Hugh Cook: The Worshippers and the Way

Asodo Hatch had been possessed of motive.

But Oboro Bakendra, on the verge of being exiled from the Combat College, had been possessed of a much stronger motive.

Oboro would have stood a good chance of winning the instructorship had not Senk postponed the examinations for three years.

And…

"The Great God Mokaragash is my life," said Oboro Bakendra.

"Is that so?" said Hatch, choosing his words with care. "If religion is your life, is it also to be your death? There was a man, once. Lamjuk Dakoto."

"That man has nothing to do with me," said Oboro, who had long ago renounced his father.

Lamjuk Dakoto Hatch, father of Asodo and Oboro, had killed himself on the sands of the Season. Lamjuk Dakoto had killed his own brother in gladiatorial combat. With the killing done, Lamjuk Dakoto had fallen upon his own sword in full view of Dalar ken Halvar.

"Our father, hence our fate," said Hatch remorselessly. "For what is the son if not the reflection of the father?"

"He renounced his religion," said Oboro. "He renounced his people, his god."

It was true. Lamjuk Dakoto had turned away from the Frangoni faith, the worship of the Great God Mokaragash. A bitter dispute over this renunciation had led to Lamjuk Dakoto fighting and killing his own brother.

"He remains our father," said Hatch.

"He's dead, Hatch," said Oboro, speaking with a wrench-note of agony, of grief.

So the son who had spurned the father still mourned him.

Oboro was racked by concealed grief – grief unreconciled. Tears unwept. Laments deep-stocked in silence.

"He's dead, yes, dead," said Hatch. "And you as his son will die for the same reason, because death is your choice."

"If I must die," said Oboro, "then I die for my god and my people."

"It is the common wisdom of all who study such matters," said Hatch, "that any man who kills himself hands a sharp sword to his son. If you die, then you die because your father killed himself.

And for no better reason."

"My god," said Oboro. "My people."

"Then what," said Hatch, flaring, "what was your god to you when you murdered Hiji Hanojo? Your people, what, you killed him good, you killed him clean, you murdered because you wanted the Nexus, you wanted to stay!"

There.

It was out.

Hatch had accused his brother Oboro Bakendra of killing Hiji Hanojo to open up a chance of winning the instructorship.

Oboro breathed slowly.

Breathed deeply.

Then said:

"Are you accusing me of murder?"

"It is Paraban Senk who accuses you," said Hatch coldly.

"Yesterday I was victorious in battle. I won the instructorship.

My first move was to consult all those files which had till then been hidden from view. Naturally I wanted to know who had killed Hiji Hanojo."

"So Senk says…"

"You should have been able to work it out for yourself," said Hatch, riding the dynamic of his bluff, taking it through to its logical conclusion. "Paraban Senk knew full well that you murdered Hiji Hanojo. You had motive. Means. Opportunity. I saw your psychological profile, there's no secrets hidden. So. Senk decided to punish you.

"So.

"Senk denied you the chance to compete for the instructorship. Senk declared a three-year moratorium on the competitive examinations. Because. Because Senk knew. Senk knew that I would win. And Senk knew. Senk knew that would be the greatest punishment. For you to see your younger brother succeed where you failed.

"And that's why you chose your god, your Great God Mokaragash, because you wanted a career, power, status, position, something to replace the Combat College. And that's why you, you wanted me to leave, no more College, no, come to the Great God, little brother, you wanted to wreck me down, you were jealous, you saw I'd win, you couldn't stand it, as soon as you were out of the College you wanted my training wrecked and ruined.

"So.

"So that's how it is, Oboro, and if you, death, if it's death, if you're going to die then it's because that's what you want, your father handed you a sword, spite and jealousy, jealousy and thwarted ambition. That's all there is, Oboro. Well. Make your choice. Stand by your Great God and die. But know why you die. Not from piety but from selfish spite. Your Great God is a sword. If you want to fall upon that sword, then do so. But I – I will not die just because my father killed himself!"

Thus Hatch.

Then silence.

Then, very slowly, Oboro Bakendra's face buckled. His shoulders began to shake, and he wept. Hatch watched him, watched him weep. Then went to his brother's side and comforted him in the agony of his grief.

The Chasm Gates: the transcosmic junction which once linked the local universe to the rest of the Nexus. Some 20,000 years ago, the Chasm Gates collapsed, isolating the local cosmos from the rest of the Nexus. War followed. Even after twenty millennia, dim memories of that war persist in the form of those legends concerning what is now known as the Days of Wrath.

But if from their steps of stone in flesh The gods should step – And sliding from the clouds unseat – And grapeskin humans with their feet – "What do you think?" said Oboro Bakendra.

"It's a bluff," said Hatch. "Of course it's a bluff. It would be too much of a coincidence for any such thing to happen now."

The two brothers were in the kinema, the natural amphitheater outside the lockway. The Eye of Delusions, the big entertainment screen set above the lockway, was screening the image of a strangely mutated human with insectile mandibles. This thing was – or so it alleged – the current ruler of the Nexus. It claimed that the Chasm Gates had opened, and that the Tulip Continuum which contained the city of Dalar ken Halvar and its Combat College was again reunited with humanity's grandest transcosmic civilization.

"You will surrender your authority to that of the Combat College," said the human-insect thing.

Not for the first time.

It had said as much a full three dozen times already, without moving either Asodo Hatch or his brother Oboro Bakendra in the slightest.

"You have to admit," said Oboro Bakendra, "the thing looks almost authentic."

"Admit?" said Hatch. "Brother mine, you forget my imperial status! I have made myself emperor, and an emperor admits nothing."

Nevertheless…

The accents of the presumptuous mandible-equipped human which dominated the Eye of Delusions did suggest some of the distortions which might reasonably have been expected to befall the Nexus Ninetongue in the course of twenty millennia. Though of course the Ninetongue had been designed to be impervious to linguistic drift – divided up into nine separate task-specific dialects and supported by the standardizing resources of an affluent machine culture.

To that degree the thing was authentic.

But Hatch was not prepared to publicly admit even that much.

"Senk's improvising," said Hatch, "but the improvisation is fairly desperate."

Hatch was right. The insect-human which was trying to menace Dalar ken Halvar, and to bring that city to order by exercise of terror, was a tenth-rate derivation of one of the standard monsters of the Nexus entertainments so commonly screened by the Eye of Delusions. Paraban Senk lacked the imagination required to think up something new. A human in authority who was characterized by tact, sensitivity and flexibility, for example – that would have been something new. Hatch might even have been impressed by it.

"So what will you do?" said Oboro Bakendra, elder brother conceding initiative and authority to the younger.

"Do?" said Hatch.

"About Senk," said Oboro Bakendra. "About the Combat College.

Do we ignore it? Or what?"

"I'll go in there soon," said Hatch. "I have to. Senk still has my wife, my daughter…"