Hugh Cook - The Worshippers and the Way

"You wish to know my requirements," said Hatch. "Very well.

My sole condition is that I should be given a handicap appropriate to my age."

A joke. Which Senk ignored, saying merely:

"Do you have any special requirements?"

"Well," said Hatch, "I require to know when we're starting, I need to know that to start with."

"Your duels with Lon Oliver will start tomorrow night," said Senk. "So you can rest for all of today, all of tonight and all through tomorrow's daylight. Now – as to my question. Do you have any special requirements?"

"For what?" said Hatch. "For inspirational music, battle slogans, battle art, or what?"

"Any of those or more," said Senk. "I can give you a list of what's permitted, if you want."

"I want nothing," said Hatch. "Except… Senk, make me a simulcrum head. A head of Lupus Lon Oliver."

"That will cost you," said Senk. "The cost will be deducted from your pay."

"I know," said Hatch. "I know."

But he wanted this head. He wanted to work some black magic.

And so he waited, while Senk fabricated him such a head, which was delivered to his room by means of a transmission tray. Then Hatch took the head, which was a very good resemblance of the Ebrell Islander who was his rival. It was made of a soft rubber-analog, and it was heavy. Hatch sank it on a paper spike.

"What's that in aid of?" said Paraban Senk.

"It's an aid to good dreams," said Hatch, patting the simulcrum head cheerfully.

"Perhaps you'd like to bathe it in artificial blood as well," said Senk.

"It's a thought," said Hatch. "How long would it take to organize?"

"A few moments," said Senk. "But it'll cost a little more."

"Then – no, scrap that plan," said Hatch.

He could afford no further indulgences. He needed to save his Combat College pay so he could buy such things as chocolate from the Combat College cafeteria, chocolate which he could later exchange for opium in the great world outside.

"One last thing," said Senk. "Do you have a guest list?"

"Guest list?" said Hatch, startled.

"You know," said Senk, imitating impatience.

"Of course," said Hatch.

Of course he knew. Those competing for the instructor position were free to invite the guests of their choice to watch the illusion tank battles which would ultimately decide who was awarded that position. To Hatch's knowledge, this was the only occasion on which outsiders could thus be invited into the depths of Cap Foz Para Lash. He suspected it was a surveillance mechanism: suspected that when one increased one's importance by becoming an instructor, one's very friends and acquaintances became a subject of inquiry.

"Well?" said Senk.

"Let in whoever asks in my name to be let in," said Hatch.

"It would be better if you specified," said Senk.

Hatch conjured briefly with the notion of his sister Penelope or the Lady Iro Murasaki watching him commanding a Galactic Class MegaCommand Cruiser somewhere in the depths of intergalactic space in a whitestar universe. Somehow he could not imagine it.

"Nobody will come," said Hatch.

"Perhaps the beggars at the gates," said Senk.

"If they want to, then let them," said Hatch.

"They are unlikely to be improved by the experience," said Paraban Senk. "An important consideration, this, given our dedications."

"Our dedications?" said Hatch, puzzled to hear Senk talking incomprehensible nonsense.

"Our dedications to the ethic of the Nexus, which is progress and improvement."

"That's as may be," said Hatch, uncertain whether Senk was being serious or mildly ironical.

Then Hatch renewed his efforts to win access to all files on Son'sholoma Gezira, hoping to find in such files information which might perhaps be used to discretely blackmail Son'sholoma into something approximating good behavior.

Failing to win such access, Hatch at last gave up, quit his room, and was soon striding toward the lockway, the triple-door airlock entrance which protected the Combat College.

As Hatch approached the lockway, a huge machine came lurching out of a side corridor. The machine was a dorgi. The dorgi. The one and only dorgi left alive in Dalar ken Halvar. For all Hatch knew, it was the one and only functional dorgi left on the whole planet. And, as far as he was concerned, one dorgi was very much one dorgi too many.

The dorgi braked abruptly, blocking the hallway entirely.

Then it trained its zulzers on Asodo Hatch and it roared:

"Halt! Halt right now! Identify yourself! Identify yourself! Who are you? Don't move or I'll blow your head off!"

"Get out of my way, you overgrown turd," said Hatch.

The bulbous machine in front of him responded with an earshattering blast of its klaxon.

"Emergency! Emergency! You are in danger of death! You are in danger of death! Identify yourself or be killed!"

"Go step on yourself," said Hatch.

Usually, when a dorgi gives a warning blast on its klaxon, that final warning indicates that its next move will be to kill someone. But the behavior of this particular machine had been eccentrically erratic for a great many centuries, and as far as anyone could tell it exercised its klaxon simply because it enjoyed uproar for its own sake.

"What is the password?" roared the machine. "What is the password? Tell me the password. Now! Now!! Or I will kill you!!!"

"There isn't a password, you stupid lunk," said Hatch. "There hasn't been a password for the last twenty thousand years."

The machine, the much-dreaded dorgi which dogged the days of every student in the Combat College, thought about this. The dorgi was not very good at thinking, but it had the advantage of having thought its way through this conundrum many many times before. To its great distress, it always came to the same conclusion.

"You are right," said the dorgi, in tones so close to the conversational that Hatch was hard put to hear them after the deafening onslaught of the earlier challenge. "There is no passport. Therefore there can be no legitimate challenge. So you need not identify yourself."

"Yes, we've been through this," said Hatch. "Just get out of my way, okay? I'm not in the mood."

"Ah," said the dorgi, "but tomorrow we will go through this again, and tomorrow there will be a password. But you won't know what the password is. So then I will kill you."

As it concluded this exercise in wishful thinking, the dorgi emphasized its enthusiasm for murder by swiveling its zulzers furiously. It had three zulzers, and each had seven snouts.

Ordinary dorgis, like those working for the Golden Gulag on security assignments, only had one seven-snout zulzer, but the Combat College was guarded by a hypercapacity heavy-combat military dorgi.

"There will be no password," said Hatch. "There is no password today, there was none yesterday and there will be none tomorrow. Understand? Passwords come from Central Command. Central Command is on Charabanc. The planet Charabanc is on the other side of the Chasm Gates. As for the Chasm Gates, why, they fell to ruin over twenty thousand years ago! Now get out of my way!"

"What you say is impossible," said the dorgi stoutly. "Chasm Gates cannot and do not fall into ruin. There is a technical hitch delaying the password. But I will have it by tomorrow and then I will kill you."

"You're ten thousand years overdue for a psyche review," said Hatch. "You're cracked. You want to learn it the hard way? You'll get out of my way right now or I'll report you to the Combat College. After that – well, you know what happens then!"

"You are bluffing," said the dorgi.

But in its heart of hearts the recalcitrant machine knew that Asodo Hatch was not bluffing. The dorgi was no great shakes as a psychologist, but it saw that this time it really had pushed Hatch too far, and if it pushed just one fraction more then Hatch really would lodge a formal complaint with the College, despite the fifty arcs of red tape time that would follow as a consequence.