The Worshippers and the Way coaaod-9

by Hugh Cook

  "For a computational device," said Hatch mildly, "you have quite a large emotional range. Have you considered the possibility that perhaps that range is excessive?"

  "In my vengeance I am human," said Senk. "As I will prove when I deal with my hostages in my vengeance."

  "I trust you will deal with your hostages in a civilized manner," said Hatch, struggling to keep his voice level and unemotional. "We are civilized, are we not?"

  "Civilized!" said Senk. "You drench your hands in murder, you kill in defiance of all our agreements, you betray a trust, you break your oath to the Nexus, and after all that – "

  "I am but a poor barbarian from one of the Wild Tribes of the Permissive Dimensions," said Hatch, in an effort at leisured selfdepreciation. "You cannot expect the high conduct of the Nexus to be reflected in the life of a barbarian such as myself. But you at least have the capacity, surely, to be truly civilized. And is not mercy the greatest of civilization's aspects?"

  "Jokes!" said Senk, responding with fury to Hatch's suave sally. "A time like this, and you indulge yourself in jokes. Very well! Then indulge yourself in this!"

  And with that, Paraban Senk's olive-complected features faded from the display screen in Forum Three. Glowing green lines divided that screen into three separate frames. And in those frames there came to life – Onica.

  Talanta.

  And the Lady Iro Murasaki.

  All three were standing on the sands of a rumpled desert of red dust. They were being observed by a group of tourists who appeared to have climbed out of a hover vehicle. The hover vehicle was garishly adorned with bright-sign glyphs and graphics, amongst which Hatch saw a fleshpink vulva, a grinning orange sun, a dolphin spouting orangejuice, and a sign in Nexus script which identified the vehicle as the property of an organization known as Happy Hunting Tours.

  All three women looked grossly unhappy, and the reason appeared to be because all three were rapidly sinking into the sands of the desert. As Hatch watched, the desert floor rocked.

  Onica screamed. Ants were swelling from the desert, cascading into hugeness, their mandibles razor-sharp.

  "Watch, Hatch!" roared Senk, in a grotesquely amplified voice-over.

  But Hatch did not watch. His hand was moving, had a life of his own, was reaching, was drawing. Not a sword but a knife. A knife, but knife enough. His hand clutched, struck, disembowelled.

  Down went Hatch in the agony of spillage, his hand griping and writhing as the intolerable pain sent it into spasm.

  – Properly. Do it properly.

  So thought Hatch in his agony.

  And, falling, Hatch steadied the knife, and speared it into his body as he fell, driving home the blade with the full force of his earthly collapse.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Cure-all clinic: a Combat College facility which has wideranging powers to repair injury and restore health.

  So laid against the pillow -

  To meet with monsters, meet

  Decapitating death, and yet -

  The dawn – Asodo Hatch woke in the cure-all clinic to find his sister Penelope – no, she was Joma, he would make no concessions, Joma she had been born and Joma she must stay – bending down over him.

  "Joma," said Hatch.

  "Penelope," said she.

  "Penelope, then," said Hatch, too weak to argue the point.

  "Penelope and Lupus," said Lupus Lon Oliver, who was sitting on the end of Hatch's bed. "The love of Penelope in balance with the wrath of Lupus."

  Lupus did not look particularly wrathful at that precise moment, but Hatch could well imagine that in this case appearances might be deceptive. Hatch was not sure of the exact nature of his own circumstances, so sent out a tentative probe.

  "What is the measure of this love?" said Hatch. "Penelope's love, of which you have spoken?"

  "She carried you here," said Lupus. "When you lay in the rubble of your bowels, Penelope scooped you up and labored you all the way to this clinic here."

  "How came she to know of my wounding?" said Hatch.

  "Your wounding!" said Lupus. "It was suicide!"

  Hatch let that pass, then said:

  "But she came."

  "Senk called us," said Lupus. "He lacks facilities for the cartage of bodies, hence needed our arms and our legs for the purpose."

  "Where were you two hiding?"

  "Hiding?" said Lupus. "We weren't hiding at all."

  "We were on our honeymoon," said Penelope.

  "Your honeymoon!?" said Hatch.

  "Earlier," said Lupus, "Paraban Senk was kind enough to officiate at our marriage. Then we entered the combat bays. Where else would we go for a honeymoon? To Dalar ken Halvar, perhaps? To indulge in the delights of the Day of the Dogs, perhaps? No, Hatch. We went to the Nexus."

  This struck Hatch as being exceedingly bizarre: that two people should choose the illusion tanks as the venue for their honeymoon. Still, it was in keeping with Lupus Lon Oliver's aspirations, for Lupus truly wanted to be a citizen of the Nexus.

  "Where did you go?" said Hatch.

  "To jungles of ice and beaches of marzipan," said Penelope dreamily. "To seas of fire and skies of liquid treacle."

  "Meantime," said Lupus, "you were busily engaged in killing my father."

  Hatch lay in his combat clinic bed, trying to gauge his own strength. He found himself decidedly weak. He was in no position to duke or duel with Lupus. Hence decided that silence was the best policy.

  "Never mind," said Lupus. "My father stood between me and my marriage, so… Hatch, let us not let my father's death stand between you and me."

  This was said with a degree of studied formality, and with a certain stiffness. Hatch remembered back to an illusion tank exercise in which he had suggested to Lupus that the pair of them conspire to kill Gan Oliver. Given the ferocity with which Lupus had reacted on that occasion, Hatch found it hard to credit the young man's present forgiveness.

  Hatch rather suspected that Paraban Senk, the venerable Teacher of Control, had put considerable pressure on Lupus, in order to coerce Lupus into making a peace with Hatch.

  Still:

  "I am ashamed of myself," said Hatch, making the confession though every word of it cost him dearly. "I acted in fear and in haste, and I regret it. I should have given Gan Oliver the chance to make his peace with me."

  "That's as may be," said Lupus, still speaking with a pronounced stiffness. "Still, that was a different world, and we must make our lives in this one."

  Then Lupus formally congratulated Hatch on making himself emperor of Dalar ken Halvar; and of killing the lockway's dorgi; and of outfacing Paraban Senk.

  "That reminds me," said Hatch, accepting these congratulations, and not finding it necessary to disclaim responsibility for the dorgi's death. "In the corpse of the dorgi I discovered a trinket."

  "This trinket," said Penelope, displaying that mazadath, which she had slung round her neck on a chain of a metal which matched the mazadath's silver.

  "Precisely," said Hatch. "That trinket."

  "This," said Penelope, "is a wedding present."

  "Who gave it to you?" said Hatch.

  "You did," said Penelope.

  And Hatch did not feel that he was in a position to argue. In any case, Lupus denied him all opportunity for argument, for Lupus said (still with a measured stiffness which spoke of unresolved homicidal impulses):

  "This must conclude our interview, for now we must withdraw, for Paraban Senk wishes to speak with you privily."

  Then the young redskinned Ebrell Islander Lupus Lon Oliver withdrew with his purple-skinned bride, the voluptuous Penelope, and Hatch was left alone in the Combat College's sickbay.

  "Hatch," said Senk, his olive-skinned features coming to life on a display screen in the cure-all clinic. "Are you ready to negotiate?"

  "I am in no position to negotiate," said Hatch. "For I am flat on my back and weak from my wounding. You have the strength of two people at your disposal, young Lup
us and his bride, and I think the pair of them will do what you want. Furthermore, you still have three hostages. I am at your disposal. Accept my surrender."

  Hatch surrendered thus because he did not want a repeat of the horrific moments in which Onica, Talanta and the Lady Iro Murasaki had been exposed to some fraction of the hidden hell which lay within the illusion tank scenarios.

  "If I could accept your surrender then I would," said Senk.

  "But I cannot."

  Hatch thought about this.

  Then said:

  "Then kill me. You have the means."

  Senk certainly had the means, at least in the cure-all clinic, for the clinic's built-in surgical equipment could easily be adapted to the lethal dissection of the living.

  "You misunderstand me," said Senk. "I cannot accept your surrender, because I have been forced to surrender to you."

  "How so?" said Hatch.

  Then Senk explained After Asodo Hatch had failed to reemerge from the Combat College, that college had been placed under an interdict by a Nuchala-nuth priesthood led by Hatch's brother Oboro Bakendra and by the noseless ex-moneylender Polk the Cash. Under the terms of that interdict, no person would be allowed into the Combat College until Asodo Hatch had been yielded up by that College, alive and well.

  "They say," said Senk, "that if you cannot be yielded up, then I will be deprived of new students forever. I will be similarly deprived unless I co-operate in teaching the doctrines of Nu-chala-nuth and the language of Motsu Kazuka."

  "So," said Hatch, "it is your destiny to become a theological college."

  "My overriding priority is to train Startroopers for the Stormforce of the Nexus," said Senk. "I must do whatever is necessary to fulfill that objective. So, if I must teach theology as well – why, it is considered fit and proper that Startroopers should know of the Nu-chala-nuth and their language."

  "I will need more from you than that," said Hatch.

  "More?" said Senk. "Isn't this enough?"

  "Not much more," said Hatch. "But a little more. The cure of my wife, if cure be possible. I trust you have the woman still."

  "She is safe in the worlds of the Nexus," said Paraban Senk.

  "Her flesh is still seated in a combat bay, but her mind is at ease in a deer-park forest. Penelope has spoken with her."

  "She has?"

  "Of course," said Senk. "Penelope has been working very hard on your behalf, Hatch. She has made Lupus Lon Oliver concede his will to our truce. I will treat with your wife in this clinic, Hatch, and I will cure her if her cure lies in my compass."

  "Do you think it does?" said Hatch.

  "I will discover the truth under surgery," said Senk.

  "There will be others who will have need of surgery," said Hatch.

  "Hatch," said Senk, "I am but one, and Dalar ken Halvar alone could flood this clinic with more surgical cases than could be treated inside the surgery."

  "Selected cases," said Hatch. "That's all I'll need you to treat. I'm no wizard, yet must secure an empire. Polk the Cash has need of a nose, and Nambasa Berlin likewise. And there will be others."

  "Tell me of these others," said Senk.

  And thus the pair of them opened their negotiations in earnest.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The Great God Mokaragash: aka the Greater Lord: aka He Who Sees Without Eyes: the ruling deity of the Frangoni people. He is believed to be immanent in the great idol found in the precincts of Temple Isherzan, the Frangoni temple which stands on the Frangoni rock. At that temple, the Great God Mokaragash is served by Frangoni priests, these priests being ruled by Sesno Felvus, who is the High Priest of the Great God Mokaragash, and who is therefore the ethnarch of the Frangoni people in Dalar ken Halvar.

  Red and black, in shadows and blood -

  To a grim purposes, sees yet sightless.

  Thus it was that Asodo Hatch dueled with a demon inside the minor mountain known as Cap Foz Para Lash, and won a great victory over that demon. Inside of a month, the details of that duel were known to all of Dalar ken Halvar. Asodo Hatch – this is how the story was told, and nobody doubted it – had challenged Paraban Senk to a duel. Senk had accepted the challenge. In an arena generated by the machineries of the illusion tanks, Asodo Hatch had met with Senk, and the pair had fought it out to the red-blood finish, with the rule of the Combat College as the prize.

  Also told in Dalar ken Halvar was the story of Hatch's climactic confrontation with the lockway's dorgi. It was told how the dorgi had growled and roared, how it had spat death with its zulzers – death which Hatch in his nimbleness had dodged and ducked – and how at last it had destroyed itself when in its frustration it attempted to use its most powerful weapons to destroy not just Hatch but the entire mountain which trapped and encumbered it.

  On the strength of such tales, Asodo Hatch became not just Saint Hatch but Hero Hatch into the bargain, all of which was a great help to him as he attempted to make himself master of the Empire of Greater Parengarenga.

  Even with such help, to secure his rule was no easy task. It required the most delicate of negotiations, coupled with a regrettable requirement for (on occasion) direct and ruthless action which need not here be detailed. For the management of an empire is a study in itself, and not to be lightly summed.

  Suffice it to say that Asodo Hatch was for a time very busy, yet as the days went by his burdens eased. And so it was that he found the time for nights of peaceful privacy, and spent those nights in Pan Lay, a fine house on the heights of Cap Gargle. The owner of that house was the Lady Iro Murasaki, one of the gray-skinned Janjuladoola people – and Hatch of course did not displace her from her residence when he chose to spend his nights in that residence.

  It is doubtlessly true that, in a strictly moral universe, Asodo Hatch would not have ended thus in the arms of the Lady Iro Murasaki. But this is a history of the world of the fact and the flesh, not a gaudy tale of Good versus Evil such as might have been candy flossed to life by the Eye of Delusions. This, then, is not a nicely balanced structure of error and retribution suitable for use as a model to propound the ethical philosophies. It is history, and it is not for history to take upon itself the mission of the moralists.

  But if some mission be demanded, if it be said that the mere recounting of events is not a task sufficient in itself – why, then, let this history be taken as an exemplification of the intrinsic complexity of life. If a message be required, why then, let the very complexities of this history be a message in itself.

  And if something more still be demanded – a moral, perforce! – why then, let the moral be that life is a dice game played in the shadows with a dog and a ghost.

  Consider by the light of that moral the life of Asodo Hatch.

  In the time of his testing, Asodo Hatch used means which he did not rightly know were at his disposal to achieve ends which were not strictly of his own choosing. He was swimming, yes, and swimming of his own free will, and in the direction of his choosing – but he was swimming in a river that was in flood, a boiling river of filthy brown water ever churning toward the hot pit of its final embroilment.

  And we too in our time may be plunged into such a flood; and therefore should not be too quick to judge, or to say that Hatch should have drunk the river dry, or should have grown wings and flown, or should have conceded himself to the flood by evolving himself into a fish.

  Let us then grant him the charity of our mercy.

  And if it be objected that Hatch, whether swimming or drowning, had no right to live when so many were dead – why then, know that it takes only a moment's courage to die, whereas it takes a lifetime's courage to live. And Asodo Hatch had the greatest of difficulty in finding that lifetime's courage, for the undeniable truth is that his father had handed him both a sharpened sword and the incentive to use it.

  Therefore let us grant to Asodo Hatch at least the honor of his courage.

  And if further excuse for his actions be needed, why then, remember on
ly that Hatch was a barbarian monstrous in his purple, a true warrior of one of the Wild Tribes if ever there was one; and, if someone must be blamed for his wrongdoing, then blame the cartoonists of the Nexus, who were surely the providers of his strongest role models. And with blame thus properly assigned in the best of moralizing fashion, it is proper to spare a moment to satisfy the curiosity of the ethnologists, and to detail the manner in which the Frangoni worship of the Great God Mokaragash was reconciled with the rise of Nu-chala-nuth.

  Let it be recorded, then, that at the end of the first year of his rule, Asodo Hatch climbed to the Frangoni rock, and that Hatch there made his peace with Sesno Felvus, the High Priest of the Great God Mokaragash. In Temple Isherzan, there was only the priesthood left, and not much of that: for the Frangoni laity had converted as a whole to the worship of the Nu-chala, and hence had joined themselves to that great congregation known as the Nuchala-nuth.

  To deprive a Great God of the worship of His people would be considered by many to be an unpardonable crime; but Sesno Felvus pardoned Asodo Hatch, for Sesno Felvus – when forced to the ultimate choice – valued his people more than his god.

  Besides, the gods evolve, do they not? State it as a certainty: they do. For it is one of the lessons of history that the gods lack that stability of form which is given to the flesh; and, in proof of this, it is difficult to find so much as a single god which has been stable in its form for as little time as a thousand years. Therefore it might well be thought that the Great God Mokaragash, when incarnated in an idol in the precincts of Temple Isherzan, had yet to evolve to His final form; and it might be thought that the Nu, the god worshipped by the Nu-chala, was simply a potential future form to which, in the fullness of time, the Great God Mokaragash would Evolve.

  Therefore it could be argued that those who abandoned the worship of the Great God Mokaragash to make themselves members of the Nu-chala-nuth were simply giving slightly premature homage to a future form of the Great God Mokaragash. This at least was what Sesno Felvus told those priests who chose to stay with him in Temple Isherzan; and, if any chose to disbelieve this, not one of them was bold enough to say as much.