The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert (110 page)

His sightless eyes appeared to stare at her for a long moment of silence; then he said: “That would be a terrible responsibility for me.”

She felt pride in her son flow all through her, said: “I'm glad you see it that way.”

The small booklet of regulations and advice handed out at the first assembly in White Sands carried names and addresses of all the colonists. Margaret started at the top of the list, called Selma Atkins of Little Rock, wife of the expedition's head zoologist.

Mrs. Atkins was a dark little button of a woman with flaming hair and a fizzing personality. She turned out to be a born conspirator. Before Margaret had finished explaining the problem, Selma Atkins was volunteering to head a phone committee. She jotted down names of prospects, said: “Even if we get the weight allowance, how'll we get the thing aboard?”

Margaret looked puzzled. “What's wrong with just showing that we have the weight allowance, and handing the piano over to the people who pack things on the ship?”

“Charlesworthy'd never go for it, honey. He's livid at the amount of equipment that's had to be passed over because of the weight problem. He'd take one look at one thousand four hundred and eight pounds of piano and say: ‘That'll be a spare atomic generation kit!' My husband says he's had to drill holes in packing boxes to save ounces!”

“But how could we smuggle…”

Selma snapped her fingers. “I know! Ozzy Lucan!”

“Lucan?”

“The ship's steward,” said Selma. “You know: the big horse of a man with red hair. He spoke at one of the meetings on—you know—all about how to conserve weight in packing and how to use the special containers.”

“Oh, yes,” said Margaret. “What about him?”

“He's married to my third cousin Betty's oldest daughter. Nothing like a little family pressure. I'll work on it.”

“Wouldn't he be likely to go directly to Charlesworthy with it?” asked Margaret.

“Hah!” barked Selma. “You don't know Betty's side of our family!”

Dr. Linquist arrived in the middle of the morning, two consultant psychiatrists in tow. They spent an hour with David, came down to the kitchen where Margaret and Rita were finishing the microfilming of the recipe files. David followed them, stood in the doorway.

“The boy's apparently tougher than I realized,” said Linquist. “Are you sure he hasn't been told he can take that piano? I hope you haven't been misleading him to make him feel better.”

David frowned.

Margaret said: “Dr. Charlesworthy refused to take the piano when I asked him. However, he's sent two experts to the Steinway factory so we'll be sure of an exact duplicate.”

Linquist turned to David. “And that's all right with you, David?”

David hesitated, then: “I understand about the weight.”

“Well, I guess you're growing up,” said Linquist.

When the psychiatrists had gone, Rita turned on Margaret. “Mother! You lied to them!”

“No she didn't,” said David. “She told the exact truth.”

“But not all of it,” said Margaret.

“That's just the same as lying,” said Rita.

“Oh, stop it!” snapped Margaret. Then: “David, are you sure you want to leave your braille texts?”

“Yes. That's sixteen pounds. We've got the braille punch kit and the braille typewriter; I can type new copies of everything I'll need if Rita will read to me.”

By three o'clock that afternoon they had Chief Steward Oswald Lucan's reluctant agreement to smuggle the piano aboard if they could get the weight allowance precise to the ounce. But Lucan's parting words were: “Don't let the old man get wind of this. He's boiling about the equipment we've had to cut out.”

At seven-thirty, Margaret added the first day's weight donations: sixty-one commitments for a total of two hundred and seven pounds and seven ounces.
Not enough from each person,
she told herself.
But I can't blame them. We're all tied to our possessions. It's so hart to part with all the little things that link us with the past and with Earth. We've got to find more weight somewhere.
She cast about in her own mind for things to discard, knew a sense of futility at the few pounds she had at her disposal.

By ten o'clock on the morning of the third day they had 554 pounds and 8 ounces from 160 of their fellow colonists. They also had an even twenty violent rejections. The tension of fear that one of these twenty might give away their conspiracy was beginning to tell on Margaret.

David, too, was sinking back into gloom. He sat on the piano bench in the music room, Margaret behind him in her favorite chair. One of David's hands gently caressed the keys that Maurice Hatchell had brought to such crashing life.

“We're getting less than four pounds per person, aren't we?” asked David.

Margaret rubbed her cheek. “Yes.”

A gentle chord came from the piano. “We aren't going to make it,” said David. A fluid rippling of music lifted in the room. “I'm not sure we have the right to ask this of people anyway. They're giving up so much already, and then we…”

“Hush, Davey.”

He let the baby name pass, coaxed a floating passage of Debussy from the keys.

Margaret put her hands to her eyes, cried silently with fatigue and frustration. But the tears coming from David's fingers on the piano went deeper.

Presently, he stood up, walked slowly out of the room, up the stairs. She heard his bedroom door close softly. The lack of violence in his actions cut her like a knife.

The phone chime broke Margaret from her blue reverie. She took the call on the portable in the hall. Selma Atkins's features came onto the screen, wide-eyed, subdued.

“Ozzy just called me,” she blurted. “Somebody snitched to Charlesworthy this morning.”

Margaret put a hand over her mouth.

“Did you tell your husband what we were doing?” asked Selma.

“No.” Margaret shook her head. “I was going to and then I got afraid of what he'd say. He and Charlesworthy are very close friends, you know.”

“You mean he'd peach on his own wife?”

“Oh, no, but he might…”

“Well, he's on the carpet now,” said Selma. “Ozzy says the whole base is jumping. He was shouting and banging his hands on the desk at Walter and…”

“Charlesworthy?”

“Who else? I called to warn you. He…”

“But what'll we do?” asked Margaret.

“We run for cover, honey. We fall back and regroup. Call me as soon as you've talked to him. Maybe we can think of a new plan.”

“We've contributions from more than half the colonists,” said Margaret. “That means we've more than half of them on our side to begin…”

“Right now the colony organization is a dictatorship, not a democracy,” said Selma. “But I'll be thinking about it. Bye now.”

David came up behind her as she was breaking the connection. “I heard,” he said. “That finishes us, doesn't it?”

The phone chimed before she could answer him. She flipped the switch. Walter's face came onto the screen. He looked haggard, the craggy lines more pronounced.

“Margaret,” he said. “I'm calling from Dr. Charlesworthy's office.” He took a deep breath. “Why didn't you come to me about this? I could've told you how foolish it was!”

“That's why!” she said.

“But smuggling a piano onto the ship! Of all the…”

“I was thinking of Davey!” she snapped.

“Good Lord, I know it! But…”

“When the doctors said he might die if he lost his…”

“But Margaret, a thousand-pound piano!”

“Fourteen hundred and eight pounds,” she corrected him.

“Let's not argue, darling,” he said. “I admire your guts … and I love you, but I can't let you endanger the social solidarity of the colony group…” he shook his head, “not even for David.”

“Even if it kills your own son?” she demanded.

“I'm not about to kill my son,” he said. “I'm an ecologist, remember? It's my job to keep us alive … as a group
and
singly! And I…”

“Dad's right,” said David. He moved up beside Margaret.

“I didn't know you were there, son,” said Walter.

“It's all right, Dad.”

“Just a moment, please.” It was Charlesworthy, pushing in beside Walter. “I want to know how much weight allowance you've been promised.”

“Why?” asked Margaret. “So you can figure how many more scientific
toys
to take along?”

“I want to know how close you are to success in your little project,” he said.

“Five hundred and fifty-four pounds and eight ounces,” she said. “Contributions from one hundred and sixty people!”

Charlesworthy pursed his lips. “Just about one-third of what you need,” he said. “And at this rate you wouldn't get enough. If you had any chance of success I'd almost be inclined to say go ahead, but you can see for yourself that…”

“I have an idea,” said David.

Charlesworthy looked at him. “You're David?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What's your idea?”

“How much would the harp and keyboard from my piano weigh? You have people at the factory…”

“You mean take just that much of your piano?” asked Charlesworthy.

“Yes, sir. It wouldn't be the same … it'd be better. It would have roots in both worlds—part of the piano from Earth and part from Planet C.”

“Darned if I don't like the idea,” said Charlesworthy. He turned. “Walter, call Phil Jackson at the Steinway plant. Find out how much that portion of the piano would weigh.”

Walter felt the field of the screen. The others waited. Presently, Walter returned, said: “Five hundred and sixty-two pounds, more or less. Hector Torres was on the line, too. He said he's sure he can duplicate the rest of the piano exactly.”

Charlesworthy smiled. “That's it, then! I'm out of my mind … we need so many other things with us so desperately. But maybe we need this too: for morale.”

“With the right morale we can make anything else we may need,” said Walter.

Margaret found a scratch pad in the phone drawer, scribbled figures on it. She looked up: “I'll get busy right now and find a way to meet the extra few pounds we'll need to…”

“How much more?” asked Charlesworthy.

Margaret looked down at her scratch pad. “Seven pounds and eight ounces.”

Charlesworthy took a deep breath. “While I'm still out of my mind, let me make another gesture: Mrs. Charlesworthy and I will contribute seven pounds and eight ounces to the cultural future of our new home.”

 

GAMBLING DEVICE

“Desert Rest Hotel—no gambling”

The blue-and-white sign, scraggly alkali sedge clustering around its supports, stood by itself at the edge of the lonely road.

Hal Remsen read it aloud, stopped his convertible at the hotel drive and glanced down at his bride of six hours. The heavy floral scent of her corsage wafted up to him. He smiled, the action bringing his thin dark features into vivid aliveness.

Ruth Remsen's short blonde hair had been tangled by the long drive in the open car. Her disarrayed hair, backlighted now by a crimson sunset, accented a piquant doll quality in her small features.

“Well?” he said.

“Hal, I don't like the looks of that place,” she said. Her eyes narrowed. “It looks like a prison. Let's try farther on.”

She suddenly shivered, staring across her husband at the blocky structure nestled in dry sand hills to their left. The hotel's shadowed portico gaped like a trap at the end of the dark surfaced driveway.

Hal shrugged, grinned. It gave him the sudden look of a small boy about to admit who stole the cookies.

“I have a confession,” he said. “Your husband, the irreplaceable troubleshooter of Fowler Electronics, Meridian…”

“I still don't like the looks of that place,” she said. Her face sobered. “Darling, it's our wedding night.”

He turned away from her to look at the hotel.

“It's just the way the sunset's lighting it,” he said. “It makes those windows look like big red eyes.”

Ruth chewed her lower lip, continued to stare at the building in the parched hills. Rays of the setting sun, reflected off mineral sands, painted red streaks across the structure, gleamed like fire on the windows and their metal frames.

“Well…” She allowed her voice to trail off.

Hal put the car in gear, turned into the drive.

“It'll be dark soon,” he said. “There's no dusk on the desert. We'd better take this while we can.”

He stopped the car in the gloom of the portico.

An ancient bellboy with a leathery mask of a face, and wearing a green uniform, came down the two steps at their right. Yellow lobby lights pouring through the double doors behind him silhouetted his stick-like frame.

Without speaking, he opened the car door for Ruth.

Hal slid across the seat after her, nodded toward the rear. “Those two bags on the seat,” he said. “We'll just be staying the night.”

He left the keys in the car.

The lobby held a cool stillness after the desert's heat. The tapping of their heels echoed across the tile floor. Hal was struck by the curious absence of plants, furniture and people. The quiet held an eerie, waiting quality.

They crossed to a marble topped semi-circular desk at the far side. Hal pushed a call button on the desk. He heard a double click behind him, turned to see the bellboy putting down their luggage.

If he were a woman, they'd call him a ‘crone,' thought Hal. The word ‘warlock' popped into his mind.

The man moved around behind the desk with a kind of slithering, shambling walk. He pushed register and pen toward Hal.