The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert

by Frank Herbert

  “You must. It is the only way you will accomplish what you were sent here to do … and … you could not stop now, anyway. The ball is rolling down the hill. You don’t even want to stop.”

  Orne tested this against his own feelings, shrugged. “I am curious.”

  “The thing is, Orne, you suspect us and fear us. These lead to hate. We saw that back there at the cell. But hate can be supremely dangerous to you in this present test. You…”

  A scraping sound behind them brought Orne’s attention around. Two oblate brothers deposited a heavy, square-armed chair on the stone floor facing the wall. They cast frightened glances at Orne, the wall, turned and scampered towards one of the heavy bronze doors.

  “As I was saying, Orne, I am merely following orders here. I beg of you not to hate me, nor to hate anyone. You should not harbour hate during this test.”

  “What frightened those two fellows who brought that chair?” asked Orne. He watched the pair scurry through their door, slam it behind them.

  “They know the reputation of this test. The very fabric of our universe is woven into it. Many things can hang in the balance here. Infinite possibilities.”

  Cautiously, Orne probed for Bakrish’s motives. The priest obviously sensed the probe. He said: “I am afraid, Orne. Is that what you wanted to know?”

  “Why are you afraid?”

  “In my ordeal, this test proved nearly fatal. I had sequestered a core of hate. This place clutches at me even now.” He shivered.

  Orne found the priest’s fright unsteadying. He looked at the chair. It was squat, ugly. An inverted metallic bowl projected on an arm over the seat. “What’s the chair?”

  “You must sit down in it.”

  Orne glanced at the grey wall, at Bakrish, back to the chair. There was tension here as though each heartbeat pumped pressure into the room. The surging and receding of his prescient sense increased, but he felt himself committed to this blind course.

  “Sometimes we must go for the sake of going.” The words rang in his memory. Who had said them?

  He crossed to the chair, turned, sat down. In the act of sitting, the prescient sense of peril came to full surge, stayed. But there was no time for a change of heart. Metal bands leaped from concealed openings in the chair, pinned his arms, circled his chest and legs. Orne surged against them, twisting.

  “Do not struggle,” warned Bakrish. “You cannot escape.”

  Orne sank back.

  “Please, Orne: you must not hate us. Your danger is magnified manyfold if you do. Hate could make you fail.”

  “Dragging you down with me, eh?”

  “Quite possibly,” muttered Bakrish. “One never quite escapes the consequences of one’s hate.” He stepped behind the chair, lowered the inverted bowl over Orne’s head. “If you move suddenly or try to jerk away the microfilament probes within this bowl will cause you great pain.”

  Orne felt something touch his scalp, crawling, tickling. “What is this?”

  “One of the great psi machines.” Bakrish adjusted something on the chair. Metal clicked. “Observe the wall. It can manifest your most latent urges. You can bring about miracles, call forth the dead, do many wonders. You may be on the brink of a deep mystical experience.”

  Orne swallowed in a dry throat. “You mean if I wanted my father to appear here he would?”

  “He is deceased?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it could happen. But I must caution you. The things you see here will not be hallucination. And one thing more: If you are successful in calling forth the dead, you must realize that what you call forth will be that dead person, and yet not that dead person.”

  The back of Orne’s right arm itched. He longed to scratch it. “How can…”

  “The paradox is like this: any living creature manifested here through your will must be invested with your psyche as well as its own. Its matter will impinge on your matter. All of your memories will be available to whatever living flesh you call forth.”

  “But…”

  “Hear me out, Orne. In some cases, your creates may fully understand their duality. Others will reject your half out of hand because they have not the capacity. Some may even lack sentience.”

  Orne felt the fear driving Bakrish’s words, sensed truth in them. He believes this, anyway. He said: “But why trap me here in this chair?”

  “It’s important that you do not run away from yourself.” Bakrish’s hand fell on Orne’s shoulder. “I must leave you now. May grace guide you.”

  There was a swishing of robes as the priest strode away. Presently a door closed, its sound a hollow sharpness. Orne felt infinitely alone.

  A faint humming became audible—distant bee sound. The booster in his neck tugged sharply, and he felt the flare of a psi field around him. The barrier wall blinked alive to the color of grass green, and immediately began to crawl with iridescent purple lines. They squirmed and writhed like countless glowing worms trapped in a viscid green aquarium.

  Orne drew in a shuddering breath. Prescient fear hammered at him. The crawling purple lines held hypnotic fascination. Some appeared to waft out towards him. The shape of Diana’s face glowed momentarily among them. He tried to hold the image, saw it melt away.

  Because she’s alive? he wondered.

  Shapeless deformities squirmed across the wall, coalesced abruptly into the outline of a shriggar, the saw-toothed lizard that Chargonian mothers invoked to frighten their children into obedience. The image took on more substance, developed yellow scale plates, stalk eyes.

  Time suddenly slowed to a grinding, creeping pace within Orne. He thought back to his childhood on Chargon: terror memories.

  But even then shriggar were extinct, he told himself.

  Memory persisted down a long corridor full of empty echoes that suggested gibbering insanity. Down … down … down … He remembered childish laughter, a kitchen, his mother. And there were his sisters screaming derisively. And he remembered himself cowering, ashamed. He couldn’t have been more than three years old. He had come running into the house to babble that he had seen a shriggar … in the deep shadows of the creek gully.

  Laughing girls! Hateful little girls! “He thinks he saw a shriggar!” “Hush now, you two.”

  On the green wall, the shriggar outline bulged outwards. A taloned foot extended. It stepped from the wall on to the stone floor: half again as tall as a man, stalked eyes swivelling right, left …

  Orne jerked out of his reverie, felt painful throbbing as his head movement disturbed the microfilament probes.

  There was scratching of talons on stone as the shriggar took three tentative steps away from the wall. Orne tasted the fear within himself, thought: Some ancestor of mine was hunted by such a creature! The panic goes too deep! It was a clear thought that flickered through his mind while every sense remained focused on the nightmare lizard.

  Its yellow scales rasped with every breath it took. The narrow, birdlike head twisted to one side, lowered. Its beak mouth opened to reveal a forked tongue and saw teeth.

  Primordial instinct pressed Orne back in his chair. He smelled the stink of the creature: sickly sweet with overtones of sour cheese.

  The shriggar bobbed its head, coughed: “Chunk!” Its stalk eyes moved, centred on Orne. One taloned foot lifted and it plunged into motion towards the figure trapped in the chair. Its high-stepping lope stopped about four metres away, and the lizard cocked its head to one side while it examined Orne.

  He stared up at it, his only bodily sensation a vague awareness of tightness across chest and stomach. The beast stink was almost overpowering.

  Behind the shriggar, the green wall continued to wriggle with iridescent purple lines. It was a background blur on Orne’s eyes. The lizard moved closer, and he smelled a draught of breath as fetid as swamp ooze.

  No matter what Bakrish said, this has to be hallucination, he told himself. Shriggar have been extinct for centuries. But another thought blinked at him: Th
e priests could have bred zoo specimens to maintain the species. How does anyone know what’s been done here in the name of religion?

  The shriggar cocked its head to the other side.

  At the green wall, lines solidified. Two children dressed in scanty sun aprons skipped out on to the stone floor. Their footsteps echoed, and childish giggling echoed in the vast emptiness. One child appeared to be about five years old, the other slightly older—possibly eight. The older child carried a small bucket with a toy shovel protruding from it. They stopped, looked around, confused.

  The shriggar turned its head, bent its stalk eyes towards them. It swivelled its body back towards the wall, poised one foot, lunged into its high-stepping lope.

  The youngest child looked up, squealed.

  The shriggar increased its speed.

  Shocked, Orne recognized the children: his two sisters, the ones who had laughed at his fearful cries on that long ago day. It was as though he had brought this incident to life for the sole purpose of venting his hate, inflicting on those children the thing they had derided.

  The lizard swooped down, blocked the children from view. Orne tried to close his eyes, could not. There came a shriek cut off with abrupt finality. Unable to stop, the shriggar hit the green wall, melted into it!

  The older child lay sprawled on the floor still clutching her bucket and toy shovel. A red smear spread across the stones beside her. She stared across the room at Orne, slowly got to her feet.

  No matter what Bakrish said, this can’t be real, thought Orne. Yet he felt an odd wash of relief that the shriggar had vanished.

  The child began walking towards Orne, swinging her bucket. Her right hand clutched the toy shovel. She stared fixedly at Orne. He brought her name into his mind: Maddie, my sister, Lurie. But she’s a grown woman now, married and with children of her own.

  Flecks of sand marked the child’s legs and cheeks. One of her two blonde braids hung down partly undone. She looked angry, shivering with an eight-year-old’s fury. About two metres away she stopped.

  “You did that!” she screamed.

  Orne shuddered at the madness in the child voice. She lifted the bucket, hurled its contents at him. He shut his eyes, felt coarse sand deluge his face, pelt the silver dome, run down his cheeks. Pain coursed through him as he shook his head, disrupting the microfilaments against his scalp. Through slitted eyes he saw the dancing lines on the green wall leap into wild motion—bending, twisting, flinging. Orne stared at the purple frenzy through a red haze of pain. And he remembered the guru’s warning that any life he called forth here would contain his own psyche as well as its own.

  “Lurie,” he said, “please try to…”

  “You tried to get into my head!” she screamed. “But I pushed you out!”

  Bakrish had said it: “Others will reject your half out of hand because they have not the capacity.” This dual create had rejected him because her eight-year-old mind could not accept such an experience. And Orne realized that he was taking this scene as reality and not as hallucination.

  “I’m going to kill you!” screamed Lurie.

  She hurled herself at him, the toy shovel swinging. Light glinted from the tiny blade. It slashed down on his right arm. Abrupt pain! Blood darkened the sleeve of his gown.

  Orne felt himself caught up in a nightmare. Words leaped to his lips: “Stop that, Lurie! God will punish you!”

  Movement behind the child. He looked up.

  A toga-clad figure in red turban came striding out of the green wall: a tall man with gleaming eyes, the face of a tortured ascetic—long grey beard parted in the sufi manner.

  Orne whispered the name: “Mahmud!”

  A gigantic tri-di of that face dominated the inner mosque of Chargon.

  God will punish you!

  Orne remembered standing beside his father, staring up at the image in the mosque, bowing to it.

  The Mahmud figure strode up behind Lurie, caught her arm as she started another blow. She turned, struggling, but he held her, twisted the arm slowly, methodically. A bone snapped with sickening sharpness. The child screamed and screamed and…”

  “Don’t!” protested Orne.

  Mahmud had a low, rumbling voice. He said: “One does not command God’s agent to stop His just punishment.” He held the child’s hair, stooped, caught up the fallen shovel, slashed it across her neck. The screaming stopped. Blood spurted over his gown. He let the now limp figure fall to the floor, dropped the shovel, turned to Orne.

  Nightmare! thought Orne. This has to be a nightmare!

  “You are thinking this is a nightmare,” rumbled Mahmud.

  And Orne remembered: this creature, too, if it were real, could think with his reactions and memories. He rejected the thought. “You are a nightmare!”

  “Your create has done its work,” said Mahmud. “It had to be disposed of, you know, because it was embodied by hate, not by love.”

  Orne felt sickened, guilty, angry. He remembered that this test involved understanding miracles. “This was a miracle?” he demanded.

  “What is a miracle?” demanded Mahmud.

  Abruptly, an air of suspense enclosed Orne. Prescient fear sucked at his vitals.

  “What is a miracle?” repeated Mahmud.

  Orne felt his heart hammering. He couldn’t seem to focus on the words, stammered: “Are you really an agent of God?”

  “Quibbles and labels!” barked Mahmud. “Don’t you know about labels? An expediency! There’s something beyond your labels. Where the zone of the word stops, something else begins.”

  A tingling sense of madness prickled through Orne. He felt himself balanced on the edge of chaos. “What is a miracle?” he whispered. And he thought back to Emolirdo: words … chaos … energy. Psi equals miracle! No. More labels. Energy.

  “Energy from chaos moulded into duration,” he said.

  “Very close for words,” murmured Mahmud. “Is a miracle good or evil?”

  “Everybody says miracles are good.” Orne took a deep breath. “But they don’t have to be either. Good and evil are all tied up in motives.”

  “Man has motives,” said Mahmud.

  “Man can be good or evil in his miracles by any definition he wants,” said Orne.

  Mahmud lifted his head, stared down his nose at Orne. “Yes?”

  After a moment of tension, Orne returned the stare. Success in this test had taken on a deep meaning for him. He could feel the inner goading. “Do you want me to say that men create gods to enforce their definitions of good and evil?”

  “Do I?”

  “So I’ve said it!”

  “Is that all you have to say?”

  Orne had to force his attention on to the meanings of words. It was like wading upstream in a swift river. So easy to relax and forget it all. His thoughts showed a tendency to scatter. Is what all I have to say?

  “What is it about men’s creations?” demanded Mahmud. “What is it about any creation?”

  Orne recalled the nightmare sequence of events in this test. He wondered: Could this psi machine amplify the energy we call religion? Bakrish said I could bring the dead to life here. Religion’s supposed to have a monopoly on that. And the original Mahmud’s certainly dead. Been dead for centuries. Provided it isn’t hallucination, this whole thing makes a peculiar kind of sense. Even then …

  “You know the answer,” said Mahmud.

  Orne said: “Creations may act independently of their creators. So good and evil don’t apply.”

  “Ah-hah! You have learned this lesson!”

  Mahmud stooped, lifted the dead child figure. There was an odd tenderness to his motions. He turned away, marched back into the writhings of the green wall. Silence blanketed the room. The dancing purple lines became almost static, moved in viscous torpor.

  Orne felt drained of energy. His arms and legs ached as though he had been using their muscles to the absolute limit.

  A bronze clangor echoed behind him, and the green wal
l returned to its featureless grey. Footsteps slapped against the stone floor. Hands worked at the metallic bowl, lifted it off his head. The straps that held him to the chair fell away. Bakrish came round to stand in front of Orne.

  “Did I pass this test?” asked Orne.

  “You are alive and still in possession of your soul are you not?”

  “How do I know if I still have my soul?”

  “One knows by the absence,” murmured Bakrish. He glanced down at Orne’s wounded arm. “We must get that bandaged. It’s night and time for the next step in your ordeal.”

  “Night?” Orne glanced up at the slitted windows in the dome, saw darkness punctured by stars. He looked around, realized that shadowless exciter light of glow globes had replaced the daylight. “Time goes quickly here.”

  “For some … not for others.”

  “I feel so tired.”

  “We’ll give you an energy pill when we fix the arm. Come along.”

  “What’s next?”

  “You must walk through the shadow of dogma and ceremony, Orne. For it is written that motive is the father of ethics, and caution is the brother of fear…” he paused “… and fear is the daughter of pain.”

  There was a nip of chill in the night air. Orne felt thankful now for the thickness of the robe around him. A cooing of birds sounded from the deeper shadows of a park area ahead. Beyond the park arose a hill outlined against the stars, and up the hill marched a snake-track of moving lights.

  Bakrish spoke from beside Orne. “The lights are carried by students. Each student has a pole, and on its top a translucent box. The four sides of the boxes each show a different color: red, blue, yellow and green.”

  Orne watched the lights. They flickered like weird phosphorescent insects in the dark. “What’s the reason for that?”

  “They show their piety.”

  “I mean the four colors?”

  “Ah. Red for the blood you dedicate to your god, blue for the truth, yellow for the richness of religious experience, and green for the growth of that experience.”

  “So they march up the mountain.”

  “Yes. To show their piety.” Bakrish took Orne’s arm. “The procession is coming out of the city through a gate in the wall over here. There will be a light for you there. Come along.”