Hugh Cook - The Worshippers and the Way

Selling the instructorship outright to Lupus Lon Oliver, allowing his warrior's pride to be bought and sold… the idea was not exactly enrapturing, but… it was a solution! And it was so obvious! Obvious to Sesno Felvus, even though the High Priest was so far removed from the center of immediate crisis. But of course one goes to such a person for advice precisely because such an individual, being free of the turbulence of the moment, is much better placed to consider the options and see the obvious.

But what if Lupus Lon Oliver refused to bribe Asodo Hatch in accordance with Sesno Felvus's suggestion?

What if Lon Oliver refused, and Gan Oliver refused likewise, and Hatch had to fight?

What if Hatch fought and lost? What if he lost and went down in flames, dying in the torn wreckage of a singlefighter? Burning, screaming, falling, down and down, down to the steaming jungles of Cicala or the turbid seas of Yo? What if – "Go-la!"

Hatch stopped, startled. He was still on the temple precincts, no place for anyone to be addressing him in Nexus Ninetongue. So who – A Frangoni?

Yes, it was a Frangoni!

No person of the purple would ever speak anything other than Frangoni upon such sacred soil. Yet here was Son'sholoma Gezira, he who was son of Vara Gezira, and there was no doubt that he had used the Nexus form of address.

Keeping company with Son'sholoma Gezira were half a dozen young men, all of whom looked anxious. They were barefooted, and wore nothing but loincloths, as befitted their station in life.

All belonged to the didimo caste, and the didimo were hewers of wood and drawers of water. There was precious little wood to hew in Dalar ken Halvar, but nevertheless the caste distinctions had not weakened in the generations since the Frangoni who now dwelt in the City of Sun had departed from the Elephant Coast, and it was wrong for one of low caste to open a conversation with one of higher status on such sacred soil.

"May we speak?" said Son'sholoma, still using the Code Seven which served as the Commonspeak of the Nexus.

"Who speaks to me here speaks to me in the tongue proper to the place," said Hatch, phrasing his anger in Frangoni.

Only three years earlier, Hatch and Son'sholoma had been peers in the Combat College, but much had changed since then.

Son'sholoma had disgraced himself, for one thing. Now Hatch spoke roughly, and he spoke in the mode of war, making his anger plain.

Son'sholoma had breached the protocols fitting to Temple Isherzan.

Hatch was all the more angry because his faith in the propriety of the customs of his own people was so weak – and weak at a time when he was trying to draw emotional support from his unity with the traditions of his people.

"Have I offended you?" said Son'sholoma, sounding surprised.

Son'sholoma Gezira was not prepared for Hatch to be so fiercely the Frangoni, because of course Son'sholoma had no knowledge of the truly strenuous combat of cultures which Hatch was manfully endeavoring to resolve in favor of his Frangoni half.

"Your tongue is the offence," said Hatch, with an intolerance which rejected all his Nexus training.

The caste difference he could overlook. After all, when Hatch and Son'sholoma had trained together in the Combat College, they had shared their lives without any regard for caste. But this was not the Combat College. This was Cap Uba, the Frangoni rock, the island of refuge, the place which was theirs and theirs alone in a culture otherwise alien, and nobody should ever compromise the emotional security of that place by speaking there in a foreign tongue.

"I meant no offence, brother," said Son'sholoma.

Hatch stiffened, quite shocked. This time his shock was quite genuine. It owed nothing to Hatch's inner conflicts. Hatch was shocked because Son'sholoma had switched languages, abandoning the Commonspeak of the Nexus to phrase his apology in the Motsu Kazuka of the Nu-chala-nuth. Hatch remembered Beggar Grim speaking that very day of brotherhood, of the Way of the Nu-chala-nuth, and he remembered the beggar's terrifying hope. Hope of being first made Real then made equal, and then – most terrifying of ambitions, this – enriched out of his beggarhood into the full liberties of manhood.

Grim's beggar-babbling had made only a momentary impression on Hatch, but he was shocked rigid to find Son'sholoma Gezira speaking atop the Frangoni rock in Motsu Kazura, the tongue of the Nu-chala-nuth, a religion which should by rights have died out of memory twenty thousand years ago.

"I give you five words," said Hatch, speaking Frangoni, and again speaking very much in the mode of war.

In the Frangoni, to offer someone "five words" was a threat.

The person thus threatened had "five words" in which to explain themselves, with the implication being that dire consequences would follow if the explanation proved inadequate.

"Brother," said Son'sholoma, still speaking the Motsu Kazuka of the Nu-chala-nuth, albeit haltingly. "I want you to me the teaching. You my teacher, the Way."

His atrocious accent, his stumbling grammar, the hesitation of his tongue – all these things told Hatch that Son'sholoma had scarcely the barest rudiments of Motsu Kazuka at his command. But Son'sholoma had learnt enough of that language to ask something utterly appalling.

"I don't understand a word you're saying," said Hatch, in his native Frangoni.

"Then understand me now," said Son'sholoma Gezira, at last consenting to use that same Frangoni tongue. "I and we, me and mine, myself and these with me, we wish you to induct us into the Way of the Nu-chala-nuth."

"Then you and yours need some brain surgery courtesy of a heavy rock," said Hatch.

"This is not a joke," said Son'sholoma. "We're serious."

"Serious?" said Hatch. "You're seriously lunatic! Motsu Kazuka, Nu-chala-nuth – are you mad? What do you want? Our own homegrown version of the Spasm Wars? This is – if I were to exhaust the thesaurus of lunacy, I could hardly find the words of it. As for me – this is my temple, the temple of my people, the temple of yours."

"I meant no offence," said Son'sholoma. "But we did not think you came here to worship."

"What else does one come to a temple for?" said Hatch, rejecting the suggestion that he was in any sense an apostate, an unbeliever, or – perish the thought! – a tourist-stranger beset by ethnological insights. "Why else does one come here? To shit wasps, perhaps? Or bugger rocks with a broomstick? You're mad enough for both, but I'm too sane to waste my time by watching."

Then Hatch left, or tried to.

"Wait," said Son'sholoma, stepping in his way. "You know the Way. You have the knowledge. It is written – it's written that anyone who knows the teachings can propagate the same, regardless of their own belief."

That was true. The religion of the Nu-chala-nuth was strange in the extreme in that it could legitimately be preached even by an unbeliever.

"Where is that written?" said Hatch, who dearly wanted to know who was preaching Nu-chala-nuth in Dalar ken Halvar.

"It is written," said Son'sholoma Gezira, "in your own thesis. That is where it is written."

"My thesis?" said Hatch.

"Yes! The thesis you wrote to gain your degree."

"Wah!" said Hatch.

It was true. It was true. He had written a thesis which had contained an account of such teachings. But he had thought nothing of it at the time. If one writes that some have mastered the art of making the sun explode or of causing the moon to drown itself in a bucket of blood, one does not usually expect such casual reference to the folly of others to lead to disaster in the literal world of the fact and the flesh.

"You know the teachings," said Son'sholoma, pressing home his advantage. "You know and you wrote. You – "