The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert (11 page)

He sank farther into the maelstrom, saw it change to gray, become suddenly a tiny picture seen through the wrong end of a telescope. He saw a small boy holding the hand of a woman in a black dress. The two went into a hall-like room. Abruptly Eric no longer saw them from a distance but was again himself at age nine walking toward a casket. He sensed again the horrified fascination, heard his mother's sobs, the murmurous, meaningless voice sounds of a tall, thin undertaker. Then, there was the casket and in it a pale, waxed creature who looked somewhat like his father. As Eric watched, the face melted and became the face of his uncle Mark; and then another mask, his high-school geometry teacher. Eric thought,
We missed that one in my psychoanalysis
. He watched the mobile face in the coffin as it again shifted and became the professor who had taught him abnormal psychology, and then his own analyst, Dr. Lincoln Ordway, and then—he fought against this one—Dr. Carlos Amanti.

So that's the father image I've held all these years,
he thought.
That means— That means I've never really given up searching for my father. A fine thing for an analyst to uncover about himself!
He hesitated.
Why did I have to recognize that? I wonder if Pete went through this in his musikron?
Another part of his mind said,
Of course not. A person has to want to see inside himself or he never will, even if he has the opportunity.

The other part of his mind abruptly seemed to reach up, seize control of his consciousness. His awareness of self lurched aside, became transformed into a mote whipping through his memories so rapidly he could barely distinguish between events.

Am I dying?
he wondered.
Is it my life passing in review?

The kaleidoscopic progression jerked to a stop before a vision of Colleen—the way he had seen her in his dream. The memory screen lurched to Pete. He saw the two people in a relationship to himself that he had never quite understood. They represented a catalyst, not good or evil, merely a reagent which set events in motion.

Suddenly, Eric sensed his awareness growing, permeating his body. He knew the condition and action of each gland, each muscle fiber, each nerve ending. He focused his inner eyes on the grayness through which he had passed. Into the gray came a tendril of red—shifting, twisting, weaving past him. He followed the red line. A picture formed in his mind, growing there like the awakening from anaesthetic. He looked down a long street—dim in the spring dusk—at the lights of a jet car thundering toward him. The car grew larger, larger, the lights two hypnotic eyes. With the vision came a thought:
My, that's pretty!

Involuntary reactions took over. He sensed muscles tensing, jumping aside, the hot blast of the jet car as it passed. A plaintive thought twisted into his mind:
Where am I? Where's Mama? Where's Bea?

Tightness gripped Eric's stomach as he realized he sat in another's consciousness, saw through another's eyes, sensed through another's nerves. He jumped away from the experience, pulling out of the other mind as though he had touched a hot stove.

So that's how Pete knew so much,
he thought.
Pete sat in his musikron and looked through our eyes.
Another thought:
What am I doing here?
He sensed the teleprobe chair beneath him, heard the new self within him say, “I'm going to need more trained, expert help.”

He followed another red tendril, searching, discarded it; sought another. The orientation was peculiar—no precise up or down or compass points until he looked out of the other eyes. He came to rest finally behind two eyes that looked down from an open window in the fortieth story of an office building, sensed the suicidal thoughts building up pressure within this person. Gently, Eric touched the center of consciousness, seeking the name—Dr. Lincoln Ordway, psychoanalyst.

Eric thought,
Even now I turn back to my own analyst.

Tensely, Eric retreated to a lower level of the other's consciousness, knowing that the slightest misstep would precipitate this man's death wish, a jump through that window. The lower levels suddenly erupted a pinwheel of coruscating purple light. The pinwheel slowed, became a mandala figure—at the four points of the figure an open window, a coffin, a transitus-tree and a human face which Eric suddenly recognized as a distorted picture of himself. The face was boyish, slightly vacant.

Eric thought,
The analyst, too, is tied to what he believes is his patient
. With the thought, he willed himself to move gently, unobtrusively into the image of himself, began to expand his area of dominion over the other's unconscious. He pushed a tentative thought against the almost palpable wall which represented Dr. Ordway's focus of consciousness:
Line
(a whisper),
don't jump. Do you hear me, Line? Don't jump. The city needs your help
.

With part of his mind, Eric realized that if the analyst sensed his mental privacy being invaded that realization could tip the balance, send the man plunging out the window. Another part of Eric's mind took that moment to render up a solution to why he needed this man and others like him: The patterns of insanity broadcast by Pete Serantis could only be counterbalanced by a rebroadcast of calmness and sanity.

Eric tensed, withdrew slightly as he felt the analyst move closer to the window. In the other's mind, he whispered, “Come away from the window. Come away—” Resistance! A white light expanded in Eric' thoughts, rejected him. He felt himself swimming out into the gray maelstrom, receding. A red tendril approached and with it a question, not of his own origin, lifted into his mind:

Eric? What is this thing?

Eric allowed the pattern of teleprobe development to siphon through his mind. He ended the pattern with an explanation of what was needed.

Thought:
Eric, how did the Syndrome miss you?

Conditioning by long exposure to my own teleprobe; high resistance to unconscious distortion built up by that work
.

Funny thing; I was about to dive out the window when I sensed your interference. It was something
—the red tendril moved closer—
like this.

They meshed completely.

“What now?” asked Dr. Ordway.

“We'll need as much trained help as we can find in the city. Others would censor out this experience below the threshold of consciousness.”

“The influence of your teleprobe may quiet everybody.”

“Yes, but if the machine is ever turned off, or if people go beyond its area of influence, they'd be back in the soup.”

“We'll have to go in the back door of every unconscious in the city and put things in order!”

“Not just
this
city; every city where the musikron has been and every city where Serantis takes it until we can stop him.”

“How did the musikron do this thing?”

Eric projected a mixed pattern of concepts and pictures: “The musikron pushed us deep down into the collective unconscious, dangled us there as long as we remained within its area of influence. (Picture of rope hanging down into swirls of fog.) Then the musikron was turned off. (Picture of knife cutting the rope, the end falling, falling into a swirling gray maelstrom.) Do you see it?”

“If we have to go down into that maelstrom after all these people, hadn't we better get started?”

*   *   *

He was a short man digging with his fingers in the soft loam of his flowerbed, staring vacantly at shredded leaves—name, Dr. Harold Marsh, psychologist. Unobtrusively, softly, they absorbed him into the network of the teleprobe.

She was a woman, dressed in a thin housecoat, preparing to leap from the end of a pier—name, Lois Voorhies, lay analyst. Swiftly, they drew her back to sanity.

Eric paused to follow a thin red tendril to the mind of a neighbor, saw through the other's eyes sanity returning around him.

Like ripples spreading in a pond, a semblance of sanity washed out across the city. Electric power returned; emergency services were restored.

The eyes of a clinical psychologist east of the city transmitted a view of a jet plane arrowing toward Clyde Field. Through the psychologist's mind the network picked up the radiating thought patterns of a woman—guilt, remorse, despair.

Colleen!

Hesitantly, the network extended a pseudopod of thought, reached into Colleen's consciousness and found terror.
What is happening to me!

Eric took over.
Colleen, don't be afraid. This is Eric. We are getting things back in order thanks to you and the musikron plans.
He projected the pattern of their accomplishments.

I don't understand. You're
—

You don't have to understand now.
Hesitantly:
I'm glad you came.

Eric, I came as soon as I heard—when I realized you were right about Pete and the musikron.
She paused.
We're coming down to land.

Colleen's chartered plane settled onto the runway, rolled up to a hangar and was surrounded by National Guardsmen.

She sent out a thought:
We have to do something about London. Pete threatened to smash the musikron, to commit suicide. He tried to keep me there by force
.

When?

Six hours ago.

Has it been that long since the Syndrome hit?

The network moved in:
What is the nature of this man Serantis?

Colleen and Eric merged thoughts to project Pete's personality.

The network:
He'll not commit suicide, or smash his machine. Too self-centered. He'll go into hiding. We'll find him soon enough when we need him—unless he's lynched first.

Colleen interrupted:
This National Guard major won't let me leave the airport.

Tell him you're a nurse assigned to Maynard Hospital.

Individual thought from the network:
I'll confirm from this end.

Eric:
Hurry … darling. We need all of the help we can get from people resistant to the teleprobe.

Thoughts from the network:
That's as good a rationalization as any. Every man to his own type of insanity. That's enough nonsense—let's get to work!

 

THE GONE DOGS

A green turbo-copter moved over the New Mexico sand flats, its rotor blades going whik-whik-whik. Evening sunlight cast deep shadows ahead of it where the ground shelved away to a river canyon. The 'copter settled to a rock outcropping, a hatch popped open and a steel cage containing one female coyote was thrown out. The cage door fell away. In one jump, the animal was out of its prison and running. It whisked over the outcropping, leaped down to a ledge along the canyon wall and was out of sight around a bend—in its blood a mutated virus which had started with hog cholera.

*   *   *

The lab had a sharp chemical odor in which could be detected iodoform and ether. Under it was that musky, wet-fur smell found in the presence of caged animals. A despondent fox terrier sulked in a cage at one end; the remains of a poodle were stretched on a dissecting board atop a central bench, a tag on its leg labelled
X-8, PULLMAN VETERINARY RESEARCH CENTER, LABORATORY E.
Indirect lighting touched everything with a shadowless indifference.

Biologist Varley Trent, a lanky, dark-haired man with angular features, put his scalpel in a tray beside the poodle, stepped back, looked across at Dr. Walter Han-Meers, professor of veterinary medicine. The professor was a plump, sandy-haired Chinese-Dutchman with the smooth-skinned look of an Oriental idol. He stood beside the dissecting bench, staring at the poodle.

“Another failure,” said Trent. “Each one of these I autopsy, I say to myself we're that much closer to the last dog on Earth.”

The professor nodded. “Came down to give you the latest. Don't see how it helps us, but for what it's worth, this virus started in coyote.”

“Coyote?”

Professor Han-Meers found a lab stool, pulled it up, sat down. “Yes. Ranch hand in New Mexico broke it. Talked to the authorities. His boss, a fellow named Porter Durkin, is a V.M.D., has a veterinary hospital on a ranch down there. Used a radioactive carbon egg to mutate hog cholera. Hoped to make a name for himself all right. Government had to move in troops to keep him from being lynched.”

Trent ran a hand through his hair. “Didn't the fool realize his disease would spread to other canines?”

“Apparently didn't even think of it. He has a license from one of those little hogwallow colleges, but I don't see how anyone that stupid could make the grade.”

“How about the coyote?”

“Oh, that was a great success. Sheep ranchers say they haven't lost an animal to coyotes in over a month. Only things worrying them now are bears, cougars and the lack of dogs to…”

“Speaking of dogs,” said Trent, “we're going to need more test animals here by tomorrow. Serum nine isn't doing a thing for that fox terrier. He'll die tonight sometime.”

“We'll have lots of test animals by tomorrow,” said Han-Meers. “The last two dog isolation preserves in Canada reported primary infestations this morning.”

Trent drummed his fingers on the bench top. “What's the government doing about the offer from the Vegan biophysicists?”

Han-Meers shrugged. “We are still turning them down. The Vegans are holding out for full control of the project. You know their reputation for bio-physical alterations. They might be able to save our dogs for us, but what we'd get back wouldn't be a dog any longer. It'd be some elongated, multi-legged, scaly-tailed monstrosity. I wish I knew why they went in for those fish-tail types.”