Frank Herbert

by Frank Herbert

  Tiborough leaned back in his chair, his hands in his lap. His face was pale, and beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead.

  “We won’t make it,” he muttered.

  “I hope you’re wrong, Senator,” Custer said. “But the only thing I know for sure is that we’d have had less chance of making it tomorrow than we have today.”

  The Daddy Box

  [This story recently appeared in The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert, Tor Books, 2014.]

  To understand what happened to Henry Alexander when his son, Billy, came home with the ferosslk, you’re going to be asked to make several mind-stretching mental adjustments. These mental gymnastics are certain to leave your mind permanently changed.

  You’ve been warned.

  In the first place, just to get a loose idea of a ferosslk’s original purpose, you must think of it as a toy designed primarily for educating the young. But your concept of toy should be modified to think of a device which, under special circumstances, will play with its owner.

  You’ll also have to modify your concept of education to include the idea of occasionally altering the universe to fit a new interesting idea; that is, fitting the universe to the concept, rather than fitting the concept to the universe.

  The ferosslk originates with seventh-order multidimensional beings. You can think of them as Sevens. Their other labels would be more or less incomprehensible. The Sevens are not now aware and never have been aware that the universe contains any such thing as a Henry Alexander or his human male offspring.

  This oversight was rather unfortunate for Henry. His mind had never been stretched to contain the concept of a ferosslk. He could conceive of fission bombs, nerve gas, napalm, and germ warfare. But these things might be thought of as silly putty when compared with a ferosslk.

  Which is a rather neat analogy because the shape of a ferosslk is profoundly dependent upon external pressures. That is to say, although a ferosslk can be conceived of as an artifact, it is safer to think of it as alive.

  To begin at one of the beginnings, Billy Alexander, age eight, human male, found the ferosslk in tall weeds beside a path across an empty lot adjoining his urban home.

  Saying he “found” it described the circumstances from Billy’s superficial point of view. It would be just as accurate to say the ferosslk found Billy.

  As far as Billy was concerned, the ferosslk was a box. You may as well think of it that way, too. No sense stretching your mind completely out of shape. You wouldn’t be able to read the rest of this account.

  A box, then. It appeared to be about nine inches long, three inches wide, and four inches deep. It looked like dark green stone except for what was obviously the top, because that’s where the writing appeared.

  You can call it writing because Billy was just beginning to shift from print to cursive and that’s the way he saw it.

  Words flowed across the box top: “This is a daddy box.”

  Billy picked it up. The surface was cold under his hands. He thought perhaps this was some kind of toy television, its words projected from inside.

  (Some of the words actually were coming out of Billy’s own mind.)

  Daddy box? he wondered.

  Daddy was a symbol-identifier more than five years old for him. His daddy had been killed in a war. Now Billy had a stepfather with the same name as his real father’s. The two had been cousins.

  New information flowed across the top: “This box may be opened only by the young.”

  (That was a game the ferosslk had played and enjoyed many times before. Don’t try to imagine how a ferosslk enjoys. The attempt could injure your frontal lobes.)

  Now the box top provided Billy with precise instructions on how it could be opened.

  Billy went through the indicated steps, which included urinating on an anthill, and the box dutifully opened.

  For almost an hour, Billy sat in the empty lot, enraptured by the educational/creative tableau thus unveiled. For his edification, human shapes in the box fought wars, manufactured artifacts, made love, wrote books, created paintings and sculpture … and changed the universe. The human shapes debated, formed governments, nurtured the earth, and destroyed it.

  In that relative time of little less than an hour, Billy aged mentally some five hundred and sixteen human years. On the outside, Billy remained a male child about forty-nine inches tall, weight approximately fifty-six pounds, skin white but grimy from play, hair blond and mussed.

  His eyes were still blue, but they had acquired a hard and penetrating stare. The motor cells in his medulla and his spinal cord had begun increasing dramatically in number with an increased myelinization of the anterior roots and peripheral nerves.

  Every normal sense he possessed had been increased in potency, and he was embarked on a growth pattern that would further heighten this effect.

  The whole thing made him sad, but he knew what he had to do, having come very close to understanding what a ferosslk was all about.

  It was now about 6:18 PM on a Friday evening. Billy took the box in both hands and trudged across the lot toward his back door.

  His mother, whose left arm still bore bruises from a blow struck by her husband, was peeling potatoes at the kitchen sink. She was a small blonde woman, once doll-like, fast turning to mouse.

  At Billy’s entrance, she shook tears out of her eyes, smiled at him, glanced toward the living room, and shook her head—all in one continuous movement. She appeared not to notice the box in Billy’s hands, but she did note the boy appeared very much like his real father tonight.

  This thought brought more tears to her eyes, and she turned away, thus failing to see Billy go on into the living room despite her silent warning that his stepfather was there and in a bad mood.

  The ferosslk, having shared Billy’s emotional reaction to this moment, created a new order of expletives, which it introduced into another dimension.

  Henry Alexander sensed Billy’s presence in the room, lowered the evening newspaper, and stared over it into the boy’s newly aged eyes. Henry was a pale-skinned, flabby man, going to fat after a youth spent as a semiprofessional athlete. He interpreted the look in Billy’s eyes as a reflection of their mutual hate.

  “What’s that box?” Henry demanded.

  Billy shrugged. “It’s a daddy box.”

  “A what?”

  Billy remained silent, placed the box to his ear. The ferosslk had converted to faint audio mode, and the voices coming from the box for Billy’s ears alone carried a certain suggestive educational quality.

  “Why’re you holding the damn thing against your ear?” Henry demanded. He had already decided to take the box away from the boy but was drawing the pleasure-moment out.

  “I’m listening,” Billy said. He sensed the precise pacing of these moments, observed minute nuances in the set of his stepfather’s jaw, the content of the man’s perspiration.

  “Is it a music box?”

  Henry studied the thing in Billy’s hand. It looked old … ancient, even. He couldn’t quite say why he felt this.

  Again, Billy shrugged.

  “Where’d you get it?” Henry asked.

  “I found it.”

  “Where could you find a thing like that? It looks like a real antique. Might even be jade.”

  “I found it in the lot.” Billy hesitated on the point of adding a precise location to where he’d found the box but held back. That would be out of character.

  “Are you sure you didn’t steal it?”

  “I found it.”

  “Don’t you sass me!” Henry threw his newspaper to the floor.

  Having heard the loud voices, Billy’s mother hurried into the living room, hovered behind her son.

  “What’s … what’s the matter?” she ventured.

  “You stay out of this, Helen!” Henry barked. “That brat of yours has stolen a valuable antique, and he—”

  “China? He wouldn’t!”

  “I told you to stay out of
this!” Henry glared at her. The box had assumed for him now exactly the quality he had just given it: valuable antique. Theft was as good as certain—although that might complicate his present plans for confiscation and profit.

  Billy suppressed a smile. His mother’s interruption, which he assumed to be fortuitous since he did not completely understand the functioning of a ferosslk, had provided just the delay required here. The situation had entered the timing system for which he had maneuvered.

  “Bring that box here,” Henry ordered.

  “It’s mine,” Billy said. As he said it, he experienced a flash of insight that told him he belonged as much to the box as it belonged to him.

  “Look here, you disrespectful brat—if you don’t give me that box immediately, we’re going to have another session in the woodshed!”

  Billy’s mother touched his arm, said, “Son … you’d better …”

  “Okay,” Billy said. “But it’s just a trick box—like those Chinese things.”

  “I said bring it here, dammit!”

  Clutching the box to his chest now, Billy crossed the room, timing his movements with careful precision. Just a few more seconds … now!

  He extended the box to his stepfather.

  Henry snatched the ferosslk, was surprised at how cold it felt. Obviously stone. Cold stone. He turned the thing over and over in his hands. There were strange markings on the top—wedges, curves, twisting designs. He put it to his ear, listened.

  Silence.

  Billy smiled.

  Henry jerked the box away from his ear. Trick, eh? The kid was playing a trick on him, trying to make him look like a fool.

  “So it’s a box,” Henry said. “Have you opened it?”

  “Yes. It’s got lots of things inside.”

  “Things? What things?”

  “Just things.”

  Henry had an immediate vision of valuable jewels. This thing could be a jewel box.

  “How does it open?” he demanded.

  “You just do things,” Billy said.

  “Don’t you play smart with me! I gave you an order: tell me how you open this thing.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You mean you won’t!”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why?” It was as much an accusation as a question.

  Again, Billy shrugged. “The box … well, it can only be opened by kids.”

  “Oh, for Chrissakes!” Henry examined the ends of the box. Damn kid was lying about having opened it. Henry shook the box. It rattled suggestively, one of the ferosslk’s better effects.

  Helen said, “Perhaps if you let Billy …”

  Henry looked up long enough to stare her down, then asked, “Is dinner ready?”

  “Henry, he’s just a child!”

  “Woman, I’ve worked all day to support you and your brat. Is this the appreciation I get?”

  She backed toward the kitchen door, hesitated there.

  Henry returned his attention to the box. He pushed at the end panels. Nothing happened. He tried various pressures on the top, the sides, and the bottom.

  “So you opened it, eh?” Henry asked, staring across the box at Billy.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I opened it.”

  Having achieved the effect he wanted, Henry thrust the box toward Billy. “Then open it.”

  Having achieved one of the moments he wanted, and right on time, Billy went for the effect. He turned the box over, slid an end panel aside, whipped the top open and closed it, then restored the end panel and presented the closed box to Henry.

  “See? It’s easy.”

  The ferosslk, having achieved an education node, convinced Henry that he’d seen gold and jewels during the brief moment when the box had been opened.

  Henry grabbed the box, wet his lips with his tongue. He pushed at the end panel. It refused to move.

  “Grown-ups can’t open it,” Billy said. “It says so right on the top.”

  Henry brought a claspknife from his hip pocket, opened it, and tried to find an opening around the top of the box.

  Billy stared at him.

  Billy’s mother still hovered fearfully in the kitchen doorway.

  Henry had the sudden realization that they both hoped he’d cut himself. He closed the knife, returned it to his pocket, and extended the box toward Billy. “Open it for me.”

  “I can’t.”

  Ominously, Henry asked, “And … why … not?”

  “I can’t let go of it when it’s open.”

  The ferosslk inserted a sense of doubt into the situation here without Billy suspecting. Henry nodded. That just might be true. The box might have a spring lock that closed when you let go of it.

  “Then open it and let me look inside while you hold it,” Henry said.

  “I can’t now without doing all the other things.”

  “What?”

  “I can open it twice without the other things, but …”

  “What other things?”

  “Oh … like finding a grass seed and breaking a twig … and I’d have to find another anthill. The one I—”

  “Of all the damn fool nonsense!” Henry thrust the box towards Billy. “Open this!”

  “I can’t!”

  Billy’s mother said, “Henry, why don’t you—”

  “Helen, you get the hell out of here and let me handle this!”

  She backed farther into the kitchen.

  Henry said, “Billy, either you open this box for me, or I’ll open it the hard way with an axe.”

  Billy shook his head from side to side, dragging out the moment for its proper curve.

  “Very well.” Henry heaved himself from the chair, the box clutched in his right hand, angry elation filling him. They’d done it again—goaded him beyond endurance.

  He brushed past Billy, who turned and followed him. He thrust Helen aside when she put out a pleading hand. He strode out the back door, slamming it behind him, then heard it open, the patter of Billy’s footsteps following.

  Let the brat make one protest! Just one!

  Henry set his jaw, headed across the backyard toward the woodshed—that anachronism that set the tone and marked the age of this house—“modest older home in quiet residential area.”

  Now Billy called from behind him, “What’re you going to do?”

  Henry stifled an angry retort, caught by an odd note in Billy’s voice … an imperative.

  “Daddy?” Billy called.

  Henry stopped at the woodshed door, glanced back. Billy never called him daddy. The boy stood in the path from the house; his mother waited on the back porch.

  Now, why was I angry with them? Henry wondered.

  He felt the box in his hand, looked at it. Jewels? In this dirty green little piece of stoneware? He was filled with the sense of his own foolishness, an effect achieved by a sophisticated refinement of ferosslk educational processing. Given a possible lesson to impart, the instructor could not resist the opportunity.

  Once more, Henry looked at the two who watched him.

  They’d done this deliberately to make him appear foolish! Damn them!

  “Daddy, don’t break the box,” Billy said.

  It was a nicely timed protest, and it demonstrated how well he had learned from the ferosslk.

  His anger restored, Henry whirled away, slammed the box onto the woodshed’s chopping block, and grabbed up the axe.

  Don’t break the box!

  “Wait!” Billy called.

  Henry barely hesitated, a lapse which put him in the precise phasing Billy wanted.

  Taking careful aim, Henry brought the axe hissing down. He still felt foolish because it’s difficult to shake off a ferosslk lesson, but anger carried him through.

  At the instant of contact between blade and box, an electric glimmer leaped into existence around the axe head.

  To Billy, watching from the yard, the blade appeared to slice into the box, shrinking,
shining, drawing inward at an impossible angle. There came an abrupt, juicy vacuum-popping noise—a cow pulling its foot out of the mud. The axe handle whipped into the box after the blade, vanished with a diminishing glimmer.

  Still clutching the axe handle, Henry Alexander was jerked into the box—down, down … shrinking …

  Whoosh!

  The pearl glimmering winked out. The box remained on the chopping block where Henry had placed it.

  Billy darted into the woodshed, grabbed up the box, and pressed it to his left ear. From far away came a leaf-whispering babble of many angry and pleading voices. He could distinguish some of the names being called by those voices—

  “Abdul!”

  “Terrik!”

  “Churudish!”

  “Pablo!”

  “James!”

  “Sremani!”

  “Harold!”

  And, on a low and diminishing wail, “Bill-eeeeeeeeeee …”

  Having taught part of a lesson, the ferosslk recognized that the toy-plus-play element remained incomplete. By attaching a label at the proper moment, Billy had achieved a daddy-linkage, but no daddy existed now for all practical purposes. There were voices, of course, and certain essences—an available gene pattern from which to reconstruct the original. Something with the proper daddyness loomed as a distinct possibility, and the ferosslk observed an attractive learning pattern in the idea.

  A golden glow began to emerge from one end of the box. Billy dropped it and backed away as the glow grew and grew and grew. Abruptly, the glow coalesced, and Henry Alexander emerged.

  Billy felt a hand clutch his shoulder, looked up at his mother. The box lay on the ground near the chopping block. She looked from it to the figure that had emerged from it.

  “Billy,” she demanded, “what … what happened?”

  Henry stooped, recovered the box.

  “Henry,” she said, “you hit that box with the axe, but it’s not broken.”

  “Huh?” Henry Alexander stared at her. “What’re you talking about? I brought the damn thing out here to make sure it was safe for Billy to play with.”

  He thrust the box at Billy, who took it and almost dropped it. “Here—take it, son.”