Hugh Cook - The Worshippers and the Way

Hatch was struck by the mice, and the way in which their lives continued, quietly and regularly, in complete innocence of the disaster which was mounting to its heights outside the palace of Na Sashimoko. It seemed to Hatch that he himself had much in common with such a mouse.

"So," said Berlin, taking a chair, "our emperor has chosen to disappear."

"You don't seem overly concerned," said Hatch.

"Not about him," said Berlin. "He comes and he goes. He won't say where, but he's never gone for more than ten days at a time."

"What do you mean?" said Hatch. "What are you talking about?"

"Just that," said Berlin. "Sometimes our emperor leaves his palace, and, for all I know, this very city. I've never found out where he goes. I've never thought it politic to take too keen an interest in the subject."

"So what do we do?" said Hatch. "Do we sit and watch the city burn?"

"No," said Berlin. "In the absence of our emperor, I'm the acting ruler. That's what the constitution says. I'll order the troops into the streets to put down our revolutionaries as best they can."

"What about Scorpio Fax?" said Hatch, conscious of his responsibilities to the man who had sought to warn him of the revolution.

"Fax?" said Berlin.

"He reported, he told us – "

"Oh, Fax, Fax, yes. Well. Since his confession was too late to be useful, we should by rights have him executed for treason.

That's what I'd do. But the emperor is usually more merciful than I would be in his place, so – I'll give Fax a provisional pardon, subject to confirmation by the emperor himself. You may tell him that when you see him next."

With that, Nambasa Berlin dismissed Asodo Hatch, and the Frangoni warrior quit the palace of Na Sashimoko.

It was by then late afternoon on the Day of Three Fishes, just three days short of Dog Day.

A simple ethic has long ruled Dalar ken Halvar: that the imaginary needs of imaginary people must take tenth place to the demands of those who really exist. Amongst the Pang, the brownskinned people who constitute Dalar ken Halvar's dominant racial group, both Chem and Yara alike have long accepted this dogma. How could it be otherwise, when the poor know from their very language that they are imaginary?

It has long been the case that subversive notions, whether sourced from the Eye of Delusions or from the revolutionary readings of radical Combat Cadets, have found no favor even with those of the Yara who are most bitterly oppressed. After all, if they were to accept their own reality, then their lives would immediately become unbearable, whereas virtually all suffering becomes bearable if it can be shrugged off as but a species of dream.

But now a cunning rabble-rouser has employed the accepted social axioms to produce an unexpected conclusion. He says:

"We are the Yara. We do not exist. Because we do not exist we have no responsibilities to anyone or anything. We are but the waking dreams of the world, and who can hold a dream accountable under law?"

This argument has proved unexpectedly potent. The Yara do not want to increase their own sufferings by acknowledging them, hence have no wish to become Real, but a formula which frees them of all responsibility to the real world has proved potently attractive.

So on the sands a shadow stands

Above a shadow stretched.

And nothing happens – but amok

The tongues demand the teeth,

The steel striking -

Demand that he

Made murderer by skill decree – Fears for his own safety had earlier kept Asodo Hatch away from his own house. For, after all, Dog Java had made a determined effort to kill him, which suggested he might be the target of a conspiracy of murder. And murderers in search of Asodo Hatch would surely and logically look for him under his own roof.

However, now that Hatch had been alerted to the danger of civic disorder in the City of Sun, he thought of his family rather than himself, and hastened back to House Takabaga with a view to securing the safety of his wife Talanta and his daughter Onica.

But on his way back to the Frangoni rock, Asodo Hatch saw precious little in the way of revolution. And on Cap Uba itself, all was peace.

Consequently, Hatch was not alarmed to find his house empty, his wife and daughter gone. He presumed them to be worshipping at Temple Isherzan, or visiting the womenfolk of other households. Or it might well be that Onica was at her knife-fighting classes, and that her mother was there as a chaperone. The Frangoni greatly approved of their womenfolk making an earnest study of the great art of knife-fighting, for amongst the Frangoni this form of athleticism has long been held to improve the physical grace of the female form. However, it would be inappropriate for a young yet nubile girl like Onica to be alone with a knife-fighting instructor, hence her mother always accompanied her to her lessons.

Once Asodo Hatch was safe in the Frangoni rock, and safe in his own house, his fears of civic disorder began to dissipate.

Indeed, he began to think that both he himself and Nambasa Berlin had given way to a certain vapouring panic while in conference in Na Sashimoko. So there had been demonstrations? The "demonstrations" might well have been no more than the distantly observed activities of gangs of young men preparing themselves for the celebrations of Dog Day. There had been burnings in Actus Dorum, had there? Perhaps there had been a couple of cooking fires out of control. A boat had been pirated on the Yamoda, had it?

Maybe one of the leaky fishing boats of that sluggish river had sunk in neck-deep water, as was a common occurrence. And as for soldiers being ambushed and massacred – why, that could be sheer rumor.

And besides, Scorpio Fax had said – had he not? – that there was no revolution scheduled until Dog Day.

Of course he had.

He had said just that.

Not till Dog Day, with the Dog Day drums to start it.

So it was that when Asodo Hatch gained the peace of his house in the late afternoon of the Day of Three Fishes, he very shortly ceased worrying about the state of the city, and convinced himself that all was well, and accordingly committed himself to his bed, and was asleep within moments.

As Asodo Hatch slept the sleep of exhaustion, the shadows of the afternoon lengthened into evening. And as the shadows lengthened, the fires which were burning here and there in the streets of Dalar ken Halvar were more easily to be seen. And it would have been clear to anyone standing atop the Frangoni rock that those fires were rapidly increasing in number.

It was thus clear to the woman Talanta and the girl Onica as they made their way home from Temple Isherzan. And by the time they got to their own house, House Takabaga, it was evident to their untutored eyes that something of a widespread riot was going on in the city, and was gathering momentum as the gathering dark began to ensure a degree of anonymity for the rioters.

Onica was all for waking her father, since she had a great faith in him, and was sure he would do something about the rioting. Talanta was likewise sure that the noble Hatch would do something – or try to. His sense of responsibility was such that he was unlikely to concede that any problem was too big for him, so there was every possibility that he would try to wrench the rioting city to order single-handed, and would quite possibly get himself killed in the process.

And Talanta, who did not wish to add to her own problems by encompassing the death of her husband, accordingly forbade Onica to wake him, and counseled her to practice the meditations of patience.

Thus peace ruled in House Takabaga.

And peace ruled on the Frangoni rock itself, for the Frangoni were poor, and well-armed, and strongly consolidated upon their rock, and therefore not much of a temptation to lawless and disorganized rioters who had easier targets elsewhere.