Hugh Cook: The Worshippers and the Way

Still.

He had no choice.

So, having pocketed the mazadath – it would make a nice souvenir, if he lived – Asodo Hatch strode on down the corridor.

Making for Forum Three.

Paraban Senk: the Teacher of Control, the great Educator which dwells in the heart of Cap Foz Para Lash. This asma has long had one great priority: to train Startroopers for the Stormforce of the Nexus. And now it is outraged: because Asodo Hatch has taken the Free Corps in ambush, destroying almost all of the Combat Cadets and Startroopers in Dalar ken Halvar.

I slept to know -

And knowing nothing knew -

And waking knew of nothing so

Gave to my edge that speed:

And drew.

Forum Three was quiet. Silent. The empty banks of seats sloped steeply down to the stage on which Asodo Hatch and Lupus Lon Oliver had so recently dueled each other in debate. Above that stage was the big display screen which had shown to the world the battles in which Hatch and Lupus had dueled each other with singlefighters and MegaCommand Cruisers.

The screen was blank.

Silent.

"Senk?" said Hatch.

No answer.

No response.

Very well.

Hatch could play this waiting game.

Hatch sat himself down, folded his arms, and closed his eyes.

Shortly, a brightening of the room made itself apparent through his eyelids. Hatch opened his eyes. The big screen above the lecture theater's stage was now dominated by the chosen face of Paraban Senk.

"Welcome, Hatch," said Senk.

"And to you, welcome," said Hatch.

Which was a token of the stress he was under, for Hatch was guest rather than host, therefore it was not for him to extend hospitality to Senk.

"Have you come for your daughter?" said Senk. "Or for your wife? Or is it perhaps the Lady Iro Murasaki whom you seek?"

"I seek all of those," said Hatch.

"Well I for my part," said Senk, "I seek Manfred Gan Oliver and his colleagues and companions."

"They will be produced in due course," said Hatch.

"Don't test my wits!" said Senk. "My spies have given me a full account."

"Your spies?" said Hatch.

"Call them what you will," said Senk. "But many have come to the kinema to witness the disaster. Messenger boys and others."

"You trust to messenger boys for strategic information?" said Hatch, endeavoring to ape amazement.

"Hatch," said Senk, "this is no time for jokes. I am grossly upset with you. Unless you have mastered the fine art of the resurrection of the dead, you are shortly going to find out just how upset I really am. You have slaughtered almost all those Startroopers I trained. Have you even the slightest excuse for your actions?"

"I had to think of the political stability of Dalar ken Halvar and the fate of my people," said Hatch, as staunchly as he could.

"That's not good enough," said Senk. "You'll have to do better than that, or I'll tear the hostages apart."

"Tear apart?" said Hatch, struggling to stay calm.

"You wife Talanta," said Senk. "Your daughter Onica. Your whore. Tear them apart, Hatch. That's what I'm going to do."

"This is scarcely a constructive approach to the demands of the moment," said Hatch, with the calm that comes upon a man when he realizes the inevitability of his own death.

"Constructive approach!" said Senk.

Senk was positively apoplectic, enraged beyond belief by Hatch's sanguinity. But the more Senk's rage wrathed up, the calmer Hatch got – that very calm feeding Senk's fury all the more.

"For a computational device," said Hatch mildly, "you have quite a large emotional range. Have you considered the possibility that perhaps that range is excessive?"

"In my vengeance I am human," said Senk. "As I will prove when I deal with my hostages in my vengeance."

"I trust you will deal with your hostages in a civilized manner," said Hatch, struggling to keep his voice level and unemotional. "We are civilized, are we not?"

"Civilized!" said Senk. "You drench your hands in murder, you kill in defiance of all our agreements, you betray a trust, you break your oath to the Nexus, and after all that – "

"I am but a poor barbarian from one of the Wild Tribes of the Permissive Dimensions," said Hatch, in an effort at leisured selfdepreciation. "You cannot expect the high conduct of the Nexus to be reflected in the life of a barbarian such as myself. But you at least have the capacity, surely, to be truly civilized. And is not mercy the greatest of civilization's aspects?"

"Jokes!" said Senk, responding with fury to Hatch's suave sally. "A time like this, and you indulge yourself in jokes. Very well! Then indulge yourself in this!"

And with that, Paraban Senk's olive-complected features faded from the display screen in Forum Three. Glowing green lines divided that screen into three separate frames. And in those frames there came to life – Onica.

Talanta.

And the Lady Iro Murasaki.

All three were standing on the sands of a rumpled desert of red dust. They were being observed by a group of tourists who appeared to have climbed out of a hover vehicle. The hover vehicle was garishly adorned with bright-sign glyphs and graphics, amongst which Hatch saw a fleshpink vulva, a grinning orange sun, a dolphin spouting orangejuice, and a sign in Nexus script which identified the vehicle as the property of an organization known as Happy Hunting Tours.

All three women looked grossly unhappy, and the reason appeared to be because all three were rapidly sinking into the sands of the desert. As Hatch watched, the desert floor rocked.

Onica screamed. Ants were swelling from the desert, cascading into hugeness, their mandibles razor-sharp.

"Watch, Hatch!" roared Senk, in a grotesquely amplified voice-over.

But Hatch did not watch. His hand was moving, had a life of his own, was reaching, was drawing. Not a sword but a knife. A knife, but knife enough. His hand clutched, struck, disembowelled.

Down went Hatch in the agony of spillage, his hand griping and writhing as the intolerable pain sent it into spasm.

– Properly. Do it properly.

So thought Hatch in his agony.

And, falling, Hatch steadied the knife, and speared it into his body as he fell, driving home the blade with the full force of his earthly collapse.

Cure-all clinic: a Combat College facility which has wideranging powers to repair injury and restore health.

So laid against the pillow -

To meet with monsters, meet

Decapitating death, and yet -

The dawn – Asodo Hatch woke in the cure-all clinic to find his sister Penelope – no, she was Joma, he would make no concessions, Joma she had been born and Joma she must stay – bending down over him.

"Joma," said Hatch.

"Penelope," said she.

"Penelope, then," said Hatch, too weak to argue the point.

"Penelope and Lupus," said Lupus Lon Oliver, who was sitting on the end of Hatch's bed. "The love of Penelope in balance with the wrath of Lupus."

Lupus did not look particularly wrathful at that precise moment, but Hatch could well imagine that in this case appearances might be deceptive. Hatch was not sure of the exact nature of his own circumstances, so sent out a tentative probe.

"What is the measure of this love?" said Hatch. "Penelope's love, of which you have spoken?"

"She carried you here," said Lupus. "When you lay in the rubble of your bowels, Penelope scooped you up and labored you all the way to this clinic here."

"How came she to know of my wounding?" said Hatch.

"Your wounding!" said Lupus. "It was suicide!"

Hatch let that pass, then said:

"But she came."

"Senk called us," said Lupus. "He lacks facilities for the cartage of bodies, hence needed our arms and our legs for the purpose."