Hugh Cook - The Worshippers and the Way

So saying, Grim beat his tattered rags in frustration, to the great discomfiture of his fleas. A little of the red dust of the Plain of Jars stirred around him in consequence of his efforts.

"Your forte is forgetting," said Hatch. "The Festival of the Dogs is shortly upon us."

Having spoken thus, Hatch began to regret his speech, for by rights a captain of the Imperial Guard has too much pride in his status to dabble in a dialog with beggars. Similarly, a Frangoni true to the traditions of his kind ever ignores the Pang, who are born without caste and who live to their deaths in the same condition. Hatch was both captain and Frangoni; Grim and his companions yet beggars and Pang. Hence the regrets of Asodo Hatch.

Still, the warning was rightly given, for it was the Day of Five Fishes, which falls just five days short of Dog Day, and so for the moment all dog-slaughter was forbidden.

Everyone knew that.

But Grim, either addled in his wits or arguing for the mere love of disputation, chose to dispute it.

"A festival comes, does it?" said Grim. "Wherefore does that quench my appetites? Am I to eat anticipations or baste my stomach with the salt of the same?"

Hatch, whose speech was ever slowed by the burdens of responsibility, made no attempt to wit a quick answer to the querimonious loquacity of Grim's nimble-skilled interrogation. But one of Grim's fellow beggars answered in Hatch's despite.

"He means," said Lord X'dex, Lord X'dex Paspilion, master of the Greater Tower of X-n'dix in the far-off land of X-zox Kalada, "he means, dear Grim, that you breach not your appetites upon the poor lean corpse of that yon-there pariah dog but by the breach of the law."

"Pardon?" said Grim.

"Friend Dex has the giblets again," said Master Zoplin.

Hatch, restless with an over-much listening to the babbling of beggars, looked around for his contact for the thousandth time. But there was still no sight of Polk. Hatch wanted to be gone, but did not dare abort this appointment. Polk had made it clear that he had almost reached the end of his patience, and Hatch could not risk antagonizing the moneylender any further.

But in the absence of Polk, there was Dog, Dog Java, returning up Scuffling Road. Reluctance was written clear in his countenance, so that Hatch immediately supposed that Dog had remembered leaving something of importance in the Combat College – study notes, perhaps – and was unenthusiastic about venturing through airlocks and past dorgi to retrieve what he had forgotten.

Dog halted.

"Yes?" said Hatch, presuming that Dog Java meant to ask him something.

"Ha!" said Lord X'dex, guessing at someone's arrival from the single-word question. "Hatch has been catching! He's got him a stranger! Who is it?"

"It's nobody," said Hatch. "Only Dog Java."

"Java!" said Dex. "The very man! Come close, Java. Come coffee our conversation. Come worm to our honey, rot to our wood. I smell blood!"

And with that, Lord X'dex Paspilion abruptly scuffled through the dust and grabbed Dog Java by the ankle.

"Blood?" said the over-nervous Dog, shaking his ankle in an ineffectual attempt to kick free the beggar. "What are you talking about? I haven't done anything! Let me go!"

"Don't mind Dex," said Zoplin. "He's touched with the giblets, as I've told you already. As a rock has worms, so Dex has the giblets. Giblets and jism. A disease from the dust."

Persuaded by a stouter kick from Dog Java, the beggar Dex released the imprisoned ankle and, laughing (the guttural noise could have been mistaken for a symptom of strangulation, but both Hatch and Dog Java conjectured it correctly as an expression of amusement) the beggar Dex retreated to the dust from whence he had come.

Dog Java stood in the sunlight.

Sweating.

Hatch looked him up and down, lazily, wondering what was wrong with him. Maybe he had a fever, for not only was he sweating – he was also trembling. Meanwhile, the beggars were still ontalking.

"Friend Dex has more than the giblets," said Grim. "He has scrofula, scurvy, bleach-bone, ringworm and a touch of the hairy bubonics. But you have the teeth!"

"So," said Zoplin, using the asset in question to gnaw a piece of sugar cane filched from the nearby sugar juice stall. "So. Beseech me as Lord of Dentition. Beseech or be burgled! Cry slave, slave, or be dust-drowned in camel dung!"

"Beseechingness be unfitting when I seek but the common property of our commune," said Grim. "You admit to the teeth, so give them!"

"I admit them and keep them," said Zoplin, "for it's not for you to be eating dog, not with these teeth or others, for dog be forbidden for slaughter."

"Since when?" said Grim.

"It is written," said Lord X'dex Paspilion, "I cannot read it, mind, but it is written, and mark that the worms have the truth of it, be the bones as yet unwritten, be the pea-soup unsalted, the eagle unwormed, in blood it is written, in shadows and bones – "

"Bones!" said Grim. "It's flesh I'm eating, or would be, had Zoplin the decency to give me the teeth."

"That I cannot," said Zoplin. "For thus it is written."

There were a pause, while the other beggars considered this. Hatch spoke into the pause, addressing the brown-skinned Combat Cadet who stood before him in a virtual paralysis of quick-breathing sweat and muscle-knotted shuddering.

"Dog? Dog Java? Are you all right?"

At which Dog Java's eyes rolled up to expose the whites, and he fell to the ground in a faint. His body shuddered in imitation of epilepsy, as a body often will when its owner faints. Then that body lay still, its breathing easing. Hatch regarded the body with faint surprise, but with no greater emotion. The beggars meanwhile ignored the event, though all three were so sharp that they must have heard Dog Java's collapse clearly, and have understood its import. Grim had considered Master Zoplin's last statement in detail and depth, and gave his response into the sun-hot stillness:

"Written?" said Grim. "We were talking teeth, not writing!"

"Teeth were talking while writing was scribing," said Lord X'dex. "With writing done, let me say it is written – "

"Written?" said Grim. "It is written? And you have the reading of it?"

"With the Eye, yes," said Lord X'dex.

This Eye of which he made mention was a small device which was the common property of the three, and was by no means to be confused with the Eye of Delusions, that much larger affair set above the lockway in the natural amphitheater at the southern end of Scuffling Road.

"With the Eye or without the Eye," said Grim, "I doubt you can read, for you were born illiterate, and I have not heard that you have improved yourself since."

Hatch then feared the two beggars would fall to fighting, something they did from time to time for sheer amusement. Not for the first time, he wondered what it would be like to be a beggar, with an infinity of useless time at his disposal. It seemed to Hatch that he had never been free of time demands and urgent responsibilities in his whole life – and that he had never been more burdened than now.

"The greater secrets have ever been hidden from you and yours," said Lord X'dex, addressing himself to Beggar Grim, would-be devourer of deceased caninity. "But still, it is written that in the month before Dog Day, no dog may be slaughtered in Dalar ken Halvar. From which I find you in breach of the law for possession of yon corpse, hence order it surrendered to the lord of the Greater Tower, who has a dispositional dispensation for the calorificatory combustion or consumption of all foodstuffs or winestuffs, provenant or purchasory, diligent or demised."

While this chattering was going on, a camel came slow-stilt striding, southbound for the kinema, bearing its owner to the entertainments of the Eye of Delusions. Hatch exerted himself to the extent of dragging Dog Java clear of the red dust roadway, then let him lie.