Four Unpublished Novels

by Frank Herbert

  “Dear, you should tell us when it hurts,” she said.

  “But, Mother, I’m—”

  “It’s all right. We understand. Here. Take this. Do you want the water?”

  “Yes.”

  The bucket gurgled as she passed it back.

  Jeb turned away. And now, in the cloak of darkness, he found a moment to wonder how they should guard Gettler during the night. The madman loomed as a constant menace hidden in the black shadows at the rear of the cabin.

  Christ! If he broke out of those tapes in the night …

  Jeb shook his head.

  A dark blotch of drowned bushes loomed out of the night. Jeb heard the current hissing and swirling over them. He glanced up at the moon, saw a black massing of clouds in the east: another storm.

  The flooded island was passing now on the left.

  Jeb readied the grapnel, took up the cane pole, worked the plane closer, tossed the iron into the dark shadows. It dragged with a sound of breaking limbs and scraping, then caught. The plane swung around downstream, rasped across the drowned bushes. Insects came up like a living vapor at the disturbance. Jeb scrambled into the cabin, closed the door. Monti was singing softly, her voice like a reverie sound.

  “Dee-eep river … my home is o-ver Jordan …”

  She broke off, looked at Jeb.

  “What’re we going to do for food?”

  “We’ll have to find something tomorrow for sure,” he said.

  Jeb found the flashlight, turned its beam into the rear of the cabin. Gettler stared blankly straight ahead.

  “David, check the tape on his hands,” said Jeb.

  The boy looked back with a doped unconcern, turned, peered down behind Gettler, spoke slowly: “’S all right.”

  Jeb snapped off the light, settled back into his own seat.

  Sounds of the river at night enveloped them: a dipping limb that murmured to itself in the current, the faint rasping of bushes against the float, a whiffling and snuffling from the left shore as an animal drank, the incessant ear-ringing of insects, the croaking of frogs.

  Monti’s voice came into this background like water filling up a low place: “It’s a terrible thing to say,” she murmured. “I know it is. But for a while today I was almost happy. Sitting here, watching the river, wondering what the next bend would reveal. Watching you out there on the float. Even the heat didn’t bother me. I just felt curious about everything.”

  “Maybe that’s the secret of happiness,” said Jeb. “Curiosity.”

  “So the next bend in the river shows you a Jivaro war party waiting,” muttered Gettler. And his voice carried that half-hidden laughing-at-you tone of clarity.

  Monti cleared her throat.

  “Thanks, Gettler,” said Jeb. “We needed that warning real bad.”

  “There’s always something new around the next bend in the river,” said Gettler. “And finally: the ocean.” His voice took on a sudden pleading note: “Logan, cut these tapes off my wrists. They’re too tight. They’ll cause an …”

  “I checked them. So did David,” said Jeb. “They’re not too tight.”

  “And thank you,” murmured Gettler.

  In the silence that followed, they heard David’s deep, drugged breathing. Presently, there came the sound of snoring from Gettler.

  And Jeb realized with a feeling of shock that Gettler probably was sleeping in utter exhaustion—his first deep sleep since they’d picked him up at the rancho.

  The moon dipped lower across the jungle. Full darkness enveloped them: a thick and oily darkness with clouds blotting out the stars.

  A wind arose, mounting swiftly. It shook the plane and the forest around them, humming everywhere like a terrible organ. From both banks came the rushing, slapping sound of leaves colliding in the wind.

  And Gettler dreamed. In the dream, he was two people: a student and a professor in a phantom lecture hall. All around them grouped other students without faces.

  “When your hands are tied, that defines your limits,” lectured the dream professor. “Happiness comes only through a defining of limits. But it may happen that you do not want happiness that way … and that you may be happier … paradoxically—without the happiness-limitation.”

  The dream-student Gettler nodded, and drifted away into a moment of non-identity that opened into himself as the dream-professor.

  “But nothing harmful must happen to the boy,” he lectured. “The boy David-Peter-Peter-David is in terrible danger, and you must protect him.”

  Gettler turned in his sleep, muttered, resumed his snoring.

  The bump-bump-bump of the canoe tied beneath the fuselage arose in the night and faded like a drum sending a jungle message.

  Jeb studied the black curtain of night, unable to sleep. He heard David’s drugged breathing, Gettler’s snores, the restless shifting of Monti. A dancing green line of fireflies bewitched the darkness, and were blotted out by a gust of wind-driven rain that pounded against the windshield.

  An ominous flowing of premonition saturated Jeb. He felt the pressure of certainty that one or more of them was marked to die. It was like finding himself high above the earth in a plane without power: no place to go but down, and nothing but sharp peaks below.

  Monti leaned toward him, whispered: “You awake?”

  Suddenly, he needed a completeness that only she could provide. The sensation exploded in him, sent his arms out, and swept her against him. Their lips crushed together in a torturing kiss—a smothering of fire and agony.

  She moaned as his hand groped beneath her shirt.

  Something about the danger around them intensified the hunger of their bodies, drove them both to frenzies of passion that neither had ever before experienced.

  Monti’s hands fluttered against him, responding to every demand. She opened their shirts, pressed herself against him: warm skin to warm skin. There came a soft, uninhibited yielding to her every motion: a warm, sensuous twisting that anticipated him.

  She put her lips close to his ear, panted: “Be … very … quiet … ohhhhhhh …”

  Their movements became like the river current: the soft and natural swaying that preceded the chasm and the rapids where the water pounded and flung itself in white violence.

  And when the moment was spent, they still clung to each other, tasting remembered sweetness.

  At dawn, the rain eased away to a fog-like drizzle.

  Jeb slipped down to the left float, retrieved the grapnel, pushed the plane off into the current.

  The pocked water around them carried an endless procession of flotsam: islands of sedge, logs, branches, leaves, bits of flower-garlanded greenery.

  He looked in at Monti, recalling the night.

  She glanced at him, turned away.

  A hot flush crept over her skin, and she thought: For Christ’s sake! I’m embarrassed! Why’n hell do I suddenly develop a conscience?

  Gettler climbed to consciousness from a deep, drenched sleep, found himself feeling clear-headed and refreshed. But his shoulders were cramped from the awkward position, and his wrists burned beneath the tape. He yawned.

  David’s first awakening sensation came as a throbbing at his temples—followed by a sharp twinge of pain in the stump of his finger, and a rasping dryness in his throat.

  “Water,” he husked.

  Monti turned.

  “Does your head hurt, dear?”

  “’M so thirsty.”

  She helped him with the water bucket.

  “Is that better?”

  “Yes. Where are we?”

  “Going from nowhere to somewhere,” said Gettler.

  Monti stabbed a sharp glance at him, settled back in the front seat.

  A tearing emptiness of hunger clutched her stomach. The pang receded, left her feeling weak and desperate. Her mind focused in sudden rage on Gettler, and she whirled. “You dirty, murdering sonofabitch!” she rasped. “I’m sorry I didn’t kill you!”

  As though at this sig
nal to violence, there came a crash of thunder upriver, and the rain returned to its blinding, drenching equatorial downpour.

  Monti slumped back, leaned against her door.

  The outburst had shocked Jeb to sudden attention, but Gettler acted as though he had not heard.

  Only David continued to stare at Monti, turning her words over and over in his mind.

  Murdering? She means he killed my dad. Did he?

  The boy turned his attention to Gettler, but the man had closed his eyes, and was sleeping softly like a baby.

  The incessant drum roll of rain on the wings and cabin top filled the four humans with a timeless feeling. All around hung the grey vaporous curtain. Dim shapes of trees and hills took form through it, and dissolved as the plane floated past. Everything beyond the wingtips looked out of focus—as though created just that moment and left unfinished.

  A spit of muddy land grew out of the rain.

  Jeb suddenly crouched, peering at it. The brown shore was lined with rows of alligators drawn up in waiting ranks.

  The Jivaro know we’re back here somewhere, thought Jeb. A shot wouldn’t tell them something they don’t already know.

  He wet his lips with his tongue, dug the pole into the river, sent the plane toward the bank below the alligators.

  “What’re you doing?” whispered Monti.

  “Going to get us some food.”

  Jeb took the rifle from the cabin floor, gave Monti the little twenty-two, lifted the grapnel from the strut and hurled it ashore as the plane grounded.

  Upstream, one of the alligators pushed itself off into the river.

  Hunger was like an electric current surging through Jeb. He brought the rifle to his shoulder, steeled himself against trembling, sighted on an eye of the nearest alligator, squeezed the trigger. The gun roared, bucked against Jeb’s shoulder.

  But there was a blood-spattered threshing monster on the shore, twisting and flopping, hurling mud all around it.

  The remaining alligators scrambled into the river.

  “Hah!” shouted Gettler. “We eat!”

  “What is it?” asked David.

  “Alligator,” said Gettler.

  Jeb exchanged the rifle for the machete, slipped off the float into the mud, slogged through clinging ooze toward the alligator. It had quieted to an occasional twitch, and lay half on its side, head in the water.

  The machete dragged heavily against Jeb’s hand. It seemed to have doubled its weight since the last time he’d held it. He stopped beside the dead alligator, lifted the blade, swung down: and again … and again, until the tail lay severed.

  Jeb picked up the tail, turned to retrace his steps. Rain poured down the muddy bank, filling his footprints, running away to the river in brown rivulets. He looked around, hesitating, feeling a sudden menace that made him tremble.

  Something moved in the greyness of the veiled jungle wall at the base of the narrow spit.

  His first thought: Indian!

  Jeb dropped the alligator tail, put his hand to the magnum revolver wedged in his belt.

  The rain-bent saw grass above him rippled, and Jeb stared at two glaring eyes in a cat face: jaguar!

  His mind came around in a kind of shocked protest, and he told himself: But jaguar hunt only at night!

  The animal flowed out of the grass and onto the muddy shore, crouched.

  Jeb dragged up the revolver, snapped off a shot at the lowered head. The gun blasted and kicked in his hand as the big cat leaped. Jeb threw himself sideways, firing again as he moved.

  The jaguar splashed into the river, jerked from side to side, twitched, shuddered, became quiet with its head under water. Something rippled the current beyond the dead animal. The cat suddenly slipped away, disappeared in an abrupt swirl of water.

  Jeb’s breathing quieted. He retrieved the alligator tail and slogged back to the plane. He flopped the tail out onto the float, scrambled hurriedly up beside it, slid the machete under the seat.

  “That’s the first time I ever saw a jaguar hunt a man in the open in broad daylight,” said Gettler. “Too bad it was so slow.”

  “Thanks,” said Jeb.

  “It was probably old, sick and starving,” said Gettler.

  Monti leaned out, looked down at the alligator tail.

  “Is that good to eat?”

  “Sure.” Jeb turned toward David. “Get out the pellet stove.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jeb cooked the meat, cut it into four shares, handed three in the cabin to Monti.

  “You going to cut these tapes off me?” asked Gettler.

  “David can feed you,” said Jeb.

  He squatted on the float, began gnawing his share of the meat. It tasted faintly of mud.

  A transparent butterfly staggered through the rain, pasted its stranded filigree against the plane’s cowling in front of Jeb. A gusting of the downpour washed it off into the river.

  Presently, Jeb arose, brought the anchor aboard, pushed off. The plane joined the other flotsam on the rain-cratered current.

  The day stretched out like an extension of the flowing river. Jeb’s muscles grew numb with the exertion of keeping the plane out of the side currents. His throat felt thick and swollen where Gettler had bruised it.

  And Jeb’s thoughts returned to Monti, but with a sense of detachment: Am I in love with her? Oh, Hell! Love doesn’t happen like this! It’s just physical. Natural.

  He glanced in at Monti. She was napping, curled back in her corner with her cheek against the seat back. The red hair wisped in disorderly strands from beneath the silver scarf. Deep blue shadows traced the sunken curves beneath her eyelids. Freckles stood out darkly against the translucent paleness of her skin.

  Jesus! She’s beautiful! he thought.

  And he wanted to go into the cabin, cradle her head against him, reassure her.

  Am I in love?

  In the afternoon the rain slackened, almost stopped. A washed clarity in the air opened up the distances, brought everything into sharp focus. The clouds lifted, but did not break. Birds and animals came out of hiding. A droll-faced monkey chattered at them from an overhanging tree. Jungle hummingbirds darted among the garlanded branches. Pale lemon-green parakeets flocked over the water.

  A giant leaf paced them for a time, bearing a long orange-shelled snail on its surface like a Magellan of the jungle world.

  The cloud-shrouded sun touched the western peaks, and the forest around the plane began to draw in its night shadows: first the dark greens went to grey, then to black; lighter flowers dimmed.

  A velvet smoothness overcame the river, and it was night.

  Jeb took out the flashlight, probed ahead: nothing. The dimming yellowness of the light told of weakened batteries. He turned it off.

  The plane suddenly grated on an obstruction, lurched, throwing Jeb against the strut. He snapped the light back on, sent its beam around them to reveal a rippling of shallows—shallows.

  They scraped and bumped downstream.

  “What’s happening?” demanded Monti.

  “Shallows.”

  Jeb turned off the light, found the grapnel and hurled it into the darkness. He felt it grip as the plane swept off into deeper water. They began the familiar sawing back and forth, back and forth in the current. Jeb scrambled through the cabin, dropped down to the opposite float, felt the patch. It was still in place. He took off the cap, groped inside the float: about two inches of water.

  “Is it all right?” asked Monti.

  “I think so.”

  He crouched on the float, feeling inside it. The water didn’t seem to be rising.

  “David, dig down behind you and give me the pump,” said Jeb.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I hope it sinks,” said Gettler.

  Jeb ignored him, checked the lashings on the dugout.

  “Here’s the pump,” said David.

  There came a sudden scrambling in the cabin’s darkness. David cried out, and Gettler be
gan to laugh. Something banged against the float beneath Jeb, splashed in the river.

  “You pushed me!” said David.

  Monti found the flashlight, shone it into the rear.

  Gettler stared back at the light, smiling.

  “He made me drop the pump,” said David.

  Jeb felt weariness without anger. He replaced the cap on the float, leaned into the cabin.

  “Did he hurt you, David?”

  “No, sir. He just pushed my hand.”

  “Are we going to sink?” asked Monti.

  “No.”

  Jeb took the flashlight, directed it into Gettler’s eyes. The man blinked, but his face held its steady, almost vacant smile.

  “Why’d you do that?” asked Jeb.

  Gettler chuckled, sank back, closed his eyes.

  The pinwheels whirled in his brain.

  Jeb handed the light to David. “Check the tape on his hands.”

  David took the light, peered behind Gettler. “Everything looks the same.”

  Jeb climbed inside past Monti, took back the light, turned it off.

  “Where are we?” asked Monti.

  “Some shallows somewhere.”

  “You’re tired,” said Monti.

  “Yes.”

  “I can stand watch,” said David.

  “Okay.”

  “Maybe we can recover that pump in the morning,” said Monti.

  “It doesn’t make any difference,” said Jeb.

  And he felt that this was the only truth remaining in the world.

  “Nothing makes any difference,” he said.

  “It’s too much for you—handling the plane all alone,” said Monti.

  “I could help,” said David.

  Jeb shook his head. “No.”

  “How’s your hand, David?” asked Monti.

  “It hurts a little, but it’s better.”

  “You should check the bandages,” whispered Jeb.

  “It’s all right,” said David.

  “I’ll do it first thing in the morning,” she said.

  Jeb leaned his head against the seat back. It felt so smooth, so restful. He slept, and dreams filled his mind. Creeping green mold spread everywhere around him, crept up his legs, reached for his mouth and nose. The smell of it filled his nostrils. He twisted, moaned.