Hugh Cook: The Worshippers and the Way

"Do you so compel me?" said Lupus.

Senk paused. The pause was to give Senk time to think, for when confronted with a truly difficult problem the Teacher of Control could on occasion by perceptibly slow in finding a resolution.

"What is your objection to training with Nu-chala-nuth constructs?" said Senk.

"I," said Lupus, "I'm loyal to the Nexus, and they're not."

There was a further pause – a long pause as Senk studied this statement in the light of Lupus Lon Oliver's training record, psychological profile and social background. Lupus was under intense, almost intolerable stress. He had to win the instructorship else face the ruin of his life and the condemnation of his family – his father in particular. By affording Lupus a choice of crew constructs, Senk would give Lupus at least the illusion of having some say over his own life, of successfully exercising autonomous control over his own destiny – and so might succeed in reducing that student's intolerable stress levels.

"Very well," said Senk. "For training purposes, you will be given a captain's choice of crew. You need no longer train with Nu-chala-nuth constructs. Tell me what you want by way of crew. I am yours to command."

"I want," said Lupus, savoring this small victory over the all-powerful Teacher of Control, "I want a crew composed entirely of adherents of Joba Qa Marika."

"It will be done," said Senk gravely.

Senk did not have the resources to create from scratch the necessary software constructs which would imitate the behaviors of such a crew, but it was Lupus Lon Oliver's good fortune that what he desired was already on file.

So Lupus left the Combat College in a moderately happy mood. His happiness lasted until the evening, when he retailed the story of the triumphs of the day to his father. The father of Lupus Lon Oliver was Manfred Gan Oliver – Manfred, the strength of the family Oliver – and he dismissed the victories of the day as a big nothing.

"Win us the instructorship," said Manfred Gan Oliver. "Then you can count yourself victorious. Other than that, nothing counts – absolutely nothing."

Thus things stood near the start of the final year of the build-up to the competitive examinations which would decide who inherited the Combat College's one and only instructorship.

Dalar ken Halvar: aka City of Sun: aka City of the Season: capital of Parengarenga. Though set high on a vast mountain plateau, it is by no means cool, for the Hot Mouth on the city outskirts (one of the several Mouths of the upland plateau) constantly outbreathes hot, dry, desiccating air.

The city is where it is because of the Combat College, the nearby silver mine wealth (less than legend's rumoring, but nevertheless substantial), the secure defensive positions afforded to the paranoid by the upthrusts of those miniature mountains known as the Caps, and the Yamoda River's reliable waterflow – water being always and ever the first and last essential of urban civilization.

The Good Neighbors of the Bralsh might adduce yet another reason for Dalar ken Halvar being located where it is, but their secret knowledge has ever been denied to geographers.

Dead to death but not yet dead

The wound essays the shadow.

Immortal in his pain he gropes,

A moment a millennium.

The sleeking sword is cooling,

Is shouldered in salute, and -

Sensing something wrong – The man died, and every death amongst the Frangoni brought the people down from the Frangoni rock to the waters of the Yamoda River. So it was that Asodo Hatch came to the riverside with his family, or at least with that part of it which remained in Dalar ken Halvar. His living children numbered three, and all were daughters, but two of those daughters – Shalamith and Yelada – had left Parengarenga to make new lives for themselves as wives of men who belonged to the Frangoni community of the far-distant Ebrell Islands.

It was the Silver Emperor, Plandruk Qinplaqus, who in his wisdom had initially placed that small Frangoni community on the Ebrell Islands. And it was Plandruk Qinplaqus likewise who ensured that contacts were maintained between that colony and the Frangoni who dwelt in Dalar ken Halvar. For, though the Ebrell Islands were independent and self-governing (or, in the opinions of some political commentators, self-ungoverning), the Silver Emperor still saw those distant rocks as being within his sphere of influence. Thus had he placed a colony of purple-skinned Frangoni amongst the red-skinned Ebrell Islanders, seeking through the manipulation of this minority to ensure for himself a degree of influence in the affairs of the whale-hunting islands.

All that was left to Hatch in Dalar ken Halvar was his wife Talanta and his daughter Onica, and at the moment it was Onica who had caught his attention. Onica had a praying perched on her hand. She was fascinated with its green complexities, and was endeavoring to outstare its tiny pinprick eyes.

"A mantis can fly, you know," said Onica, "but when it flies, it's more like a leaf than a bird."

She shook her hand and the mantis went whirling away, and in all truth its tumbling flight did mimic that of a leaf sent sprawling by the wind.

Hatch saw little of his daughter these days, for he was fiercely training toward his final examinations. His last year of study was more than half-gone. Seven of the year's thirteen moon- months had waxed and waned, and only six remained. In a bare 160 days, Asodo Hatch would have to fight Lupus Lon Oliver for the instructorship of the Combat College. It was what everyone expected.

It had been what his father had expected, and his father had told him as much on the day before he went to his death. And now that death was a completed fact, a part of history, and the old man's body lay atop a funeral pyre by the river. The wood of the pyre was saturated with aromatic oils which Hatch could smell from where he stood, one hand on Onica's shoulder.

The costs of this funeral would have bankrupted the family Hatch but for the fact that all those costs were being met by Plandruk Qinplaqus, the Silver Emperor who ruled the city of Dalar ken Halvar and the Empire of Greater Parengarenga, the Silver Emperor who, in the service of the motto "divide and rule", had established the small minority Frangoni colonies in both Dalar ken Halvar and the Ebrell Islands alike.

Lamjuk Dakoto Hatch, father of Asodo Hatch and of Oboro Bakendra Hatch, had served the Silver Emperor well, and so Plandruk Qinplaqus, that ancient and much-wizened Ashdan-bred wizard of Ebber, honored Lamjuk Dakoto in death. As Hatch was thus standing there with his daughter Onica, he was verbally accosted when someone said:

"Startrooper Hatch."

"What is it, Combat Cadet?" said Hatch, acknowledging the presence of Yolombo Atlantabara.

Hatch felt the Combat College titles became grotesque if spoken out in the open, out in the sun beneath the sky. They belonged to the world inside the minor mountain of Cap Foz Para Lash, and only there could he take them seriously.

But Hatch said nothing of this to Yolombo Atlantabara, for the young Frangoni warrior had just turned 18, and was taking a break from his Combat College training to enter Parengarenga's imperial army. Like Hatch, Atlantabara would return to the Combat College at age 25 to complete his education.

"Startrooper," said Atlantabara. "I'm joining the army tomorrow."

"You have my blessing, then," said Hatch, not sure what Atlantabara wanted.

"But," said Atlantabara, blurting it out as if the very confession was a statement of horror, "I don't want to."

"You don't want to!" said Hatch.

"Well," said Atlantabara, already ashamed of his confession. "I'd… I'd rather not. Put it that way. I'd rather not. If it was possible to stay, I | | "