Yet – Hatch paused upon the heights, and looked to the east, looked out across the shackwork streets of Actus Dorum, the windings of the Yamoda River, the distant heights of Blogo Zo and the red eternities of the Plain of Jars beyond. He sometimes found that the evergaze distances of the far horizons allowed him to step outside himself, to distance himself from his own condition and thus gain insight into that condition.
Thus it was in this case, for, in the peace of the far horizons, Asodo Hatch was granted a moment of grace, and in that moment he acknowledged to himself a difficult truth. The truth was that, though his cultural laments were not faked or fraudulent, they were nevertheless secondary. He had enlarged them to primacy to hide from himself the full extent of his griping concern for a far more urgent problem – the state of his finances.
– Admit it, Hatch, admit it.
Hatch admitted it as he resumed his upward trudge in the sunsweat heat. He admitted it reluctantly. A grand clash of cultures, a conflict of national destinies – ah, there lay drama!
But that which oppressed him was the squalid greeding and grasping of commercial life, something which should not afflict a hero.
– A hero? You want to be a hero?
Yes. Hatch wanted to be a hero. Like his father. But his father, well, his father…
– My father was a fool.
So thought Hatch, and halted as he thought it, the stones of the Frangoni rock seeming unstable underfoot. He could not, would not, should not, must not think such things. But he had. Thoughts themselves have consequences, and this one could not be canceled into oblivion. It was true. The old man had been a fool. In his folly, he had gone down to grief in full view of the public, dying for, for…
– What did he die for?
– For nothing.
Suddenly it was pleasure, pure pleasure, for Hatch to retreat to thoughts of his finances, to a consideration of the pressures of his debts, and he concentrated on figuring gold and silver in his head as he pressed on toward the lair of the High Priest, striving to shut out all thoughts of his father and his father's fate.
Usually a High Priest in the service of the Great God Mokaragash does not undertake pastoral duties. But Asodo Hatch was a person of no small importance. After all, as a captain of Dalar ken Halvar's Imperial Guard he had the ear of the Silver Emperor himself. So, though his was not one of the Three Questions which any worshipper could put to the ecclesiarch of the Frangoni Rock, Temple Isherzan's sensitivity to political nuance entitled Hatch to ask as he wished.
This was only natural.
'Every religious organization is also and necessarily a political organization. Consequently the hierarchy of any established religion tends to be dominated by individuals whose key skills are political.'
So says the Book of Politics.
Hatch remembered that wisdom as he waited on the pleasure of a junior priest. The junior was fool enough to deny knowledge of the visitor's mission, and kept Hatch waiting while certain Tablets of Appointments were laboriously consulted. Hatch had firmly committed the junior's demerits to memory by the time he was at last allowed to step into the presence of the Inner Idol.
In the presence of the Inner Idol stood Sesno Felvus, ethnarch of Dalar ken Halvar's Frangoni, and therefore necessarily High Priest of the Great God Mokaragash. Felvus, heavily burdened with ceremonial robes of red and black, was busy with pestel and mortar, grinding the bones of a dead man for ritual purposes. When at last he finished, he abluted his hands in lustral water, then acknowledged Hatch with a nod.
'Greetings, my lord,' said Hatch. 'Greetings to the lord who serves the Greater Lord.'
Hatch made ritual obeisance; Felvus recited the Five Blessings; then the two retired to Felvus's private quarters.
Though the shutters were open, the generous overhang of the eaves meant that the room was cool and shadowy. Coming in out of the sun, Hatch felt almost cold, and was reminded of the eternal chill of the Combat College.
The High Priest's quarters consisted of a single room only, but this was large, and made to seem enormous by height of ceiling and sparceness of furnishings. Only a single table and three chairs of woven bamboo stood on the bare flagstones of the floor.
Against one wall stood a broom, a water urn, and – this last a product of the Combat College – a rolled up spongefoam sleeping mat. Such were the High Priest's possessions.
On the table was a stoneware dish heaped with cubes of sundried scorpion bread. Sesno Felvus ate a piece, as ritual required. He offered no food to Hatch, for the bread was consecrated to the priesthood's service. Besides, this was 'a ritual of setting apart', as the Book of Ethnology has it; it demonstrated and reinforced the gulf between priest and worshipper. Hatch – Hatch was unsettled by the unexpected renewal of the dislocating perspective of ethnology. To his dismay, he found himself again seeing all as a stranger, a visitor, an analyst from the Nexus. He fought to be Frangoni, Frangoni in crutch and fundament, in liver and lungs. But instead he was Hatch of the Combat College. Hatch of the Stormforce. Startrooper Hatch.
Deepspace warrior. Transcosmic citizen.
To such a person – What could an unwashed savage of the Frangoni rock have to offer such a person?
'Sit,' said Sesno Felvus, in a way which made it clear he had said as much already. 'Sit, Hatch. Is anything wrong? Something's wrong. What is it?'
This was a very difficult question to answer. One does not lie to a High Priest. That would be blasphemy – and, besides, Sesno Felvus was far too acute to swallow an idle deceit. So Hatch had to express his condition in words which would carry the truth yet remain palatable.
'I, ah… the mind plays tricks,' said Hatch. 'It happens, sometimes. When things go wrong, I… they teach us the Nexus, so sometimes… sometimes it's as if I wasn't of this world, not quite, but rather… I suppose it's a distancing strategy. When things get too hard I… one devalues the present. What is.'
'The Combat College is a different world,' said Sesno Felvus, as if he knew it well. 'I think of the Combat College as a cave.
The cave of the Nexus, where shadows posture as reality. If we accept the very shadows as reality – well, if you live in a cave too long, the very sun must seem a madness. But I don't think you as yet so deeply sunk in strangeness. Or are you? Tell me, Hatch – are we so strange to each other?'
Seated side by side, the two men were marked by superficial similarities – skin likewise purple and robes similarly styled, albeit of different colors. But Hatch – Hatch was tall and strong by the standards of his people, a warrior in the prime of life, washed, deodorized, depilated and very faintly perfumed by the miraculous machineries of the Nexus, whereas Sesno Felvus – In extreme old age, the Frangoni purple of the High Priest's skin was tinged with brown. His eyes had faded from violet to gray. The lean and bony ancient had long, long ago abandoned the golden ear-rings of virile manhood, piercing his earlobes instead with the iron rings which denoted 'a man in the service of death', as the ritual phrase has it. The ancient had not bathed for several years, a fact which Hatch – to his shame – found shameful.
It was all too easy to see Sesno Felvus as a tourist from the Nexus might have seen him. As a sample of a type. Barbarian Priest, type A-7, old; subtype B-4, rancid. For a moment, Hatch saw the man exactly thus – which was a measure of his estrangement.
'The heart is a labyrinth,' said Sesno Felvus, deducing deep inner conflict's from Hatch's silence. 'The best of us get lost in that labyrinth from time to time. Tell me, Hatch – how old are you?'
'Thirty-four,' said Hatch.
'Thirty-four!' said Sesno Felvus, as if amazed. 'Why, I've lost a year! I thought you were thirty-three, because your sister – well, enough of that. Thirty-four. A good age. Still graced with the last of youth yet mature enough to appreciate its sweetness.'
'I don't feel young,' said Hatch.
'One doesn't,' said Sesno Felvus, betraying slight amusement.
'Yet when you reach my age – oh, but I could talk all day of age if you let me. You're thirty-four. A man.'
'For what it's worth,' said Hatch.
Though his ears did not bear the gold, it was nevertheless true that he had attained a man's estate. He had been through the rites of passage, winning wisdom and self-knowledge. His confidence was that which comes from danger and hardship met, faced then overcome. Yet – yet sometimes – 'Sometimes,' said Sesno Felvus, as if
