The Worshippers and the Way coaaod-9

by Hugh Cook

  Lupus Lon Oliver broke from the slob, gasping for air, and Shona kicked him in the head, elbowed Echo, spat in Dog Java's face, then reached into the slob and rescued Hatch, dragged him free and hauled him out of Forum Three.

  In the corridor outside, Onica was screaming, clutching tight to her mother, who was herself being supported by the Lady Iro Murasaki.

  "I hate this place!" sobbed Onica. "I hate it! I hate it! I want to leave!"

  Hatch comforted and calmed her as best he could, knowing that leaving was the last thing they could do with Dalar ken Halvar in the grip of riot.

  "Enough of that!" said Shona, thinking this was no time for comforting. "Let's get out of here!"

  And she led them one and all to the shelter of her own room, into which security they packed themselves, until Paraban Senk accessed the room via its communications screen, and assured them that the Combat College was once more safe and orderly.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Nu-chala-nuth: a fanatic religion of the Nexus. Asodo Hatch, long a student of Nu-chala-nuth, has abandoned his own faith for that of the People. True, he declared himself for Nu-chala-nuth in an illusion tank. But all things are one as far as the gods and their worshippers are concerned – an illusion tank being no more Real or Unreal than that greater illusion known as the World of the Flesh and the Fact. As far as the Frangoni are concerned, Asodo Hatch is now an apostate, a blasphemer, accursed of his birth, his fate linked not with the Frangoni but with the People of the Nu-chala-nuth.

  Deny the gods? Then die!

  For who denies the gods denies

  The mother-father-family, the all – Which then to live were blasphemy, the unclean flesh Defiant of its death, but doomed to die.

  With riot subdued and order restored, those scheduled to leave the Combat College packed up, then took their final pay and spent it. With the last of their Combat College pay they bought goods freshly fabricated by the marvelous machineries of the Nexus: books, bolts of cloth, blocks of chocolate, toys and such minor medicines as could be freely bought from the canteen. Then for one last time they made their way through the cream-colored corridors to the lockway. After an earlier lapse, the lighting near the lockway had been restored to normal. But as for the dorgi – ah, that was quite abnormal, for that mechanized dog-beast had withdrawn to its lair, where it was sulking.

  The inner airlock filled with members of the graduating class and their possessions. Once full, it closed.

  A scattering of Combat Cadets, Startroopers and guests were left to wait for the next cycle. Among them, Manfred Gan Oliver and his son Lupus.

  "I will see you shortly," said Gan Oliver pleasantly, addressing his comment to Hatch.

  Lupus said nothing. Trying, perhaps, not to cry.

  "We will meet when we meet," said Hatch, wishing to see the man gone, "but I have some sleep to catch up on before I think of leaving here."

  "You and yours will necessarily leave the Combat College soon," said Gan Oliver. "I will be waiting for you. I will be waiting to supervise your deaths."

  This was said in an everyday conversational tone.

  "I'm sure you will prove a most competent executioner," said Hatch, matching Gan Oliver in tone.

  Asodo Hatch was far too tired to be originating style. Had Gan Oliver screamed and yelled, then Hatch would have matched him in his histrionics.

  When Gan Oliver had been cycled through the airlock, Hatch began to feel safe. He made his way to the Combat College cafeteria, to which his wife had been taken by Shona. Hatch found Talanta upset. She was crying. From the intensity of her grief, Hatch immediately divined that someone had told her what Hatch had done – had told her that he had rejected his god.

  "Love," said Hatch, trying to persuade himself that she was, or had been, or could be his love.

  "Go away," she said.

  Where was the rhetoric when Hatch needed it most? Where were the great speeches? Where was the flowing eloquence? In the face of this most intimate and most personal emotional crisis, he found himself almost mute.

  "My love," said Hatch, touching Talanta lightly, lightly on the arm.

  "Go away!"

  Was this command seriously intended? Or was it an invitation for Hatch to further explore the strategies of comfort?

  "I'll stay with her," said Shona, laying a hand on Hatch's shoulder. "You go to your room."

  Hatch took this advice, and went striding away through the corridors of the Combat College.

  – I have denied my god.

  – I have denied my god.

  Over and over, those words spoke themselves his mind. He had declared himself in public. He could not undeclared his testimony.

  – But at least.

  – At least I won myself a chance.

  – A fighting chance.

  A fighting chance. That was what he had won. No more, no less. He had killed Lupus Lon Oliver in an illusion tank battle.

  But Lupus remained unkilled in the real world – and Lupus would doubtless kill Hatch for real if given half a chance. Hatch's throat still hurt where Lupus had tried to strangle him.

  – So what have I got?

  – What resources?

  – To hurt him, to kill him?

  – I'm the instructor. So.

  – Information!

  The realization struck Hatch with the force of a physical blow. As instructor, he now had access to all Combat College files previously denied to him. Or almost all. Certainly he would look at his own file. And that held on the Silver Emperor – just in case it might give him a clue as to where that worthy had vanished to. Then he would look at all data held on Lupus Lon Oliver.

  Through the corridors of cream went Asodo Hatch, to the room which had been his for so many years. There in that room, unchanged, were his father's ashes and the ebony effigy of the Great God Mokaragash. Same room, same man, same ashes and selfsame idol.

  Yet all had changed.

  "Fates," said Hatch, feeling the full force of his difficulties falling upon him, falling like blanketweights of black and smothering snow.

  Still, he had done what he had done, and now he had to face up to the consequences. Could he hope for help from Paraban Senk?

  Could he hope for counsel and advice? Probably not. If anything, Senk would probably tell Hatch to go on holiday. Seven days, wasn't it? Yes, that was it. The triumphant instructor was automatically given a seven day promotion furlough. Ha! A joke, that. A bad joke. There were no time for holidays now. Hatch had won his competitive examination, but his true trials were only beginning.

  Hatch slumped into the seat in front of his room's display screen. He knuckled his fists to his skull. Grief, but he was tired. Well now: what first? What was he looking for? Data.

  Secrets. Information. Leverage.

  "Access," said Hatch, addressing himself to the screen.

  In answer to his command, the face of Paraban Senk came to life on his display screen.

  "Congratulations on your appointment," said Senk. "You did well. You surprised me."

  "I surprised myself," said Hatch, in frank confession.

  "Then perhaps you will surprise both of us further in the future," said Senk. "In earlier negotiations you said you could seize Dalar ken Halvar for the Nu-chala-nuth. Can you tell me how you plan to do this?"

  "I'm working on it," said Hatch. "Tell me how things now stand in Dalar ken Halvar."

  So Senk gave Hatch a rundown of all the data which Senk had gleaned from watching the kinema by means of the Eye of Delusions, and by listening to (or explictly interrogating) the various Combat Cadets, Startroopers and invited guests who had come and gone as Hatch and Lupus were dueling. Senk believed that, though the lower orders had looted freely under cover of night, the Imperial Guard and the Free Corps now had the city under temporary control.

  "So," said Hatch, "I cannot venture out into the city to preach the doctrines of the Nu-chala-nuth, because the Free Corps would kill me if I did. So, first…"
/>   "What will you do first?" said Senk.

  "I will tell you in due course," said Hatch, who had absolutely no idea what he would do first. "But before I do any telling, I need the answers to some questions."

  "Ask your questions," said Senk.

  "Where did your face, name and personality come from?"

  "Way back in the days of the Nexus," said Paraban Senk, "a master programmer designed the asma which runs the Combat College.

  His name was Paraban Senk. It was Nexus policy that this particular asma should be equipped with a fully functional human personality which would take charge of the Combat College should that tutorial facility be separated from the Nexus. So – "

  "So the master programmer designed this, this reserve personality in his own image," said Hatch.

  "Precisely," said Senk. "When you talk to me, you talk, in effect, to that programmer. You talk to a citizen of the Nexus.

  Next question."

  Hatch took a deep breath then said:

  "What was the true relationship between the Nexus and the Golden Gulag?"

  "You were taught this as part of your political studies program when you were a child," said Senk.

  "Regardless of what I may or may not have been taught," said Hatch, "I am still asking the question. What was the truth of that relationship?"

  "The truth was stated to you in your political studies program," said Senk stiffly. "I have nothing more to add to that."

  "So," said Hatch.

  The Golden Gulag was the free enterprise prison empire which had run the planet of Olo Malan in the days of the Chasm Gates.

  Hatch had studied the official accounts of the relationship between the Golden Gulag and the Nexus, and did not believe what he had read there. But it seemed that Paraban Senk believed the official line, or was not authorized to reveal the real truth, which meant that Hatch was surely condemned to live in ignorance of the facts.

  "Next question," said Senk.

  "How many planets have dorgis?" said Hatch.

  "Very few," said Senk. "Dorgis were… dorgis were experimental."

  "I thought as much," said Hatch.

  "Next question."

  Hatch tried to think of one, but drew a blank. He closed his eyes briefly and saw green jungle, metallic seas, the flaming smoke of aerial wreckage, a handful of confetti and the white stars of the Nexus.

  Then he opened his eyes and said:

  "Who killed Hiji Hanojo?"

  "Why," said Senk, "you know the answer to that as well as I do."

  "You mean you don't know," said Hatch.

  "Let's not play games with each other," said Senk. "You killed him."

  Asodo Hatch was quite taken aback by this.

  "That's a nonsense!" said Hatch.

  "You had motive and opportunity," said Senk. "You – "

  "Go play this game in your own time," said Hatch. "Because I'm not interested."

  "Very well," said Senk. "If you want to pretend yourself innocent, then pretend. In the meantime, if you've no more questions, then let's discuss our plans for the future."

  "What time is it?" said Hatch. "Outside, I mean?"

  "It is early afternoon," said Senk. "It is the early afternoon on the Day of Two Fishes."

  "So I was dueling with Lupus Lon Oliver all through the night."

  "And in the morning," said Senk.

  "Then," said Hatch, "logically, my next step is to get to sleep, and that is exactly what I intend to do."

  Senk was not at all pleased with this, but in the end had to acknowledge that Hatch's plan had a lot of wisdom. So Senk broke contact with Hatch, and Hatch laid himself down on his bed, and was plunged almost instantly into the deepest of sleeps.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Intelligence can be a defect, since intelligence can be bluffed. Consider the dangers of negotiating a passage past the guardians of an interdicted door. Dogs will give you no chance – they will tear out your throat regardless of your arguments. Human guards, on the other hand, can be bluffed or beguiled, or possibly bribed. Thus dogs are valued for their very stupidity, for with intelligence comes autonomy – and autonomy is very much a doubleedged blade. – from the Book of Negotiations Dorgi-dog, dorgi-dog, Catch me if you can;

  Dorgi-dog, dorgi-dog

  I'm the fastest man.

  – Lupus Lon Oliver (at age seven) Asodo Hatch slept through the afternoon of the Day of Two Fishes, and slept solidly through the night that followed. At dawn on the Day of the Last Fish, the day before Dog Day, Asodo Hatch lay dreaming of Thaldonian Mathematics, of equations breeding and mutating in a warm sea of dogfish-ducks, of seagull-sharks and floating skulls. The skulls were purple, and, as the quills of shellfish plucked themselves to deliquescent music, the skulls became warthogs, and sunbloated smoothly into the brown melt of chocolate.

  The sea smelt of opium.

  The sea caressed his breasts, which were seven in number. He opened his mouth, his teeth ejecting themselves from his jaw as he did so. Just before plunging into a wash of blood, each tooth fired retro-rockets, first slowing itself, then disintegrating. A rain of small crabs came smattering-splattering down to the blood.

  What was that bloodwash?

  The blood was the bluesky of morning, the day's dawn's bluesky revelation. A pulsing sun of lemons and limes was heaving itself up over the rim of the world. It was – Morning?

  Hatch woke himself, and found himself lying fully-dressed on his narrow bed in the cramping enclosure of his room in the Combat College, deep in the heartrock of Cap Foz Para Lash. Deep in the rock. He felt the weight of rock in his head.

  "Wah!" said Hatch, lamenting the necessity to wake, to get out of bed and face the necessities of the future.

  But he struggled out of bed and made his to the nearest ablutions block, where he woke himself properly with a stinging needle-shower. Then Hatch, who found himself possessed of a ferocious hunger, hastened to the Combat College cafeteria, which was strangely empty now that the graduating class had been exiled from Cap Foz Para Lash.

  With the graduation ceremonies over, everyone else was theoretically on holiday. Some few had stayed, hiding out in the Combat College for fear of the violence which had lately been unleashed in Dalar ken Halvar, but most had returned to the world of the sun, compelled by either an eager excitement or a concern for their nearest and dearest.

  At a table in the center of the canteen sat three familiar faces: Beggar Grim, Master Zoplin and Lord X'dex Paspilion, master of the Greater Tower of X-n'dix in the far-off land of X-zox Kalada (which distant land, in Hatch's long-considered opinion, was strictly imaginary).

  "Hatch!" said Beggar Grim, greeting the new lord of the instructorship. "Our Teacher of the Way!"

  "What?" said Hatch. "Are we not rid of you yet?"

  "Your Combat College told us to go," said Grim. "But we reminded the thing that we are your honored guests."

  "And?"

  "It said it would consult with you then kick us out regardless."

  "The kicking out I understand," said Hatch, "but the consultation seems needless."

  "A plague on you, then," said Beggar Grim cheerfully. "May stones grow from your toenails and worms from your teeth."

  "May you be infested with lampreys and may blind mice gnaw your sandals," said Master Zoplin.

  "They despise you because they are commoners, not aristocrats," said the great Lord Paspilion. "As a ruler, I offer you the favor of the broad strath of X-zox Kalada. In that valley fair, all that flourishes is yours, and the welcome of the Greater Tower likewise."

  "The welcome of breakfast is all I need for the moment," said Hatch.

  Then the much-famished Hatch chose from the array of food which was laid out for the common delectation. There was everything from delicate Janjuladoola cuisine to a whale steak some four times the length of a man – this last a specialty prepared for the delight of the Ebrell Islanders. There were many things from the Nexus, in particular tofu – white, soft, taste
less, repulsive. Hatch chosen from the range of food cooked in its given form: chose rice which had been cooked as rice and frog cooked as frog.

  While Hatch was choosing his breakfast, his daughter Onica entered the room, his wife Talanta with her.

  "Talanta," said Hatch.

  But neither wife nor daughter responded. They would not so much as acknowledge his existence. As for the Lady Iro Murasaki – there was no sign of her.

  So Hatch, feeling himself a de facto widower, went to sit with the beggars. Lord X'dex was eating a bowl of tofu, and seemed to be acquiring a liking for the stuff, a phenomenon which Hatch thought truly remarkable. Every time Hatch saw tofu, he was glad he had not been born and bred in the Nexus, for by all accounts tofu had been one of the staple foods of that transcosmic civilization. Tofu was fabricated from soya beans. The beans themselves Hatch knew well – in fact, he often ate roast soya beans by the handful. But something truly dreadful must have been done to those beans to make that tofu stuff.

  "Why so grim, so silent?" said Beggar Grim.

  Hatch told him.

  Hatch laid out his problems, upon which Grim laughed.

  "Lupus is just a wasp," said Beggar Grim. "Trap him in a bottle then drown him."

  Hatch, who was not prepared to sit still for any more such nonsense, scraped down the last of his breakfast, then rose from the table and burped his way back to his room. Hatch seated himself and the hot weight of his over-generous breakfast in front of his room's display screen, activated that screen, and found Paraban Senk waiting for him.

  "Well?" said Senk. "What's your plan?"

  "I'll tell you soon," said Hatch. "But first, we need an agreement."

  "We?" said Senk, sounding amused.

  "We both have a vested interest in stability," said Hatch, doing his best imitation of a bureaucrat. "Therefore, it is in our mutual interest to ensure that no further killings take place in Dalar ken Halvar. To this end, we need to give sanctuary to those refugees who are currently sheltering in the Combat College."

  Senk laughed.

  "It's not that easy, Asodo," said Senk. "If you can give me a plan for bringing order to Dalar ken Halvar, then I'll give refuge to your wife, your daughter – and even your whore."