Hugh Cook - The Worshippers and the Way

To survive.

To survive is victory sufficient.

Hatch glanced at the countdown telltale and saw he had but ten pulsebeats to combat. He watched the clock-counter pulse.

Once. Twice. Thrice.

As if calmed by the very countdown itself, Hatch found himself lucid, clear. In his lucidity, he remembered one of the brevities of Jeneth Odette, a practitioner of Dith-zora-ka-mako who had once lectured on her method by saying:

"I took a worm and turned it inside out." – To survive is victory sufficient.

Turned inside out:

– To die is victory sufficient.

Suddenly Hatch remembered. He remembered the evasion exercise he had so recently undertaken when paired with Lupus Lon Oliver.

Pursued by a hunter-killer, Hatch had jumped over a cliff, taking a death-plunge which had allowed him to survive to the end of the exercise.

He glanced at the countdown telltale.

Three pulses remained.

Hatch grinned, fiercely, for now he knew, now he understood, now he saw a way to wreck young Lupus and win.

Two pulses.

One.

None.

And Paraban Senk said:

"Let combat begin."

The world went red. The world went white. The world flickered through the spectrum, then blurred into unintelligibility. Then steadied. As the world steadied, Hatch found himself sitting frozen in the cockpit of a Scala Nine singlefighter in a monochromatic world. A world without color, a world of black and white. A world of silence unbroken except for the slightest background hiss.

Caught in a world of monochromatic paralysis, Hatch reviewed his plan. Then color flooded the world, stasis ended, and he was thrust back into his seat by the force of a full five gravities of acceleration, hurtling through the lower atmosphere in a Scala Nine singlefighter.

Illusion tanks: computer-generated environments allowing people-in-the-flesh to interact with each other (or with software artefacts) in a subjective world which lacks all objective existence.

If in a world of dreams we fight The bloodstained shadows of the cranking steel Which grinds the bones of monsters then grinds ours – Then wake and find The blood which gapes and grins upon the pillow – The softness like a rope around my neck – But this "but if" is but – So forced by five gravities he burnt low across a sea of green, a sea not grass but tarnished water. Slammed through the lower atmosphere beneath a sky of burnished copper.

"Hatch," said Lupus, over the vidrolator's open channel. "I see you, Hatch." Hatch ignored him. "Hatch! Hatch! It's me! It's me! You can run, Hatch. You can run, but you can't hide."

Hatch had heard that before. When? Oh yes. Standing outside the lockway, waiting for the outer airlock to open. Some entertainment hero had said as much to some entertainment villain on the Eye of Delusions.

"Idiot," said Hatch.

Then a pig-panic squeal from the singlefighter alerted him to danger. Lon Oliver's attack systems had acquired, had locked on, were ready to blast Hatch to oblivion. Hatch blurted a quick command: "Prison!"

Obedient to this command, Hatch's singlefighter sheathed itself in a force-field which sealed out the world. Now his singlefighter was sealed off from the outside world, safe from attack, for the moment invulnerable. But to maintain such a forcefield would cost Hatch dearly. The corrosion cells which powered his singlefighter would soon be drained by the cost of maintaining the force-field. But in the meantime Hatch was protected from anything Lupus might try.

What now?

Hatch could run. A singlefighter sheathed with a force-field was hard to detect, hard to follow. It was almost invisible.

Almost – but not quite. Sensitive instruments could detect the sheathing force-field itself. Furthermore, the sophisticated radar systems of the Nexus could detect the patterns of air turbulence left in the wake of an aircraft, and so could hunt down any flying machine, regardless of the sophistication of its camouflaging legerdemain.

"Sequence," said Hatch, alerting his singlefighter to the fact that he wanted to give it instructions.

"Say sequence," said the singlefighter, indicating its readiness to receive instructions.

"Maximum self-destruct on ejection plus one."

So said Hatch. He knew that Lupus would be readying himself for the attack. When Hatch's singlefighter shed its protective force-field, it would be momentarily helpless and exposed to attack. Knowing that, Lupus would probably close the distance and come in close. Come in close for the kill. That was his fashion, his style. He liked to be close, close enough to enjoy to the full the primitive satisfactions of destruction.

That was his weakness.

"Sequence received," said the singlefighter, acknowledging its receipt of orders. Then it repeated those orders so they could be checked: "Maximum self-destruct on ejection plus one."

"Sequence continues," said Hatch.

"Continue sequence."

"Ejection is simultaneous with liberty."

"Continuation received," said the singlefighter. "You will be ejected immediately we have liberty."

As the command "prison" directed a singlefighter to seal itself inside a protective force-field, so the reverse-word "liberty" commanded it to unseal itself.

"Very well then," said Hatch. "Liberty!"

The singlefighter shed its protective force-field and ejected Asodo Hatch. Blasted free by his ejection sheet, he was slammed up and out. The air smashed him. He heard the taut crack as his back broke. He was slammed to a whirl-shock of buffeting turbulence as the world slammed, as the world burst black and blue, blasted by a double-crash of thunder, of thunder pitched for the shatter. The visible spectrum split into sub-harmonics of pain, and then – Then Hatch was in the clear, free from the turbulence, and given the grace of a lucid moment in which he felt the summer of the blossoming heat from below. He caught a brief glimpse of the crumpling fire expanding below him, of the billowing bloom of destruction.

He could not say or speak, but thinking was still in his power. Though only just.

– Wah!

Thus thought Asodo Hatch.

Then thought no more, for he was falling. Lucidity gone, he fell. He toppled. Down through the gulfs he plummeted. His ejection seat's parachute did not open. Strapped into that seat, he dropped downward, doomed down to destruction, his back broken, his four limbs wrecked and useless.

Falling, he hit turbulence. Hitting turbulence, he was whirled sideways, tossed, corkscrewed, cocktailed in a gigantic blood-shaker, falling wrecked and ruined, a wreck falling toward wreckage, falling toward the wreckage of the world.

And then -

Falling, the seat steadied.

And, seated on the arc of his downward slide, seated on the smooth arc of the longest rollercoaster slide in the history of humanity, Asodo Hatch glimpsed two cinders blistered with flames, two cinders falling, trailing smoke as they arced down toward the blazing sea. One of those two charred meteorites was his abandoned singlefighter. The other was Lupus Lon Oliver's craft, caught in the flamesmash fireball as Hatch's craft blew itself up.

– Marshmallows.

Thus thought Hatch, thought he had no idea why he thought it.

Then there was time for no further thoughts, for he was falling, and the smooth arc of his slide was breaking up as he hit turbulence again, and slammed by the buffeting turbulence he went shockbursting down toward the green. And now at last he found his voice. A scream was wrenched from his mouth a moment before impact, then impact – The shock was lethal.

So he was dead, dead, seated dead in the initiation seat, eyes starting, panic shuddering in his throat, hands clutching at the armrests, flesh shuddering.

"The illusion tank sequence is over," said Paraban Senk, with those words telling Hatch that his waking dream was done with, that he was back in the world of the living.