chocolate was one of the choicest of all the delicacies known to Dalar ken Halvar. So there would doubtless be a shortage of the stuff, so if the Bralsh was still in the market for it then the price might well quadruple over the norm, at least on the day.
'Business is good,' said Shona to Shona, glad to have been born with a good head for money, and born as a woman, and born into the Pang rather than the Frangoni, and born as Shona, plain Shona, and not as Asodo Hatch, Hatch of the brooding purple, Hatch of House Takabaga, Hatch of the Frangoni rock.
As Shona was thus gladdening her heart, she noticed some boys scuffling in the dust with spears, hunting an imaginary enemy.
Then she saw the boys were not boys but men, and the spears were longer and heavier than those usually used for rats, frogs or fish. She wondered what kind of animal they hoped to hunt with those big heavy spears of theirs, and why they were so intense about their practice, and when they would be playing their practice for real.
Chapter Six
Nu-chala-nuth: a fanatic religion which, after an organic rectifier was introduced into human affairs, sparked the Spasm Wars (technically known as the Spasm Riots, since no State of Civil War was ever officially declared by the Nexus Council), and thus precipitated the death of billions.
The Nu is the great lord, ie God. The Nu-chala is the servant of the great lord. The nuth are the worshippers of the servant of the lord – the members of the congregation. Consequently 'Nuchala-nuth' may be laboriously rendered as 'the congregation which worships the servant of the lord', though a common and far preferable translation is 'the Way of Worship'.
Nu-chala-nuth is headquartered on Borboth, holiest of planets and home of the Nu-chala. Contrary to the common belief of the ignorant, the language of this planet is not Nu-chala-nuth (for scholarship acknowledges the existence of no language so named) but Motsu Kazuka.
How shall I send to the wind -
How shall I send to the sea -
The bamboo wind of the Elephant Coast -
The fish of the bamboo sea.
If one is of the Frangoni – and Hatch was of the Frangoni – then the Elephant Coast is ever one's home, regardless of where one was born. But five generations previously, the people of the Elephant Coast had met defeat in a perishing war which they were as yet far from forgetting, and the burden of that defeat was that the kings of the south paid tribute to Plandruk Qinplaqus, the mindmastering wizard of Ebber whom they acknowledged as emperor, and some of the Frangoni dwelt yet in servitude in Dalar ken Halvar.
Hatch was born in Dalar ken Halvar, and lived there, and looked set to die there, though dying was not on his mind when he went to Temple Isherzan to seek guidance from the High Priest.
His problem was not death but life.
It was early afternoon on the Day of Five Fishes when Asodo Hatch climbed Cap Uba's southern slopes and entered the precincts of Temple Isherzan. At the gateway known as the Passage of Death he beat his sandals against an iron rail to remove the red dust of the Plain of Jars. He stooped to the Waters of Water, which even in reflection still sustained the purple of his features. He dipped a beaker into the water, shattering his own reflection in the ritual which is known to the Frangoni as p'dala m'thara, and which is designed to remind the pilgrim of the transience of the flesh which so briefly sustains us against the inevitability of our deaths. Hatch drank from the Water of Water, drank from that wisdom; then, with lips wet and unwiped as ritual requires, and with a stray drop of water drippling down his chin, he climbed on up the hillpath, passing first the still-smouldering remains of a funeral pyre, then a temple acolyte who was painting a pyramid of heaped-up skulls with fresh blood.
His father's body should have been burnt here, for this was hallowed ground, and the rightful place for every Frangoni funeral. But the manner of the death of Lamjuk Dakoto Hatch had made such an honorable funeral impossible, for that death had brought shame upon Lamjuk Dakoto, and upon his children, and upon the children of his children. And so he had been burnt by the waters of the Yamoda, burnt like a dead dog, and his ashes had still to find a fitting resting place.
So, when the acolyte raised his eyes and looked at Asodo Hatch, Hatch did not meet his gaze. He tried to shrug off the memories of his father's death.
– Death is death, and can I undo it?
Thus he tried.
But he was only half-successful.
Asodo Hatch was wearing manhood's purple robes, but the acolyte wore red and black, for such were the colors of the Great God Mokaragash. Likewise colored were the temple's totem poles.
Hatch remembered reading that black and red are perennially popular with primitive tribes, since charcoal and ochre are easy to use. He tried to put this thought also out of mind, since the thought was vulgar, and the ground he trod was sacred.
– This is my God.
So thought Hatch. But the thought was faked, and he knew it.
He was trying by an exercise of will to contend against the scepticism bred into him by long years of contact with the Nexus, and he was failing.
– God of my bones. God of my blood. God of my people.
Again the thought was forced and fraudulent. But Hatch matched actions to thought, bowing to the first and greatest of the graven images of the Great God Mokaragash, a huge slab of stone carved in the shape of a slovenly, almost amorphous face.
The only sharply detailed features were the deep-cut shadows of the eye sockets. Mokaragash is He Who Sees Without Eyes, but He sees to a grim purpose, and the blood which stained the eyesockets was fresh.
'Lord,' said Hatch, addressing his god.
Amongst the Frangoni, an idol is not a symbolic representation of an entity located Elsewhere. Rather, the deity is presumed to be incarnate in the image. Thus Hatch should have been awed, humble and slightly apprehensive, since he stood in the actual presence of his god. But in truth | | Today he could not deny it.
Today he was seeing Temple Isherzan through the eyes of the Nexus. He could no longer forget the realms of transcosmic science and computerized ethnology simply by exiting from the lockway. The tricks of unlearning, of setting aside knowledge, no longer worked. He stood in the temple as a tourist-stranger from the Nexus, and found himself comparing the temple's people to the jabbering barbarians of the Wild Tribes of the Eye of Delusions.
– I did not choose this.
That much at least was true. Hatch had never wished to be a stranger amongst his own people – but then, choice had not been a part of his birthright. Asodo Hatch had been born into slavery. He was not free to choose his own destiny, for, like every Frangoni male of Dalar ken Halvar, he was bound forever in servitude to Plandruk Qinplaqus, the Silver Emperor who ruled the Empire of Greater Parengarenga.
Since earliest youth, Hatch had been attracted to the realm of Final Things. Given free choice, he would have become a priest: a master of mysteries, a keeper of numinous secrets, an inner associate of the Great God Mokaragash. But free choice had ever been denied to him, and so he had become a soldier in the service of the Silver Emperor, since that was how the lord of Na Sashimoko wished to be served.
At the age of 11, Hatch had sat the requisite aptitude tests, had passed, and had entered into the Combat College, and thus had been thrust amongst people who had no caste. From that day forth, everything he used was unclean, tainted by the sweat of a foreign people. The food he ate was demon-stuff fabricated out of shadow.
It sustained life, yet it too was unclean.
So Hatch in his very childhood had been forced to leave the security of the Frangoni rock to dwell amongst strangers. At puberty he was denied the gold: he entered manhood with his ears as yet unpierced. He drank green milk and ate the meat of whales, while foreign languages pressed upon his ears until he found himself waking from dreams to realize that his very sleep had been phrased in the Commonspeak of the Nexus.
Burdened by such training, it was hard for Hatch to be a Frangoni, even on the Frangoni rock.
