The Worshippers and the Way coaaod-9 Read online

  But that which oppressed him was the squalid greeding and grasping of commercial life, something which should not afflict a hero.

  – A hero? You want to be a hero?

  Yes. Hatch wanted to be a hero. Like his father. But his father, well, his father…

  – My father was a fool.

  So thought Hatch, and halted as he thought it, the stones of the Frangoni rock seeming unstable underfoot. He could not, would not, should not, must not think such things. But he had. Thoughts themselves have consequences, and this one could not be canceled into oblivion. It was true. The old man had been a fool. In his folly, he had gone down to grief in full view of the public, dying for, for…

  – What did he die for?

  – For nothing.

  Suddenly it was pleasure, pure pleasure, for Hatch to retreat to thoughts of his finances, to a consideration of the pressures of his debts, and he concentrated on figuring gold and silver in his head as he pressed on toward the lair of the High Priest, striving to shut out all thoughts of his father and his father's fate.

  Usually a High Priest in the service of the Great God Mokaragash does not undertake pastoral duties. But Asodo Hatch was a person of no small importance. After all, as a captain of Dalar ken Halvar's Imperial Guard he had the ear of the Silver Emperor himself. So, though his was not one of the Three Questions which any worshipper could put to the ecclesiarch of the Frangoni Rock, Temple Isherzan's sensitivity to political nuance entitled Hatch to ask as he wished.

  This was only natural.

  "Every religious organization is also and necessarily a political organization. Consequently the hierarchy of any established religion tends to be dominated by individuals whose key skills are political."

  So says the Book of Politics.

  Hatch remembered that wisdom as he waited on the pleasure of a junior priest. The junior was fool enough to deny knowledge of the visitor's mission, and kept Hatch waiting while certain Tablets of Appointments were laboriously consulted. Hatch had firmly committed the junior's demerits to memory by the time he was at last allowed to step into the presence of the Inner Idol.

  In the presence of the Inner Idol stood Sesno Felvus, ethnarch of Dalar ken Halvar's Frangoni, and therefore necessarily High Priest of the Great God Mokaragash. Felvus, heavily burdened with ceremonial robes of red and black, was busy with pestel and mortar, grinding the bones of a dead man for ritual purposes. When at last he finished, he abluted his hands in lustral water, then acknowledged Hatch with a nod.

  "Greetings, my lord," said Hatch. "Greetings to the lord who serves the Greater Lord."

  Hatch made ritual obeisance; Felvus recited the Five Blessings; then the two retired to Felvus's private quarters.

  Though the shutters were open, the generous overhang of the eaves meant that the room was cool and shadowy. Coming in out of the sun, Hatch felt almost cold, and was reminded of the eternal chill of the Combat College.

  The High Priest's quarters consisted of a single room only, but this was large, and made to seem enormous by height of ceiling and sparceness of furnishings. Only a single table and three chairs of woven bamboo stood on the bare flagstones of the floor.

  Against one wall stood a broom, a water urn, and – this last a product of the Combat College – a rolled up spongefoam sleeping mat. Such were the High Priest's possessions.

  On the table was a stoneware dish heaped with cubes of sundried scorpion bread. Sesno Felvus ate a piece, as ritual required. He offered no food to Hatch, for the bread was consecrated to the priesthood's service. Besides, this was "a ritual of setting apart", as the Book of Ethnology has it; it demonstrated and reinforced the gulf between priest and worshipper. Hatch – Hatch was unsettled by the unexpected renewal of the dislocating perspective of ethnology. To his dismay, he found himself again seeing all as a stranger, a visitor, an analyst from the Nexus. He fought to be Frangoni, Frangoni in crutch and fundament, in liver and lungs. But instead he was Hatch of the Combat College. Hatch of the Stormforce. Startrooper Hatch.

  Deepspace warrior. Transcosmic citizen.

  To such a person – What could an unwashed savage of the Frangoni rock have to offer such a person?

  "Sit," said Sesno Felvus, in a way which made it clear he had said as much already. "Sit, Hatch. Is anything wrong? Something's wrong. What is it?"

  This was a very difficult question to answer. One does not lie to a High Priest. That would be blasphemy – and, besides, Sesno Felvus was far too acute to swallow an idle deceit. So Hatch had to express his condition in words which would carry the truth yet remain palatable.

  "I, ah… the mind plays tricks," said Hatch. "It happens, sometimes. When things go wrong, I… they teach us the Nexus, so sometimes… sometimes it's as if I wasn't of this world, not quite, but rather… I suppose it's a distancing strategy. When things get too hard I… one devalues the present. What is."

  "The Combat College is a different world," said Sesno Felvus, as if he knew it well. "I think of the Combat College as a cave.

  The cave of the Nexus, where shadows posture as reality. If we accept the very shadows as reality – well, if you live in a cave too long, the very sun must seem a madness. But I don't think you as yet so deeply sunk in strangeness. Or are you? Tell me, Hatch – are we so strange to each other?"

  Seated side by side, the two men were marked by superficial similarities – skin likewise purple and robes similarly styled, albeit of different colors. But Hatch – Hatch was tall and strong by the standards of his people, a warrior in the prime of life, washed, deodorized, depilated and very faintly perfumed by the miraculous machineries of the Nexus, whereas Sesno Felvus – In extreme old age, the Frangoni purple of the High Priest's skin was tinged with brown. His eyes had faded from violet to gray. The lean and bony ancient had long, long ago abandoned the golden ear-rings of virile manhood, piercing his earlobes instead with the iron rings which denoted "a man in the service of death", as the ritual phrase has it. The ancient had not bathed for several years, a fact which Hatch – to his shame – found shameful.

  It was all too easy to see Sesno Felvus as a tourist from the Nexus might have seen him. As a sample of a type. Barbarian Priest, type A-7, old; subtype B-4, rancid. For a moment, Hatch saw the man exactly thus – which was a measure of his estrangement.

  "The heart is a labyrinth," said Sesno Felvus, deducing deep inner conflict's from Hatch's silence. "The best of us get lost in that labyrinth from time to time. Tell me, Hatch – how old are you?"

  "Thirty-four," said Hatch.

  "Thirty-four!" said Sesno Felvus, as if amazed. "Why, I've lost a year! I thought you were thirty-three, because your sister – well, enough of that. Thirty-four. A good age. Still graced with the last of youth yet mature enough to appreciate its sweetness."

  "I don't feel young," said Hatch.

  "One doesn't," said Sesno Felvus, betraying slight amusement.

  "Yet when you reach my age – oh, but I could talk all day of age if you let me. You're thirty-four. A man."

  "For what it's worth," said Hatch.

  Though his ears did not bear the gold, it was nevertheless true that he had attained a man's estate. He had been through the rites of passage, winning wisdom and self-knowledge. His confidence was that which comes from danger and hardship met, faced then overcome. Yet – yet sometimes – "Sometimes," said Sesno Felvus, as if picking up Hatch's thoughts, "sometimes manhood is a puzzlement even to the best of us. I've known you since – why, since you were born."

  True. Sesno Felvus had been on hand when Hatch was still squirming in his birth-blood. Had initiated him into the outer stages of the worship of the Great God Mokaragash when he was aged but nine. Had married him to the woman of his parents' choice when he was 14. Had blessed his daughters. And had consoled him after his father's death, even though that death had been both sinful and shameful, an unpardonable abomination.

  "It is a puzzlement," said Hatch, in that single sentence admitting the intolerable s
tress he was under.

  With this act of admission, Hatch felt – Hatch felt as if a bubble which had been protecting him from the world had suddenly burst. The intolerable months of training, tension, examination, uncertainty, debt, harassment, pain – it was all too much for him.

  His mouth opened and closed, and without warning the tears screwed themselves out of his eyes, and he could not see or breathe or speak.

  Such emotion made introspective analysis impossible, though analysis would have served only to confirm that such a crisis was the inevitable result of unrelieved pressure and the long denial of all carefree reward.

  Hatch wept. Openly, shamelessly. In complete default of all self-control. Sesno Felvus reached out and took his hand. The High Priest's hands were dry, and bon-hard, and firm in the assurance of their comfort, their acceptance. The comfort remained as Hatch's weeping eased, pure pain turned to a deep-felt grief at the mere fact of loss of self-control.

  Then, when Hatch had cleansed himself by weeping – his body calm, relaxed and pliable, as if the collapse of self-control had answered some deep-seated biological need, massaging the tensions from his muscles and from the very linkages of his bones – Sesno Felvus began to deal with him in earnest.

  Counseled by Sesno Felvus, Hatch talked his way through his problems, step by step. The pressures and uncertainties surrounding his struggle for the instructorship of the Combat College. The illness of his wife, the illness which had come upon her with full force in the last six months, and which seemed certain to kill her. His sister's delinquencies. His pressing requirements for money.

  "Asodo," said Sesno Felvus, who had never before called Hatch by his given name. "You have never been happy in the Combat College, have you?"

  "No," said Hatch.

  "I remember you as a child. Your father came to me for guidance. You were… you had nightmares which woke the house, and when it was time to go back… "

  "I remember," said Hatch.

  In the early years of his training in the Combat College, in the years when he had still been a boy, there were times when he had fled from its cold and cream-colored corridors. His family had several times been forced to hunt for him in Spara Slank and Childa Go, by the swamps of the Vomlush or in the streets of Bon Tray. He remembered sitting out one night on the red dust flatlands south of Cap Foz Para Lash, the night being lit by Yon Yo, the high and cold and inexplicable beacon which had ever ruled the heights of Dalar ken Halvar's southernmost minor mountain.

  The boy Hatch had always been caught in the end, and always after his brief-lived truancies he had been forced to return to the Combat College. Always forced. Always compelled. He had never wanted to go back. The memory of that childhood unpleasantness was still very, very clear.

  "So," said Sesno Felvus, "you're not one of those who welcomed your descent into the cave. And now… now you're scheduled to fight for the instructorship. You need to win that fight because you need the money. But… as for the position itself… as for the Combat College | | "

  "If I could walk away from it all then I would," said Hatch.

  "I'd never regret it. I'm not a – it's a playground. That's all.

  That's all it is. It's only the Free Corps which thinks it's – what? A vocation. That's what they think. Stormforce. Startrooper.

  Nexus talk and Nexus tongue. A life. But it's a nonsense."

  "So you wouldn't regret – "

  "What? Whalemeat? Green milk? The Eye of Delusions? I can see the Eye any day, in any case. No. Nothing. I'd have no regrets. If I walked away I'd – but I need the money, I can't walk away from the money. I know the Temple's poor, so I can't, I couldn't – well. You know how it is."

  Dalar ken Halvar was not a rich city, even though it was the capital of the Empire of Greater Parengarenga. As for Temple Isherzan, it was not in any sense wealthy. Sesno Felvus did not have the luxury of being able to offer Hatch charity, and both of them knew it.

  "Your problem," said Sesno Felvus, "is simple to state, even though it may not be quite so simple to solve. You need money desperately, and so seek to win the instructor's position at the Combat College. If you win, will that be money sufficient?"

  "An instructor's pay is generous," said Hatch. "It will serve. If I can win the instructorship."

  "So," said Sesno Felvus. "So you have set your heart on winning. Selection is by competition by combat. Is that not so?"

  "It is so," acknowledged Hatch.

  "A symbolic Season," said Sesno Felvus. "A battle in dream for a prize in the flesh."

  "That," said Hatch, "describes the combat well. The Combat College was founded in the flesh of the fact – however, little remains but the dreams. That's why – it's folly, the whole thing.

  I want my life in the flesh. If I can have it. The flesh of the world and the fact."

  "So you'd like to renounce the Combat College," said Sesno Felvus. "But this is your secret. Nobody else knows it. Everyone rumors that it's your dearest wish to be instructor. I've heard that you're an excellent fighter. If rumor holds truth, then there's only one other seriously in contention for the instructorship. Lon Oliver, isn't it? Is that the young man's name?"

  "Yes," said Hatch, registering no surprise at the High Priest's impeccable intelligence.

  It was no secret that, with the just-completed competitive theoretical examinations having clarified the standing of those students who were competing for the instructorship, Hatch's only remaining serious rival for the one single instructor position was Lupus Lon Oliver. Who was good. Who was very very good. Who might yet shoot Hatch down in flames. Literally in flames – for they would be dueling not with swords and spears but with singlefighters and MegaCommand Cruisers.

  "Now," said Sesno Felvus, "Lon Oliver may win, may lose. But one thing we know of a certainty. Since Lon Oliver is the son of Gan Oliver, he has been driven since childhood by his father's ambition. Lupus Lon Oliver is of the Free Corps, hence thinks like his father. You if you lose will still have a life for yourself.

  But if Lon Oliver loses – for him, nothing."

  "That is so," said Hatch.

  Money aside, Hatch could walk away from the Combat College with no regrets. But Lupus Lon Oliver, like all members of the Free Corps, had made an emotional alliance with the Nexus, and to lose the instructorship would be a tragedy which would break his life.

  "So, Asodo," said Sesno Felvus, "isn't it simple? Your friend Lon Oliver wants the job, but all you want is the money. So sell him the job. Let him bribe you. With gold to your credit, you let him defeat you in the instructorship examinations."

  "Wah!" said Hatch, taken aback by the elegance of this solution. "But – but where would he get the gold? I'd want it in advance, I couldn't trust him to pay me afterwards."

  "Such caution is only wise," said Sesno Felvus. "Of course you'd want cash in advance. You'd need gold sufficient to pay off your debts and a healthy surplus to bank with the Bralsh. But that's no problem. Lon Oliver's father, well – talk to the father if you can't get sense from the son. It matters to both of them intensely. The father's got the Free Corp's resources behind him, so – "

  "But they might not do a deal," said Hatch.

  "I think refusal unlikely," said Sesno Felvus. "From what I hear, the betting in the Combat College runs even on yourself and Lon Oliver. Only a fool would risk losing the instructorship for a point of pride when it could be bought of a certainty at an easily affordable price. Talk to the son. If he's really such a fool, go to his father. They've got the gold, it's no problem."

  "I am in your debt," said Hatch.

  Painfully reminded, as he said it, that he was in debt to many people, mostly for cash.

  "I am a servant," said Sesno Felvus, with these words withdrawing from familiarity into the distance of ritual, and thus sealing up in secrecy the knowledge of all which had passed between them. "I am a servant not just of the Great God but of the people. As you serve your family, as you serve your people, so it is my pleasure
and my privilege to be of service to you."

  So spoke Sesno Felvus, and that was when Hatch – succored by a priest of his religion, succored and nourished, comforted and healed – that was when Hatch knew that he was still of the Frangoni, still truly of the Frangoni, regardless of what the Nexus had done to him. The Frangoni rock was his home, his life, his world – the place where he was accepted and protected, where he was valued and honored.

  Despite the manner of his father's death.

  "There is yet one thing more which I need," said Hatch, affirming his new knowledge to himself by meticulous attention to the rituals of his faith.

  "Speak."

  "I think that Lupus Lon Oliver will yield to me in accordance with your wisdom, but maybe he will fight. If he does, then I must fight for the instructorship. If I fight and win, then I will need a dispensation to accept the instructorship, for to take that job I needs must take an oath to value the Nexus more than my god."

  "Asodo Hatch," said Sesno Felvus, becoming stern and formal, "as High Priest of the Great God Mokaragash in the city of Dalar ken Halvar I give you a dispensation to take such an oath."

  Then Hatch thanked the High Priest, said formal words of parting, then went out into the dustlight of the sunheat day.

  "Hatch," said Sesno Felvus.

  Hatch turned. The High Priest was standing in the doorway.

  "What?" said Hatch, forgetting the courtesies and using a mode of colloquial interrogation which he immediately regretted.

  "To survive is victory sufficient," said Sesno Felvus.

  Then nodded, then withdrew into the shadowspace of his quarters. To survive. To survive? What was the old man talking about? Life? Illusion-tank dueling? The fate of the Frangoni race?

  Hatch remembered one of the old sayings from the teachings of Dith-zora-ka-mako:

  "Wisdom lies but a hair from the idiot."

  In Hatch's estimate, Sesno Felvus had on this occasion failed to manage that hair-fine differentiation between wisdom and… well, not idiocy, not exactly. But platitude. Felvus, Sesno, a platitudinous old Frangoni male | | But still!