Hugh Cook - The Worshippers and the Way

So the dorgi, grumbling, backed off into its side corridor.

But Hatch had barely got past the machine when it came lurching out again, blasting the air with its klaxon. Hatch jammed his fingers into his ears. Despite the jamming, the dorgi's challenge came through loud and clear:

"Halt! Halt! Halt right now! Take off your clothes! Take off your clothes! Now! Now! Or you will be exterminated!"

Hatch unjammed his ears and turned on the machine. As he did so, from the far side of the metallic brute there came the sounds of Shona's womanly wrath, an edge of murder in her fury:

"Exterminated! I'll do the exterminating around here! You get out of my way right now or I'll get a power wrench and I'll rip your torque out."

As the dorgi began arguing with Shona, Hatch escaped to the lockway. The innermost airlock door dissolved. Hatch slipped inside and the innermost door reformed. There was a faint hiss of positive pressure.

"Greetings, citizen," said an automated female voice. "Your duty as a citizen is to vote. Democracy is our common duty… very well, very well… you have your first clearance… prepare to proceed."

The central door dissolved. Hatch stepped into the outer chamber. The central airlock closed. Again the hiss of positive pressure.

"Have you time to spend with the ill or the aged?" said the automated female voice. "Human Concern is our commoncause enabling organization. Human Concern welcomes your involvement for the common good… very well, very well… you have your second and final clearance… prepare to proceed."

The kaleidoscope of the outermost door collapsed. Driven by the positive pressure within the airlock, it spewed outwards outwards in a mess of shivering slob.

Hatch exited, striding bravely through the slob, only to be accosted by a mob of beggars. They were demanding not alms but justice, something Hatch was equipped to dispense since, by virtue of being a captain of the Imperial Guard, he was automatically a Judge of the Open Court.

So Hatch spent a weary time trying to make sense out of a three-cornered dispute between the beggars Grim, Zoplin and Lord X'dex Paspilion, something to do with the use of the Eye and the alleged theft of a considerable fraction of a much-decomposed dog corpse.

Hatch did his best, which was not easy, since the affairs of the poor are typically more complicated than those of the rich, and this seemed to be one of those cases in which everyone is at least partly to blame. Hatch at last decided that Grim should be allowed to punch Zoplin twice, and that Zoplin should be given the privilege of kicking Lord X'dex thrice in the ribs, but that Zoplin should have the exclusive use of the Eye until dawn the next day.

Having thus discharged his responsibilities, Hatch made his escape, or tried to, but in Scuffling Road he was waylaid by the noseless moneylender Polk, whose many demerits were increased by the fact that, thanks to his noseless state, he always reminded Hatch unpleasantly of his political nemesis, the implacable and ever-victorious Nambasa Berlin.

"Hatch!" said Polk, seizing upon the Frangoni warrior with claws which gripped like pincers.

Upon which Asodo Hatch turned upon the unfortunate moneylender. He seized Polk's wrist and twisted it free with a viciousness which almost broke the joint.

"Polk," said Hatch, with murder in his voice.

Then caught a glimpse of something sun-struck and striking.

It was a knife.

As Dog Java struck, Hatch blocked the blow with the body of the moneylender Polk. Dog's murderous blade slammed into Polk's back. Hatch felt the moneylender's body shake as Dog's knifestrength hit it, and hit it hard.

"Gah!" said Dog, realizing he had struck Polk rather than Hatch.

"You fool!" roared Hatch, letting Polk fall.

Dog confronted him. For a moment. Gaping. Blinking. Combatshocked. Seared and shaken by his own audacity. And terrified to realize that his audacity had failed him – and that his musclepumped enemy still lived. Then Dog took to his heels, pelting away in a panic, fleeing back toward the lockway. Hatch made no attempt to pursue him. While Dog had the physique of a sprinter, Hatch was a bodybuilder, and was built accordingly.

"What was all that about?" said Polk, picking himself up from the dust where Hatch had dropped him.

"What?" said Hatch, astonished. "I thought you were dead!

Here, let me look at you."

With that, Hatch took Polk by the shoulders and spun him round. The cloth which covered the moneylender's back had been knife-struck, ripping open a rent which revealed bright-shining fish-scale armor, the smoothest and brightest which Hatch had ever seen in his life. The workmanship was incredible, and, assuming that the armor had successfully blocked a full-strength blow by Dog, it was hard to assume that stuff so thin and yet so strong was of local make.

"Where did you come by this?" said Hatch.

"Never you mind," said Polk, breaking free from the Frangoni warrior.

And, clearly disconcerted by the knife attack, and by Hatch's discovery of his secret armor, Polk made his getaway, leaving to a later date whatever discussion he had had in mind.

Hatch then started to make his way toward the lockway, intending to reenter the Combat College and bring Dog to justice.

But he was intercepted by Shona, who had seen Dog's attack, and who restrained him.

"You might get ambushed," she said.

There was a lot of good military sense in this, for it was most unlikely that Dog would have sought to strike Hatch down unless he had been encouraged to do so by some kind of conspiracy.

So inside Cap Foz Para Lash there might be half a dozen or more Dog-minded knife-strikers ready to rip up Asodo Hatch if he incontinently pursued his quarry into the Combat College. So Hatch allowed Shona to talk him into settling his nerves with a cup of tea, and then, with his nerves settled – he had been shaken, he had to admit it! – Hatch went on his way.

Parengarenga: continental mass east of Argan, south of Tameran and west of Yestron. Dalar ken Halvar stands on the central upland plateau, viewed from which the geography is thus:To the north, a harsh and sparsely populated desert stretching away to the Coast of Sand; to the south, the arid wastes of the Death Lizard Desolations, then the Blue Mountains, with the lush tropics of the Elephant Coast beyond; to the west, the Golden Desert, realm of gold-diggers and opal miners, terminating at the Crocodile Coast; and, to the east, the Cattle Plains, which reach across the horizons to the Coast of Grass.

The Empire of Parengarenga has an army of a bare 30,000 men, a number ludicrously small until one considers that a continent which consists largely of a series of wastelands needs precious little protection against invaders, and that the Silver Emperor typically resolves domestic problems by political manipulation rather than brute force.

So he seated silk on furs, and,

Sweat despoiling ambergris and incense,

Stacked his folds for comfort.

Then watching fed, and fed on watching,

Fed on blood, and fingered

The naked soul beneath his thumb -

A blister-boil about to burst

And break beneath the sun.

On leaving Shona, Hatch did not go to his own home, but headed instead to the elegant house known as Pan Lay, the house which was the home of the Lady Iro Murasaki. If his murder was on the agenda, then he would surely be safer at Pan Lay; and, besides, he was in a mood to see the lady.

The Lady Iro Murasaki greeted Asodo Hatch in her customary manner, and they settled themselves upon a padded luxury of cushions. Tea was brought, and they drank.

The Lady Murasaki was adorned with Janjuladoola silks which had been spun and embroidered in the far-off city of Obooloo in the distant continent of Yestron. Those silks were patterned with fish and birds. Yet wealth far greater adorned her hand, for on her finger she wore a sample of that rare and fabulously expensive gemstone known as ever-ice. The stone was held by a setting of silver. It was cold always, and by night and day alike it was surrounded by a nimbus of light, sometimes cold white and sometimes rainbow.