Hugh Cook: The Worshippers and the Way

And now she was standing in silence, her silence an accusation.

"What am I to do?" said Hatch. "I mean, I can kill myself, but… is that what you want?"

He was not speaking in jest.

And Shona knew it.

"Hatch," said Shona, "I… I don't have anything to say."

And with that she turned, and left him.

Shona was entirely without gratitude, and Hatch allowed himself to be hurt by that. After all, he had gone to a lot of trouble to ensure that Shona and other Startroopers and Combat College were delayed or waylaid, being either prevented from entering the Combat College in response to its summons, or else being separated out from the Free Corps ranks as the Free Corps marched toward the Grand Arena.

Through such exertions, Hatch had saved those he thought of his closest friends, thinking that they would serve as a closeknit group of confidantes and advisers. He had thought to keep his friends during the loneliness of the long years of power which faced him.

But now…

It seemed that was not to be.

At least not as far as Shona was concerned.

With that thought in his mind, Hatch turned away from the Yamoda River. Evening gathered about him as he made his way back to the kinema. It was dark by the time he stood in front of the Eye of Delusions, his limbs heavy with fatigue, his skin tainted with the sweat of his long marches through Dalar ken Halvar, the taste of the red dust of the Plain of Jars upon his lips.

Paraban Senk had given up bluffing.

No insect-mandible human showed any more upon the Eye of Delusions. Instead, the Eye was a blank gray, and from it came a hissing like the falling of distant rain. Hatch had never seen the Eye fall blank before, and the sight of it affected him oddly.

He ventured to the lockway. The outermost door, of course, had failed entirely, but two doors of rock-hard kaleidoscope still stood between him and the Combat College. Would the doors acknowledge him?

The first of the remaining doors dissolved away to nothing.

Hatch stepped into the airlock. The kaleidoscope of the door reformed. No voice spoke to Hatch within the airlock. There was only the hiss of air, supplemented by another hiss – dull, dry, dead. The hiss of ancient vacuum.

The interior door dissolved away to nothing.

Hatch stepped into the cream-colored corridors of the Combat College. Stepped into the mountain of Cap Foz Para Lash. The corridor was littered with trash. Here the Free Corps membership had waited while the lockway airlock cycled them into the outside world a few at a time, and here were their combast ration tubes, their banana skins, their apple cores, their bits of fried whale blubber – the casual litter of their last taste of life.

They would have been happy. Well – disappointed to have realized that the Chasm Gates had not after all opened. But. Well, they had been promised a share of power, the chance to do something, to be something.

And Hatch – Asodo Hatch shook himself free from the past, and strode on into the future, waiting for the dorgi to come lurching out to challenge him.

The password!

What was the password?

Was there still a password? And had the old one changed? And what had the old password been in any case?

He could not remember!

Hatch hesitated.

Maybe the dorgi was expecting a password, would kill him if he didn't have it, the lockway should have given it to him, he didn't have it, couldn't remember it.

Then Hatch felt a dreadful temptation. He was tempted to go on, to challenge the dorgi. Password or no password. And if he died, well. He was ready for death. But. His wife. His child. His lover. All three were inside the Combat College. Hatch could not risk letting himself be killed by a homicidal machine simply for lack of a password.

So what should he do?

Well, Onica, Talanta, the Lady Iro Murasaki – they were all safe in the Combat College. That was no problem. Time was no problem. So Hatch should withdraw. He should at least get the old password. He would remember it himself, surely, if he was able to sit down in peace and think. Or someone else would know it, Shona would know it. And if there was a new password, why, the Eye of Delusions had a communications capability, Hatch could talk with Paraban Senk through the Eye, there was no reason to venture in any further, not now.

With this thought through, Hatch beat his retreat. But the lockway's innermost door refused to recognize him. The faintest hint of warmth remained to its iridescence, but it was rapidly cooling to the chill which dominated the entire Combat College.

"Senk!" said Hatch, raising his voice to a roar. "Let me out!"

Then he hammered on the kaleidoscope.

But there was no response, not from Senk, not from anyone.

So Hatch turned.

Slowly, slowly.

And ventured down the corridor at a funeral pace.

Ventured to its intersect with the dorgi's lair.

Where – Hatch risked a glance into the dorgi's lair, and saw not the beast, but, rather, the slop-slurped hunk-gunk dissolution which marked its wreckage. Hatch knew immediately what had happened. To the uninitiated, it would have looked as if the dorgi had melted.

But Hatch knew full well that the dorgi must have tried to use those of its weapons which were based upon the manipulation of probability. And those weapons had malfunctioned, thus destroying the dorgi.

Hatch stepped into the dorgi's lair, wanting to be sure, wanting to have the physical satisfaction of knowing that his much-hated enemy was really dead.

It was.

Of course.

And in its ruins there was something silver, something curiously winking-glinting. Cautiously, Hatch stooped. And picked it up. It was a small thing and a heavy thing, a thing heavier than lead, heavier than gold, heavier than depleted uranium. It was made of an intricate interweaving of shining wires, and it shimmered with its own unquenchable light.

Hatch knew what it was.

The thing which Asodo Hatch had found in the ruins of the dorgi was a mazadath, otherwise known as an Integrated Stabilizer.

In the technical literature of the Nexus, a lot of bold and confident jargon surrounded the nature and use of such devices. A mazadath lay at the heart of every Nexus machine which manipulated probability. A mazadath protected such a machine from being digested by the hazardous forces it manipulated. That was the theory, in any case – thought this mazadath appeared to have failed this dorgi!

The Nexus was a civilization based on the manipulation of probability, and a mazadath was an essential part of any machine designed to manipulate probability – but the uncomfortable truth was that humans could neither understand nor manufacture any such thing as a mazadath. The Nexus had purchased mazadaths in bulk from the Vangelis, a race of partially-disembodied alien creatures also known as the Shining Ones. Had it not been for the Vangelis, the entire transcosmic civilization of the Nexus would have been quite impossible.

So now Hatch had in his possession one of the essential components required for the building of a machine which could manipulate probability; though he knew full well that the supporting technologies were so complex that no such task could possibly be brought to fruition within his own lifetime.

Still – Hatch realized he was unconsciously engaging in an extended exercise in delay, for he was fearful of what lay ahead. Paraban Senk, the Teacher of Control who ruled the Combat College, was obviously not willing to let him leave. So he had to go onwards. A confrontation with Senk lay ahead of him, and Hatch was by no means sure that he would survive such a confrontation.

After all, if Senk got really angry with Hatch, then Senk could cancel the manufacture of food in the Combat College cafeteria. That way, Hatch would ultimately starve to death, if Senk continued to refuse to allow him out through the lockway. Or maybe Senk could pump all the air out of the Combat College. Was that possible? Hatch didn't know. But he had an uneasy suspicion that he might get round to finding out. The hard way.