"Strong, you are, with the Source," said Yodel. "But unguided your strength is. Learn to control it, you must, or control you it will."
"I understand, Master Yodel," said Lurk. "I am trying, but..."
"No!" said Yodel sharply. "Try not. Do, or do not; there is no 'try'."
"Why does that sound familiar?" muttered Lurk to himself. He sighed. If there was no 'try', then he was obviously destined to fail.
"Again," said Yodel. He pointed.
The old Jubbly master and his young Patabum apprentice stood together in a small dry clearing, little more than a bump of solid ground surrounded by the mud and slime and water of the swamp. Of course, in the near-constant drizzle, 'dry' was a relative term at best. At one edge of the clearing sat the small domed structure—built of dried mud and matted vegetation—that was Yodel's humble hovel. At the far side of the clearing, half-buried in the mud, sat a rotting log. Perched atop the log was a thick length of stick, roughly the size and shape of a deactivated light rapier. In a small jumbled heap on the dirt beneath where the stick was balanced, half a dozen orange vegetables lay where they had fallen.
Lurk's face was masked by the bandanna, now soiled and damp.
Lurk closed his eyes and reached out his hand towards the stick. The hand gestures were apparently not necessary, but Yodel had assured him that they helped to focus one's concentration.
"Reach out," said Yodel. "Feel the stick with your mind."
Lurk concentrated.
"Now, grasp it gently. Feel its texture. Feel its weight."
His hand moved gingerly in the air, as though holding and stroking the stick.
On the log, the stick wobbled slightly.
"Good," said Yodel. "Now lift it, and bring it to you."
Lurk pictured the stick moving, visualising his goal, seeing it float through the air into his outstretched hand. He massaged the code of the stick, manipulated its Source. He tweaked, and another root vegetable toppled off the log onto the growing pile.
"No, no, no," said Yodel. "Stick, we want. No more carrots."
"I'm sorry, Master Yodel," said Lurk.
"A parsnip, at least, would be nice," muttered Yodel. He looked up at Lurk.
"That seemed very familiar for a second," said Lurk, "as though I'd done it a thousand times before. Every time I think I've got it, though, I just tweak, and it changes into something else."
"Most impressive it is," said Yodel, "but more there is to the Source. A sledgehammer you use, when required a feather is. A habit this is. Break it, you must. Unlearn what you have learned, you must."
"But I never even really learned this," said Lurk. "I just sorta picked it up along the way."
"And yet, unlearn you must," said Yodel. The Jubbly master sighed. "Never before, this dilemma have I faced. Knows too much, my Patabum does. Requires some thought, this does."
"Shall I try it again, Master Yodel?"
Yodel sighed and shook his head.
"Do, I mean," said Lurk. "Shall I do it again?"
"Later, young Splitwhisker," said Yodel. "Now, time to eat, it is. Again, carrot soup we will have."
"Yes master," said Lurk. He trudged across the clearing to retrieve the pile of vegetables.
"A different approach we will try," said Yodel. "Empty your mind, we must. Discipline, you must learn."
Yodel wriggled to get comfortable. He was seated in a pouch strapped to Lurk's back.
"What must I do, Master Yodel."
Yodel chuckled until he coughed. "Many things," he said mysteriously. "Many things. Now, though, run you will." He prodded Lurk's shoulder with his walking stick. "Run," he said again. "That way."
Lurk ran.
He ran with his eyes half-closed, using the Source to guide him. With just a little concentration, he could see the correct path to follow through the mire. He could distinguish solid ground from bottomless bog, shallow water from deep—and he saw it all several paces before he reached it, enabling him to pick out his own path through the trackless wastes.
As he ran, Yodel spurred him onwards. "Faster," he would say, or simply poke the panting youth with his walking stick.
Before long, his legs began to ache, and the weight of the Jubbly master on his back became impossible to bear, but Yodel would not allow him to stop. "Faster," he said, and Lurk searched deeply within himself to find new reserves of energy. Finally, though, he could simply go no further. Legs weak and trembling, chest heaving as he gasped for each foul-smelling breath, he collapsed to his knees in the mud.
"I can't," he gasped. "I'm exhausted. I have to rest."
"Very well," said Yodel. "Five minutes, no more. Then return we must." The Jubbly master laboriously dismounted from the pouch, and dropped down into the shallow water. He made no splash, and Lurk glanced down despite his exhaustion. He blinked. Yodel was standing on the surface of the water, as though it were solid.
"I don't ... don't believe it," gasped Lurk.
Yodel shook his head sadly. "Believe, you must, or fail you will."
Lurk shook his head. Yodel shuffled across the water to the nearest fallen log—in this environment of bad light, acidic water, and steamy heat, fallen logs lay everywhere—and jumped up onto it.
The five minute rest period seemed far too short to Lurk, but at least, when Yodel motioned that it was time to continue, he was no longer gasping for breath. In this atmosphere, gasping for breath was not a good idea.
Lurk said as much to Yodel.
Yodel shook his head. "No smell, there is," he said.
"With respect, Master Yodel, but you have lived here so long you've gotten used to it. The air is awful. It smells and tastes like concentrated urine, and that's on a good day."
Yodel shook his head again. "No smell there is," he repeated firmly. "Where we are, remember. The smell the machines implant, as a detail. Unreal, it is."
"But..." began Lurk.
"No," said Yodel. "Only if bound by the source you are, a smell there is. For those of us, aware of the Array, the Source, no smell there is. Ignore it, we can."
Lurk frowned as he considered this. "Of course," he said. "Here in the Array, even the act of breathing is merely a simulation." He examined the Source, and carefully took a breath. The smell was not as strong as it had been. With practice, he should be able to eliminate it completely.
"Thank you, Master Yodel. I see the wisdom in what you say."
Yodel shrugged. "Now, your run, continue you must."
Once the Jubbly master had settled himself back into his saddle on Lurk's back, the youth pushed himself to his feet and began to run back the way he had come.
Everything seemed different. At first Lurk put it down to the fact that he was simply facing the other way, but eventually he realised that he was no longer on the same path. He was headed in roughly the right direction, but via a different route.
Yodel did not seem concerned.
Suddenly Lurk hesitated. Even with the Source to guide him, he could see no way to proceed. He had brought them into a dead end. Breathing heavily, he slowed and stopped.
"I am sorry, Master Yodel," he panted, "but I seem to be lost."
"A wrong turn you have taken," said Yodel.
Lurk began to apologise again, but Yodel waved him silent. "Guided you here, I did."
He tapped Lurk on the shoulder, and the youth crouched so that Yodel could dismount. He looked around. Something smelled rotten. Of course, the whole damn planet smelled rotten, but this sense of wrongness did more than fill his nose; it seeped into his awareness of the Source as well.
"Something is not right here," he said.
Yodel nodded. He pointed with his walking stick. "There," he said. "Strong with the Hard Side of the Source, that place is. Enter it, you must."
Lurk turned to look. A huge, gnarled tree sat in the mud as though it had been there a thousand years. There was something obscene about it; Lurk realised that it looked as rotten as it smelled. Its trunk was broad and squat, and a twisted tangle of leafless limbs wrapped it in an impenetrable shroud.
"What do you mean, 'enter it'?" he asked. "It's a tree."
"Beneath the tree," persisted Yodel, "a cave there is."
"What's in there?"
"Only what, with you, you take."
"Oh right," said Lurk. "Some sort of spiritual thing, right. Like I take my fears with me, and it manifests them? Next you'll be saying I don't need to take my weapons."
"Perceptive, you are," said Yodel. "Beware, young Splitwhisker: nobody, a smart-ass likes."
"Well," said Lurk, "this smart-ass is going to take his light rapier with him into the cave. I prefer to be prepared."
Yodel sighed. "As you wish."
Lurk picked his way through the mud until he was close enough to the tree to touch it, if he chose. The thought of actually doing so made his skin crawl; the bark was peeling and flaking, and it looked more like decaying flesh than simple wood. Words like scabrous and leprous slithered into his brain, and he shuddered.
Gingerly, without touching it, he made his way around the tree until he found the dark hole nestled between two thick, snaking roots. He peered inside, but saw nothing.
Bracing himself with his gloved right hand, he squatted and felt inside with his left leg for a foothold. Somehow, touching the diseased tree and the putrid mud with his robotic limbs seemed less distasteful. His foot touched something solid—another tree root, perhaps—and he began to lower himself into the hole. Suddenly the object on which he was resting his weight seemed to squirm beneath him, and then he was tumbling and rolling and slithering down the slimy, muddy slope. He landed with a splash in a shallow pool of stinking water. He tried to clamber quickly to his feet; instead, he merely succeeded in falling again, this time into a deeper part of the puddle.
Soaked to the skin, dripping filth, he sat up. "Just great," he muttered. "And I thought the sewage pit on the Death Tube was bad!"
Carefully, moving slowly, he got his feet under himself and stood up. Trying to ignore the thoroughly unpleasant sensation of cold slime dribbling down his body inside his clothing, he took a tentative step forward. Something squeaked indignantly and scampered out from under his foot.
It was dark down here, but not completely black. Some light filtered down from above, and once his eyes adjusted somewhat to the gloom he could see that the walls were swarming, squirming, alive with luminescent worm-like creatures whose glow added dimly to the faint illumination.
Sliding his foot along the squishy ground through the freezing layer of water, he took another step forward.
Nothing happened.
"Hello," he called softly. His voice echoed eerily around the slimy chamber. A chill ran down his spine—or was it just a lump of mud?
"Well," he said to himself, "if my worst fear was that this would be a nasty slimy cesspit, it has certainly been realised."
He took another step forward, reaching out with his hand for the far wall. There wasn't one. The cave was larger than seemed likely from the outside.
"Of course," he said—the sound of his own voice was comforting, in this evil-smelling place—"my next biggest fear is probably that the entrance will cave in and I'll be trapped down here, buried alive." He turned his head slowly to look behind him. The faint circle of daylight still glimmered, although it was now barely visible.
"After that," he continued, "I think what I fear most is that I'm wasting my time, letting myself be trained by a swamp-bound frog."
He blinked. There appeared to be a patch of slightly brighter blackness up ahead. As he stepped closer, he became aware of indistinct shapes moving in the half-light.
Suddenly there was a bright flare in front of him, and out of nowhere, light rapier bursting into life, the menacing masked figure of Barth Vapour stepped in front of Lurk, coming between him and the pool of light. His breath gasped and clicked through the respirator unit. Lurk reacted quickly, raising his own weapon even as the Hard Lord swung at him. He parried, pushed the Stiff Lord back, and swung his light rapier. The blade slipped past Vapour's defences, and sliced through the armoured neck. Vapour's helmeted head spun to the floor as his body toppled backwards to land with a splash in the mud.
Lurk looked down at the black mask; it reflected the shimmering blue light of his rapier blade. The rapier which had been his father's, before Mannequin Splitwhisker had turned to the hard side and become Barth Vapour. Suddenly the mask split open and inside, features slack in death, was Lurk's own face, staring up at him.
Lurk stared at the grisly scene for a moment. Then he laughed.
"That's the best you can do?" he shouted. "The fear that I might one day become my father? Make the same mistakes he made?" He waited until the echoes of his voice died away. "You'll have to do better than that," he said softly into the silence.
The headless torso, and the bodiless head, faded away as though they had never existed—for, of course, they had never existed. As Yodel had said, all that was here was what he had brought with him. He couldn't help but wonder, however, what would have happened if he hadn't had his light rapier. What happened to you if one of your fears—would that be a vaporous fear? he wondered—sliced your head off?
He deactivated his weapon and returned it to the holster on his belt.
A soft giggle caught his attention. He looked up.
The pool of light was brighter now. It shone on something which seemed to be a bed, although the black silk sheets made that determination difficult. Something moved beneath the sheets, there was another giggle, and then a shape reared up and the sheets slid away, revealing the smooth, naked back and buttocks of a young woman. Her long dark hair, tousled and tangled, hissed down around her shoulders and back. From the way she moved her hips, she was not alone in the bed.
No, thought Lurk. Not this. Suddenly he found himself unable to move. Frozen to the spot, dreading what was to come next but unable to look away, he watched with growing horror. Despite his sudden revulsion, however, he also felt a stirring in his groin.
The woman shifted position slightly, and now Lurk could see that the second person in the bed—the man she was atop—was himself, an intense look in his eyes and a dopey grin on his face. She began to move faster, grinding herself down onto his double, until she cried out in ecstasy. She turned to face him.
"That was wonderful, lover boy," said Libby.
Lurk screamed. In a wild panic, he turned and ran for the safety of the swamp above.
Freshly showered, but still wearing his old flight-suit, Lurk sat cross-legged on the dry, hard-packed dirt floor of the small dining area in Yodel's domed mud house. The diminutive Jubbly master bustled around the kitchen, preparing yet another pot of rat and carrot stew.
"Tell me, you must," said Yodel, "what troubles you. What you saw in the cave, share, you must."
Lurk shrugged. "It was..." He stopped, unsure of how to proceed. "It was basically one of the dreams I have been having since ... well, since all this began."
"One of?" asked Yodel. "Dreams, you are having? Or nightmares?"
"Well, they're not pleasant," said Lurk. "Some of them are confusing, and probably packed with all sorts of symbolism. But there are three or four which repeat, over and over, and it's pretty darn obvious what they are about."
Yodel tossed a few handfuls of chopped herbs into the pot and stirred the simmering stew slowly. "Tell me," he said simply.
"I'm not sure I want to discuss this," said Lurk. "It is private, and disturbing."
"Dangerous, nightmares are, for a Jubbly. Signs of unrest, they can be. A path to the Hard Side, they may become."
Lurk considered this.
"Well, first I saw my father, Barth Vapour," said Lurk. "But I could handle that."
Yodel stopped stirring and studied the young man for a few seconds.
"Go on," he said at last.
Lurk met Yodel's gaze. "Master Yodel," he said, "how did my father fall from grace? How did he fall to the Hard Side?"
Yodel sighed. The stew began to bubble noisily, and Yodel resumed stirring.
"Led him astray, the Imperator did." said Yodel. "While training he was, to be a Jubbly, whispering in his ear, Senator Palpator was. But love, it was, and lust, which the gap in his armour, opened. His love for your mother, vulnerable it made him, to Palpator's evil lies."
Lurk frowned. "That explains my other vision, I guess, but I don't understand. Isn't love—normal healthy love between two people who have no reason not to be together—supposed to be a good thing?"
Yodel shrugged. He paused to taste a sip of the soup. "More salt, I think," he said. "To answer your question, yes and no. Love, good it can be. But weaken you, it does. If love someone you do, a target they can become. Used against you they may be. For a Jubbly, dangerous it is."
"But if you can keep the person you love safe from your enemies," began Lurk, "surely..."
"Not your enemies," said Yodel. "In here, the biggest threat is." He touched the centre of Lurk's chest lightly. "Love overrides intellect, overrides reason, even morals will it conquer. Dangerous, it can be, for one who follows the Jubbly path."
Lurk sighed and stared at the floor. "In my vision, I defeated Vapour, only to discover my own face behind the mask. I scoffed, thinking that the fear of turning to the Hard Side was a minor one. But then the cave showed me something else."
Yodel placed a couple of wooden bowls—hand carved, by their rustic appearance—on the low bench, and began to spoon hot stew into them.
"I fell in love once," said Lurk quietly. "Oh, it was driven mostly by lust at first, but I came to love her too. I wanted her, and she wanted me. Then, Bent told me she was my sister."
"Oh," said Yodel. Then: "eww!"
"I know," said Lurk. "I have been having nightmares about it ever since. That was what the cave showed me."
Yodel nodded soberly. "Difficult that is," he said. "But aware, you are. A problem this is not."
"Not for you, maybe," said Lurk, "but I cannot get her out of my head. Thoughts of her destroy my sleep, and my calm. I keep dreaming of what might have happened if Bent had not told me who she really was."
"But a possibility that no longer is," said Yodel. "Let go, you must."
"I know," said Lurk. "I am trying."
"Try not," said Yodel.
"Yes, Master Yodel, I know," said Lurk. "Do, or do not. But easy it is not."
Yodel nodded. "What else?"
"What else what?"
"Your dreams. 'One of', you said. Your others, you must tell."
"Oh," said Lurk. "Well, I've just..." He sighed. "Since the battle at Yawn, when I, uh, tweaked the Death Tube, I have been feeling guilt over the number of Imperial crew who died as a result of my actions."
"I see," said Yodel. "No choice you had. Acted to save your friends, you did."
"Sure, they were trying to kill us all," said Lurk, "but that was the officers, the Fighter pilots, the Shock Troopers. A place that size, though, must have had vast numbers of non-military staff. Cleaners, kitchen staff, plumbers. All dead at my hands."
"Difficult that is," agreed Yodel. "Collateral damage there always is, in war. Learn to accept it, you must, otherwise paralysed you will become."
"I have been paralysed," admitted Lurk, "afraid to use the Source to attack my enemies."
"A good thing that is," said Yodel gravely. "Always for defence must a Jubbly use the Source. Never for attack. Remember, though, sometimes the best defence, a good offence is."
"Either way," said Lurk, "I have been afraid to use the Source against those who have attacked us."
"Meditate, you must," said Yodel. "Right your actions were. Always in context, one must judge oneself, never in absolute. Dangerous, fear is. Kill your mind, it will."
"Meditate?" asked Lurk.
"Yes," said Yodel. "Come, close your eyes, think on what I have said. Guide you I will."
Lurk slowly closed his eyes. Gradually, as he sat in silence, listening to the omnipresent noise of the insects, and the gentle drone of Yodel's voice, the faint frown lines on his brow smoothed and faded.