The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert

by Frank Herbert

  Polly Bullone sat on the divan. Her mouth was pulled into a straight line. Her hands were clasped so tightly in her lap that the knuckles showed white. Diana stood beside her mother. Her fists were clenched at her sides. She shivered with fury. Her gaze remained fixed, glaring at Orne.

  “Okay, so my stupidity set up this little meeting,” snarled Orne. He stood about five paces in front of Polly, hands on hips. The admiral, pacing away at his right, was beginning to wear on his nerves. “But you’d better listen to what I have to say.” He glanced at the ComGO. “All of you.”

  Admiral Spencer stopped pacing, glowered at Orne. “I have yet to hear a good reason for not tearing this place apart … getting to the bottom of this situation.”

  “You … traitor, Lewis!” husked Polly.

  “I’m inclined to agree with you, Madame,” said Spencer. “Only from a different point of view.” He glanced at Stetson. “Any word yet on Scottie Bullone?”

  “They were going to call me the minute they found him,” said Stetson. His voice sounded cautious, brooding.

  “You were coming to the party here tonight, weren’t you, admiral?” asked Orne.

  “What’s that have to do with anything?” demanded Spencer.

  “Are you prepared to jail your wife and daughters for conspiracy?” asked Orne.

  A tight smile played around Polly’s lips.

  Spencer opened his mouth, closed it soundlessly.

  “The Nathians are mostly women,” said Orne. “There’s evidence that your womenfolk are among them.”

  The admiral looked like a man who had been kicked in the stomach. “What … evidence?” he whispered.

  “I’ll come to that in a moment,” said Orne. “Now, note this: the Nathians are mostly women. There were only a few accidents and a few planned males, like me. That’s why there were no family names to trace—just a tight little female society, all working to positions of power through their men.”

  Spencer cleared his throat, swallowed. He seemed powerless to take his attention from Orne’s mouth.

  “My guess,” said Orne, “is that about thirty or forty years ago, the conspirators first began breeding a few males, grooming them for really choice top positions. Other Nathian males—the accidents where sex-control failed—they never learned about the conspiracy. These new ones were full-fledged members. That’s what I’d have been if I’d panned out as expected.”

  Polly glared at him, looked back at her hands.

  “That part of the plan was scheduled to come to a head with this election,” said Orne. “If they pulled this one off, they could move in more boldly.”

  “You’re in way over your head, boy,” growled Polly. “You’re too late to do anything about us!”

  “We’ll see about that!” barked Spencer. He seemed to have regained his self-control. “A little publicity in the right places … some key arrests and—”

  “No,” said Orne. “She’s right. It’s too late for that. It was probably too late a hundred years ago. These dames were too firmly entrenched even then.”

  * * *

  Stetson straightened away from the wall, smiled grimly at Orne. He seemed to be understanding a point that the others were missing. Diana still glared at Orne. Polly kept her attention on her hands, the tight smile playing about her lips.

  “These women probably control one out of three of the top positions in the League,” said Orne. “Maybe more. Think, admiral … think what would happen if you exposed this thing. There’d be secessions, riots, sub-governments would topple, the central government would be torn by suspicions and battles. What breeds in that atmosphere?” He shook his head. “The Rim War would seem like a picnic!”

  “We can’t just ignore this!” barked Spencer. He stiffened, glared at Orne.

  “We can and we will,” said Orne. “No choice.”

  Polly looked up, studied Orne’s face. Diana looked confused.

  “Once a Nathian, always a Nathian, eh?” snarled Spencer.

  “There’s no such thing,” said Orne. “Five hundred years’ cross-breeding with other races saw to that. There’s merely a secret society of astute political scientists.” He smiled wryly at Polly, glanced back at Spencer. “Think of your own wife, sir. In all honesty, would you be ComGO today if she hadn’t guided your career?”

  Spencer’s face darkened. He drew in his chin, tried to stare Orne down, failed. Presently, he chuckled wryly.

  “Sobie is beginning to come to his senses,” said Polly. “You’re about through, son.”

  “Don’t underestimate your future son-in-law,” said Orne.

  “Hah!” barked Diana. “I hate you, Lewis Orne!”

  “You’ll get over that,” said Orne mildly.

  “Ohhhhhh!” Diana quivered with fury.

  “My major point is this,” said Orne. “Government is a dubious glory. You pay for your power and wealth by balancing on the sharp edge of the blade. That great amorphous thing out there—the people—has turned and swallowed many governments. The only way you can stay in power is by giving good government. Otherwise—sooner on later—your turn comes. I can remember my mother making that point. It’s one of the things that stuck with me.” He frowned. “My objection to politics is the compromises you have to make to get elected!”

  Stetson moved out from the wall. “It’s pretty clear,” he said. Heads turned toward him. “To stay in power, the Nathians had to give us a fairly good government. On the other hand, if we expose them, we give a bunch of political amateurs—every fanatic and power-hungry demagogue in the galaxy—just the weapon they need to sweep them into office.”

  “After that: chaos,” said Orne. “So we let the Nathians continue … with two minor alterations.”

  “We alter nothing,” said Polly. “It occurs to me, Lewis, that you don’t have a leg to stand on. You have me, but you’ll get nothing out of me. The rest of the organization can go on without me. You don’t dare expose us. We hold the whip hand!”

  “The I–A could have ninety per cent of your organization in custody inside of ten days,” said Orne.

  “You couldn’t find them!” snapped Polly.

  “How?” asked Stetson.

  “Nomads,” said Orne. “This house is a glorified tent. Men on the outside, women on the inside. Look for inner courtyard construction. It’s instinctive with Nathian blood. Add to that, an inclination for odd musical instruments—the kaithra, the tambour, the oboe—all nomad instruments. Add to that, female dominance of the family—an odd twist on the nomad heritage, but not completely unique. Check for predominance of female offspring. Dig into political background. We’ll miss damn few!”

  Polly just stared at him, mouth open.

  Spencer said: “Things are moving too fast for me. I know just one thing: I’m dedicated to preventing another Rim War. If I have to jail every last one of—”

  “An hour after this conspiracy became known, you wouldn’t be in a position to jail anyone,” said Orne. “The husband of a Nathian! You’d be in jail yourself or more likely dead at the hands of a mob!”

  Spencer paled.

  “What’s your suggestion for compromise?” asked Polly.

  “Number one: the I–A gets veto power on any candidate you put up,” said Orne. “Number two: you can never hold more than two thirds of the top offices.”

  “Who in the I–A vetoes our candidates?” asked Polly.

  “Admiral Spencer, Stet, myself … anyone else we deem trustworthy,” said Orne.

  “You think you’re a god or something?” demanded Polly.

  “No more than you do,” said Orne. “This is what’s known as a check and balance system. You cut the pie. We get first choice on which pieces to take.”

  There was a protracted silence; then Spencer said: “It doesn’t seem right just to—”

  “No political compromise is ever totally right,” said Polly. “You keep patching up things that always have flaws in them. That’s how government is.” She chuc
kled, looked up at Orne. “All right, Lewis. We accept.” She glanced at Spencer, who shrugged, nodded glumly. Polly looked back at Orne. “Just answer me one question: How’d you know I was boss lady?”

  “Easy,” said Orne. “The records we found said the … Nathian (he’d almost said ‘traitor’) family on Marak was coded as ‘The Head.’ Your name, Polly, contains the ancient word ‘Poll,’ which means head.”

  Polly looked at Stetson. “Is he always that sharp?”

  “Every time,” said Stetson.

  “If you want to go into politics, Lewis,” said Polly, “I’d be delighted to—”

  “I’m already in politics as far as I want to be,” growled Orne. “What I really want is to settle down with Di, catch up on some of the living I’ve missed.”

  Diana stiffened. “I never want to see, hear from or hear of Mr. Lewis Orne ever again!” she said. “That is final, emphatically final!”

  Orne’s shoulders drooped. He turned away, stumbled, and abruptly collapsed full length on the thick carpets. There was a collective gasp behind him.

  Stetson barked: “Call a doctor! They warned me at the hospital he was still hanging on a thin thread!” There was the sound of Polly’s heavy footsteps running toward the hall.

  “Lew!” It was Diana’s voice. She dropped to her knees beside him, soft hands fumbling at his neck, his head.

  “Turn him over and loosen his collar!” snapped Spencer. “Give him air!”

  Gently, they turned Orne onto his back. He looked pale, Diana loosed his collar, buried her face against his neck. “Oh, Lew, I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I didn’t mean it! Please, Lew … please don’t die! Please!”

  Orne opened his eyes, looked up at Spencer and Stetson. There was the sound of Polly’s voice talking rapidly on the phone in the hall. He could feel Diana’s cheek warm against his neck, the dampness of her tears. Slowly, deliberately, Orne winked at the two men.

  THE PRIESTS OF PSI

  The instant he stepped out of the transport’s shields into Amel’s sunlight warmth on the exit ramp Orne felt the surge of psi power around him. It was like being caught in a strange magnetic field. He caught the hand rail in sudden dizziness, stared down some two hundred metres at the glassy tricrete of the space port. Heatwaves shimmered off the glistening surface, baking the air even up to this height. There was no wind except inside him where the hidden gusts of the psi fields howled against his recently awakened senses.

  The techs who had trained Orne in the use of the flesh-buried psi detection instruments had given him a small foretaste of this sensation back in the laboratory on Marak. It had been far short of this reality. The first sharp signal of the primary detector concealed in his neck had been replaced by the full spectrum of psi awareness.

  Orne shuddered. Amel crawled with skin-creeping sensations. Weird urges flickered through his mind like flashes of heat lightning. He wanted to grunt like a wallowing kiriffa, and in the next instant felt laughter welling in him while a sob tore at his throat.

  I knew it was going to be bad, he thought. They warned me.

  The counter-conditioning only made this moment worse because now he was aware. Without the psi training, he knew that his mind would have confused the discrete sensations into a combined awe-fear—perfectly logical emotions for him to feel when debarking on the priest planet.

  This was holy ground: sanctuary of all the religions in the known universe (and, some said, of all the religions in the unknown universe).

  Orne forced his attention on to the inner focus as the techs had taught him. Slowly, psi awareness dimmed to background annoyance. He drew in a deep breath of the hot, dry air. It was vaguely unsatisfying as though lacking some essential element to which his lungs were accustomed.

  Still holding the rail, he waited to make certain he had subdued the ghost urges within him. Across the ramp, the glistening inner surface of the opened port reflected his image, distorting it slightly in a way that accented his differences from the lean, striding norm. He looked like a demigod reincarnated out of this world’s ancient past: square and solid with the corded neck muscles of a heavy-grav native. A faint scar demarked the brow line of his close-cropped red hair. Other fine scars on his bulldog face were visible because he knew where to look, and his memory told of more scars on his heavy body. There was a half-humorous saying in Investigation & Adjustment that senior field agents could be detected by the number of scars and medical patches they carried.

  Orne tugged at the black belt on his aqua toga, feeling uncomfortable in this garment that all “students” on Amel had to wear.

  The yellow sun, Dubhe, hung at the meridian in a cloudless blue sky. It hammered through the toga with oppressive warmth. Orne felt the perspiration slick on his body. One step away the escalfield hummed softly, ready to drop him into the bustle visible at the foot of the transport. Priests and passengers were engaged in some kind of ceremony down there—initiation of the new students. Faintly to his ears came a throbbing drum-chant and a sing-song keening almost hidden beneath the port’s machinery clatter.

  Orne studied the scene around him, still waiting to make sure he would not betray his awareness. The transport’s ramp commanded a sweeping view: a fantastic scratchwork of towers, belfries, steeples, monoliths, domes, ziggurats, pagodas, stupas, minarets, dagobas. They cluttered a flat plain that stretched to a horizon dancing in the heatwaves. Golden sunlight danced off bright primary colors and weathered pastels—buildings in tile and stone, tricrete and plasteel, and the synthetics of a thousand thousand civilizations.

  Staring out at the religious warren, Orne experienced an abrupt feeling of dread at the unknown things that could be waiting in those narrow, twisted streets and jumbled buildings. The stories that leaked out of Amel always carried a hint of forbidden mystery, and Orne knew his emotions were bound to be tainted by some of that mystery. But his sudden dread shifted subtly to a special kind of fear.

  This peculiar fear, coming out of his new awareness, had begun back on Marak.

  Orne had been seated at the desk in his bachelor officer quarters, staring out at the park-like landscape of the I–A university grounds. Marak’s green sun, low in the afternoon quadrant, had seemed distant and cold. Orne had been filling in as a lecturer on “Exotic Clues to War Tendencies” while waiting for his wedding to Diana Bullone. He was scheduled to marry the High Commissioner’s daughter in only three weeks, and after a honeymoon on Kirachin he was expecting permanent assignment to the anti-war college. He could look forward to a life of training new I–A agents in the arts of seeking out and destroying the seeds that could grow into another Rim War.

  That had been his concept of the future that afternoon on Marak. But suddenly he had turned away from his desk to frown at the stiffly regulation room. Something was awry. He studied the grey walls, the sharp angles of the bunk, the white bedcover with its blue I-A monogram: the crossed sword and stylus. The room’s other chair stood backed against the foot of the bunk, leaving a three-centimetre clearance for the grey flatness of the closet door.

  Something he could not define was making him restless—call it premonition.

  Abruptly, the hall door banged open. Umbo Stetson, Orne’s superior officer, strode into the room. The section chief wore his characteristic patched blue fatigues. His only badge of rank, golden I–A emblems on his collar and uniform cap, looked faintly corroded. Orne wondered when they had last been polished, then pushed the thought aside. Stetson reserved all of his polish for his mind.

  Behind the I–A officer rolled a mechanocart piled with cramtapes, microfilms and even some old-style books. It trundled itself into the room, its wheels rumbling as it cleared the doorsill. The door closed itself.

  Good Lord! thought Orne. Not an assignment! Not now. He got to his feet, looked first at the cart, then at Stetson. There was an edge of uneasiness in Orne’s voice as he asked: “What’s this, Stet?”

  Stetson pulled out the chair from the foot of the bunk, straddled
it, sailed his cap on to the blanket. His dark hair straggled in an uncombed muss. His eyelids drooped, accenting his usual look of haughty superciliousness.

  “You’ve had enough assignments to know what this is,” he growled. A wry smile touched his lips. “Got a little job for you.”

  “Don’t I have any say in this any more?” asked Orne.

  “Well now, things may’ve changed a bit, and then again maybe they haven’t,” said Stetson.

  “I’m getting married in three weeks,” said Orne. “To the daughter of the High Commissioner.”

  “Your wedding is being postponed,” said Stetson. He held up a hand as Orne’s face darkened. “Wait a bit. Just postponed. Emergency. The High Commissioner sent his charming daughter off today on a job we just trumped up for the purpose.”

  Orne’s voice was dangerously low: “What purpose?”

  “The purpose of getting her out of your hair. You’re leaving for Amel in six days and there’s lots to be done before you’re ready to go.”

  Orne drummed his fingers on the desk. “Just like that. Wedding’s off. I’m assigned to a … Amel?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is this, Stet? Amel’s a picnic ground.”

  “Well…” Stetson shook his head. “Maybe not.”

  A sudden fear struck Orne. “Whose job was trumped up?” he demanded. “Has Diana…”

  “She’s off to Franchi Primus to help design a new uniform for the I–A women,” said Stetson. “That safe enough for you?”

  “But why so sudden?”

  “We have to get you ready for Amel. Miss Bullone would have wasted time, diverted your attention. She knows something’s up, but she takes orders just like the rest of us in the I–A. Have I made myself clear?”

  “No notice. No nothing. Oh, this I–A is real fun! I must recommend it every time I find a young fellow looking for a job!”

  “Mrs Bullone will bring a note from Diana tonight,” said Stetson. “She’s perfectly safe. You can get married when this is over.”