The Worshippers and the Way coaaod-9

by Hugh Cook

  So dorgis made good perimeter guards (in theory, at least), but on account of their inherent and progressive instability they were supposed to be checked out by a machine psychologist at least once every three years. The beast which guarded the lockway was more than twenty thousand years overdue for such a check, and was getting more and more eccentric with each passing century.

  Hatch suspected that, had the Chasm Gates not collapsed, all dorgis would soon have been done away with, for surely the Nexus authorities would have realized that a machine created in the image of erraticism was not a good idea. But the closure of the Chasm Gates had made every passing technological caprice of the Chasm Gate era into a semi-permanent fixture of the Combat College.

  Semi-permanent, rather than permanent, because everything wears out sooner or later. The Combat College dorgi should have worn out long ago, since it had a design life of only seven thousand years. But this one was still going strong, and sooner or later it would kill one person – or several. Hatch was sure of it.

  "Well," said Fax, "get on with it."

  "Get on with what?" said Hatch.

  "You didn't come here just to admire the scenery, did you?

  You want something. You want Lupus dead."

  "No," said Hatch. "Not Lupus."

  "Who, then?"

  "Gan Oliver."

  "Why Gan Oliver? Why not Lupus?"

  "I trust to my judgment," said Hatch.

  Lupus Lon Oliver was 27, a man full-grown by the reckoning of some societies, but in Dalar ken Halvar he counted as no more than a boy, for he done nothing in life except to indulge himself in his own education. Manfred Gan Oliver, on the other hand, was aged 57, and so was approaching the prime of political life. Those he had grown up with were in positions of power, and Gan Oliver had cultivated them as they eased themselves into those positions. He had, too, the authority which comes with age, for people would listen to him when they would never listen to a boy.

  Furthermore, Hatch judged Lupus to be a romantic and Gan Oliver to be a realist, and on that account alone he feared Gan Oliver the more.

  "You're sure it's Gan Oliver you want?" said Fax.

  "Lupus I can handle myself," said Hatch, hoping this was so.

  "So why… why should I favor you with Gan Oliver's death?" said Fax.

  So saying, Scorpio Fax looked up at Hatch, looked up from his sickbed and remembered. Scorpio Fax remembered how Asodo Hatch had recruited him to kill Impala Fax, the Butcher of Shintoto. Fax had done as much. And remembered. Blood on his hands, blood on the floor, blood daily and nightly in waking dreams and sleeping.

  "We are at war," said Hatch. "At war, with Dalar ken Halvar the prize. If Gan Oliver wins, we're dead men, both of us. You must strike him down to save your own life. What more reward could you want?"

  "I want – "

  Fax knew just what he wanted, but could not bring himself to say it. He was not sure how Hatch would react, but suspected the big-built Frangoni would be angry, maybe murderously so.

  "Kill me Gan Oliver," said Hatch, "and you can have anything you want. Anything."

  "Even your sister?"

  "My sister!" said Hatch, startled.

  "Yes," said Fax, who looked positively terrified as he made the confession. "I – I'm in love with Penelope."

  "Grief of gods!" said Hatch.

  "You – you've chosen another? As – as her husband, I mean? Is she betrothed?"

  "Penelope," said Hatch, who thought it would be unfair to conceal the complications from the infatuated Fax, "is betrothed to no man, though Lupus Lon Oliver has declared her love for him.

  Furthermore, Penelope has declared her reciprocal love for Lon Oliver."

  "Well," said Fax, with sturdy resolution, "she can hardly love him once he's dead."

  "Quite so," said Hatch. "But if you're going to kill Lon Oliver, then strike him down in secret, else Penelope will have your testicles by way of revenge."

  "It's as good as done," said Fax fiercely.

  "But if you're going to kill young Lupus Lon Oliver," said Hatch, "then you do so on your own account. Remember it's the father I want. Manfred. Kill Manfred, and I'll give you my sister – at least to the extent that she's mine to give."

  "Manfred, then," said Fax. "But – how dod I kill him?"

  "That's over to you," said Hatch. "But do it soon!"

  Then Hatch took his leave and headed for the combat bays. One the way he met Lupus Lon Oliver. Following close behind the redskinned Ebrell Islander was the grayskinned Combat Cadet of Janjuladoola race, the ever-reticent Jeltisketh Echo. Hatch immediately deduced that Echo had been recruited as Lon Oliver's bodyguard.

  "Hail fellow, well met," said Lupus. "Are you ready for the singlefighters?"

  "Singlefighters?" said Hatch. "Who told you we'd have singlefighters?"

  "It's a guess, of course," said Lupus. "But I'm right, I'm sure of it."

  "Maybe," said Hatch, hoping that they would not be dueling with singlefighters.

  "Definitely," said Lupus. "You'll go down in flames, Hatch.

  Then they'll kick you out. And my father will be waiting for you when you get kicked out."

  Hatch made no reply to this, because he could quite easily imagine this exchange of pleasantries escalating quite suddenly into bloody battle. Rather than risk a brawl, he kept his lips sealed, strode through the open doorway of the nearest functional combat bay and settled himself in the initiation seat. It sighed faintly as it took his weight.

  In the open doorway, a sheet of kaleidoscope started to form, then collapsed into hissing slob. Hatch swore, and leapt out of the initiation seat. He was certainly not going to sit helplessly in an initiation seat while he was exposed and vulnerable to his enemies. A new sheet of kaleidoscope started to form in the doorway. Slowly, slowly. It hesitated, wavered, then consolidated itself. Hatch kicked his way through the cold and swiftly disintegrating slob, reached the door, put his weight against the kaleidoscope – which was slightly warm to his touch – and pushed.

  Hard. He threw his whole weight against the door. It held.

  Okay.

  Hatch went back to the initiation seat and settled himself.

  He glanced at the countdown telltale. It had not yet started to count down the last pulsebeats.

  "Worried, were you?" said Paraban Senk, appearing on the combat bay's display screen.

  "Very," said Hatch frankly.

  "But now you're safe. Very well. You know the dual viewpoints of this combat session will be relayed to the Forum Three."

  "Of course," said Hatch. "Hi, Shona. Hi, Dog. How's things, Manfred my old friend?"

  "Clowning is not in order," said Paraban Senk, frowning.

  "No," said Hatch. "Of course it isn't. I apologize."

  "Your apology is accepted."

  "Very well," said Paraban Senk. "We are gathered here today to observe the combat between Lupus Lon Oliver and Asodo Hatch.

  The prize is the instructorship of the Combat College. To the victor, the spoils."

  There was a pause. Hatch assumed that Paraban Senk was saying something to Lupus Lon Oliver. Then:

  "Are you ready to receive your first combat assignment?" said Paraban Senk.

  "I am ready," said Hatch.

  A flickering motion attracted his attention. It was the countdown telltale.

  There was a pause. Hatch assumed that Lupus Lon Oliver was being given the combat assignment. Then:

  "Asodo Hatch," said Paraban Senk. "You will duel with Lupus Lon Oliver with the Scala Nine singlefighter."

  Hatch almost flinched, but restrained himself. But even so: he did not like this idea one little bit. The singlefighter was a small and turbulent flying machine designed for solo combat missions within a planet's atmospheric envelope. To use it effectively in combat, one required razor-sharp reflexes, and there young Lupus most definitely had the edge.

  For a brief moment, Hatch indulged himself in notions of despair. Then steadied himself by bringin
g to mind memories of the desert and the gasping thirst and bleeding leather of real war – real war which he had endured and survived.

  The task ahead was only a game, for all the seriousness of purpose which attended it. Win or lose, he would still walk from the combat bay with all four limbs intact. Here you could die and it would not matter.

  Hatch wished, above all, that he was not so alone, not so isolated. But he was himself alone, alone and unaided, with nobody to help him, guide him, support him, advise him.

  – To survive.

  Hatch remembered.

  The High Priest of the Great God Mokaragash, old Sesno Felvus, had said something about survival. But what? Hatch thought back to their encounter in the precincts of Temple Isherzan.

  – To survive is victory sufficient.

  True, true, but Hatch had always known that, it was a platitude, a nothing-statement, proof of the ancient teaching which holds that wisdom is often but hair from the idiot. If Lupus was an idiot, if Hatch himself was an idiot… but of course they were idiots, they were both of them idiots to be wasting their time dueling in skies of imagination while the city of the flesh wailed through the agony of its burning.

  To survive.

  To survive is victory sufficient.

  Hatch glanced at the countdown telltale and saw he had but ten pulsebeats to combat. He watched the clock-counter pulse.

  Once. Twice. Thrice.

  As if calmed by the very countdown itself, Hatch found himself lucid, clear. In his lucidity, he remembered one of the brevities of Jeneth Odette, a practitioner of Dith-zora-ka-mako who had once lectured on her method by saying:

  "I took a worm and turned it inside out." – To survive is victory sufficient.

  Turned inside out:

  – To die is victory sufficient.

  Suddenly Hatch remembered. He remembered the evasion exercise he had so recently undertaken when paired with Lupus Lon Oliver.

  Pursued by a hunter-killer, Hatch had jumped over a cliff, taking a death-plunge which had allowed him to survive to the end of the exercise.

  He glanced at the countdown telltale.

  Three pulses remained.

  Hatch grinned, fiercely, for now he knew, now he understood, now he saw a way to wreck young Lupus and win.

  Two pulses.

  One.

  None.

  And Paraban Senk said:

  "Let combat begin."

  The world went red. The world went white. The world flickered through the spectrum, then blurred into unintelligibility. Then steadied. As the world steadied, Hatch found himself sitting frozen in the cockpit of a Scala Nine singlefighter in a monochromatic world. A world without color, a world of black and white. A world of silence unbroken except for the slightest background hiss.

  Caught in a world of monochromatic paralysis, Hatch reviewed his plan. Then color flooded the world, stasis ended, and he was thrust back into his seat by the force of a full five gravities of acceleration, hurtling through the lower atmosphere in a Scala Nine singlefighter.

  Chapter Twenty

  Illusion tanks: computer-generated environments allowing people-in-the-flesh to interact with each other (or with software artefacts) in a subjective world which lacks all objective existence.

  If in a world of dreams we fight The bloodstained shadows of the cranking steel Which grinds the bones of monsters then grinds ours – Then wake and find The blood which gapes and grins upon the pillow – The softness like a rope around my neck – But this "but if" is but – So forced by five gravities he burnt low across a sea of green, a sea not grass but tarnished water. Slammed through the lower atmosphere beneath a sky of burnished copper.

  "Hatch," said Lupus, over the vidrolator's open channel. "I see you, Hatch." Hatch ignored him. "Hatch! Hatch! It's me! It's me! You can run, Hatch. You can run, but you can't hide."

  Hatch had heard that before. When? Oh yes. Standing outside the lockway, waiting for the outer airlock to open. Some entertainment hero had said as much to some entertainment villain on the Eye of Delusions.

  "Idiot," said Hatch.

  Then a pig-panic squeal from the singlefighter alerted him to danger. Lon Oliver's attack systems had acquired, had locked on, were ready to blast Hatch to oblivion. Hatch blurted a quick command: "Prison!"

  Obedient to this command, Hatch's singlefighter sheathed itself in a force-field which sealed out the world. Now his singlefighter was sealed off from the outside world, safe from attack, for the moment invulnerable. But to maintain such a forcefield would cost Hatch dearly. The corrosion cells which powered his singlefighter would soon be drained by the cost of maintaining the force-field. But in the meantime Hatch was protected from anything Lupus might try.

  What now?

  Hatch could run. A singlefighter sheathed with a force-field was hard to detect, hard to follow. It was almost invisible.

  Almost – but not quite. Sensitive instruments could detect the sheathing force-field itself. Furthermore, the sophisticated radar systems of the Nexus could detect the patterns of air turbulence left in the wake of an aircraft, and so could hunt down any flying machine, regardless of the sophistication of its camouflaging legerdemain.

  "Sequence," said Hatch, alerting his singlefighter to the fact that he wanted to give it instructions.

  "Say sequence," said the singlefighter, indicating its readiness to receive instructions.

  "Maximum self-destruct on ejection plus one."

  So said Hatch. He knew that Lupus would be readying himself for the attack. When Hatch's singlefighter shed its protective force-field, it would be momentarily helpless and exposed to attack. Knowing that, Lupus would probably close the distance and come in close. Come in close for the kill. That was his fashion, his style. He liked to be close, close enough to enjoy to the full the primitive satisfactions of destruction.

  That was his weakness.

  "Sequence received," said the singlefighter, acknowledging its receipt of orders. Then it repeated those orders so they could be checked: "Maximum self-destruct on ejection plus one."

  "Sequence continues," said Hatch.

  "Continue sequence."

  "Ejection is simultaneous with liberty."

  "Continuation received," said the singlefighter. "You will be ejected immediately we have liberty."

  As the command "prison" directed a singlefighter to seal itself inside a protective force-field, so the reverse-word "liberty" commanded it to unseal itself.

  "Very well then," said Hatch. "Liberty!"

  The singlefighter shed its protective force-field and ejected Asodo Hatch. Blasted free by his ejection sheet, he was slammed up and out. The air smashed him. He heard the taut crack as his back broke. He was slammed to a whirl-shock of buffeting turbulence as the world slammed, as the world burst black and blue, blasted by a double-crash of thunder, of thunder pitched for the shatter. The visible spectrum split into sub-harmonics of pain, and then – Then Hatch was in the clear, free from the turbulence, and given the grace of a lucid moment in which he felt the summer of the blossoming heat from below. He caught a brief glimpse of the crumpling fire expanding below him, of the billowing bloom of destruction.

  He could not say or speak, but thinking was still in his power. Though only just.

  – Wah!

  Thus thought Asodo Hatch.

  Then thought no more, for he was falling. Lucidity gone, he fell. He toppled. Down through the gulfs he plummeted. His ejection seat's parachute did not open. Strapped into that seat, he dropped downward, doomed down to destruction, his back broken, his four limbs wrecked and useless.

  Falling, he hit turbulence. Hitting turbulence, he was whirled sideways, tossed, corkscrewed, cocktailed in a gigantic blood-shaker, falling wrecked and ruined, a wreck falling toward wreckage, falling toward the wreckage of the world.

  And then -

  Falling, the seat steadied.

  And, seated on the arc of his downward slide, seated on the smooth arc of the longest
rollercoaster slide in the history of humanity, Asodo Hatch glimpsed two cinders blistered with flames, two cinders falling, trailing smoke as they arced down toward the blazing sea. One of those two charred meteorites was his abandoned singlefighter. The other was Lupus Lon Oliver's craft, caught in the flamesmash fireball as Hatch's craft blew itself up.

  – Marshmallows.

  Thus thought Hatch, thought he had no idea why he thought it.

  Then there was time for no further thoughts, for he was falling, and the smooth arc of his slide was breaking up as he hit turbulence again, and slammed by the buffeting turbulence he went shockbursting down toward the green. And now at last he found his voice. A scream was wrenched from his mouth a moment before impact, then impact – The shock was lethal.

  So he was dead, dead, seated dead in the initiation seat, eyes starting, panic shuddering in his throat, hands clutching at the armrests, flesh shuddering.

  "The illusion tank sequence is over," said Paraban Senk, with those words telling Hatch that his waking dream was done with, that he was back in the world of the living.

  Hatch moved his jaw cautiously. Tested his tongue.

  Heard himself question with a word, a word which sounded as if spoken by someone else, spoken by a machine:

  "Result?"

  "Partial point in your favor," said Paraban Senk, as calm as an accountant.

  "Details," said Hatch.

  "You died, but you outsurvived Lon Oliver. You win a partial point. You win 0.0000057 of a point."

  "Good," said Hatch. "Good."

  "However," said Paraban Senk. "However… wait one moment.

  Ah yes. Lon Oliver is contesting this decision."

  "Contesting?" said Hatch. "What do you mean, contesting?"

  "He claims you have no right to your partial point. He claims that partial point is contrary to reason. He says there must be an error in the adjudication software."

  "He thinks I won through computer error?" said Hatch.

  "Precisely," said Paraban Senk. "So he has demanded that the partial point be wiped."

  "Wah!" said Hatch.

  "I have decided to let Lon Oliver argue his case in Forum Three," said Senk. "I will then arbitrate on this matter."