Hugh Cook - The Worshippers and the Way

As Hatch was making a note of what he had seen, intending to report it to Paraban Senk, Scorpio Fax saw Hatch and signaled to him. Hatch, who wanted no dealings with Fax – there was too much guilt, too much pain and anguish there – pretended not to see him, and escaped toward the kinema, the natural amphitheater which held the Eye of Delusions.

This morning there was a sprinkling of children on the bench seats from which one could view the Eye. A cartoon giant strode across the big entertainment screen, grinning as it stuffed red and green stars into its satchel. It was pursued through the multi-colored chasms of interstellar space by a Hero of the Permissive Dimensions, his face dominated by a tyrannical Good Guy grin.

Suddenly the giant turned and confronted the pursuing hero.

Made a grab – and secured him!

The giant had the hero in his fist!

Was squeezing him!

The sweat of pain spurted from the hero's brow. Greased by this lubricant, the hero was abruptly squirted out from the giant's fist. He popped up into the air then tumbled down into a beanstalk jungle where, moments later, he was discovered by some painted warriors of the Wild Tribes, ever a feature of the cartoons. To Hatch, hypersensitive in the Frangoni manner, the Wild Tribes were uncomfortably like the Frangoni.

Usually, Hatch did his best to ignore these cartoons. But, sometimes, he could not keep himself from watching. On such occasions, he told himself he was gathering evidence on the offchance that he might one day have the opportunity to prosecute the cartoonists of the Nexus for their delinquencies.

There was nothing in the cartoons to indicate that any warrior of the Wild Tribes was capable of engaging in high-level transcultural semantic analysis, or negotiating with such alien life forms as the Mok and the Vogliono Tendenza, or repairing a subdimensional hyperdrive in hard vacuum in a high radiation environment – all things which Hatch was trained to do.

Rather, the Wild Tribes – whose members were often purpleskinned – were portrayed for the most part as a bunch of mindlessly butchering cannibal headhunters. Perhaps people of purple skins had been chosen for such mockery because there had been none known to the Nexus, but even so – if the Chasm Gates ever opened, then Asodo Hatch would personally make sure that the cartoonists of the Nexus answered to the Frangoni nation for their libels.

As Hatch was eyeing the Eye of Delusions, a young boy came up to him.

"You're a Combat Cadet, aren't you?" said the boy, who was aged about ten.

"A Startrooper," said Hatch, finding himself forced to insist on the full dignity of his present status, even when it was only a boy who was interrogating him.

"What's the difference?" said the boy.

"Startroopers," said Hatch, "are far, far more important. And they get paid more."

"So you're – you're going into the mountain now?"

"Right into the depths of Cap Foz Para Lash," confirmed Hatch.

"So you're going to the women. Right?"

"The women?" said Hatch, mystified.

"It's true about the women? Isn't it?"

What was this? Some new rumor? There was never an end to these rumors, for all those denied entry to the mountain were convinced that some dark and obscene secret lived within.

"Oh," said Hatch. "Oh, yes, the women. They have six breasts on each side, and they – "

"Good morning, Hatch my darling," said Shona, snuggling up behind him and trying to catch his wrist in a bone-breaking combat lock. The wrist escaped, so she sank the strength of her fingers into a bicep.

"Do these women," said the boy, "do they – "

"Brat away, boy!" said Shona, catching him a kick. "You're too young for women. Wait till you're as old as this one, then I'll have thoughts for you."

With that, Shona blew hot air in Hatch's ear.

Hatch, irritated by this Pang female's public familiarity – she was carrying on as if they were lovers! – broke free from the grip of the female Startrooper, and virtually fled for the outer door of the lockway. On his approach, it disintegrated into foaming slob. As Shona joined him inside, the outer door began to reform to hard-shining kaleidoscope, and as it did so the lockway's internal loudspeakers began to lecture the pair of Startroopers on the dangers posed by venereal warts.

Hatch and Shona passed through the triple doors of the slogan-speaking lockway airlock, thus entering the precincts of the Combat College inside the minor mountain known as Cap Foz Para Lash. First came the tedious business of dueling with the dorgi which ever persecuted Combat Cadets and Startroopers alike. Once they had outfaced the beast, they strode through the creamcolored corridors, where the problem of uncollected garbage was perceptible worse.

They made their way to the cafeteria, where Hatch got himself a cup of coffee while Shona indulged herself in a fullscale breakfast. The place was as noisy as ever, and the noise, together with the hot coffee and the harshness of the sunflare lights glaring off the shiny blue paint, woke Hatch up properly, and gave to Hatch a hard-edged work-readiness.

As Shona was finishing her breakfast, which she ate at always at the wolf, Lupus Lon Oliver came up to her, said something, then exited in her company. Hatch watched them narrowly. Conspiracy? He tried to shake off the thought, and went to get himself another cup of coffee.

While Hatch was sipping at his second cup of steaming coffee, Scorpio Fax entered. Fax was the Startrooper whom Hatch had recently seen feeding young Lucius Elikin. A sad and sorry history linked Hatch to Fax, for the Silver Emperor had once commanded Hatch to persuade Fax to murder his father, the infamous Impala Fax, the Butcher of Shintoto – and Hatch, recognizing the political necessities, had been obedient to the emperor's command.

Fax tried to make eyecontact with Hatch, but Hatch pretended not to see him. Hatch almost scalded his throat by gulping down his over-hot coffee, then hurried off to his room, where he made a half-hearted effort to study MegaCommand tactics until it was time to report to Forum Three.

When Hatch did take himself off to Forum Three, he found most of the Startroopers already settled on the steeply-banked benchseats which faced the silent lecture-size display screen. The benchseats were fronted by matching benchdesks, and some people had chess sets and similar arranged on those benchdesks. Lupus Lon Oliver was playing star chess with Shona, which surprised Hatch, who had not known that the Pang female had any knowledge of or taste for the game.

Lupus was playing with the intense concentration of a small man who does not like to lose. Or that at least was how Hatch perceived the conflict. Asodo Hatch was possessed of the indelible conceit that large men (like himself) were good losers, whereas small men (like Lupus) were vicious in defeat. The validity of this belief is questionable, since Hatch never played chess at all, simply because he found losing to be intolerable.

The Startroopers were gathering in Forum Three to receive their assignments for the next stage of the examinations which would determine who would become the Combat College instructor.

Though only Hatch and Lupus were seriously in contention, all Startroopers were supposed to participate – but such universal participation was impossible because of the limited number of combat bays.

When all were gathered, Forum Three's lecture-sized display screen came alive with the olive-skinned features of Paraban Senk, who addressed them with an unseemly cheerfulness.

"Greetings, Startroopers," said Paraban Senk. "I hope we are all ready for this today's exercises. Today we have evasion exercises, which start soon and run through the day then through the night, finishing at dawn tomorrow."