Hugh Cook - The Worshippers and the Way

"You'll push your luck too far one of these days," said Hatch to the dorgi. "Now take back your order – or you'll suffer for it."

But in the end the dorgi proves so savage in its insistence that Hatch, by way of concession, picked up a single scrap of paper then escaped to the airlock. In less than a heartbeat, the inner door dissolved away to nothing. Hatch stepped through, and the door instantly congealed to kaleidoscope behind him.

The airlock's inner chamber worked perfectly, lecturing Hatch on a citizen's ecological duties as it cycled out the old air and replaced it with new. While it did so, Hatch straightened out the crumpled bit of Nexusmake paper and scanned the childish Nexus script written thereon. It was a list: the Gu. the Degli Oltra. the Vogliono Tendenza. the Mok.

Remora Rialto.

Gorbograd. the Vangelis. the Nu-chala-nuth. the Guma Sia Gli. the Permissive Dimensions.

Obsidian IV.

Leonard Haiku.

Plandruk Qinplaqus.

It was part of a child's study notes on the Nexus, obviously. But one item on the list should not have been there. Plandruk Qinplaqus. For Qinplaqus had never played any part in Nexus history but, rather, ruled as emperor in the city of Hatch's nativity. Hatch recrumpled the list and tucked it into a document pocket built into his purple robes.

The airlock's central door dissolved, and Hatch stepped into the airlock's outer chamber. Again the air cycled, again a lecture spoke, and then the outer door dissolved. But unlike the other two doors, which were still working perfectly, the outer door was beginning to break down. When it dissolved, its substance did not dematerialize properly, but instead disintegrated into a fizzing slush of cold and filthy slob. Hatch waded through the slush, quitting the cold of the Combat College for the heat of the sun, the heat which was trapped and amplified by the kinema, the small natural amphitheater outside the lockway airlock.

The kinema was populated night and day by a small audience – of children, mostly – drawn by the nonstop free entertainment offered by the Eye of Delusions. Some of these children raised a small, ironic cheer as Hatch emerged.

"Nu-chala!" cried one. "Nu-chala-nuth!"

Now where on earth had they learnt to say that? Never mind. The religion of Nu-chala-nuth was safety dead, twenty thousand years dead, and in Hatch's estimate all chances of its resurrection were dead, null and zero.

As Hatch strode into the kinema, the lockway's outermost airlock door began to coagulate behind him. It was supposed to open and close instantaneously, but after being neglected for a koba – to use the Ninetongue word for a period of twenty millennia – it was starting to show its age, as indeed was everything in the Combat College. Doubtless eventually the entire College would slag down to wreckage and the Teacher of Control would mumble its way into impotent senility. But for the moment everything still worked.

After a fashion.

True, the outer door of the lockway was malfunctional; true, the milk in the cafeteria was blue; true, the illusion tanks often glitched; true, the temperature controls were shot, so the whole Combat College was shivering cold all year round; but, with a little luck, the whole thing would last for at least a little longer.

And Hatch – Asodo Hatch had no thought for the last twenty thousand years or for the next, since his fate would be settled, one way or another, in the course of the next few days.

Behind the purple-skinned Frangoni warrior, the airlock door hardened at last to the iridescent beauty of kaleidoscope. The lockway's triple airlock doors of kaleidoscope ever protected the Combat College, forbidding entry to the unwanted. Thus that institution had for twenty thousand years been able to continue its rightful mission: to train Startroopers for the Stormforce of the Nexus. Deep in the heart of the mountain lay the Combat College, deep in the heart of Cap Foz Para Lash. But Hatch was outside, outside in the sunlight, standing on the red dust of the Plain of Jars, standing on the fringes of Dalar ken Halvar: the City of the Sun.

City and Combat College.

Two worlds.

Two worlds – each an illusion to the other.

"I vote for this one," said Hatch.

But while he voted for Dalar ken Halvar, he was still contending for dominance in the world of the Combat College.

And – Back in the world of that College, the redskinned Ebrell Islander named Lupus Lon Oliver was conferring with Dog Java in the shadowy privacy of the rock-walled laboratory, and was demanding that Dog explain to him why Hatch still lived, as yet unmurdered, unassassinated, and all too strong fit and dangerous.

The Chem and the Yara: the rich and the poor. In Dalar ken Halvar's Pang, the word for wealth is the same as that for reality. The Chem are those who control the city's wealth, and hence its realities. The poor, the Yara – the underclass of the People Pang – are by definition Unreal, imaginary, dream-delusions formed in the shape of people.

The fingertips, my chaffinch,

Burnt to a flinch, and thus – The world unhanded, humming-bird denied.

All light charade, all voices

In flesh but charnel shadows -

Shadows with shadows scented.

Yet – It was mid-morning when Hatch exited from the lockway. Polk the Cash, the noseless moneylender who had lately assumed such a dominant place in his life, should have been there to greet him, but was not, which irritated Hatch intensely. In these days of tension, irritation was becoming Hatch's dominant operating mode. Which was understandable. He was desperately busy, and right now he wanted to make a deal with Polk, to hurry himself to House Jodorunda, then push on to Temple Isherzan to keep his appointment with the High Priest.

So where was Polk?

With the moneylender being nowhere in evidence, and with the Eye of Delusions showing one of the more offensive cartoon entertainments about the mythical Wild Tribes, Hatch retreated a short distance down Scuffling Road, where he sheltered the bulk of his purple in the shadow of a sugar juice stall. He took particular care to make sure that his stuffbag was safe in that shadow.

Time passed.

Sunbeat and heartbeat.

Shadow and sun.

An oxcart lumbered past, its wooden wheels digging deep in the soft rutted dust of Scuffling Road. More than one Combat College graduate had suggested paving the roads, but any such extravagance would have drained Dalar ken Halvar's treasury of the profits of three generations. Water spilt from the barrels loaded on the oxcart, which had uplifted that water from the Yamoda River and was taking it to sell to those watching the Eye.

Dog Java went by, still dressed in the Junior Blues of a Combat Cadet. He cast a half-glance in Hatch's direction then hastened down Scuffling Road as if fleeing from an unwelcome dental appointment.

Hatch scarcely noticed him.

In the slow sweating desolations of his impatience, Hatch began to attend to the conversation of three much-familiar beggars, the ragmen Grim, Zoplin and X'dex (allegedly Lord X'dex) Paspilion. They seemed to be arguing about a dog. And about a certain set of teeth.

"Pass me the teeth," said Beggar Grim. "This dog's rough as tough for the gums."

"You can't eat dog," said Hatch, incontinently intervening from the shade of his sugar juice shelter, which was scarcely a flea's jump distant from Grim and Grim's lice.

Hatch was surprised at his own forwardness, for he usually exercised the discipline of silence when in the presence of beggars. But Grim showed no corresponding surprise, and replied, as if their converse were the most natural thing in the world:

"Oh, I can eat him right enough – if Master Zoplin be kind enough to pass me the teeth."