Hugh Cook - The Worshippers and the Way

Asodo Hatch and Lon Oliver looked at each other.

"What was that?" said Lupus.

"A glitch, maybe," said Hatch, dry-mouthed.

He hoped it wasn't. When things went wrong with the programming of the illusion tanks, outright terror was often the result. But for the moment, everything looked normal, if a red sun in combination with a purple sun could be thought of as representing some kind of normality.

Under the red sun and the purple sun, the red-skinned Ebrell Islander and the purple-skinned Frangoni warrior lay in the lizard-tongue heat. Lupus began sucking a small stone to appease his thirst. That made Hatch conscious of his own thirst. The sky was a vast heating plate, its color purple – the same as that of the big sun. Was there some scientific reason for the sky to be purple, or was its coloration a defect of the illusion? Or an unseemly joke perpetrated by Paraban Senk?

Hatch wanted to sleep, but sleep was always difficult in the world of the illusion tanks, since the brain was constantly being artificially stimulated to maintain the illusion. As ever, the lyricism consequent upon that stimulation meant that Hatch saw everything with hallucinatory clarity, from the wrinkled skin over the knuckles of his right hand to a liquid seam of shining black ants coursing past that same organ – which the Frangoni ever call the killing hand.

"So," said Lupus, "what did you do last night?"

Hatch gathered that Lupus meant not the night of the illusion tanks through which they had just lived but the previous night in Dalar ken Halvar.

"I was with my wife," said Hatch.

"I've heard that she's dying," said Lupus.

"It is so," acknowledged Hatch.

"Then doubtless you'd like to spend more time with her," said Lupus.

"I don't need persuading, if persuasion's your motive," said Hatch. "With revenue secured, I'd leave the Combat College tomorrow."

"So what were you doing with your wife?" said Lupus. "Why weren't you working on my father?"

"You over-estimate my talents," said Hatch. "Old man Gan, he's not the kind of man one works on. What am I supposed to do?

Bluff him? Bribe him? Scare him with threats? Lupus, your father's a hard man. If he doesn't want you to have Penelope, why, there's nothing I can do about it."

"So," said Lupus. "We're doomed to fight each other. You and I. Fight it out to the finish."

"Not necessarily," said Hatch. "We…"

"We what?"

Hatch hesitated, not sure how Lupus would take this suggestion. Then he got it out:

"We could kill him."

"What!?" said Lupus.

"Kill him," said Hatch. "Kill Gan Oliver. Your father's a hard man, but he's by no means immortal."

"Hatch," said Lupus, "I'm warning you this. If my father dies, whatever the cause, I'll hold you responsible."

"All right, all right," said Hatch, startled by the wrathfulness of the Ebrell Islander's response. "It was only a, an exploratory suggestion."

"Exploratory! We're talking murder here!"

"Speech is not action," said Hatch. "Why, many times I've – "

"Don't joke with me, Hatch!"

So saying, Lupus locked eyes with Hatch. Hatch, mature enough to concede a point of ego to the needs of diplomacy, broke eye contact. As he did so, he saw a blister of blue light rising over a knoll. He recognized it instantly as one of the hunterkillers of the Musorian Empire.

"Split!" yelled Hatch, rolling away.

Lupus rolled likewise, then joined Hatch in a downhill sprint. The two men fled, dodging and jinking in an effort to make themselves hard to hit. Hatch glanced at the survival-issue timecounter strapped to his wrist. It was almost time! Almost time!

But the hunter-killer was almost upon them. There was no escaping it.

Ahead was a sink-hole, a deep cleft in the ground. Hatch leapt across it. He landed hard, feet together, and ran on. Ahead was a slight rise, and beyond that – what? Lupus Lon Oliver outpaced Asodo Hatch and sprinted for the top of the rise.

"Shit!" screamed Lupus, teetering on the rocks at the top of the rise. "It's a cliff!"

A moment later, Hatch was level with Lupus, who was standing at the edge of a colossal drop. Rock fell sheer for a league or more to the blistering sunslash of the sea.

The hunter-killer was behind them, and approaching fast.

Hatch did not hesitate.

Do or die!

Hatch shoulder-slammed Lupus, slammed him over the edge of the cliff, then jumped after him. Lupus fell, screaming and flailing. Hatch dived as if in a parachute exercise. He spreadeagled his body, presenting maximum resistance to the air, thus slowing his fall. Below him, Lupus was tumbling helplessly, locked into a tumultous death-down spinfall.

Hatch thought at him furiously:

– Come on, Lupus! Break out of it!

But this irrational attempt at telepathy was futile. Lupus fell in the tumult of his fear. Hatch squinted his eyes against the buffeting doorslam of the windrush sky. The sea was rushing toward him, hurtling upward with the dropspeed of his plunge, and Lupus was flailing still, would be dead in a moment, would be – A slapshock of cold dashed Hatch backwards. He had been thrown into a sitting position. He tried to straighten, to spreadeagle his body. He wrenched himself with such viciousness that he almost dislocated a dozen joints before he realized he was sitting in the initiation chair.

He was out of the world of the illusion tanks.

He was back in the Combat College.

He was cold in the chair, his heart at idling speed, his body at rest. But a moment later, the fearshock battlecharge hit, and his heart slammed to a panic-sprint, his flesh flared with heat, his limbs shook, and nausea doubled him over.

The combat bay's display screen filled with the olive-skinned features of Paraban Senk.

"Congratulations," said Paraban Senk.

Hatch straightened, slowly. Breathed out. Shuddered. Mastered himself, and said:

"Thank you."

"Mind you," said Paraban Senk, "your escape stratagem would have been futile had you been living through that episode in the flesh of the fact."

"Futile?" said Hatch. "Since when is escape futile?"

"You would have died when you hit the sea," said Senk.

"Ah," said Hatch, "but you have the concede the fact. I did extend my life by jumping over the cliff, even if only for moments."

"Yes," said Senk. "But what's the use of those moments?"

"It is written in the Book of Survival," said Hatch, "that a breath of life is still life, and that much can be done with a dying breath. You should know as much."

"I do know," said Senk, evidencing amusement. "But of course my function is to make sure that you know."

"So it is," said Hatch. "So it is."

Then, being in no mood to endure Senk's bantering lecturing any longer, Hatch freed himself from the initiation chair and escaped to the corridor, where he found Lupus Lon Oliver. Despite the redskinned tint of his race, the Ebrell Islander was pale and sweaty.

"Hatch, you bastard!" said Lupus, leaning against the creamcolored wall for support. "Only a Frangoni would be mad enough to pull a stunt like that."

"My breeding I cannot help," said Hatch gravely. "I was born to the Wild Tribes, hence must live with wildness. Come on, let's get something to eat."

"To eat?" said Lupus.

"Yes, to eat," said Hatch. Then, maliciously: "Something nice and greasy. Oilfish in butterslime."

"Hatch," said Lupus, irefully. "I'm warning you!"

At which Hatch had mercy. Abandoning his attempts to talk Lupus's stomach into vomiting, Hatch left the shocked and shaken Ebrell Islander and set off for the cafeteria.

Polk the Cash: a moneylender of Dalar ken Halvar who dwells in the commercial center of Actus Dorum, south of Cap Gargle and north of Cap Foz Para Lash. Onica, the youngest daughter born to Talanta and Asodo Hatch, has lately mortgaged herself to this dignitary in order to amplify the supply of opium available to her mother.