Hugh Cook - The Worshippers and the Way

As Hatch took himself and his worries west of north toward Isherzan, Shona was heading in the opposite direction, her ultimate destination being Kamjo Mojo. She was glad to have been able to help Hatch, for she liked him, for all that he sometimes incited her amiable contempt. Men are so helpless sometimes. Fancy a grown man not knowing the market value of a block of chocolate!

Round Cap Foz Para Lash went Shona, until she gained the southern side and entered the shackland shanty town of Kamjo Mojo, the frog-hunter's colony by the swamp known as the Vomlush. Here the Yamoda River began to perish in shallows enjoyed by frogs and water buffalo alike. Here water lilies were perpetually in bloom, their red and orange flowers giving off a heavy perfume which, on a calm day, would rival Shona's favored Nudik Martyr.

But calm days were seldom in Kamjo Mojo, for either the Hot Mouth vented furnace-dry air, or else it would be breathing in, which it did with such a ferocity that it swallowed dust, sticks, straw, stones, and any small dogs or children caught too near its lip. Either way, the Weather of Never tended to make life in Kamjo Mojo uncomfortable, as did the prolific mosquitoes of the Vomlush and the red dust of the Plain of Jars.

But it was cheap and it was home, and Shona was ever glad to get there after a day spent in the cold cream of the underworld dreamland of the Combat College. Tension, tension, tension: that was what the Combat College was all about. Unremitting pressure and stress. But here she was home, here she could relax.

She wondered about Hatch. Did he ever relax? Somehow, she doubted it. He was so intense, living as if he was responsible for everyone and everything. But that was the Frangoni way. The Frangoni had evolved a doctrine of communal and collective responsibility, but had managed to incorporate into this doctrine the notion that each individual had the ability to change the whole, and hence was responsible for the whole.

Whereas Shona…

Shona was of the Yara, the poor of the Pang, so poor that she scarcely existed, for who but the poorest of the poor would live out here in Kamjo Mojo, south of Yon Yo, south of anything which might possibly be thought of as civilization?

Being of the Yara, being (at least in terms of the beliefs of her people) so Unreal that she counted for no more than a shadow, she had no responsibilities, no debts, no guilts, no burdens, hence lived free. Though life in the Combat College had long ago forced her to accept that there was a strong probability that she did in fact exist, she had not let this prey on her mind, for the very teachings of the Nexus showed her that she truly did not exist, at least as far as time's final outcome was concerned.

It all burns out, in the end. Flesh, hydrogen, helium. The flesh goes down to bones and the bones to dust, and the stars die out to darkness in the end, burdened with the sands of silicon and a deadweight of iron, and then the stars are torn apart and their iron rebuilt to planets as unburnt hydrogen and helium are cooked anew to fresh-burning suns. So, in the long event of time, we none of us exist – and so, if mortality be accepted, then the mere fact of existence becomes no cause for worry.

Thus Shona lived carefree, but for the occasional niggle, one of which was the ongoing problem of keeping the secret of their gold from her husband. Shona, being sharp with a bargain and but one year short of graduation, had done well out of the Combat College, trading everything from coveralls to chocolate for forms of more permanent wealth. So far, so good – but if once her husband learnt how rich they were, he would shortly come to believe that he really existed, from which all manner of suffering would follow.

The chocolate, now. When should she be selling it? It was in blocks of bitter, so it would keep if wrapped in cellophane – of which she had plenty – and stored in the dark in a calabash, sealed against ants, and hung from the bamboo roof-ridge to be out of the way of the rats. But while it would keep it was perishable, so best to be rid of it soon.

The day before Dog Day, that was the best day to be selling.

Everyone was shopping that day for delicacies to be feasted upon on the evening of the Festival of the Dogs itself. The Chem spent in abundance then, as did the poorest of the commons in accordance with their means, and chocolate was one of the choicest of all the delicacies known to Dalar ken Halvar. So there would doubtless be a shortage of the stuff, so if the Bralsh was still in the market for it then the price might well quadruple over the norm, at least on the day.

"Business is good," said Shona to Shona, glad to have been born with a good head for money, and born as a woman, and born into the Pang rather than the Frangoni, and born as Shona, plain Shona, and not as Asodo Hatch, Hatch of the brooding purple, Hatch of House Takabaga, Hatch of the Frangoni rock.

As Shona was thus gladdening her heart, she noticed some boys scuffling in the dust with spears, hunting an imaginary enemy.

Then she saw the boys were not boys but men, and the spears were longer and heavier than those usually used for rats, frogs or fish. She wondered what kind of animal they hoped to hunt with those big heavy spears of theirs, and why they were so intense about their practice, and when they would be playing their practice for real.

Nu-chala-nuth: a fanatic religion which, after an organic rectifier was introduced into human affairs, sparked the Spasm Wars (technically known as the Spasm Riots, since no State of Civil War was ever officially declared by the Nexus Council), and thus precipitated the death of billions.

The Nu is the great lord, ie God. The Nu-chala is the servant of the great lord. The nuth are the worshippers of the servant of the lord – the members of the congregation. Consequently "Nuchala-nuth" may be laboriously rendered as "the congregation which worships the servant of the lord", though a common and far preferable translation is "the Way of Worship".

Nu-chala-nuth is headquartered on Borboth, holiest of planets and home of the Nu-chala. Contrary to the common belief of the ignorant, the language of this planet is not Nu-chala-nuth (for scholarship acknowledges the existence of no language so named) but Motsu Kazuka.

How shall I send to the wind -

How shall I send to the sea -

The bamboo wind of the Elephant Coast -

The fish of the bamboo sea.

If one is of the Frangoni – and Hatch was of the Frangoni – then the Elephant Coast is ever one's home, regardless of where one was born. But five generations previously, the people of the Elephant Coast had met defeat in a perishing war which they were as yet far from forgetting, and the burden of that defeat was that the kings of the south paid tribute to Plandruk Qinplaqus, the mindmastering wizard of Ebber whom they acknowledged as emperor, and some of the Frangoni dwelt yet in servitude in Dalar ken Halvar.

Hatch was born in Dalar ken Halvar, and lived there, and looked set to die there, though dying was not on his mind when he went to Temple Isherzan to seek guidance from the High Priest.

His problem was not death but life.

It was early afternoon on the Day of Five Fishes when Asodo Hatch climbed Cap Uba's southern slopes and entered the precincts of Temple Isherzan. At the gateway known as the Passage of Death he beat his sandals against an iron rail to remove the red dust of the Plain of Jars. He stooped to the Waters of Water, which even in reflection still sustained the purple of his features. He dipped a beaker into the water, shattering his own reflection in the ritual which is known to the Frangoni as p'dala m'thara, and which is designed to remind the pilgrim of the transience of the flesh which so briefly sustains us against the inevitability of our deaths. Hatch drank from the Water of Water, drank from that wisdom; then, with lips wet and unwiped as ritual requires, and with a stray drop of water drippling down his chin, he climbed on up the hillpath, passing first the still-smouldering remains of a funeral pyre, then a temple acolyte who was painting a pyramid of heaped-up skulls with fresh blood.