Hugh Cook - The Worshippers and the Way

Even so, it was less than proper for him to join them in conversation. He had his dignity to think about, and the dignity of a Frangoni warrior is ever one of the more conspicuous parts of his style. Hatch's dignity was conspicuous even though it had to compete with his height, with his hair-knot, his muscle-pumped torso and the grandly great sweep of his purple robes.

But…

"You were talking of a dog," said Hatch, drawn back into the beggars' dialog despite himself.

The Frangoni prided themselves on their aloofness, but Hatch had lately been so stressed by the multiple pressures of his crisis, and so undeniably and unreachably lonely in that crisis, that he had allowed himself to have more to do with beggars than was properly decent, and was hard put to break the habit.

"A dog, yes," said Grim. "A dorgi. The petdog of Manfred Gan Oliver, that's what it was. Gan Oliver himself bred it by bucking a Lashund."

The implication was that Manfred Gan Oliver was a dog himself, for the ferocious hunter-killers known as dorgis are bred by mating long-legged Lashund hounds with the slaughterweight fighting dogs called thogs. Asodo Hatch had never before realized how like unto a thog was Gan Oliver, but once made the comparison was irresistible. The grim-faced head of the Free Corps was undeniably thoggish in all his major attributes, though it had taken a blind man to see as much.

Hatch was still grinning at the beggar's joke when he saw Gan Oliver's son, Lupus Lon Oliver, stealthing his way down Scuffling Road like a debtor in fear of an ambush by writ-bearing creditors.

"Lupus," said Hatch, calling out the Ebrell Islander's name so the beggars would be warned of his approach, and choke back any further jokes about thogs.

Lupus Lon Oliver started, with as much of a shock as if he had been touched at night by a hand of bones in a house thought deserted.

"Hatch," said Lupus, partially recovering himself. "I – I – have you seen Dog Java?"

"Why, yes," said Hatch. "It's been just a snack-snap since he was standing here as large as life. A combast or so."

A combast was a Nexus ration tube; and, by natural extension of meaning, the approximate time taken to leisure down such a ration.

"What – ah, where – "

"He went down the road," said Hatch. "I think he was heading for home. He was upset about something, I don't know what."

"I see," said Lupus.

Then the Ebrell Islander cleared his throat and hastened down Scuffling Road, rushing away with all the impetuous velocity of an Evolutionist sprinting for the river in the hope of surviving an imminent transformation from manflesh to fish.

As Lupus left, Hatch remembered Dog's knife. He thought to call Lupus back and ask him to pass on the knife, then thought better of it. Clearly something had badly upset the young Ebrell Islander, and from what he had seen Hatch could only presume that the Lupus and Dog were locked in some deeply emotional dispute. Probably, given their ages, they were disputing about love. Love for a woman? For each other? For a third man desired by both? Hatch, with more than enough problems of his own to worry about, had absolutely no desire to find out, but guessed that it would be unwise to arm young Lupus with murderous steel as the Ebrell Islander went in pursuit of Dog Java.

"There goes Gan Oliver's son," said Hatch, telling the beggars the air was again free for the exercise of their folly. "Perhaps he's the dog of whose breeding you spoke of."

"Why, no," said Grim. "For Lupus yet lives, but the dog of my eating is dead. This dog, you see, was a dog bred for love. Gan Oliver in exile, old Manfred, he pined for the love of yon dorgi within, hence bred a dorgi without to send it in to consummate his love by proxy. But the lockway denied dog as it did master, so, being built to love, or to pine in love's despite, the dorgi without did perish, hence my eating. My eating, which I will consummate, be you so good as to pass me the teeth. The teeth, Master Zoplin!"

"I suppose," said Master Zoplin, at last consenting to pass along the teeth, which Grim promptly snatched, "I suppose you'll be wanting my tapeworm next."

"No," said Grim, slobbing the teeth into place, "no, but I wouldn't say no to the Eye. Who's got it? Have you?"

"I sold it to Hatch," said Zoplin. "He's awfully keen on the Eye is old Hatch."

"He's waiting with a stuffbag," said X'dex. "I can see it from here. He's waiting to sell something."

"To sell something?" said Grim. "What's he got to sell? His soul he sold at birth, like his father-Frangoni before him. What you waiting for, Hatch? You don't usually wait, not you."

"I told you," said X'dex. "He's selling."

"Then what? Pass us the eye, Friend Dex, Friend Dexlord Paspilion."

"I can't," said that worthy. "I'm studying ants."

"Ants!" said Zoplin. "I'm the one with the ants. They're half my lunch by weight and ten thousand thirds of it by number."

With that, toothless Master Zoplin picked up one of the pieces of baked yam from the banana leaf at his side, wiped it on his rags to remove any ants – for he was fastidiously vegetarian – then began to masticate the yampiece with his gums. As he did so, the worthy Lord X'dex Paspilion unscrambled the Eye from his left-hand socket, wiped it on his own rags, then passed it to Grim, who received it with gratitude.

"Ah!" said Grim, popping the Eye into his own left-hand socket, "now I see him clear enough!"

Whether Grim saw or whether he didn't was a moot point. None of the three beggars had ever allowed Hatch to examine their allegedly precious Eye, so even after more than two decades of acquaintance he had no idea whether the three truly possessed some fabulous device which enabled them to see or whether they had been carrying on a running joke for all these years with a worthless bit of shiny metal.

"What do you see?" said Hatch, challenging.

"A Frangoni born ugly and since grown worse," said Grim. "A Frangoni purple in his humors, with further purple drawn about his purpleness. Purple upon him, and with him – chocolate! That's what he's got! Chocolate! A vile and hideous drug if ever there was one."

In truth, Asodo Hatch did have a consignment of chocolate which he planned to sell for profit. Drug it was indeed, this chocolate being a species of psycho-addictor once very popular in the Nexus.

"You smelt it," said Hatch. "You're blind to the sight but you smelt it."

"Smelt it, did I?" said Grim. "Then it must be melting."

Melting!

Hatch reached in alarm for his stuffbag, for the chocolate within was equal in value to a ten-day supply of opium, and opium he needed most urgently to satisfy his wife's inescapable requirements. Of course the chocolate had not melted at all, for he had it in the bitterblock tablet form which is proof against all but the worst of the sun. Grim laughed, either seeing Hatch's alarm or guessing at it.

"A pox on all beggars," said Hatch.

"A pox indeed," agreed Grim. "Oh, pox would be luxury, or at least the getting of it. You'll be getting with luxury shortly, won't you?"

"How so?" said Hatch.

"Why, for you'll soon be instructor. Isn't it? You're fighting for it soon and shortly, isn't it?"

"Maybe," said Hatch, unwilling to discuss the details of the agon to which he was committed.

"Maybe, maybe," muttered Grim. "Are you too poor to be giving a beggar a yes or a no? It's true, isn't it!" Here anger, so sharp that Hatch was startled by it. "You, you glut on chocolate, six nights of the night, you glut it and squeeze it, but we poor beggars, worms and rats, rats as rags and maggots as comfort. Give me the chocolate!"

"You need no chocolate," said Hatch, speaking lightly, and trying thus to dismiss the truth of Grim's anger. "It's not good for you."