“Well, Nikki?” Root studied him, questioning.
“Why did you start flying hydrogen?”
“Because the bloom flies hydrogen.”
“What happened when you flew helium?”
“They’d get within about twenty meters of a floater and they’d scream … you had the impression of extreme pain, then they’d expel all their hydrogen and they’d die.”
“Scream, you say. The way they did today?”
“Similar.”
“How were the other crews killed?”
“Some crashes, some trying to recover gasbag skins before they disintegrated.”
“You put people out there in the open?”
“Volunteers.”
“Did you get any skins?”
“No.”
“What about choppers?”
“The bags won’t come anywhere near them.”
“Why can’t chopper crews recover skins?”
“Choppers just scatter the skins and the increased air movement melts them that much faster.”
“Or the demons got to them first,” Tam said.
Nikki looked at her. “Have you been on the surface?”
“Twice. Root’s been down four times.”
“What’s it like?”
“Not pretty.”
“Why’d you want the skins?”
“We need any clue we can get,” she said.
“How about the older bags? Have you been able to get close to them?”
“They move off when we get close and somehow they signal others to run away. When we chase, they’ll use up all of their hydrogen trying to escape. Then they just drop and disintegrate.”
“Why didn’t Ship give me this information?” Nikki asked.
“Ask Ship!” Root said.
There was no mistaking the venom in his voice.
“The old ones warn the young ones of our approach,” Tam said. “We’ve watched it many times.”
“But they ignore you when you fly hydrogen?”
“From a distance. The significant thing is that they don’t attack.”
“How do they attack?”
“Kamikaze—one or more old ones from above. Static spark and they explode themselves against the floater bag.”
Root pushed a palm downward sharply: Crash!
“What happens to gasglobe skins when they fall on water?”
“They melt rather quickly into a sludge which disappears with the first rain,” Tam said.
“But on land demons eat the skins?”
“Ravenously,” Tam said. “Then an odd thing happens.”
“Didn’t we come here to find out why Nikki went into panic?” Root asked. It was obvious he wanted to divert Tam from this course.
Nikki was not being diverted. “What’s the odd thing?”
She saw Root’s displeasure and spoke hesitantly.
“After eating a skin, the creature becomes quite unpredictable. It may lose its fear of higher predators, run in aimless circles, ignore obvious prey.”
“We suspect that the skins are hallucinatory,” Root said.
“Epiphany,” Nikki said. “The visitation of God.”
Root shrugged.
“And the older bags prefer to drift over water except that they’ll come inland to attack the colony,” Nikki mused.
“Or to lift animals from the surface and drop them,” Tam said.
Nikki was surprised. “Don’t they eat animals?”
“Not that we can see.”
“We’ve never seen them eat anything,” Root said.
“Well, Nikki, what happened to you out there over the bloom?” It was Tam, the DataMaster, performing on cue. She had heard Root’s displeasure.
“I’m not sure. I think the bloom’s panic was contagious and I caught it.”
“How do we know the bloom didn’t catch your panic?” Root demanded.
“I’ve told you what I believe. I wouldn’t have said it if it were untrue.”
As he spoke, Nikki experienced the swift inner expansion which always accompanied his own poetic revelation. He stared at Tam without seeing her. They’d been playing the question game here! He sensed a subtle perversion in the way they’d played the game, but the form was there, the essential form. It lacked only the right language.
What did he know about the bloom?
Skins dissolved … sludge in the water disappeared. The deadly demons of the land ate skins and … what? Hallucination? Epiphany? Colors! Globes changed colors as they whistled and babbled. Even in panic they changed colors.
He really saw Tam now: the white hair, the translucent skin—to change colors and become a Medean.
“You’ve been lying to me, both of you,” Nikki said.
A swift blush suffused Tam’s face.
Root saw this betrayal and scowled. “Is that why you’re not telling us what really happened to you out there?”
I deserve that, Nikki thought. He wondered why he felt reluctant to tell them about that externalized scene he’d experienced during the panic. He consulted the image once more. There was a message in it, something basic. The floater was … it had to be … respected, that was it. Respected. It could not be attacked. But … it was deadly … dangerous. You were compelled to flee such a … thing.
Compelled!
“All you did with the hydrogen was to stop the attacks,” Nikki said. “You didn’t stop the panic.”
“They don’t come close any more,” Tam said. “The panic starts farther and farther…”
“Tam!” Root was openly angry.
“We have to tell him,” she said. “It’s not right.”
“He’s still hiding something,” Root growled.
“I don’t care. We have to be straight with him.”
“Tam, you agreed…”
“But we no longer have a reason for that agreement!”
“I hope you’re satisfied! You’ve blunted the one instrument we could…” Root threw up both hands in exasperation.
Nikki stared from one to the other. Root remained mostly a closed and concealing person, but every tone, every movement from Tam carried its revealing message.
“Did you feel the panic?” Nikki asked her.
“The first two trips when they came closer, but not these last times. Root…”
“I’ve never felt a thing,” Root said.
It was the most revealing statement Root had made in Nikki’s presence. The man has absolutely no emotions and no sensitivity. He mimics emotion, presents an image of the emotion he believes is responsive.
Was Root even angry or was it all a calculated performance?
“Why did you ask if I felt the panic?” Tam asked.
“What’s a poet supposed to do? You brought me here because I’m supposed to be more sensitive. You hoped I could see through to the reason for the panic.”
“And did you?” Root demanded.
“Change the floater’s color,” Nikki said. “Eliminate the orange.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s how they identify us as dangerous.”
“I won’t ask how you arrived at that,” Root said. “I don’t believe I have time to examine the form of every question.” His words conveyed a calculated sneer, but Nikki ignored it. That was part of Root’s game. It was the way he played.
First, you have to learn Root’s language, Nikki thought. And once more he wondered where he’d heard the man’s voice before. It was such an elusive thing. Why can’t I remember?
“We’re scheduled to fly at dawn,” Tam said. She looked at Root. “Do you mean you’re going to change the floater’s color?”
“Of course! Nikki’s right. That’s why we brought him.”
She glanced at a chronometer on the console at her elbow. “But dawn…”
“The ground crew will work all night,” Root said. “Help Nikki back to his quarters. He’s had a rough day.”
There was no feeling of concern in Root’s word
s, only a dismissal. Nikki has served his purpose and now he’s a nusiance.
Tam felt this, too. The first thing she said after they entered Nikki’s quarters was: “Don’t be offended by Tom. The only thing that matters to him is the project.”
He’s Tom again, Nikki thought. But never to his face.
He sat on the bed, leaned back and closed his eyes. How good the bed felt. A sharp click caught his attention and he opened his eyes to see Tam pulling a cushioned foldout chair from its concealing panel in the wall. She sat down facing him, their knees almost touching.
“Dawn’s not very far away,” he said.
She shook her head as though his words were insects distracting her.
“Let me see your hands.”
He held out his hands and she examined the skin through the celltape. “The healing’s far enough along. This tape should come off.”
He nodded.
Gently, she removed the tape. How soft her movements were, how careful and considerate. He watched the intensity of her attention.
“Your mother,” she said, speaking without looking up from her work. “I pulled her records while you were unconscious.”
Why do I feel a chill? he wondered.
She glanced at him, returned her attention to the tape. A faint smell of healing unguents came from his hands.
“Why was your mother your teacher when you were very young?”
“She asked Ship and Ship consented.”
“What did she teach you?”
“Many things … how to clear my mind. The mind doesn’t work well when it’s cluttered up and churning. It jams … it’s devoured by questions and distractions.”
She put the last of the celltape in a disposal chute, but continued to hold his hands.
“How do you clear your mind?”
“I throw things out of it one by one, then concentrate on the last thing, then throw that out, too, and focus on the no-thing that’s left. Then I don’t think things out, I just know them.”
“You mean to say that after all your questions and the emphasis on our data, our information, after all that, what you really operate on is intuition?”
He smiled at her obvious surprise. How warm her hands were, how true and loving.
“Not exactly. I just give the unconscious part of me a role in most decisions. Facts, records, books—they’re all obvious learning.”
“But there’s a lot of subtler data coming in.”
“We’re bombarded with it all the time and we ignore it for the most part, filter it out.”
“As Tom says: the sentient being chooses what it will see.”
“Root said that, not Tom,” Nikki said.
“What?” She dropped his hands as though he’d hurt her.
“He said it on the floater. That’s when he’s Root. You never call him Tom there.”
She put a hand to her cheek. The skin remained pale and clear, the blood undertone unchanged.
“I do, don’t I. I wonder why I do that?”
“Because you keep him in two compartments—conscious and unconscious.”
She stared into his eyes. “You do that so easily. That’s what your mother taught you, isn’t it?”
“Ship and my mother.”
“Can anybody do it?”
“Most can. Very few ever do.”
“Will you teach me?”
“It can’t be taught, only learned.”
“But your mother…”
“She talked of it often and her stories were wonderful. She gave me thinking exercises to entertain myself and these were similar to the game I played with Ship.”
“You asked questions and she answered.”
“Usually she gave me the question. If I brought a question she might not answer. When she answered, it could be yes or no or silence.”
She stared at him.
“Silence was an answer?”
“Sometimes. Other times she might answer with a question. If she made a statement that, too, could be no answer.”
She leaned back in the chair to absorb this, her head against the cushioning, eyes closed, relaxed.
Nikki didn’t move or change his breathing rhythm.
Tam found herself listening to the slow and regular sigh of Nikki’s breath. She relaxed her muscles one by one, felt the tension wash out of her stomach and neck and legs. Her breathing fitted itself to Nikki’s rhythm and she felt everything go: her body, then her memories one by one, then her thought of self stood apart and drifted down a long corridor to a warm glow with a red wash at the end that was the color of Argo low on the horizon.
“I see,” she whispered and all thought of self disappeared.
“Tam. Tam?”
She awoke to his voice gentle but insistent, the light pressure of his hand on her shoulder.
“I didn’t want to wake you but if we’re getting out to the bloom at dawn…”
She stretched and noticed that he was admiring her as a woman for the first time. He found her beautiful. She prolonged her stretching.
He saw this and grinned. “Yes, you’re beautiful.”
Immediately, she sat up straight, reached for the callbox at the head of his bed and punched in the hangar code. It rang several times before an impatient female voice answered.
“Yes!”
“Is Root there? This is Tam Kupule.”
“We’re pretty busy here.”
“Put him on. It’s important.”
“I’ll see if he’ll come.”
There was a long wait then Root’s cold voice. “What is it, Tam?”
“Have you chosen a color yet?”
“We’re about to make it purple.”
“Add some red to that. Make it Argo red.”
“Why? To appeal to the gasbags’ esthetic sensibilities?”
“Argo red,” she insisted. “And we come in from the Argo side.”
“Where are you?”
“What difference does that make?”
Root’s laughter was not companionable. “Tell Nikki I agree. Argo red it is.”
She slapped the disconnect switch, blushing.
“He’s slipping,” Nikki said. “He didn’t ask you if we’re running a research team or a school of design?”
“He thinks the color is your idea.”
“Does that bother you? I’ll call him back and…”
“No!” She put a hand on his knee, jerked it back as though his knee had burned her. “Let it be.”
“That’s it,” Nikki said. “You have to let it be, then you can tell what it is, what it’s doing.” He leaned forward, cupped her face in his hands and kissed her.
When he released her, she said: “We mustn’t…”
“Why, because you’re older?”
“Of course not. Sometimes you’re older than Root.”
“Nobody’s older than Root.”
The words had come from him spontaneously and their sense of truth shocked him. Nobody’s older than Root. Who was this man with the familiar voice?
“It’s not that there’s anybody else,” Tam said. “I have no companion. For a time I hoped that Root…” She broke off. “I mean Tom, of course, but Tom doesn’t exist except in those hopes which I … I rejected.”
He nodded.
“How is it you make people be this truthful?” she asked.
Nikki shrugged. If there was an answer she already had it.
Silence as an answer, she thought.
She wanted to get up but knew that anything she did would only increase the sexual tension between them.
A knock on the hatch startled both of them.
Nikki called out much too loudly: “Open.”
It was a young male ground crewman, dark-haired, grinning. He tossed in an open shipcloth bag crammed with tapes and Nikki noted a splash of Argo red on the man’s left sleeve.
“Root sent those. Bloom recordings. He said try to find some interesting rhythms in them.”
The hatch was
closed before either could respond.
Tam stood up abruptly.
“I will not have him laughing at me … at us!”
“How do you know that your present response isn’t exactly what he wants?”
She sat down as though his words had released latches in her knees. “This is insane.”
“Our worrying about what Root wants?”
“That, too. No!” She spoke quickly as he started to reach for her. “I’m going to leave in just a moment. I’ll do that in spite of the fact that I want to stay.”
“Is that the insanity?”
“I don’t think so and neither do you. No … what we need is the right time…”
“And the right place.”
“When a thing’s right…” She hesitated, then said, “I see. That’s why you didn’t even question it when I told Root what color to use on the floater.”
“When a thing’s right,” Nikki said.
Once more, Tam stood. “I would like to’ve known your mother.”
* * *
Nikki arrived on the hangar floor almost an hour early. Root already was there with a scattered remnant of the ground crew finishing up on the floater. The bag glistened in the upper reaches of the hangar, a dark red ball with flecks of purple in it. The ground crewmen were a ludicrous sight, stained varying shades of Argo red.
The bag of bloom recordings slung over one shoulder, Nikki finished fastening his slicker as he hurried up to Root near the nest’s entrance hatch.
“Well, poet, will it work?”
Root gave the appearance of being in exceptionally good humor. It was well done, but Nikki suspected it.
“Perhaps it’ll work for the wrong reasons—the way I worked for you.”
“Have you worked for me?”
Nikki glanced up at the glistening red bag, shrugged.
“Why did we bring you into the project?” Root asked.
Nikki slipped the bag of recordings to the floor. “Perhaps because you knew I’d listened to every globe tape in Ship’s records.”
“Ahhhh. And what can you teach us from those peculiar noises?”
“To move with caution. If the globes are sentient, any deaths we’ve caused could be seen as murders rather than errors of judgment or ignorance.”
“You expect the gasbags to mount a massive retaliatory attack?”
“Humankind doesn’t have a monopoly on preservation of its species or desires for revenge. The globes already have demonstrated kamikaze behavior.”
The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert Page 93
