The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert

by Frank Herbert

  “Yes,” said Ren. “At the very moment of my panic, I could consider what it meant. Violence has been all but stamped out of us. And what little’s left, the inhibitory conditioning of our childhood takes care of that. But there must be something remaining because I found myself thinking that if Jorj struck me again, I’d have to grapple with him, stop him.”

  “Do you think you actually could have done it?” asked Saim.

  “I don’t know. But I thought of it.”

  “Why did he strike you?” asked Jeni. And she thought: Perhaps there’s a clue here to Saim’s difference.

  “Now, there’s another curious thing,” said Ren. “Merely because I was in his path. I was questioning him about the weapons in this cave complex, trying different word-thought patterns in Ancienglis. Suddenly, he jumped up, shouted in Ancienglis: ‘Out of my way!’ And he struck me aside. He ran halfway across the medical lab, stopped, turned around, and did the same thing you saw him do out there. He just … seemed to turn off.”

  “Is it possible he remembers?” whispered Jeni.

  “Of course not!” Ren felt his skin tingle at the stupidity of such a question. “You know how he was constructed.”

  Saim said: “But, what’s the difference if…”

  “We started with a skeleton,” said Ren. “Dead bones. They gave us nothing but a cellular pattern. From that pattern the kabah tank got the pattern of adjoining cells. A one-cell thickness. Those new cells gave the pattern for the next layer, and so on. Jorj is like the original, but he is not the original. The concept of memory, therefore, is not consistent.”

  “But those bones had been preserved by the gas from a weapon chamber,” said Jeni. “There might even have been some flesh…” She shuddered, remembering Saim after the blast at the doorway to the cave.

  “Even that wouldn’t make any difference,” said Ren. “This wasn’t the same as growing a new arm, say, for someone injured in an accident. It wasn’t even the same as…” He glanced at Saim, back to Jeni. “With an accident victim we have the original central nervous structure all intact. Or enough of it to give us solid patterns of the original. But with bones…” He shrugged.

  All this talk of regeneration disturbed Saim, and he couldn’t understand why. He said: “But this simulacrum was one of the Elders. Isn’t it…”

  “That’s right,” said Ren. “Was. The original died of the twenty-minute virus. There’s no doubt he was a plague victim. He was one of the Elders. But the accent is on past tense of a thousand years ago. Was.”

  Saim glanced at Jeni, back to Ren. “But he speaks the old language exactly like the tapes we…”

  “Certainly he does!” Ren threw up his hands at the stupidity of these questions. “But we have no reconstructed memories! All we have is the pattern, the inclination, the avenues where familiar thoughts once were. It’s like…” He waved a hand in the air. “It’s like a water-course. Rain falls. It strikes the earth and runs into little random rivulets. These rivulets hit the paths of earlier rainfalls, and still earlier rainfalls, until all those original raindrops are channelled in old, deep water-courses. Don’t you see?”

  Saim nodded. He suddenly saw more than this. There could be dams on those water-courses. Permanent changes in the channels. Odd storage systems ready to gush out with strange twists of … He began to tremble, abruptly pulled himself out of these thoughts.

  “Habits,” said Ren. “Old thoughts that are often repeated. They do something of the same thing. If we strike the right thought patterns, they’ll slip into familiar channels for Jorj. He’ll repeat the thought or action pattern. He’ll do something that was familiar because of the old pattern.”

  “Like striking you,” said Jeni.

  “Yes!” Ren beamed at her. “They were violent people. And somewhere in this violent person we’ve regenerated, there’s a clue to the weapons in this cave system. Through those weapons we can open up all the old sciences. Think of the metals they had that we no longer have except when we melt down something of the ancients’. And the fuels!” Ren threw up his hands. He smiled at them, turned to the table, began pawing through the notes.

  “It’s like grasping hold of some terrible thing and not being able to let go,” said Saim.

  “What is?” asked Jeni.

  Saim stared at her, ignoring the question, suddenly struck with the feeling that he once had known another Jeni … different …

  “Why are you staring at me like that?” asked Jeni. The look on Saim’s face frightened her.

  “Here it is,” said Ren. He straightened with a sheaf of notes. “The abstract on my sessions with Jorj. Our opening wedge is going to come from this simulacrum. I’m thinking that…” He broke off, focusing on his companions. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s almost as though I should remember something,” said Saim.

  “Ren, I’m frightened,” said Jeni.

  Ren moved to Saim’s side, put a hand on his arm. “Do you feel ill, Saim?”

  “Ill?” Saim thought about it. “No. I feel … well, different.” He stared down at his right hand. “Didn’t I have a scar on this hand once?”

  “A scar?” Ren glanced at the hand. “Oh.” Ren’s voice took on a forced heartiness. “So that’s it. We all have these feelings at one time or another, Saim. They pass quickly.”

  “Feelings about scars?”

  “If not scars, some other kind of familiarity,” said Ren. “It’s called deja vu, this feeling. You’ll get over it.”

  “When I was testing that flying machine in the big cavern, studying the manual, and adjusting all the parts, sometimes my hands seemed to know what to do when I didn’t,” said Saim. “Is that what you mean?”

  “It may even have something to do with racial memory,” said Ren. “Just put it out of your mind.”

  “Would you like to rest or have something to eat?” asked Jeni.

  “No … I … Get on with it, Ren. Work first, rest later.”

  “As you say,” said Ren. And he thought: Trust Jeni to get him back on the track. I’ll have to take that into consideration—the power of love and affection in maintaining a sense of normalcy.

  “Well,” said Ren. He cleared his throat. “To get back to Jorj. To understand the original of this simulacrum…” He leafed through his notes. “Yes … to understand the original, we must understand the psychology of the world that bore him. There were two opposing Alliances of power in that world. They’d agreed to disarm, but for years they disarmed with one hand while arming with the other. The natural result was a sense of shame. This cavern complex is a perfect symptom of that shame. Look how they hid it. More than a hundred meters of dirt over us that has to be lifted off by explosive charges before the actual weapons tubes are exposed.”

  “Are we sure it was shame?” asked Saim.

  “Of course it was. Concealment is the companion of shame.” Ren shook his head, marvelling at the way the non-specialist could misinterpret. “And beyond this even,” he said, “beyond this cave complex and the others it hints at, think of what the opposing Alliance had. Another entire network of these weapons.”

  “We’ve discussed all this before,” said Saim. He was beginning to feel impatient.

  “But not the psychology of it,” said Ren.

  “I’d rather talk about something more to the point,” said Saim. “First, what about the targets? These weapons were aimed someplace. Those targets must have changed in a thousand years.”

  “It wouldn’t make any difference,” said Jeni. “I found something horrible in dismantling some of the little guiding instruments.”

  “Jeni!” said Saim. “You might have exploded one of those monsters!”

  “No,” she said. “I didn’t touch an actual weapon. I found a store of spare guidance systems. Some of them will follow lines of magnetic flux. Some can be set to go to a large area of heat or a small area of intense heat or a near bulk of metal. And you must keep in mind that all these systems are interlocking. T
hey’re made to go into a single package.”

  “Tell him about the other one,” said Ren.

  “It’s a tiny version of the fear sensor,” said Jeni. “When it nears a large city, it assumes command of the total guidance system. It’s attracted by massive waves of fear. The fear of a populace exposed to the weapon attracts the weapon.”

  “There has to be some way to stop that Millennial Display,” said Saim. “The wave of fear…” He walked away from them, turned. “People will see fireworks, all right. And that’s the last thing they’ll ever see.”

  “Maybe we should go to ó Katje and combine forces,” said Jeni, “Maybe she’d help us convince…”

  “ó Katje!” barked Saim. “I don’t trust her!”

  “Now, Saim,” said Ren. “She’s a renegade, a rebel just like ourselves. She’s even transmitted pictures and data about the weapon they’re studying.”

  “Saim, the size of that weapon!” said Jeni. “It’s fifty times larger than these ones we found!”

  “I don’t see how she could be a rebel,” said Saim. “You don’t understand about the Ultimate Conditioning. I do. I’ve seen my uncle come out of the kabah room after his yearly renewal. Sometimes he looks like a man near death. We have to nurse him. You don’t understand.”

  “Accidents do happen,” said Ren. He spoke quickly, impatient to get back to his notes and the work as he saw it.

  “ó Katje’s done nothing except try to force us to reveal our hiding place,” said Saim. “That alone is enough to make me distrust her.”

  A buzzer sounded on the panel behind Jeni. She whirled and knocked down a toggle switch.

  “Was that the outside warning system?” asked Saim.

  “Someone’s approaching the old cave entrance,” said Ren. He glanced at Saim. “Are you sure you used that odour suppressor?”

  “I smeared it all over,” said Saim. He lifted the hem of his robe. “You can see the stains. Besides, I came in the fault fissure, not the…”

  Another buzzer sounded overhead. Jeni slapped another switch.

  “Coming directly towards the entrance,” said Ren. “Saim, did you say anything to your uncle that…”

  “Why don’t you come right out and ask if I’ve betrayed you?” demanded Saim. He felt stirrings of unrest. Anger? Again, he tried to remember the emotions of childhood, and failed. The conditioning was absolute here.

  “What’s this?” asked Jeni. She stood up, tugged at the back of Saim’s robe, removed a small disc of metal stuck there with adhesive. She extended it on her palm. “Why would you wear this decoration on the back of your robe?”

  Saim shook his head, confused, feeling himself on the verge of a fearful revelation. “I … it isn’t…”

  “Did your uncle embrace you in greeting?” demanded Jeni. She stared at the disc on her palm.

  “Of course. Family always…”

  “That’s it!” she enclosed the disc in a fist, jumped past him, ran to the door, hurled the object into the hall. Turning, she slammed and bolted the door. “Signal generator,” she said. “Has to be.”

  “Your uncle was more clever than you thought,” said Ren. And he thought: We should never have sent Saim. Jeni or I would never have made such a mistake.

  Jeni returned to Saim, inspected his robe. “Turn around.”

  He obeyed, moving with shocked stiffness.

  “Nothing else,” she said.

  A red light flashed on the panel beside them.

  “They’re forcing the perimeter door,” said Ren.

  The idea of forcing such a door seized Saim with a sudden panic. He said: “They…”

  “It means they’re using metal detectors,” said Ren. “A signal generator would only give them the general area.”

  “How did ó Plar know Saim would try to escape?” asked Jeni. “It doesn’t…”

  “He could’ve planted the idea,” said Ren. “We’re wasting time. We’ll have to run for it.” He strode to the door, flung it open. This happened because I’m surrounded by fools! he thought.

  “But what about the simulacrum?” protested Jeni. “Can he travel?”

  Ren turned in the doorway. “In the flying machine. Do you still believe you can operate it, Saim?”

  “Well, I’ve only lifted it a little bit off the floor,” said Saim. “But … yes, I…”

  “I’m as frightened at the thought as you are,” said Ren. “But there’s no other way. Come on.” He turned, strode into the hall.

  Saim and Jeni followed.

  They could hear the hammering now, metal against metal.

  They shouldn’t try to force that door, thought Saim. That’s dangerous.

  “Hurry it up!” called Ren.

  Everything’s happening so fast, thought Saim. He felt resentment at pressures he couldn’t understand.

  Jeni took his hand, urged him faster.

  Their way led off the big hall, down a narrow passage single file. They barred doors behind them. Dim white exciter lights blinked on at their passage, surrounding them with a pale nimbus of illumination. The air grew cooler. They came out into a laboratory cut deep in the rock. A green light glowed above a cot where the simulacrum slept. He was a green shape within green within green …

  Saim turned away. This was the room where Ren kept the stolen regeneration tank. Something about the place loomed in Saim’s mind, a black image of terror.

  Why? he wondered. Why? Why?

  “I gave him a sedative,” said Ren. “We’ll have to wheel the cot.” He pointed to the far wall. “There’s a can of inflammable fluid over there, Saim. Some of the fuel from the flying machine. Get it, please.”

  “What do you want with it?”

  Saim’s question touched a core of impatience in Ren. “The regenerative tank’s in this lab. You know that!”

  “But why…”

  “We can’t let them find what we’ve done,” said Ren. “There’s too much evidence around. We have to destroy it.”

  “What about your notes in the other lab?” asked Jeni.

  “I have them in my pocket. The rest of the stuff up there won’t mean anything without the evidence in here. Now, hurry it up.”

  Yes! thought Saim. Destroy this place! He said: “Where’s this fluid you…”

  A dull roar shook the room. The ceiling trembled, showering them with dust.

  Ren said: “What was…”

  “The main door,” said Jeni. “We should’ve known. The Elders must’ve built one of their diabolical devices into the door just as they did in the…” She broke off, staring at Saim.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  They whirled. It was George, speaking in Ancienglis. He stood beside his cot, staring up at the ceiling. “Are they attacking?”

  Ren answered in the same tongue, wary that this might return the simulacrum to violence. “We have to escape, Jorj. We’ve been discovered.” Aside to Jeni and Saim, he said: “Watch him carefully. Shock awakened him from the sedative. I’m not too certain of his metabolism yet. He could do anything.”

  “There won’t be anyone alive up there at that door,” said Saim. “Whoever was…”

  “Now it’s certain we have to run,” said Ren. “The explosion will attract others, and the cave’s wide open.”

  “Where are the guards?” demanded George.

  “Dead,” said Ren. He darted across the lab, returned with a yellow can that sloshed in his hands.

  “What’re you doing?” asked George. He rubbed at his head.

  “Burning my records,” said Ren. “Please stand aside.”

  “Bad as that, eh,” said George. He still spoke in Ancienglis. “The dirty, sneaking bastards!” Abruptly, he shook his fist at the ceiling. “We’ll show you!”

  A pungent odour filled the room as Ren poured and sloshed the contents of the can around.

  “Use plenty of gas,” said George. “Don’t leave anything for ’em.”

  They retreated out of the door. Ren
threw the can into the center of the room.

  Jeni clutched Saim’s arm. “Saim, I’m frightened.”

  He patted her hand.

  “Who’s got a match?” asked George.

  Ren took a firepill from his pocket, crushed it between his fingers, tossed it into the room. He slammed the door as a blossom of orange flame jumped up from the floor.

  “To the big cavern,” said Ren.

  Saim turned, leading. Jeni stayed close to his side.

  Ren stayed beside George. “You feel all right, Jorj?” he panted. He spoke Haribic, testing.

  “Fine, fine.” George answered in Ancienglis.

  “He’s in kind of a shock,” said Ren. “We must be careful.”

  “Where’re we going?” asked George. He felt turmoil at the edges of consciousness, but the action and need for it were central, demanding all attention. They’d been expecting the attack for a long time. Having it actually occur was almost a relief. The dirty, sneaky bastards! “Where’re we going?” he repeated.

  Ren searched in his mind for the Ancienglis word. “Helicopter,” he said.

  “Hope they don’t have much air cover,” said George. “A ’copter’s a sitting duck for anything with firepower.”

  They emerged into an echoing chamber, large and cold. Dim exciter lights emitted a pale green glow around the room at their entrance. Still, the place remained a mass of phantom shadows.

  “Well, blow the charge!” shouted George. He darted to the right along the wall, pulled down a fluorescent handle.

  A crackling roar deafened them.

  “Never trust a damn’ shaped charge!” shouted George. “But they always seem to work.” He threw another handle beside the first one.

  Part of the ceiling creaked and groaned upwards, exposing a length of evening sky pale dove grey against dark green treetops. Something clanked and the ceiling stopped its movement.

  Jeni pressed her face against Saim’s chest, clung to his robe. “What’s happening?” she whispered. “The noise…”

  “Damn’ thing’s stuck!” said George. He punched a red button beside the handle. A sharp, crackling explosion shook them. The ceiling hurtled away and they heard it land in a thunderous crackle of broken trees and branches.