered. The ceiling here was high, the room in shadows. It was a room crowded with furniture, most of it high-gloss laquerwork. Hatch knew the furniture, like the house, to be mortgaged already for more than its value.

  "Joma?" said Hatch, challenging the silence with his sister's official name.

  He was answered by the silence of spiderwebs, the prophecy of stone.

  But then, these days his sister was not answering to Joma.

  Instead, she was insisting on being called by the ridiculous name which she had taken when she entered upon her brief-lived marriage: Penelope Flute.

  A slight splash told Hatch where to look. He strode into the bathroom and there found his sister immersed in a tub of water.
/>
  This annoyed him intensely. Hatch had scant tolerance for folly, so the lunacy of his sister's bathing habits had long been a source of ireful exasperation.

  "Joma," said Hatch, endeavoring to suppress his vexation as he looked down on his waterlogged sister. "We have to talk."

  "Do you not think," said Penelope, looking up at him from the bathtub, "that there is a certain degree of impropriety involved in bearding your sister in her bathroom?"

  This was a question to which there was no established answer, since the Frangoni did not usually have baths, let alone bathrooms. When they wanted to wash then they went to the river just like everyone else, which was by far and away the cheapest and most sensible method of resolving the hygienic question.

  "I do not consider," said Hatch, "that there is any impropriety involved in seeing my sister at any time when she is fully dressed."

  Penelope was so dressed, for she had been fully clothed when she had immersed herself in her tub of water. This immersion was a part of her religious praxis, for Penelope was an Evolutionist.

  Since dawn, the purple-skinned Frangoni female had been steeping herself in the water – which was decidedly muddy – in order to encourage her transformation into a fish. At the moment of the Changing of Forms, her clothes would become scales, hence she was careful never to get wet unless she was wearing them.

  Penelope believed her transformation to a piscatorial mode of existence to be imminent, for thus she had been advised by her Perfect Master, whom she believed to be infallible. The Perfect Master in question was Edgerley Eden, a centaur who dwelt in Hepko Cholo, an urban enclave to the east of the Yamoda River. Eden claimed his own transformation into centaur shape to be proof of the coming General Evolution, of which he had knowledge (or so he said) thanks to his studies under an alleged Hermit Crab of Untunchilamon, an improbable individual said to be a philosopher a billion years old.

  Now it was a matter of record that anyone who cared to pay the entrance fee could penetrate the Temple of Change in Hepko Cholo and gaze therein upon the horseflesh-manflesh configuration which constituted Edgerley Eden's corporeal form. Hatch had never been, but knew several reliable witnesses who had, including his own elder brother (Oboro Bakendra) and the ever-reliable Shona of the Combat College. On occasion, Hatch had also seen Eden from a distance when the centaur was promenading in the open sunlight, or bathing in the Yamoda.