The Worshippers and the Way coaaod-9

by Hugh Cook

  Yet if Eden had truly chosen this centaur form of his own free will – which was what he claimed – then his choice was illogical in the extreme. For if the world was truly to be inundated by a Great Flood – which was what Eden taught, and what all Evolutionists believed – then it was hard to see how the possession of a horse's legs, belly and tail would be conducive to either happiness or survival. Unfortunately, this note of illogic had yet to strike Penelope herself, even though she had personally decided to meet The End Of The World As We Know It in the form of a catfish.

  For his part, Hatch thought the whole of evolutionary theory to be but a total nonsense.

  As for this alleged Hermit Crab, enlightened philosopher and Evolutionist extraordinary – well, Hatch had seen the crabs of both land and sea in the course of his peregrinations round Parengarenga, and was convinced that your average crab is no more enlightened than a scorpion. To imagine an unaverage Crab that gave lofty lectures on the Victory of Mind over Form was quite beyond his capacity.

  In search of confirmation of his own scepticism, Hatch had consulted with the Combat College, which to his great satisfaction had given him an absolute assurance that there was no such thing as an intelligent crab, let alone a talking crab. This the Combat College had proved out by an exhaustive search of every available database. Crabs were recorded on a great many of the billions of worlds known to humanity, but not a single such animal had yet advanced to the stage of needing to learn its table manners.

  Thus Edgerley Eden's Hermit Crab was confirmed as an impossibility.

  As for Eden himself, a centaur in the flesh – why, there was no great mystery about that, since centaurs were common in the Permissive Dimensions. Indeed, on some worlds known to the Combat College databases, centaurs were almost as common as dragons. All in all, it was quite reasonable to presume that Eden had been born into a small population of centaurs existing somewhere within a lifetime's traveling distance of Dalar ken Halvar, for all that Eden claimed to have been born as a human on the Ebrell Islands, and to have ventured to Untunchilamon as a humanformed pirate.

  Be that as it may, Penelope was certainly enraptured by Eden and his teachings, and donations consequent upon her devotion had led her into debt. There was also the cost of the bath and deliveries of bathwater to bear in mind. Outside of the Combat College, there was no such thing as running water in Dalar ken Halvar, so every drop used for every purpose had to be lugged from the Yamoda River, and such lugging was expensive if done in any great quantity.

  "Joma," said Hatch, again challenging his sister with her lawful birthname.

  "My name," said Penelope, with that studied female insolence which she had brought to such a pitch of perfection, "is Penelope.

  That's my name. If you want to speak to me, then use it."

  Hatch brought his wrist to his mouth then kissed it in the Frangoni manner, seeking thereby to moderate his anger.

  "Penelope, then," said Hatch, still struggling to control the rage which threatened to upset his judgment as he looked down on the woman in the bathtub. "Penelope. We must talk."

  Penelope closed her eyes. She had perfected this manoeuvre during a previous spasm of religious enthusiasm. Her last Perfect Master had believed (or had claimed to believe) that sleep is the better part of life, and that wakefulness is at best a necessary evil. One of his sidelines had been organizing orgies, since he had held orgiastic excess to be the best available soporific. (Hatch had argued about this, claiming that there was nothing to beat a good solid blow on the head for ensuring unconsciousness, but he had lost that argument, or at least Penelope had claimed he had lost it).

  "Laa-mo," hummed Penelope.

  It was the going-to-sleep mantra taught to her by her previous Perfect Master.

  Hatch fished a sodden sponge out of the foot-bowl by the bath. He kissed it, then let it fall. Obedient to the basic laws of physics, the sponge accelerated under the gravitational pull of the planet, and, like a meteorite dragged in from the cold and vacuumous wastelands of outer space, it went hurtling down through the atmosphere until it slammed into Penelope's face.

  "Wah!" said Penelope, waking up in great hurry.

  "Don't fool around," said Hatch, allowing a hint of his anger to show, "because I'm not in the mood. You're in debt to the tune of half a hundred scorpions, which is just a fraction less than the worth of your flesh."

  A scorpion was a gold coin issued by the Silver Emperor. It was exactly equivalent in value to the zeal issued by the Bralsh.

  The zeal, however, was a small ring of nine-carat gold bearing interior and exterior banker's marks, whereas the scorpion was a thin coin with a milled edge, with a crown imaged on the face and, on the obverse, the pincer-wielding arachnid for which it was named.

  "Half a hundred!" said Penelope. "I'm worth more than that."

  "No you're not," said Hatch. "Polk the Cash has had a valuer take a look at you."

  "He's done no such thing," said Penelope. "I'd have known."

  "You wouldn't have known," said Hatch. "They're very discreet."

  "How can he tell what I'm worth when he never saw me with my clothes off?"

  "Female, Frangoni, age 25, tall, big-breasted," said Hatch.

  "Value, 49 crowns and a fraction. I saw the report myself. You're worth just less than the money you owe."

  "So what do you expect me to do about it?" said Penelope.

  "You'd better do something," said Hatch. "Because Polk is threatening to claim you as his slave."

  "Then let him threaten," said Penelope.

  She was either carefree or thoughtfree, one or the other.

  Certainly she had never got to grips with the management of money, for this is part of that greater discipline of managing oneself, and Penelope had lived largely unmanaged either by herself or by anyone else.

  "He's got a buyer already," said Hatch, striving to make the woman see sense, though he suspected there was no more profit to be had from arguing with Penelope than in arguing with a goldfish.

  "The buyer is from the Stepping Stone Islands. He'll take you north, never to be seen again."

  "That's a nonsense," said Penelope.

  "What do you mean, a nonsense?" said Hatch.

  "Just that. I can't be sold, because I'm someone's slave already."

  "Whose?" said Hatch.

  "The Silver Emperor's, of course."

  "What are you talking about?" said Hatch, intensely irritated by this nonsense.

  "We're all his slaves," said Penelope. "We Frangoni, I mean."

  "No!" said Hatch, dismayed by the immensity of this error.

  "You're not his slave at all. Only the men are his slaves."

  "What do you mean, only the men?"

  "Just that," said Hatch, wondering if his sister really was this ignorant or if this was her idea of a joke. "Only the men are his slaves. The women are free. That's the law."

  "Why do the men always get the good things?" said Penelope.

  "Because that's how the world was made," said Hatch. "So you're free, and because you're free, you can be bought and sold, which means – Penelope, you've really gone too far this time. Polk can come in here and claim you. Which is exactly what he's going to do. Then he'll sell you to this foreigner, and that man, that man can rape you at will or – or cut off your hair and sell it!"

  Hatch hoped to terrify Penelope into a realization of the precariousness of her own position, and thereby to curb the increasing recklessness of her spending. It was possible that, by doing a deal with Lupus Lon Oliver in accordance with the wisdom of Sesno Felvus, Hatch would shortly be in a position to pay off Penelope's debts. But that would bring no joy to anyone if she simply went out and mortgaged herself all over again.

  Yet in his attempt to terrify, Hatch proved less than adequate.

  "Rape me!" said Penelope scornfully. "Is that what he'll do?"

  "Yes," said Hatch, who truthfully thought that there was a strong probability that anyone who bought Penelope
as a slave would do exactly that.

  "So what do you care?" said Penelope.

  "I'm your brother," said Hatch. "Of course I care. I don't want to see you taken, kidnapped, stolen, sold."

  "So what do you want?" said Penelope, with surprising bitterness.

  "Why," said Hatch, "I want what any brother would want for his sister. To see you married and pregnant."

  Hatch was trying hard. Amongst the Frangoni, fecundity was highly valued, and one of the politest things one could say to a woman was "May you soon be pregnant". Hatch seldom said any such thing to his sister, for such formal politesse was not commonly required between brother and sister. But he felt that the stress of the moment called for an extra effort.

  "Married!" said Penelope. "Pregnant! Since when have you wanted me either? It was because of you I had to murder my husband."

  "Grief of a dog!" said Hatch. "We're not going to go into that again, are we?"

  "Why not?" said Penelope. "This is my husband we're talking about. Not a – a flowerpot!"

  "Oh come on," said Hatch, annoyed by Penelope's quibbling pettishness. "A fine young woman like you can always get another husband."

  "That's not the point," said Penelope. "I had one, and now he's dead."

  "Of course he's dead," said Hatch, infuriated by Penelope's obtuseness. "That was the whole point of getting him married. You knew that before you went into it."

  "Yes, yes, but you're my brother, so what could I do? You made me a murderer!"

  "As I recall," said Hatch, making a heroic attempt to govern the passion of his mounting rage, "it was me who did the killing.

  All you had to do was step outside."

  "That's all!?"

  "Well, yes," said Hatch, who thought he had now won this argument, and that Penelope should acknowledge as much. "Stop making such a fuss! I mean, you weren't in love with him or anything. Were you?"

  "What would you know about it?"

  "Well of course you weren't. You never even met him till you were married, and then – "

  "Then you killed him!" said Penelope.

  "If it hadn't been for me," said Hatch, deeply vexed by this continued onslaught, "you'd never have married him in the first place. You'd never even have met him. I found him for you, so it was thanks to me – "

  "Yes. You found him. So you're responsible!"

  "Responsible?," said Hatch, baffled by this display of female irrationality. "Responsible for what?"

  "For killing him!" screamed Penelope. "For killing my husband! Murder, bloody murder, killing him, cutting his throat, stabbing him, slashing him, blood, blood, blood everywhere, you killed him, and he was mine, and – and – and I – I loved him!"

  With those final words, her hysteria stammered into irreconcilable grief, and she burst into tears.

  Hatch still had no clear conception of what, if anything, he might have done to upset her. True, he had killed her husband, but it should be pure pleasure for a Frangoni girl to help her brother encompass a necessary murder. And even supposing the experience did not prove to be an unalloyed pleasure, it was still a duty for a sister to thus help a brother. But… well, if marriage really meant so much to her | | "If marriage really means so much to you," said Hatch, "you could always marry me."

  This was a very great-hearted and self-sacrificing gesture, for Hatch did not by any means want to marry his sister. She knew him well, very well indeed, and he was a true Frangoni male in that he was ever uneasy in the presence of any female who knew too much about him. The Frangoni consider it best to bed with strangers, for to bed with someone is to be emotionally vulnerable, and a stranger is more likely to be ignorant of one's weak points. Consequently, amongst the Frangoni a brother will rarely marry his sister except under the compulsion of a compelling duty.

  Penelope squeezed the tears out of her eyes, mastered her sobs, then said:

  "You? You're offering to marry me?"

  "Yes," said Hatch, already regretting the offer, but putting a good face on it. "It might stall Polk for a month or two."

  "Stall Polk!" said Penelope, sorrow turning to outrage. "I should marry you for that? You! Marry you!?"

  "Why, yes," said Hatch, starting to feel offended. "Why shouldn't you marry me?"

  Asodo Hatch did not consider himself thin-skinned.

  Nevertheless, when a man invites a woman to marry him, he is apt to be disconcerted if her reaction is one of baleful fury, and Hatch, being in many ways a very average and conventional man, was so disconcerted.

  "Marry you?" screamed Penelope. "You with your wife in drugs and dying? You with your fancy whore on the top of the hill?"

  "The Lady Iro Murasaki," said Hatch coldly, "is not a whore."

  "She's a whore! A whore, a bitching whore! But I'm no whore, I'm smarter than her, I know you through and through, I'm your sister, I won't be fooled or whored!"

  With that, Penelope hurled the wet sponge at Hatch, or tried to. But she underestimated the difficulty of hurling something whilst fully clothed and recumbent in a wooden bathtub half full of water. She banged her elbow painfully – and howled.

  Hatch looked down on the woestruck woman with dismay.

  Howling broke to sobbing, and in her sobbing Penelope choked out a heartbroken accusation.

  "You killed him to rape. To rape me. That's why. You wanted me, wanted me, that's why you killed him. Rapist!"

  The situation was painfully difficult, particularly as Hatch felt duty-bound to question his own heart. Had he truly cut down Darius Flute simply so he could take possession of his own sister?

  Hatch decided the claim was fatuous. He had absolutely no desire for his sister, even though she bore upon her nose the ceremonial blue and green tattoos which denote a woman who has killed and castrated a would-be rapist. Several ethnologists have written that Frangoni males are inevitably aroused by the implicit challenge posed by such tattoos, but Hatch was not aroused at all.

  Even though he knew those tattoos to be true to their boast, he found them distinctly unproductive of desire – an unpleasant reminder of a squalid episode which he would much sooner forget.

  "I don't want you," said Hatch. "I never have. I never will."

  "Never!" said Penelope.

  And, unable to bear such a brutal rejection of her womanly charms, she started to howl again.

  Hatch was glad to hear someone at the door, which gave him an excuse to escape from the bathroom, back to the crowded lacquerwork luxury of the outer room. But on venturing to that outer room he was somewhat dismayed to find that the interloper was his elder brother, Oboro Bakendra Hatch. The black-bearded Oboro Bakendra was three years his senior, and was a fanatical priest of the Great God Mokaragash. Relations between the brothers had deteriorated markedly since Oboro Bakendra had joined the priesthood three years earlier, on quitting the Combat College.

  On joining the priesthood, Oboro Bakendra had demanded that Hatch cut short his studies in the Combat College and join likewise. Hatch had protested his devotion to the Silver Emperor, the great Plandruk Qinplaqus, whose obedient slave he was.

  Whereupon Oboro Bakendra had obtained from the great Qinplaqus a dispensation permitting Hatch to quit his military studies in favor of a religious career if he so chose.

  Upon which Hatch had been forced to acknowledge to himself that any career in the service of the Great God Mokaragash would be intolerable if it took place in the shadow of his elder brother Oboro Bakendra, who had inherited the stubbornness, the overbearing arrogance and the explosive anger of their father Lamjuk Dakoto Hatch.

  Hatch's decision to remain in the Combat College had led to something of a breach between the two brothers.

  As far as Oboro Bakendra was concerned, his younger brother Asodo was polluting himself by his intimate relations with Outsiders. Asodo Hatch was working with the unclean, he was eating with the unclean, and it was an open secret that he was even sleeping with one of the unclean in the manner of lust. Oboro Bakendra had continued to insist
that Hatch should abort his Combat College training, and had become more and more insistent as it started to become obvious that Hatch had a good chance of landing a permanent position in that College.

  "Hatch!" said Oboro Bakendra, as Hatch emerged from the bathroom and entered upon the outer room.

  "I was just leaving," said Hatch. "Penelope is all yours.

  She's in the bath."

  From the bathroom there came a crash, followed by a scream of female rage. Penelope had started throwing things. As a small girl, she had once knocked out her grandfather with a watermelon, and her temper had not mellowed since.

  "It's not her I'm looking for," said Oboro Bakendra. "It's you!"

  Oboro Bakendra had come to discipline his younger brother, and he had not come alone. Hatch was conspicuously large, and one of the problems of being a big man is that anyone minded to pick a quarrel with you is going to be forewarned of the need for adequate preparations.

  The strength of Oboro Bakendra's preparations became clear as others came crowding into House Jodorunda behind him – his sidekicks and backkicks, a group of like-minded fanatics all armed with sticks. These were not snake-breaking sticks or rods for the chastisement of dogs. Rather, they were knurled and knubbly hardwood clubs built for the breaking of men – or the battery of elephants. And Hatch knew at once that he was in trouble. Nexus battle doctrine holds that one can fight six, but not if the six have each been trained to fight six – and no adult Frangoni male was innocent of the means of slaughter. Hatch started to think he might be better off back in the bathroom with Penelope.

  "Well, gentlemen," said Hatch. "What can I do for you?"

  "Gentlemen, gentlemen," said Oboro Bakendra. "Flattery, is it? The Age of Flattery is an age long gone, brother mine. This is an Age of Righteousness, an age of punishing wrath."