The Jesus Incident

by Frank Herbert

  Waela continued to stare at her. “Well, Hali?”

  “Perhaps your child is not confined to this time.” She shrugged. “I can’t explain, but that’s what occurs to me.”

  Apparently, this satisfied Waela. She glanced at Andrit, who was holding his head and remaining quiet. She turned back to Ferry.

  “What is it about my baby? What’re you afraid of?”

  “Murdoch?” It was a desperate plea from Ferry. Murdoch crossed his arms and said, “We got the reports from Ferry and . . .”

  “What reports?”

  Murdoch swallowed, nodded at the holoprojection with its spiral of red dots.

  “What were you supposed to do to me?” Waela asked.

  “Nothing. I swear it. Nothing.”

  He’s terrified, Hali thought. Has he seen this feral threatened-mother phenomenon before?

  “Questions?” Waela asked.

  “Oh, yes, of course—questions.”

  “Ask them.”

  “Well, I was . . . I mean, I discussed this with the Natali and, we, that is, Oakes, wanted me to ask if you would return groundside to have your baby?”

  “Violate our rules of WorShip?” Waela looked at Usija.

  “You do not have to go groundside,” Usija said. “We merely agreed that he could ask.”

  Waela returned her attention to Murdoch. “Why groundside? What did you hope to do there?”

  “We have stockpiled a large supply of burst,” Murdoch said. “It’s my belief you will need every ounce of it you can get.”

  “Why?”

  “Your baby is growing at an accelerated rate. The physical requirements for the cellular growth are . . . very large.”

  “But what about the sick children?” She turned toward Andrit. “What have they told you?”

  He lifted his head, glared at her. “That you’re responsible! That they’ve seen this before groundside.”

  “Do you want me to go groundside?”

  They could see him battling with his WorShip conditioning. He swallowed hard, then: “I just want it to go away, whatever’s making my son sick.”

  “How do they explain my responsibility for this?”

  “They say it’s a . . . psychic drain, often observed but never explained. Perhaps Ship . . .” He was incapable of repeating outright blasphemy.

  They chose a poor tool to attack me, Waela thought.

  The pattern of the plot was clear now: Andrit was to demonstrate potential violence in shipside opposition to her. She would be forced to go groundside “for your own good, my dear.” They wanted her down there badly.

  Why? How am I dangerous to them?

  “Hali, have you ever heard of this phenomenon?”

  “No, but I would agree that the evidence points at you or your baby. You don’t need burst, though.”

  “Why?” Murdoch demanded.

  “Ship is feeding her from the shiptits.”

  Murdoch glared at her, then: “How long have you Natali known that this baby was growing too rapidly?”

  “How do you know it?” Usija countered.

  “It’s part of this phenomenon—rapid growth, abnormal demand for energy.”

  “We’ve known since our first examinations of her,” Hali said.

  “You kept it under wraps and proceeded with caution,” Murdoch said. “Precisely what we did groundside.”

  “Why would you want to feed me on burst?” Waela asked.

  “If the fetus gets enough energy from burst, the psychic drain does not take place.”

  “You’re lying,” Waela said.

  “What!”

  “You’re as transparent as a piece of plaz,” Waela said. “Burst cannot be better than elixir.”

  Usija cleared her throat. “Tell us, Murdoch, about your experience with this phenomenon.”

  “We were doing some DNA work with kelp samples. We found this . . . this survival characteristic. The organism absorbs energy from the nearest available source.”

  “The mother’s the nearest available source,” Hali said.

  “The mother’s the host and immune. The organism takes from other organisms around it which are, ahhh, similar to the hungry one.”

  “I’m not aging,” Hali said. “And I’m around her more than anyone.”

  “It does that,” Murdoch said. “It takes from some people and not from others.”

  “Why from children?” Hali asked.

  “Because they’re defenseless!” That was Andrit, fearful but still angry.

  Waela felt energy charging every muscle in her body. “I’m not going groundside.”

  Andrit started to get to his feet, but Usija restrained him. “What are you going to do?” Usija asked.

  “I’ll move out to the Rim beyond one of the agraria. We’ll keep people, especially children, away from me while Hali studies this condition.” She looked at Hali, who nodded.

  Murdoch did not want to accept this. “It would be far better if you came groundside where we’ve had experience with . . .”

  “Would you try to force me?”

  “No, oh no.”

  “Perhaps if you sent us a supply of burst,” Usija said.

  “We would not be able to justify shipment of such a precious food at this time,” Murdoch said.

  “Tell us what you know about the phenomenon,” Hali said. “Can we develop an immunity? Does it recur or is it chronic? Does . . .”

  “This is the first time we’ve seen it outside a lab. We know that Waela TaoLini conceived outside the breeding program and outside Colony’s protective barriers, but . . .”

  “Why don’t I get answers from Colony?” Ferry asked. He had been sliding his chair slowly to one side while Murdoch spoke, and now he looked up at the man.

  “That has nothing to do with . . .”

  “You speak of not shipping burst at this time,” Ferry said. “What is special about this time?”

  Waela heard desperation in the old man’s voice. What is Ferry doing? Something deep in him was driving these questions out.

  “Your questions do not relate to this problem,” Murdoch said, and Waela heard death in his voice.

  Ferry heard it, too, because he fell into abashed silence.

  “What do you mean about the conception being outside of Colony’s barriers?” Usija asked. It was the scientist’s voice gnawing at an interesting question.

  Murdoch appeared thankful for the interruption. “They were floating in a . . . in a kind of plaz bubble. It was in the sea, completely surrounded by the kelp. We don’t know all of the details, but some of our people have suggested that Waela and her child may no longer be humantype.”

  “Don’t try to get me groundside!” Waela said.

  Usija climbed to her feet. “Humans bred freely Earthside and anywhere they liked. We’re merely seeing it happen again . . . plus an unknown which must be studied.”

  Murdoch directed his glare at her. “You said . . .”

  “I said you could ask her. She has made her decision. Her plan is a sensible one. Isolate her from children, put her under constant monitoring . . .”

  Usija’s voice droned on outlining specifics to implement Waela’s decision—a place with a shiptit, a rotation of Natali med-techs . . .

  Waela tuned out the droning voice. The baby was turning again. Waela felt dizzy.

  None of this is normal. Nothing is as it should be.

  Blip. The fear lifted in her awareness, then dropped.

  What did Murdoch mean that she might no longer be humantype?

  Waela tried to recall details of what had happened in the gondola as it floated on Pandora’s sea. All she could remember was the ecstatic wash of her union with something awesome. This shipside command cubby, Usija’s voice—none of this was important any longer. Only the baby growing at its terrible pace within her was important.

  I need a shiptit.

  An image of Ferry pressed itself into her awareness. He was somewhere else with his inevitabl
e drink in his hand. Murdoch was talking to him. Ferry was trying to protest without success. She heard faint voices, distant and muffled as though they came from a sealed room. There was a high view of Pandora’s sea glowing in the light of two suns. It was replaced by a blurred vision of Oakes and Legata Hamill. They were making love. Oakes lay on his back on a brown woven mat. She was astride him . . . slow movement . . . very slow . . . an insane look of joy on her face, her hands clenching and unclenching the fat of his chest. In the vision, Legata leaned back, trembling and Oakes caught her as she fell.

  It’s a dream, a strange waking dream, Waela told herself.

  Now, the dream shifted to Hali on her knees in her own cubby. Atop a ledge in front of Hali stood an odd construction of wood—two smooth sticks, one of them fixed off-center across the other. Hali leaned her head close to the crossed sticks and, as she did this, Waela experienced the unmistakable fragrance of cedar, as fresh as anything she had ever smelled in a treedome.

  Abruptly, she was back in the command cubby. Hali’s arm was around her shoulder, leading her out the hatch while Usija and Brulagi argued with Murdoch behind them.

  “You need food and rest,” Hali said. “You’ve overstressed yourself.”

  “Shiptit,” Waela whispered. “Ship will feed me.”

  Chapter 55

  The prophets of Israel who preached the idea of the nucleus of ten good men required for a city’s survival, built this concept on the Talmudic idea of the Thirty-Six Just Ones whose existence in each generation is necessary for the survival of Humankind.

  —Judaism’s Book of the Dead, Shiprecords

  UNTIL SHE saw him sprint across the east plain, a Hooded Dasher close behind, Legata did not know Thomas was at the Redoubt. She stood at the giant screen in the Command Center, the hum of late dayside activity going on all around. Oakes and Lewis were conferring off to her left. The big screen had been set on a scan program, ready to lock onto any unusual activity. She took over the controls and zoomed in on the running man. The Dasher was only a few leaps behind him. The scene was outlined in the harsh cross-light of the evening suns.

  “Morgan, look!”

  Oakes rushed to her side, stared up at the screen.

  “The fool,” he muttered.

  Thomas swerved abruptly to the left, made a desperate leap off a dangerously high rock onto the sand at the high tide mark. The Dasher leaped after him, misjudged and landed in a patch of dead kelp washed up by the surf. It immediately began gulping rags of kelp while Thomas ran off down the beach. Another Dasher appeared behind him then, dropping from a high rock, running as it landed. Thomas dodged around a boulder and sped off along the high tide mark. His boots kicked up globs of damp sand. There was no doubt that he heard the Dasher closing on him.

  “He’ll never make it. No one can,” Oakes’ trembling voice betrayed his nervousness.

  Afraid he won’t get away? Legata asked herself. Or afraid he will?

  “Why did you turn him out?” she asked. She kept her attention on the figure darting and weaving away from her, and she remembered that nightside meeting with him outside Colony’s Lab One. She found herself silently urging him on: Into the surf! Dodge into the water!

  “I didn’t turn him out, my dear,” Oakes said. “He must’ve escaped.” Oakes turned and called out to Lewis across the room. “Make sure nothing’s been left open to the outside.”

  “He was a prisoner. Why?”

  “He and the TaoLini woman came back from their undersea venture without Panille, a wild story about hylighters rescuing them. That requires more than simple debriefing.”

  Lewis came up to stand beside Oakes. “All secure.”

  Thomas had swerved into the water once more, diving under ragged scraps of dead kelp. He surfaced draped with the stuff, and the second Dasher remained behind to feed on the scraps. Thomas was visibly tiring now, his stride irregular.

  “Can’t we do anything for him?” Legata asked.

  “What would you have us do?” Oakes asked.

  “Send a rescue party!”

  “That area’s full of Dashers and Flatwings. We can’t afford to lose any more people.”

  “If he was foolish enough to go outside, he takes his own chances,” Lewis said. “Isn’t that the rule for running the P?” He stared at Legata.

  “He’s not running the P,” she said, and she wondered if Lewis had somehow learned about her own mad run.

  “Whatever he’s doing, he’s on his own,” Oakes said.

  “Ohhh, no . . .” The gasp escaped her as the black figure of another Hooded Dasher, two Flatwings close behind it, took up the chase. Thomas was staggering now and the Dasher closed rapidly. In the last blink, as the Dasher stretched for the final blurring leap, it swerved abruptly aside. A mass of tentacles dropped from the air and a hylighter soared across Thomas, scooping him up.

  Oakes worked the screen controls, zooming back for a general view. Someone behind them said: “Would you look at that!” It was almost a sigh.

  The hills and cliffs inland from the Redoubt displayed tier upon tier of hylighters, great mobs of them gathered in a siege arc beyond the range of the Redoubt’s weapons.

  “Goodbye, Raja Thomas,” Oakes said. “Too bad the hylighters got him. A Dasher would’ve ended it quickly.”

  “What do the hylighters do to you?” Legata asked.

  Before Oakes could answer, Lewis turned to the room and said: “All right, everybody. Show’s over. Back to work.”

  “We only have evidence from some demon carcasses,” Oakes said. “They were sucked dry.”

  “I . . . wish we could’ve saved him,” she said.

  “He took his chances and he lost.”

  Oakes reached out to the controls, his finger poised over the scan program, stopped. He stepped backward to bring the whole screen into view. The hylighter carrying Thomas had lost itself in the distant mobs. The great billowing bags now danced on the air, underlighted by the orange glow of the suns, their sail membranes rippling and filling.

  Legata saw what had stopped Oakes. More hylighters were coming up, climbing higher and higher, filling in the sky.

  “Ship’s eyes!” another voice behind them said. “They’re blocking out the suns!”

  “Split screen,” Oakes said. “Activate all perimeter sensors.”

  It took several blinks for Legata to realize he was addressing her. She flipped the switches and the screen went gray, then reformed in measured squares of the different views, a locator number under each. Hylighters englobed the sky all around the Redoubt—over the sea, over the land.

  “Look there.” It was Lewis pointing to a screen showing the base of the inland cliffs. “Demons.”

  They became aware then that the entire rim of cliffs, as far as the sensors could reach, writhed with life. Legata felt certain that never before had such a mass of teeth and claws and stings assembled in one place on the face of Pandora.

  “What are they doing?” Oakes asked, and his voice trembled.

  “They look like they’re waiting for something,” Legata said.

  “Waiting for orders to attack,” Lewis said.

  “Check security!” Oakes barked.

  Legata keyed for the proper sensors and the screens flickered to re-form with views of the cleanup work on the damage left by the E-clone revolt. Orders from whom? she wondered. Crews were busy in every screen, mostly E-clones guarded by armed normals. Some worked in the open courtyard where the Nerve Runners had left nothing alive; others toiled along the shattered sections of the perimeter where temporary barriers had been erected. There were even some heavily guarded crews outside. No demons or hylighters interfered.

  “Why aren’t they attacking?” Legata asked.

  “We seem to be at a stand-off,” Lewis said.

  “We’re saving our energy,” Oakes said. “My orders are not to shoot them at random. We cook them now only if they come within twenty-five meters of our people or equipment.”

&nbs
p; “They can think,” Lewis said. “They think and plan.”

  “But what are they planning?” Legata asked. She noticed that Oakes was going paler by the blink.

  Oakes turned. “Jesus, we’d better do some planning of our own. Come with me.”

  They left, but Legata did not notice. She remained at the screen, working through the outside sensors. The whole landscape had turned into a golden dazzle of suns and hylighters, black cliffs aswarm with demons, and a surging sea capped with white foam and spray.

  Presently, Legata turned, realized that Oakes and Lewis no longer were in the Command Center.

  I’ll have to act soon, she thought. And I have to be ready.

  She worked her way through the activity in the Center, opened a main corridor hatch and hurried toward her own quarters.

  Chapter 56

  Poet

  You see bones up ahead

  where there are none.

  By the time we get there

  so do they.

  —Hali Ekel, Private Letters

  HALI STUDIED the monitors on the reclining Waela with care. It was well into dayside, but Waela appeared to be asleep, her body quiet on the tightly stretched hammock which they had rigged in one of Ship’s rim compartments. Her abdomen was a mounded hillock. There was no hatch to this cubicle, only a fabric curtain which rustled in faint stirrings from the agrarium to which this extrusion was attached.

  This is not normal sleep, Hali thought.

  Waela’s breathing was too shallow, the passivity of her body too profound. It was as though she had slipped back into something approaching hyb. What did that mean for the fetus?

  The compartment was slightly larger than a regular cubby, and Hali had brought in a small wheeled cart to support the monitor screen. The screen showed Waela’s vital signs as visible undulating curves with synchronous time-blips. A secondary set of lines reported on the child developing in Waela’s womb. A simple twist of a dial could superimpose one set of lines on the other.