The Worshippers and the Way coaaod-9

by Hugh Cook

  Hatch grabbed the singlefighter's remote control, then abandoned ship. A clicketing-clicketing hum-roar of insects assailed him as he opened the ship's door. He emerged to the heatsoup air and tried to find footing on the interlocked root structure of the jungle trees. He slipped, tottered, and almost fell into the putrid swamp from which the trees arose. He caught hold of a branch and looked down. The roots were patterned in swirling brown and black, and were uncommonly shiny and slippery, looking for all the world as if they had been lacquered.

  Hatch pointed the remote control at the ship and thumbed the OBLITERATE button. Obedient to this command, the ship sheathed itself in silence, compressed itself, crushed itself down to the vanishing point, and was gone. Gone beyond recovery. Gone beyond detection. The sudden envanishment of the singlefighter left a temporary depression in the swamp-muck. Very temporary, for almost immediately the glutinous murk-mud of the swamp bletched and blurched, sleebing and sloobing into the depression, burying the evidence in a slurching slooze of ooze, of black saliva, of feverpitch exudate.

  A thick and heavy latrine-and-vomit stench burped upwards from the swamp as it sloozed into the space left by the quickcrushed singlefighter. Hatch imagined the consequences of falling into that filth, and shuddered.

  What now?

  Asodo Hatch was marooned in the hot and sweating fever-swamp jungles of an alien planet, with nothing to ensure his own survival excepting his own strength and wit, and the survival skills which the Nexus had taught him.

  First question:How dangerous was this jungle?

  Any entertainment program screened by the Eye of Delusions would have pictured a jungle like this as a ravaging arena of huge carnivores. If a Hero of the Permissive Dimensions were to be dumped down in such a jungle, then within moments a multi-clawed monster would surely manifest itself, drops of corrosive saliva sizzling from its fangs as it came crashing through the trees. But in point of fact, as Hatch knew well, eaters-of-flesh are typically few and far between in any ecology, standing as they do at or near the top of a pyramidal foodchain.

  Even so…

  A tree would be safest.

  Hatch wiped the bubbling sweat from his forehead and looked upwards into the heights of the nearest tree. An insect bit him on the cheek. He slapped it to its death, and studied the heights above. The trunk of the tree was sheathed in the same smooth and shiny skin of brown and black which protected the roots. But the tree branched at scarcely more than head-height, and thick creepers trailed down its side. Hatch examined the nearest creeper to make sure it was not a snake. He touched it with the back of his hand. Then grasped it and shook it. A few fragments of dead leaf descended, wisping and whispering. Hatch grabbed the creeper with both hands, let it take his whole weight, then bounced as violently as he could.

  A tree-snail fell. As it hit the roots, it broke with a sharp!chick! which was clearly audible above the background noise of clicketing insects. Hatch imagined that he might well be eating such snails before very long. But there was no hurry. He could comfortably go without any food whatsoever for the first two or three days. But what about water? It was so hot in this feverswamp that his water requirements would be prodigious. And he certainly could not drink from the stench-pit of a swamp which spread itself through the green-veil distances as far as the eye could see. Well. He could look for water inside the creepers themselves. Or seek it above – seek it in the crotches of the trees.

  But first – first he should climb.

  For his safety.

  Hatch yanked on the creeper again.

  The creeper held.

  Hatch began to climb, sweating as he did so. By the time he reached a convenient crotch where he could settle down to wait, the sweat was streaming off him, and his Startrooper's Standard Gray was plastered to his skin.

  "Wah!" said Hatch, panting, amazed at the speed with which the humidity sapped his strength.

  He was accustomed to dry heat, but had never liked humidity.

  Still, it was not too bad once he settled down to wait and dedicated himself to the task of sweating.

  Doubtlessly Lupus Lon Oliver was sweating also as he hunted the nerveracking skies, waiting for Hatch's singlefighter to burst out of hiding and attack him. Doubtless Lupus would hunt, would circle uselessly, seeking an enemy ship masked against his hunting instruments, and then – Why, within three days Lupus's ship would come to the end of its fighting life, and would power down and land automatically, its life support facilities losing all power a bare half-arc later as the ship exhausted its last resources. Upon which Lupus would have no choice but to get out and try to survive in the wilderness.

  – Let him. Let him.

  Lupus would try. Doubtless. And he would die. The mortality of the enemy: ever one of life's reliable satisfactions.

  Then Hatch, reassured by the regular rhythms of the jungle, let his thoughts turned to the City of Sun and wondered if Takabaga, his house on the edge of Cap Uba, had been burnt out in riot. It was not much of a house, but it was his, and he did not like to think of it in ruins, the bamboo charred, his bedding reduced to feathery white ash, and every resident malatothapus fled or dead.

  At least his wife was safe. For the moment. His wife, his daughter, and the Lady Iro Murasaki. And any other refugees who had entered the Combat College as Hatch's guests. By opting to settle himself in the swampland jungles rather than fight with Lupus in the skies above, Hatch had purchased them at least three days of life. As his guests, they could not be expelled from the Combat College until the competition for the instructorship had reached an end, so they were safe till then. And a lot could happen in three days.

  And then Hatch thought about his own body, still seated in the initiation seat in the Combat College while his mind wandered the world of the illusion tanks. The initiation seat would be monitoring the condition of his physical flesh with the utmost diligence. If maintenance became necessary, then the initiation seat, obedient to its programming, would begin to interfere with that flesh, to feed and catheterize it, to clean it and massage it, to exercise the muscles and thus protect the flesh against wasting. Hatch disliked the thought intensely. To be petted, babied and investigated. He imagined his body helpless, mouth ajar, a trace of saliva easing down its chin.

  – But that is there and this is here.

  So Hatch told himself, but he could not free himself from the knowledge that the initiation seat was potentially dangerous. In the last two or three generations, a number of students had been killed by malfunctioning initiation seats which had bungled the medical tasks of body maintenance. The equipment was simply too old, too unreliable.

  And Hatch might be dependent on that machinery for quite some time. For if Lupus Lon Oliver did not die quickly, then this trial by combat might stretch on. And on. And on. How long could they stay in the illusion tanks? There was a legal limit, wasn't there?

  Yes. Hatch dredged up the relevant clause in the Regulations:

  "Combat sequences in the illusion tanks will not be extended beyond twenty-one days." Twenty-one days. A long time.

  – Still.

  – There's no helping it.

  And at least he had a reason for enduring those days. The protection of his wife and daughter… and his lover.

  – So.

  So Hatch began the diligent practice of conscious relaxation.

  He tried to concentrate on all the things that were good. Here in his tree above the swamp, he was free from all the worries of Dalar ken Halvar. Here nobody could touch him. He was a world away from the City of Sun, and, equally, a world away from the Nexus. He was safe. Beyond all demands. Answerable only to the Great God Mokaragash, and to none other.

  "Wah!" said Hatch, relaxing, reclining, feeling his steel become flesh, his bowstrings become spiderweb.

  Abruptly, the million million clicketing insects of the jungle simultaneously fell to silence. Hatch listened. Heard, somewhere, a rhythmic squelching. A drop-drop-drop of water. Then the insects began to s
peak again, all at the same moment. What concerted their actions? Telepathy? Or did each incorporate in its makeup some kind of clock? Valid questions, these, for Hatch knew this jungle of illusions to be modeled on a real, literal boneand-water mud-and-blood pollen-and-wood ecosystem on some planet which did or had existed sometime, somewhere.

  So the insects were not random aspects of a computerized fantasia, but accurate models of living creatures which – Hatch thoughts were interrupted as the world wavered, melted then abruptly brightened, his body suddenly seated, the hot and moist replaced by the dry and cold – For he was back in the Combat College.

  Weirdly disorientated.

  Hatch had made the transition from illusion tank to reality thousands of times before, but never under conditions quite so unexpected.

  "Lupus!" said Hatch, blurting the word.

  Lupus Lon Oliver must have killed him, must have, thus winning their encounter. Else how could Hatch possibly have been plunged back into the world of the Combat College?

  "He demands," said Paraban Senk, speaking from the display screen in Hatch's combat bay.

  "Demands?" said Hatch, bewildered. "Demands what?"

  "What do you think?" said Senk. "He demands adjudication."

  And Hatch felt a shuddering relief. So Lupus had not outguessed him, outfought him, outmatched him. Instead, the young Ebrell Islander was seeking to win this match by legal manoeuvre.

  Well, it would be very interesting to see what he came up with.

  Because as far as Hatch could see, his own position was watertight.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Warfare weakens. It generates chaos, crisis and unknowns in abundance. Battle is apt to compromise both psychic and physical integrity, and a predisposition to favor the enemy may further weaken your resolve to prosecute your duty.

  This last factor is often ignored when we study warfare which sees the warrior locked into machines kept parsecs apart.

  However, while the Nexus does train for intergalactic and transcosmic warfare, the military reality of the last millennium has been that most active operations involve civil interventions undertaken as a response to political or religious extremism.

  Here we must consider the human element: and here note that the tactics of empathy are of particular value when your own resolve is weak.

  Unfortunately humans cannot be taken out of the loop, least of all when dealing with the Nu-chala-nuth, who reject the authority of machines over humans. In any case, one could not, for example, entrust a dorgi with the task of policing the streets of any of the cities of the Nu-chala-nuth in the aftermath of one of the periodic upheavals inspired by that religion. So we rely upon the warrior.

  If you are of the Nu-chala-nuth, then in the supervision of members of your own faith you may find that your discharge of your duty to the Nexus is difficult. This is an extreme case, but for any given individual we can wargame a situation in which that individual's loyalties will be divided.

  In pitched battle, this may be of small account, but it matters greatly in civil interventions, which tend to revolve around negotiations. You as an officer of the Nexus may one day find yourself endeavoring to discharge your duty in a situation in which you have a predisposition to support the enemy in defiance of your duty.

  Under such circumstances, you should attend first to the emotional dynamics of the negotiation scenario. If you can befriend your opposite number then that person will tend to refrain from using those tactics which will be most hurtful to you. Here we ask you to understand the first rule of the Characterization of the Enemy: the Enemy is someone to respect. As you come to understand the horrors of total war and the methods which can be used to avoid it, you will begin to understand the importance of this characterization. – from the Book of Negotiations So was it then a slip which let The hero fall and long odds claim the day?

  Or was the one sword sharper, or the sand Made partial by its hungers?

  "So what's Lon Oliver going to argue?" said Hatch.

  "I've no idea," said Paraban Senk.

  "Can we be heard?" said Hatch. "Right now, I mean? By those in Forum Three?"

  "They get to watch you while you're in the illusion tanks," said Senk. "They get a full-color full-sound split-screen presentation of the battles. But right now you've got a guarantee of privacy."

  "Then while we're closeted together in private," said Hatch, "let's talk about Dalar ken Halvar."

  "Why?"

  "Because there's revolution in Dalar ken Halvar."

  "Why should I worry about that?" said Senk.

  "Because it's going to compromise your ability to fulfill your mission," said Hatch. "Your mission to train Startroopers for the Nexus."

  "So?" said Senk. "I thought I'd made my position on that clear. Some lawful authority will establish itself swiftly in the city, and I will then deal with that authority."

  "So," said Hatch, "let's talk about dealing. Obviously it's something you've got to do, so why not now rather than later? Why not deal with someone you know, someone you trust, rather than someone unknown and untested? Why not manipulate the situation in Dalar ken Halvar rather than taking whatever random leadership gets thrown up by the present disorder? Senk, if you're willing, then I'd like to cut a deal. If you make me the instructor, I'll do my level best to restore order in Dalar ken Halvar and help you fulfill your mission."

  "I thought you didn't want to be instructor," said Senk.

  "What gave you that idea?" said Hatch.

  "Lon Oliver gave me that idea," said Senk. "He told me today that you offered to sell him the instructorship. You invited him to bribe you. Lon Oliver asked me to disqualify you from this competition on that account."

  "But you didn't," said Hatch.

  "That's right," said Senk. "I didn't. Even so, the information made me doubt the strength of your commitment to the Nexus."

  "You're not saying you believe Lon Oliver, are you?" said Hatch.

  "You're not denying the truth of his accusations, surely."

  "Of course I am!" said Hatch. "It's a nonsense, an utter nonsense, the whole lot of it."

  "Perhaps," said Senk. "But Lon Oliver was very persuasive.

  He makes much of the fact that the Silver Emperor is missing."

  "Temporarily, perhaps," said Hatch. "But – "

  "He tells me," said Senk, "that the Free Corps is going to end up in effective control of Dalar ken Halvar. I'm inclined to believe him, Hatch. I've come to a decision. As you say, I've got to do deals with whoever ends up in control of Dalar ken Halvar, and I may as well start now. So I'm starting. I've decided that it's best that Lupus Lon Oliver becomes the instructor."

  "So you're going to adjudicate in his favor," said Hatch.

  "That depends on what argument you put up," said Paraban Senk. "But I give you fair warning. If you fight with Lupus Lon Oliver a third time, then I'm going to ensure that you go down to defeat. I'm going to ensure that you die."

  "Die?" said Hatch.

  "Yes, die," said Senk. "I'm going to ensure that you meet with your death. First you'll die in the world of the illusion tanks, and then you'll die in the fact of the flesh."

  "And how do you propose manage that?" said Hatch.

  "Wait and see," said Senk. "Wait and see."

  "The initiation seat," said Hatch. "Is that how you're going to do it? Kill me with the initiation seat?"

  "That's for you to work out," said Senk. "Think about it, Hatch. Think about it."

  Hatch did think about it. He thought about it fiercely all the way to Forum Three. Kill him. Senk was going to kill him. But how? With the initiation seat? Maybe, maybe. Or. Or what?

  – Purpose.

  The hotbright thought burnt bright in Hatch's mind. Purpose.

  What was the purpose of deciding the instructorship through trial by combat? Hatch knew the answer to that. Dalar ken Halvar understood trial by combat. Everyone could understand that. So the instructor who triumphed over all others was graced wi
th an authority which everyone in Dalar ken Halvar could understand.

  – Assume that Senk wants Lupus as instructor.

  – Senk will want Lupus to win authority through triumph in battle.

  – So.

  So the implication was that Paraban Senk must ensure that Lupus Lon Oliver defeated Asodo Hatch in combat. In front of witnesses. How could Senk do that?

  – The MegaCommand.

  The ominous thought rose in Hatch's mind and could not be suppressed. Lupus was much better than Hatch when it came to making war with the MegaCommand.

  – But first, the adjudication.

  As Hatch entered Forum Three, striding onstage in front of the tiered seating, he was hailed by a familiar voice.

  "Wah, Hatch!" cried Beggar Grim.

  Beggar Grim was sitting with his comrades Zoplin and X'dex.

  All three members of this besognio scumpack had entered the Combat College as the official guests of Asodo Hatch. Deloused, ungrimed and dressed in the limegreen uniforms of beneficiaries of Nexus Welfare, they looked superficially disciplined, but their unruly cheers nullified the effect of the superficialities. Though each had been provided with a double eye-patch to hide empty eye sockets, they had strung these round their necks, and were passing the Eye from hand to hand, from socket to socket.

  Master Zoplin socketed the Eye then said, chanting the words:

  "I see you loud, I see you clear, I see you killing – kill him, Hatch!"

  Hatch acknowledged the beggars' applause, not because he welcomed it but because he knew the gesture would infuriate Lupus.

  It did.

  Lupus swore at the beggars, who jeered at him, then threw food at him. The strange food of the Nexus which tasted soft in their mouths, like food made to feed some monstrous race of earthdwelling grubs.

  Lupus was furious.

  "Senk!" said Lupus, addressing the Teacher of Control. "Call them to order!" Then, when there was no reply from Paraban Senk:

  "Hatch! Control your filth!"

  "Filth!" said Lord X'dex. "Are you referring to me?"