Hugh Cook - The Worshippers and the Way

Who has dared amongst the gods yet still Though golden in the living flesh Finds clay disputes him, He Endures intractables, and knows – While we, Though blind to face the gods, Still see the butterfly, and, Blinded by its transcendence, presume – Asodo Hatch entered Forum Three with a sack in his hand. The sack was of synth, and waterproof, which was just as well, for there was liquid within as well as something weighty.

"Ho!" said Shona, bellowing her approval. "Ho, Hatch!"

Hatch raised the sack in salute.

Others roared applause. Above all, they loved the way the victory had been won. This was not a cheating stunt like the fractional win Hatch had earlier achieved by ejecting from his singlefighter, with the machine destroying itself and his enemy moments later. Instead, he had closed for an honest kill, a meatcleaving sword-kill, a work of bloody butchery. He had won with a bright-daring stratagem worthy of a hero – and there were few in that room who did not wish themselves heroes.

But no Frangoni Combat Cadet or Startrooper in Forum Three would look Hatch in the eye. For Hatch had disowned the Frangoni nation, had disowned the Frangoni god.

Hatch glanced at Talanta. That glance was sufficient to tell him that his wife had not understood his shipboard dialog with Sen Kaladan, couched as it had been in the Nexus Commonspeech, of which she was entirely ignorant.

But soon, doubtless, someone would tell her.

Soon, doubtless, he would know.

Asodo Hatch had renounced his god.

Asodo Hatch had renounced the Great God Mokaragash, and he had declared himself for Nu-chala-nuth.

A thing said is a thing said wherever it is said. Written by handscript or written in water, that which is said cannot be unsaid. Too many Frangoni had witnessed the saying for the thing to be kept secret. Hatch would be unwelcome hereafter on the Frangoni rock. His name would be given to a dog, and then that dog would be burnt alive in token of the community's displeasure.

He had lost his people, he had lost his nation, and there was no recovering them. He was an exile now, or would be soon, an outcast stranger in his own city, a man without tribe, a man without family, a man without a people.

But Hatch was a warrior, and though he acknowledged what he had done he nevertheless went on regardless, just as – in battle – he would have stepped over the fresh-dead body of his best friend to lead an attack which would win him victory.

"Lupus!" shouted Hatch.

Challenging.

Looking around for his rival, for Lupus Lon Oliver.

Where was he? Where was he?

As Hatch was searching for him, Lupus came stumbling into Forum Three, gray with shock. Lupus had just lived through the trauma of having his head hacked off, and Hatch – Hatch was not about to let him forget it.

"Lupus," said Hatch.

Lupus Lon Oliver turned to face his enemy, the man who had outwitted him, who had outfeinted and outfought him, and had then dealt him a grievous punishment.

"Lupus," said Hatch, grinning. "A present for you."

Then Hatch upended his sack, and out bounced Lupus Lon Oliver's head, and rolled across the floor in a spew of blood, and blood still splurged from the sack, pumping out in gouting orgasms. Hatch grinned like a lunatic, grinned – then laughed ferociously. As Hatch laughed, Lupus doubled up and vomited.

"The Season!" said Hatch. "I live for the Season!"

"Enough," said Paraban Senk, speaking from Forum Three's display screen. "Hatch, you've won. Lon Oliver, you've lost. To the victor, the spoils."

Forum Three erupted. The audience howled, cheered, jeered, stamped, and threw things.

As Hatch stood firm to receive this mixed derision and applause, a free-floating machine entered Forum Three, drifted toward the simulcrum-head of Lon Oliver, swallowed it, vacuumed up the artificial blood and was gone, satisfied with the competence of its performance – though some stains of pseudoblood remained as token of the outrage Hatch had just perpetrated.

Hatch was startled by the advent of the machine. He had seen such devices before, of course – many times. But he had presumed, on the basis of the evidence of the steadily mounting litter which had lately degraded the Combat College's environment, that all such cleaning machines were permanently disabled.

"The meeting will settle," said Paraban Senk.

It took more than saying it to make it happen, but eventually Forum Three came to order in obedience to Senk's commands. Hatch took a seat next to Talanta, who took his arm.

"You were brave," she said. "You were very brave."

She was still trying to give to him.

All through their marriage she had done her best, giving him her body, giving him her services, and now, in extremis, in pain and dying slowly, giving him her praise when she had nothing else to give. Hatch experienced a crushing guilt, knowing himself to be an adulterer, a blaspheming apostate. His name would soon be scandal on the lips of every Frangoni in Dalar ken Halvar, and how would Talanta cope with that?

Hatch had already done the unforgivable, and was sure that he would do far worse before the year was out. He believed, now, that he could only survive the enmity of the Free Corps by linking himself with the revolutionaries who thought of themselves as practitioners of Nu-chala-nuth. And what then would be Talanta's fate? Surely as the wife of an apostate she would find herself ostracized by the Frangoni community, would find herself an exile on the very Frangoni rock itself.

Thinking of this, Hatch felt an enormous pity for the woman and her sufferings. But he knew that two cannot be made one by pity: and that, in a way, his pity was a measure of his estrangement from his wife.

Then Hatch thought of his wife no more, for Paraban Senk was addressing Forum Three.

"The graduating class has come to the end of its combat studies," said Paraban Senk. "I am pleased to say that we have a one hundred per cent pass rate. Those who have been unable to take their final examinations have been passed on the basis of an assessment of their work through the year and their performance in past examinations. We have of course one promotion to formally announce: Asodo Hatch is promoted to the post of resident instructor."

Again there were mingled shouts of acclamation and derision, but the shouts were not as forceful as before. This drama had played itself out, and those in Forum Three were now starting to worry about the greater drama: the battle taking place for the control of Dalar ken Halvar.

"Members of the graduating class," said Paraban Senk, "should clear their rooms and exit from Cap Foz Para Lash."

"And if we don't?" yelled someone.

"That needs no answer," said Paraban Senk. Then, urgently:

"Scorpio Fax! What are you doing? Put down that knife!"

That gave Gan Oliver the moment's warning he needed. He turned as Fax struck. Gan Oliver knocked the knife aside, elbowed Fax to the floor, then brought his bodyweight slamming down on top of Fax. Gan Oliver grabbed Fax by the hair and started slamming his head against the plax of the floor.

With that, Forum Three abrupted into violence, as Free Corps supporters and Frangoni began to fight each other. A clutch of Free Corps loyalists slammed into Asodo Hatch.

Taken by Dog Java, by Lupus Lon Oliver and by Jeltisketh Echo, Hatch went down hard. Lupus got hands to his throat and started to strangle him.

"I," said Lupus, tightening his grip, "am going to kill you."

This was for real, death for real, no lyrical illusion tank dream, no simulated fakery staged on the Eye of Delusions, but the terminus, the breath-fight, the lynch-note panic of flesh against flesh.

And Hatch was losing, was going under, sliding under the blackness as the ceiling – The ceiling of kaleidoscope abruptly came crashing down, breaking in huge gobs of slob as it collapsed. The slob was COLD!