And here was a ruler who had seen too much in times when that carried supreme danger. Suspicion was aroused. A sharp intelligence weighed data it should never have received.
Two red-coated android law-niks, as alike in their bland-featured intensity as obedient dogs, swept through the alcove hangings, came to a stop waiting for Vicentelli’s orders. It was unnerving: even with androids, the ones-who-submitted never hesitated in looking first to a ruler for their orders.
The Tegas thought of the control capsule that had been on James Daggett’s spine. A new fear trembled through him. The host’s mouth was dry with a purely Carmichael emotion.
“This is Joseph Carmichael,” Vicentelli said, pointing. “I want him taken to IC for a complete examination and motivational profile. I’ll meet you there. Notify the appropriate cadres.”
The law-niks helped the Tegas to his new feet.
IC—Investigation Central, he thought.
“Why’re you taking me to IC?” he demanded. “I should go to a hospital for—”
“We’ve medical facilities,” Vicentelli said. He made it sound ominous.
Medical facilities for what?
“But why—”
“Be quiet and obey,” Vicentelli said. He glanced at William Bailey’s body, back to Carmichael. It was a look full of weighted suspicions, half knowledge, educated assumptions.
The Tegas glanced at William Bailey’s body, was caught by an inward-memory touch that wrenched at his new awareness. It had been a superior host, flesh deserving of love. The nostalgia passed. He looked back at Vicentelli, formed a vacant stare of confusion. It was not a completely feigned reaction. The Carmichael takeover had occurred in the presence of the suspected William Bailey—no matter that William Bailey was a corpse; that merely fed the suspicions. Vicentelli, assuming an unknown presence in William Bailey, would think it had leaped from the corpse to Carmichael.
“We’re interested in you,” Vicentelli said. “Very interested. Much more interested than we were before your recent … ahhh, seizure.” He nodded to the androids.
Seizure! the Tegas thought.
Firm, insistent hands propelled him through the alcove curtains into the hallway, down the hall, through the antiseptic white of the employees’ dressing room and out of the back door.
The day he’d left such a short time before as William Bailey appeared oddly transformed to the Carmichael eyes. There was a slight change in the height of the eyes, of course—a matter of perhaps three centimeters taller for Carmichael. He had to break his visual reactions out of perspective habits formed by more than two centuries at Bailey’s height. But the change was more than that. He felt that he was seeing the day through many eyes—many more than the host’s two.
The sensation of multi-ocular vision confused him, but he hadn’t time to examine it before the law-niks pushed him into the one-way glass cage of an aircar. The door hissed closed, thumping on its seals, and he was alone, peering out through the blue-gray filtering of the windows. He leaned back on padded plastic.
The aircar leaped upward out of the plastrete canyon, sped across the great tableland roof of the Euthanasia Center toward the distant man-made peaks of IC. The central complex of government was an area the Tegas always had avoided. He wished nothing more now than to continue avoiding it.
A feeling came over him that his universe had shattered. He was trapped here—not just trapped in the aircar flitting towards the plastrete citadel of IC, but trapped in the ecosystem of the planet. It was a sensation he’d never before experienced—not even on that aeons-distant day when he’d landed here in a conditioned host at the end of a trip which had taxed the limits of the host’s viability. It was the way of the Tegas, though, to reach out for new planets, new hosts. It had become second nature to choose the right kind of planet, the right kind of developing life forms. The right kind always developed star travel, releasing the Tegas for a new journey, new explorations, new experiences. That way, boredom never intervened. The creatures of this planet were headed towards the stellar leap, too—given time.
But the Tegas, experiencing a new fear for him, realized he might not be around to take advantage of that stellar leap. It was a realization that left him feeling exhausted, time-scalded, injured in his responses like a mistreated instrument.
Where did I go wrong? he wondered. Was it in the original choice of the planet?
His Bacit half, usually so explicit in reaction to inner searching, spread across their mutual awareness a projected sense of the fuzzy unknowns ahead.
This angered the Tegas. The future always was unknown. He began exploring his host-self, assessing what he could use in the coming showdown. It was a good host—healthy, strong, its musculature and neural system capable of excellent Tegas reinforcement and intensification. It was a host that could give good service, perhaps even longer than William Bailey. The Tegas began doing what he could in the time available, removing inhibitory blocks for quicker and smoother neural responses, setting up a heart and vascular system buffer. He took a certain pride in the work; he’d never misused a host as long as it remained viable.
The natural Tegas resilience, the thing that kept him going, kept him alive and interested—the endless curiosity—reasserted itself. Whatever was about to happen, it would be new. He seated himself firmly in the host, harnessed the Carmichael memory system to his Tegas responses, and readied himself to meet the immediate future.
A thought crept into his mind:
In the delicate immensity that was his own past there lay nonhuman experiences. How subtle was this “Total Profile of Personality”? Could it detect the nonhuman? Could it cast a template which would compare too closely with William Bailey … or any of the others they might have on their Data Center lists?
He sensed the dance of the intellects within him, pounding out their patterns on the floor of his awareness. In a way, he knew he was all the captive stalks bound up like a sheaf of grain.
The city-scape passing beneath the aircar became something sensed rather than seen. Tiny frenzies of fear began to dart about in him. What tools of psychometry would his interrogators use? How discreet? How subtle? Beneath their probes, he must be nothing other than Joe Carmichael. Yet … he was far more. He felt the current of now sweeping his existence toward peril.
Danger-danger-danger. He could see it intellectually as Tegas. He responded to it as Joe Carmichael.
Sweat drenched his body.
The aircar began to descend. He stared at the backs of the androids’ heads visible through the glass of the control cab. They were two emotionless blobs; no help there. The car left the daylight, rocked once in a recognition-field, slid down a tube filled with cold aluminium light into the yellow glowing of a gigantic plastrete parking enclosure—tawny walls and ceiling, a sense of cavernous distance humming with activity.
It made the Tegas think of a hive society he’d once experienced; not one of his better memories. He shuddered.
The aircar found its parking niche, stopped. Presently, the doors hissed open. The androids flanked the opening. One gestured for him to emerge.
The Tegas swallowed in a dry Carmichael throat, climbed out, stared around at the impersonal comings and goings of androids. Neither by eye or emotional aura could he detect a human in the region around him. Intense loneliness came over him.
Still without speaking, the androids took his arms, propelled him across an open space into the half-cup of a ring lift. The field grabbed them, shot them upward past blurred walls and flickers of openings. The lift angled abruptly, holding them softly with their faces tipped downward at something near forty-five degrees. The androids remained locked beside him like two fish swimming in the air. The lift grip returned to vertical, shot them upward into the center of an amphitheater room.
The lift hole became floor beneath his feet.
The Tegas stared up and around at a reaching space, immense blue skylight, people-people-people, tiers of them peering down at him, tiers
of them all around.
He probed for emotions, met the terrifying aura of the place, an icy neural stare, a psychic chutzpah. The watchers—rulers all, their minds disconnected from any religion except the self, no nervous coughs, no impatient stirrings.
They were an iceberg of silent waiting.
He had never imagined such a place even in a nightmare. But he knew this place, recognized it immediately. If a Tegas must end, he thought, then it must be in some such place as this. All the lost experiences that might come to an end here began wailing through him.
Someone emerged from an opening on his left, strode toward him across the floor of the amphitheater: Vicentelli.
The Tegas stared at the approaching man, noted the eyes favored by deep shadows: dense black eyes cut into a face where lay a verseless record—hard glyphs of cheeks, stone-cut mouth. Everything was labor in that face: work-work-work. It held no notion of fun. It was a contrivance for asserting violence, both spectator and participant. It rode the flesh, cherishing no soft thing at all.
A vat of liquid as blue as glowing steel arose from the floor beside the Tegas. Android hands gripped him tightly as he jerked with surprise.
Vicentelli stopped in front of him, glanced once at the surrounding banks of faces, back to his victim.
“Perhaps you’re ready to save us the trouble of an interrogation in depth,” he said.
The Tegas felt his body tremble, shook his head.
Vicentelli nodded.
With impersonal swiftness, the androids stripped the clothing from the Tegas host, lifted him into the vat. The liquid felt warm and tingling. A harness was adjusted to hold his arms and keep his face just above the surface. An inverted dome came down to rest just above his head. The day became a blue stick of light and he wondered inanely what time it was. It’d been early when he’d entered the Euthanasia Center, now, it was very late. Yet, he knew the day had hardly advanced past mid-morning.
Again, he probed the emotional aura, recoiled from it.
What if they kill me coldly? he wondered.
Where he could single out individuals, he was reminded of the play of lightning on a far horizon. The emotional beacons were thin, yet filled with potency.
A room full of rulers. The Tegas could imagine no more hideous place.
Something moved across his stick of light: Vicentelli.
“Who are you?” Vicentelli asked.
I’m Joe Carmichael, he thought. I must be only Joe Carmichael.
But Carmichael’s emotions threatened to overwhelm him. Outrage and submissive terror flickered through the neural exchanges. The host body twitched. Its legs made faint running motions.
Vicentelli turned away, spoke to the surrounding watchers:
“The problem with Joseph Carmichael is this violent incident which you’re now seeing on your recorders. Let me impress upon you that this incident was not predicted. It was outside our scope. We must assume, therefore, that it was not a product of Joseph Carmichael. During this examination, each of you will study the exposed profile. I want each of you to record your reactions and suggestions. Somewhere here there will be a clue to the unknowns we observed in William Bailey and before that in Almiro Hsing. Be alert, observant.”
God of Eternity! the Tegas thought. They’ve traced me from Hsing to Bailey!
This change in human society went back farther than he’d suspected. How far back?
“You will note, please,” Vicentelli said, “that Bailey was in the immediate vicinity when Hsing fell from the Peace Tower at Canton and died. Pay particular attention to the material which points to a previous association between Hsing and Bailey. There is a possibility Bailey was at that particular place on Hsing’s invitation. This could be important.”
The Tegas tried to withdraw his being, to encyst his emotions. The ruling humans had gone down a developmental side path he’d never expected. They had left him somewhere.
He knew why: Tegas-like, he had immersed himself in the concealing presence of the mob, retreated into daily drudgery, lived like the living. Yet, he had never loved the flesh more than in this moment when he knew he could lose it forever. He loved the flesh the way a man might love a house. This intricate structure was a house that breathed and felt.
Abruptly, he underwent a sense of union with the flesh more intimate than anything of his previous experience. He knew for certain in this instant how a man would feel here. Time had never been an enemy of the Tegas. But Time was man’s enemy. He was a man now and he prepared his flesh for maximum reactions, for high-energy discharge.
Control: That was what this society was up to—super control.
Vicentelli’s face returned to the stick of light.
“For the sake of convenience,” he said, “I’ll continue to call you Carmichael.”
The statement told him baldly that he was in a corner and Vicentelli knew it. If the Tegas had any doubts, Vicentelli now removed them.
“Don’t try to kill yourself,” Vicentelli said. “The mechanism in which you now find yourself can sustain your life even when you least wish that life to continue.”
Abruptly, the Tegas realized his Carmichael self should be panic-stricken. There could be no Tegas watchfulness or remoteness here.
He was panic-stricken.
The host body thrashed in the liquid, surged against the bonds. The liquid was heavy—oily, but not oily. It held him as an elastic suit might, dampening his movements, always returning him to the quiescent, fishlike floating.
“Now,” Vicentelli said.
There was a loud click.
Light dazzled the Carmichael eyes. Color rhythms appeared within the light. The rhythms held an epileptic beat. They jangled his mind, shook the Tegas awareness like something loosed in a violent cage.
Out of the voice which his universe had become there appeared questions. He knew they were spoken questions, but he saw them: word shapes tumbling in a torrent.
“Who are you?”
“What are you?”
“We see you for what you are. Why don’t you admit what you are? We know you.”
The aura of the surrounding watchers drummed at him with accusing vibrations: “We know you—know you—know you—know you…”
The Tegas felt the words rocking him, subduing him.
No Tegas can by hypnotized, he told himself. But he could feel his being coming out in shreds. Something was separating. Carmichael! The Tegas was losing his grip on the host! But the flesh was being reduced to a mesmerized idiot. The sense of separation intensified.
Abruptly, there was an inner sensation of stirring, awakening. He felt the host ego awakening, was powerless to counter it.
Thoughts crept along the dancing, shimmering neural paths—
“Who … what are … where do…”
The Tegas punched frantically at the questings: “I’m Joe Carmichael … I’m Joe Carmichael … I’m Joe Carmichael…”
He found vocal control, mouthed the words in dumb rhythm, making this the one answer to all questions. Slowly, the host fell silent, smothered in a Tegas envelope.
The blundering, bludgeoning interrogation continued.
Shake-rattle-question.
He felt himself losing all sense of distinction between Tegas and Carmichael. The Bacit half, whipped and terrorized by the unexpected sophistication of this attack, strewed itself in tangles through the identity net.
Voices of old hosts came alive in his mind: “… you can’t … mustn’t … I’m Joe Carmichael … stop them … why can’t we…”
“You’re murdering me!” he screamed.
The ranked watchers in the ampitheater united in an aura of pouncing glee.
“They’re monsters!” Carmichael thought.
It was a pure Carmichael thought, unmodified by Tegas awareness, an unfettered human expression surging upwards from within.
“You hear me, Tegas?” Carmichael demanded. “They’re monsters!”
The Tegas crouched in the f
lesh not knowing how to counter this. Never before had he experienced direct communication from a host after that final entrapment. He tried to locate the source of communication, failed.
“Look at ’em staring down at us like a pack of ghouls!” Carmichael thought.
The Tegas knew he should react, but before he could bring himself to it, the interrogation assumed a new intensity: shake-rattle-question.
“Where do you come from? Where do you come from? Where do you come from?”
The question tore at him with letters tall as giant buildings—faceless eyes, thundering voices, shimmering words.
Carmichael anger surged across the Tegas.
Still, the watchers radiated their chill amusement.
“Let’s die and take one of ’em!” Carmichael insisted.
“Who speaks?” the Bacit demanded. “How did you get away? Where are you?”
“God! How cold they are.” That had been a Bailey thought.
“Where do you come from?” the Bacit demanded, seeking the host awareness. “You are here, but we cannot find you.”
“I come from Zimbue,” Carmichael projected.
“You cannot come from Zimbue,” the Tegas countered. “I come from Zimbue.”
“But Zimbue is nowhere,” the Bacit insisted.
And all the while—shake-rattle-question—Vicentelli’s interrogation continued to jam circuits.
The Tegas felt he was being bombarded from all sides and from within. How could Carmichael talk of Zimbue?
“Then whence comest thou?” Carmichael asked.
How could Carmichael know of this matter? the Tegas asked himself. Whence had all Tegas come? The answer was a rote memory at the bottom of all his experiences: At the instant time began, the Tegas intruded upon the blackness where no star—not even a primal dust fleck—had tracked the dimensions with its being. They had been where senses had not been. How could Carmichael’s ego still exist and know to ask of such things?
“And why shouldn’t I ask?” Carmichael insisted. “It’s what Vicentelli asks.”
The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert Page 79
