The Worshippers and the Way coaaod-9

by Hugh Cook

  Thus when Scorpio Fax came bursting into House Takabaga, he found Polk seated cross-legged upon a meal-mat, enjoying a bowl of scorpion soup. And when Fax called upon Polk to come outside and be murdered, the effect of this call was to precipitate violence.

  This violence woke from sleep the slumbering Asodo Hatch, who came stumbling from the bedroom in a state of dazed bewilderment, to find Scorpio Fax sprawled full-length on the beaten earth of the floor, with the shards of a soup pot scattered around him.

  Explanations followed, explanations to which Fax reluctantly added once he had recovered consciousness. Whereupon Asodo Hatch, who was not at all amused, declared Fax to be his prisoner, and further declared that he would deliver this prisoner to Na Sashimoko that very night.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Frangoni: the purple people of Parengarenga. Those who dwell in Dalar ken Halvar keep themselves very much to themselves to themselves on the great rock known as Cap Uba, west of the Dead Mouth and east of the commercial center known as Actus Dorum.

  There in the temple of Isherzan they worship the Great God Mokaragash, the Resurrector of Souls. The ethnarch of the Frangoni of Dalar ken Halvar is Sesno Felvus, who is also and necessarily the High Priest of the Great God Mokaragash.

  This bowl has fed from

  Strangers whose offence

  Is spoken by their saliva, by the grub Which lives between their lips and sings Of locust-lust and slime Thicker than worms.

  I would have the food of my own people,

  But here devour, perforce,

  The bedbug's tapeworm,

  The brandling's red and yellow,

  The bloodworm's grease:

  And eat my words in whispers in the night, Lost in the heartland of an alien dust.

  So it came to pass that, early on the night of the Day of Three Fishes, just three days short of Dog Day, Asodo Hatch was woken from sleep to find Dalar ken Halvar in disorder and Scorpio Fax sprawled full-length on the floor of House Takabaga.

  After formally taking Fax a prisoner, Asodo Hatch then with equal formality invited Polk the Cash to enjoy the hospitality of House Takabaga during these times of uncertainty.

  "I have it on good information," said Hatch, improvising a lie of some cunning, "that the revolutionaries now on the loose in the city have a death-list, and that your name is near the top of that list."

  Of course, the noseless one did not need the encouragement of such lies, but Hatch wanted to make sure. For Hatch hoped that by sheltering Polk in this time of trouble he would thereafter obtain some amelioration of his financial burdens. Polk, for his part, readily accepted Hatch's invitation, and had grace enough to conceal the fact that just such an invitation had already been extended to him by Talanta and Onica.

  With the affairs of the moment thus arranged, Hatch confirmed to one and all that he intended to take Scorpio Fax to Na Sashimoko, the ruling palace of the City of Sun. Having made that announcement, Hatch hauled Fax away into the night.

  "All right," said Fax, once they were out of earshot of House Takabaga. "You can let me go now."

  "Let you go!" said Hatch. "What makes you think I'm going to let you go!"

  "I was trying to kill Polk! He – he – "

  "You were trying to kill him in front of my daughter Onica!

  You witless idiot! You'd have made her witness to murder, and then, then, well, either we turn you in or else she becomes a part of a conspiracy to conceal murder. Didn't you think of that?"

  "Of course I thought of that," said Fax, who had thought no such thing. "But – "

  "I told you!" said Hatch. "I told you to get yourself back to the Combat College. I thought you were going there! If I'd thought for a moment that you were – "

  "He's your enemy, Hatch! Polk's your enemy! I thought – "

  "Come on," said Hatch. "I've no time for listening to speeches."

  Here Hatch was true to his breeding, for the Frangoni have ever preferred making speeches rather than listening to them.

  Having thus cut short Fax's excuses, Asodo Hatch took Fax down the Backsteps which descended the western slopes of Cap Uba.

  "So what happens to me at Na Sashimoko?" said Fax, unable to conceal his fear for his own future.

  "We dungeon you," said Hatch.

  "The emperor has no dungeons," said Fax.

  "Not at his palace. But the Grand Arena is not so terribly distant."

  "You don't gain by threats," said Fax. Trying to play the part of the brave revolutionary. Then, suddenly: "Hatch. Hatch. It would be the easiest thing to let me go. A moment's work. There's no witnesses here, not now, not in the dark."

  "You don't like this game?" said Hatch. "That's easy, then.

  The Dead Mouth is but a stone's throw distant. Oh, I can let you go, if that's what you really want."

  The Dead Mouth was as close as Hatch said it was. And it was deep. Even in the brightest of sunlight, to look down into it was to see darkness falling to darkness for what looked like eternity.

  It was quite impossible to see the bottom. While Hatch presumed that the Dead Mouth did actually have a bottom, legend held it to be depthless, and in practice it was, for no rope of mortal make could measure out more than its merest lip. It was, naturally, an irresistible attraction to suicides.

  In the face of that threat, Scorpio Fax fell very quiet, and Hatch led him through the stumbling dark toward the palace of Na Sashimoko.

  But they were still far short of the palace when they met Umka Ash, he of the uncertain breeding – his piebald skin a mass of white and black blotches, and birthmarks in both red and in purple.

  "Hatch!" said Ash.

  "What is it, Combat Cadet?" said Hatch.

  Then Umka Ash gave him the bad news. In the face of a revolution by the Unreal, the Free Corps had joined with certain officers of the imperial guard in launching a coup to "stabilize the situation".

  "A coup!" said Hatch, in disbelief. "What do you mean by a coup?"

  "I mean," said Ash, "that they said they were making a coup, and killed three men who were fool enough to disagree with them."

  "Killed?" said Hatch.

  "Yes," said Ash. "Unless you believe a man can have his head chopped off and still live, they were killed. I saw it."

  "But," said Hatch, still at a loss, "what do they hope to achieve by this – this coup?"

  "I am going back to the Combat College to write you a formal paper on the analysis of that very point," said Umka Ash dryly.

  "Wah!" said Hatch, trying to absorb the implications of this news of a coup. "A real night for lunatics!"

  "So what are you going to do with me?" said Scorpio Fax.

  "We'd best be back to the Combat College," said Hatch. "Both of us."

  "Does this mean I'm pardoned?"

  "Am I the emperor, to be giving pardons?" said Hatch. "Come on. Let's be gone."

  So Scorpio Fax and Asodo Hatch started back to the Combat College, in company with Umka Ash. But they had not gone far when Fax suddenly broke away and fled into the night.

  "Fax!" roared Hatch. "Come back! I'm ordering you!"

  But it was no use.

  Fax was gone.

  "What now?" said Umka Ash.

  "We proceed to the Combat College," said Hatch. "There you can write your paper of analysis, but I for my part intend to rouse our fellow students out for action."

  The readiness with which Hatch said this disturbed Ash greatly, who said:

  "Sorry," said Ash. "I've been thinking, and my family…"

  "Go, then," said Hatch.

  Ash went, and Hatch continued to the Combat College on his own, trying to work out what to do. Rouse students for action? it was easily said. But who could he rouse, and exactly what could they do to bring the city to order?

  Asodo Hatch was on his own, with no communications and no access to any kind of data flow. His emperor was missing. A group of over-excited soldiers and Free Corps types had declared themselves masters of Dalar ken Halvar. A h
alf-coordinated revolution was in progress in the city.

  Hatch was tolerably certain that his family would be safe enough on the Frangoni rock, at least for the moment. He decided that he should push on to the Combat College, set up his own command center, send out scouts to bring him information, organize the information on a battle-map, and find volunteers who would be prepared to act under his command and restore order in the city once the rioting burnt itself out.

  So to the lockway went Asodo Hatch, and found it a scene of burnt-out wreckage, for every stall on Scuffling Road had been smashed, looted, wrecked and burnt. The kinema, the amphitheater outside the lockway, was lit by the lurid light of the Eye of Delusions, which was showing a cartoon in which the gross and hideous savages of one of the Wild Tribes – savages who gibbered in the triumph of their bloodlust – were cutting out the hearts of hapless victims.

  Tonight, nobody was in the amphitheater watching the Eye. The attractions of the city were greater.

  "A bad business," said Hatch.

  He strode toward the lockway itself. The lurid cartoon-light of the Eye flickered across the red dust of the Plain of Jars, dust which was rucked with scuffled footprints, and stained and besplattered with darkness.

  Hatch halted.

  Something was wrong. The – the lockway! The outer door was gone! There was no kaleidoscope, no slob, no nothing. The mob had – no, that was impossible. No mob could encompass the breach of such a barrier. Rather – well, the obvious alternative was worse.

  The door had failed. It no longer worked. It had ceased to function.

  Hatch entered the outer chamber of the airlock, which was smeared with blood. The central door still stood firm, but its kaleidoscope dissolved away to nothing as he entered. It reformed behind him, trapping him within the airlock, which was bathed by an unearthly green light. Green light? This was new, weirdly so.

  Hatch experienced a moment of claustrophobic dread. What if the airlock malfunctioned terminally and trapped him here?

  "Our culture is our greatest treasure," said the platitudinous voice of the airlock, maintaining its habitual custom of idle lecturing in complete disregard of the realities of the moment. "Have you listened to an original musical composition recently?"

  Blood everywhere. Blood underfoot and blood on the walls.

  Smeared handprints. Bloody scrabblings. What the hell had been going on?

  There was a hiss of air under pressure. Then the airlock began listing compositions which Hatch should listen to, only to have its lecture interrupted by the dissolution of the innermost door. Hatch stepped through, entering the tunnel which led deep into the depths of Cap Foz Para Lash.

  The customary white brightlight of the tunnel had failed.

  Instead, the tunnel was lit by a dim emergency pink, by which Hatch saw the bloody footprints which tracked their way to the bloody bundle of – no, not a bundle. A body. But small, so, so – Hatch stooped to the body, shook it by the shoulder, and it flopped, revealed its face. Lucius Elikin. Combat Cadet. Aged 11.

  And dead, quite dead.

  "Lucius," said Hatch, in the loud and demanding voice used to challenge fatigue and stupor. "Lucius, wake up!"

  But already he was quite sure the boy was far too late for challenging. Even so, he slid two fingers down to the windpipe to check for a carotid pulse. None. And the wound, oh – down beneath the ribs, down by the kidneys. A deep rip. Lethal. But the boy had tried. He had scrabbled this far, struggling inward, striving for the safety at the heart of the Combat College, the cure-all clinic. And had died far short of his goal.

  Hatch stood up, and hastened down the corridor. The dorgi did not come lurching out of its lair to challenge him. He gave it a glance in passing. It was silent, stolid. Sleeping? Sulking? Dead?

  He gave it a heartbeat's thought then forgot about it as he hurried on toward Forum Three.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The student body: Dalar ken Halvar's Combat College accepts 30 new students per year, entrance age being typically 11, though older students are sometimes accepted. Students who begin the standard course at age 11 graduate at age 27; imperial levies, such as Hatch, break their training for seven years of service with the imperial army. The number of Students of all ages now in training in the Combat College is 353. Of these, 29 are Startroopers and the remainder, of course, are Combat Cadets.

  So young in youth the would-be warriors

  Dream desire as blithe abandon -

  Till drawing days from days the war

  Lights monotonies of dust,

  And lighting lights

  Encasement of routine.

  On entering the Combat College, Asodo Hatch naturally headed for Forum Three, for that lecture theater was where Paraban Senk habitually dealt with matters of communal discipline or communal crisis.

  Forum Three was a steeply banked amphitheater in which seating and desking was ranked in a semi-circle above a small stage. The backdrop to the stage was a large communications screen, which was at present displaying the image of a lotus in full flower. There was seating for as many as 680 people in Forum Three, but at the moment it had fewer than five dozen occupants.

  Hatch remembered the last crisis of common concern, when Paraban Senk had summoned all students after Hiji Hanojo had been found dead – dead at the age of 40, in the thirteenth year of his instructorship. Forum Three had been positively crowded then. But now, with trouble on the loose in Dalar ken Halvar, some students were fighting with the Free Corps, others were guarding their homes, and some had doubtless joined in the lawless rioting.

  The few dozen students gathered in Forum Three evidenced both apprehension and excitement. They had trained for war, and so should have had a grasp of its realities; but the heroic fantasies of the Eye of Delusions had overmastered their training, so that they had found themselves ill-prepared for the realities of the misfortune which had come upon their city.

  In Forum Three, politics was in the ascendant. Where was the Silver Emperor? Was he prisoner? Was he dead? Was Treasurer Berlin dead? Was it true the officers of the Imperial Guard were fighting amongst themselves? Would Manfred Gan Oliver really become the next emperor?

  "Hatch!" shouted someone, as Hatch entered Forum Three.

  "So here he is," said Lupus Lon Oliver. "The man who tried to make himself the master of Na Sashimoko. Who tried, but failed.

  They say he ran at a speed a very rabbit would have envied."

  The rabbit was a creature of the Nexus, a beast unknown to Dalar ken Halvar but said to be possessed of an extraordinary turn of speed and a streak of cowardice which encouraged it to put that turn to frequent use. But Hatch did not feel insulted, for he had absolutely no idea what Lupus was talking about.

  Hatch said as much.

  "What are you gabbling about?" said Hatch.

  "Your inglorious encounter," said Lupus. "That's what I'm on about."

  But Hatch was none the wiser, for he had not heard of the rumor which claimed that Asodo Hatch had been ignominiously outfaced, humiliated and defeated while endeavoring to singlehandedly put down the coup which had seen a parcel of Imperial Guards seize control of the palace of Na Sashimoko. Hatch was equally ignorant of a variety of other rumors, variously claiming that Hatch had started the revolution of the Unreal; that Hatch had personally murdered the Silver Emperor; that Hatch was dead; that Hatch had fled the city; and that Hatch had plunged into the Hot Mouth, taking Lupus Lon Oliver down to destruction as he leapt to his death.

  "You're talking nonsense," said Hatch.

  "So," said Lupus, "you don't admit it."

  "If you won't tell me what I'm supposed to have done," said Hatch, "then I cannot reasonably either admit or deny it. Accuse me, and I'll account for my performance. Meantime, account for your own – what are you doing sitting here on your backside while our city burns?"

  "What are you doing?" retorted Lupus.

  "I came here to organize a response to the present chaos," said Hatch. "Inside
of the night I'll do as much. But I'm fresh arrived, you seem to have been here all night."

  "Not so," said Lupus. "I was out in the city, but returned in response to the messengers, just as you did."

  "The messengers?" said Hatch in bewilderment, wondering if Lupus was suffering one of those illnesses where the deluded victim starts hearing imaginary voices speaking inside his head.

  "Senk's messengers," said Lupus.

  And by diligent questioning, Hatch learnt that Paraban Senk had despatched a number of Combat Cadets as messengers, telling them to recall Asodo Hatch and Lupus Lon Oliver to the Combat College.

  "Then perhaps Senk wants us to jointly organize a response to the present crisis," said Hatch.

  "Perhaps," said Lupus.

  At this, a couple of Combat Cadets entered Forum Three. They were flushed and panting, scratched and bruised, and Hatch immediately zeroed in on them, thinking them hot from the battles of Dalar ken Halvar. But before Asodo Hatch could begin his interrogation of these fresh witnesses, the full-flowering lotus adorning Forum Three's communications screen disappeared, and was replaced by the olive-complexioned features of Paraban Senk, the Teacher of Control. Senk called the room to order.

  "It seems," said the Teacher of Control, "that there is a degree of disorder in the city tonight."

  This pronouncement was greeted with hoots, howls, jeers, and cries of feigned disbelief.

  "Nobody can say where this disorder will end," said Senk. "In as little as a day, conditions may become far worse. Therefore, I am bringing forward the competitive examination for the instructorship. Tomorrow may be too late. Accordingly, we will proceed with the competitive examination for the instructorship as soon as possible. Asodo Hatch will fight with Lupus Lon Oliver on this very night. To the victor, the spoils."

  Both Hatch and Lupus were on their feet immediately, protesting. Hatch out-bellowed Lupus: