The Santaroga Barrier

by Frank Herbert

  “Certainly.”

  Nis took the paper, read it.

  What is it? Dasein asked himself. What did Selador write that his wife would send to a State investigator? Is this why Garrity came?

  Nis returned the paper to Garrity. “Keeping in mind that Dr. Selador was a psychiatrist, this passage could have many interpretations. I see no reason why Dr. Dasein shouldn’t have the opportunity to throw light upon it, however—if he can.”

  “May I see this?” the Coroner asked.

  Garrity stood, took the paper to Cos, waited while the Coroner read it.

  “Very well,” Cos said, returning the paper to Garrity. “The passage you’ve marked in red pencil presumably is what concerns you. You may question the witness about that passage if you wish.”

  Garrity turned, the paper held stiffly before him, faced Dasein. With occasional glances at the page, he read: “Dasein—a dangerous instrument for this project. They should be warned.”

  He lowered the paper. “What project, Dr. Dasein?”

  There was a hush in the room as thick as fog.

  “I … when did he write this?”

  “According to his wife, it’s dated approximately a month ago. I repeat: what project?”

  Dasein groped in his memory. Project … dangerous?

  “The … only project …” He shook his head. The passage made no sense.

  “Why did you come to Santaroga, Dr. Dasein?”

  “Why? My fiancée lives here.”

  “Your fiancée …”

  “My niece, Jenny Sorge,” Piaget interposed.

  Garrity glanced at Piaget, who sat now in the front row of chairs, looked back to Dasein. “Didn’t you come here to make a market survey?”

  “Oh, that—yes. But I don’t see how I could be dangerous to that …” Dasein hesitated, weighing the time nicely. “ … unless he was afraid I’d have my mind too much on other things.”

  A soft rustle of laughter whispered through the room. The Coroner rapped his pencil, said: “I remind you this is a serious occasion. A man has died.”

  Silence.

  Garrity looked once more to the page in his hand. The paper seemed to have gained weight, pulling down.

  “What else is on that page from his journal?” Dasein asked. “Doesn’t it explain what …”

  “Who are the they who should be warned?” Garrity asked.

  Dasein shook his head. “I don’t know—unless it could be the people who hired us for the market study.”

  “You have prepared such a study?”

  “I’ll complete it as soon as I’m well enough to be released from the hospital.”

  “Your injuries,” Garrity said, a note of anger in his voice. “Something was said about burns. I’m not at all clear about …”

  “Just a moment, please,” the Coroner said. “Dr. Dasein’s injuries are not at issue here in any way other than now they bear on his being in a particular place at a particular time. We have had testimony that he was very weak and that Dr. Selador had wheeled Dr. Dasein’s wheelchair out onto the sundeck.”

  “How weak?” Garrity asked. “And how dangerous?”

  The Coroner sighed, glanced at Piaget, at Dasein, back to Garrity. “The facts surrounding Dr. Dasein’s injuries are common knowledge in Santaroga, Mr. Garrity. There were more than a dozen witnesses. He was severely burned while saving a man’s life. Dr. Dasein is somewhat of a hero in Santaroga.”

  “Oh.” Garrity returned to his seat at the table, put the page from Selador’s journal on the briefcase. He obviously was angry, confused.

  “I permit a considerable degree of informality in an inquiry such as this,” Cos said. “Dr. Dasein has asked a question about the surrounding contents of that page. I confess the entries make no sense to me, but perhaps …” The Coroner left his question hanging there, his attention on Garrity.

  “My office can add little,” Garrity said. “There’s an entry which obviously is a population figure; it’s so labeled. There’s a line …” He lifted the page. “‘Oil company checked out. Negative.’ There’s a rather cryptic: ‘No mental illness.’ Except for the one entry referring to Dr. Dasein …”

  “What about the rest of the journal?” the Coroner asked. “Has your office investigated it?”

  “Unfortunately, Mrs. Selador says she obeyed her husband’s testamentary wishes and burned his journal. It contained, she said, confidential data on medical cases. This one entry she preserved and sent to us …” Garrity shrugged.

  “I’m afraid the only man who could explain it is no longer living,” the Coroner said. “If this was, however, a journal of medical data with reference to Dr. Selador’s psychiatric practice, then it would seem the entry in question might be explained easily in rather harmless terms. The word dangerous can have many interpretations in a psychiatric context. It may even be that Dr. Dasein’s interpretation is the correct one.”

  Garrity nodded.

  “Do you have any more questions?” the Coroner asked.

  “Yes. One more.” Garrity looked at Dasein, a veiled, uncertain look. “Were you and Dr. Selador on friendly terms?”

  Dasein swallowed. “He was … my teacher … my friend. Ask anyone at Berkeley.”

  A blank look of frustration came over Garrity’s face.

  He knows, Dasein thought. And immediately he wondered what it was Garrity could know. There was nothing to know. An accident. Perhaps he knew Selador’s suspicions about Santaroga. But that was foolishness … unless Garrity were another of the investigators looking into things that were none of his business.

  Dasein felt his vision blur and, staring at Garrity, saw the man’s face become a death’s-head skull. The illusion vanished as Garrity shook his head, jammed Selador’s journal page into the briefcase. A rueful smile appeared on his face. He glanced at the Coroner, shrugged.

  “Something amuses you, Mr. Garrity?” the Coroner asked.

  The smile vanished.

  “No, sir. Well … my own thought processes sometimes. I’ve obviously allowed an unhappy woman, Mrs. Selador, to send me on a wild goose chase.”

  The investigator sat down, said: “I’ve no more questions, sir.”

  Abruptly, Dasein experienced a moment of insight; Garrity’s thoughts had frightened the man! He’d suspected a vast conspiracy here in Santaroga. But that was too fantastic; thus, the smile.

  The Coroner was closing his inquiry now—a brief summation: all the facts were in … an allusion to the pathologist’s gory details—“massive head injuries, death instantaneous”—a notation that a formal inquest would be held at a date to be announced. Would Mr. Garrity wish to return for it? Mr. Garrity thought not.

  It dawned on Dasein then that this had been a show for Garrity, something to set his mind at ease. Tiny bits of Piaget’s preinquest conversation with Garrity returned to Dasein, fitted into a larger pattern. They’d been in school together—outside! Of course: old friends, Larry and Bill. One didn’t suspect old friends of conspiracy. Reasonable.

  It was over then—death by misadventure, an accident.

  Garrity was shaking hands with Coroner Cos, with Piaget. Would Piaget be coming out to their class reunion? If his practice permitted … but Garrity certainly must know how it was with country doctors. Garrity understood.

  “This was a terrible thing,” Garrity said.

  Piaget sighed. “Yes, a terrible tragedy.”

  Garrity was pausing at the foyer door now. There were knots of people behind him waiting for the elevator, a buzz of conversation. He turned, and Dasein thought he saw a look of angry speculation on the man’s face.

  Piaget bent over Dasein then, shutting off the view of the door. “This has been a strain on you and I want you to get some rest now,” Piaget said. “Jenny’s coming in for a minute, but I don’t want her staying too long.”

  He moved aside.

  The foyer doorway stood open and empty.

  “Understand?” Piaget asked.

&
nbsp; “Yes … Jenny’s coming.”

  What was that look in Garrity’s eyes? Dasein asked himself. A black savage in Africa might have peered that way into a white man’s shiny city. Strange … angry … frustrated man. If Meyer Davidson and his crew chose Garrity for an investigator—there’ d be a dangerous one. That’d be a bridge to cross in its own time, though … if at all. Many things could happen to a man out there in the wide-wide world. Dasein could feel it—Santaroga was preparing itself to reach out there.

  That’s why I was chosen, he thought. And Burdeaux … and the others … whoever they are. The only good defense is a good offense.

  This was a disturbing thought that sent trembling agitation through Dasein’s stomach and legs.

  Why am I trembling? he wondered.

  He tried to recapture the thought that had disturbed him, failed. It was brief unimportant disturbance, a momentary ripple on a lake that otherwise was growing calmer and calmer. Dasein allowed the sensation of calm green waters to flow over and around him. He grew aware he was alone in the room with Jenny.

  There was calmness personified: blue eyes with laugh wrin-kes at their edges, full lips smiling at him. She wore an orange dress, an orange ribbon in her dark hair.

  Jenny put a package on his nightstand, bent over and kissed him—warm lips, a deep sense of peace and sharing. She pulled away, sat down beside him, held his hand.

  Dasein thought she had never looked more beautiful.

  “Uncle Larry says you’re to rest this afternoon, but you can be released from the hospital by Saturday,” she said.

  Dasein reached out, ran his fingers through her hair—silky-smooth, sensuous hair. “Why don’t we get married Sunday?” he asked.

  “Oh, darling …”

  Again, she kissed him, pulled back, looked prim. “I better not do that anymore today. We don’t want to weaken you.” The dimple flickered in her cheek. “You want to be fully recovered and strong by Sunday.”

  Dasein pulled her head down against his neck, stroked her hair.

  “We can have one of the houses in the new section,” she whispered. “We’ll be near Cal and Willa. Darling, darling, I’m so happy.”

  “So am I.”

  She began describing the house to him, the garden space, the view …

  “You’ve chosen one of them already?”

  “I was out there—dreaming, hoping …”

  The house was everything she’d ever longed for—it was important for a woman to have the right house in which to begin life with the man she loved. There was even a big garage with room for a shop … and a lab.

  Dasein thought of Jersey Hofstedder’s car sitting in the garage she described. There was a sense of continuity in the thought, a peasant complacency involving “good things” and “vintage crops.”

  His attention focused on the package Jenny had put on his nightstand.

  “What’s in the package?”

  “Package?”

  She lifted her head, turned to follow the direction of his gaze. “Oh, that. The gang at the Co-op—they put together a ‘get-well’ package for you.”

  “Jaspers?”

  “Of course.” She sat back, straightened her hair.

  Dasein had a sudden vision of himself working in the wrapping line at the Co-op.

  “Where will I work?” he asked.

  “Uncle Larry wants you in the clinic, but we’ll both get a month of honeymoon leave. Darling—it’s going to be so long until Sunday.”

  In the clinic, Dasein thought. Not as a patient, thank God. He wondered then which god he was thanking. It was a odd thought, without beginning and without end, a bit of string hanging in the green lake of his mind.

  Jenny began unwrapping the package on the nightstand—a wedge of golden cheese, two bottles of beer, dark wheat crackers, a white container that sloshed when she moved it. He wondered when they had been exposed.

  Dasein had the sudden feeling that he was a moth in a glass cage, a frantic thing fluttering against his barriers, lost, confused.

  “Darling, I’m tiring you.” Jenny put her hand on his forehead. It soothed him, calmed him. The moth of his emotions settled on a strong green limb. The limb was attached to a tree. He felt the trunk of the tree as though it were himself—strong, an infinite source of strength.

  “When will I see you?” he asked.

  “I’ll come by in the morning.”

  She blew him a kiss, hesitated, bent over him—the sweet fragrance of Jaspers about her breath, a touch of lips.

  Dasein stared after her until the foyer door closed.

  A momentary anguish touched him, a fleeting sense that he’d lost his grip on reality, that this room was unreal without Jenny in it. Dasein grabbed a chunk of the golden cheese, stuffed it in his mouth, felt the soothing Jaspers presence, his awareness expanding, becoming firm and manageable.

  What’s reality, anyway? he asked himself. It’s as finite as a bit of cheese, as tainted by error as anything else with limits.

  He settled his mind firmly then onto thoughts of the home Jenny had described, pictured himself carrying her across the threshold—his wife. There’d be presents: Jaspers from ‘the gang,’ furniture … Santaroga took care of its own.

  It’ll be a beautiful life, he thought. Beautiful … beautiful … beautiful …

  Tor Books by Frank Herbert

  The Dosadi Experiment

  The Eyes of Heisenberg

  The Green Brain

  The Santaroga Barrier

  “Herbert may be one of our major prophets.”

  —The Berkeley Barb

  “Herbert is one of the most thought-provoking writers of our time; by focusing on an ‘alien’ culture, he makes us examine what the true definition of ‘human’ is.”

  —The Pacific Sun

  “Herbert does more than carry events forward: he deals with the consequences of events, the implications of decisions.”

  —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  TURN THE PAGE

  to read a sample chapter

  of the

  ALL-NEW

  DUNE

  NOVEL

  In the desert, the line between life and death

  is sharp and quick.

  —Zensunni fire poetry from Arrakis

  Far from thinking machines and the League of Nobles, the desert never changed. The Zensunni descendants who had fled to Arrakis scraped out squalid lives in isolated cave communities, barely subsisting in a harsh environment. They experienced little enjoyment, yet fought fiercely to remain alive for just another day.

  Sunlight poured across the ocean of sand, warming dunes that rippled like waves breaking upon an imagined shore. A few black rocks poked out of the dust like islands, but offered no shelter from the heat or the demon worms.

  This desolate landscape was the last thing he would ever see. The people had accused him, chosen the young man as a scapegoat, and would mete out their punishment. His innocence was not relevant.

  “Begone, Selim!” came a shout from the caves above. “Go far from here!” He recognized the voice of his young friend—former friend—Ebrahim. Perhaps the other boy was relieved, since by rights it should have been him facing exile and death, not Selim. But no one would mourn the loss of an orphan, and so Selim had been cast out in the Zensunni version of justice.

  A raspy voice said, “May the worms spit out your scrawny hide.” That was old Glyffa, who had once been like a mother to him. “Thief! Water stealer!”

  From the caves, the tribe began to throw stones. One sharp rock struck the cloth he had wrapped around his dark hair for protection against the sun. Selim ducked, but did not give them the satisfaction of seeing him cringe. They had stripped almost everything from him, but as long as he drew breath they would never take his pride.

  Naib Dhartha, the sietch leader, leaned out. “The tribe has spoken. Your fate rests on your own crimes, Selim.”

  Protestations of his innocence would do no good, nor would e
xcuses or explanations. Keeping his balance on the steep path, the young man stooped to grab a sharp-edged stone. He held it in his palm and glared up at the people.

  Selim had always been skilled at throwing rocks. He could pick off ravens, small kangaroo mice, or lizards for the community cookpot. If he aimed carefully, he could have put out one of the Naib’s eyes. Selim had seen Dhartha whispering quietly with Ebrahim’s father, watched them form their plan to cast the blame on him instead of the guilty boy. They had decided Selim’s punishment using measures other than the truth.

  Naib Dhartha had dark eyebrows and jet-black hair bound into a ponytail by a dull metal ring. A purplish geometric tattoo of dark angles and straight lines marked his left cheek. His wife had drawn it on his face using a steel needle and the juice of a scraggly inkvine the Zensunni cultivated in their terrarium gardens. The Naib glared down as if daring Selim to throw the stone, because the Zensunni would respond with a pummeling barrage of large rocks.

  But such a punishment would kill him far too quickly. Instead, the tribe would drive Selim away from their tight-knit community. And on Arrakis, one did not survive without help. Existence in the desert required cooperation, each person doing his part. The Zensunni looked upon stealing—especially the theft of water—as the worst crime imaginable.

  Selim pocketed the stone. Ignoring the jeers and insults, he continued his tedious descent toward the open desert.

  Dhartha intoned in a voice that sounded like a bass howl of stormwinds, “Selim, who has no father or mother—Selim, who was welcomed as a member of our tribe—you have been found guilty of stealing tribal water. Therefore, you must walk across the sands.” Dhartha raised his voice, shouting before the condemned man could pass out of earshot. “May Shaitan choke on your bones.”

  All his life, Selim had done more work than most others. Because he was of unknown parentage, the tribe demanded it of him. No one helped him when he was sick, except maybe old Glyffa; no one carried an extra load for him. He had watched some of his companions gorge themselves on inflated family shares of water, even Ebrahim. And still, the other boy, seeing half a literjon of brackish water untended, had drunk it, foolishly hoping no one would notice. How easy it had been for Ebrahim to blame it on his supposed friend when the theft was discovered … .