The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert (40 page)

“Like:
‘What've you done with the body?'
” snarled Orne. “Hell! There might not even be an I–A to make an inquiry in six months!”

Stetson shrugged. “I know this is sudden, and our data's skimpy where it…”

“This is like a last resort!”

“Exactly, Lew. But we have to find out why the galactic centre of all religions has turned against us. We have no hope of going in there and subduing them. It'd start religious uprisings all through the galaxy. Make the Rim War look like a game of ball at a girl's school. I'm not even certain we could get enough volunteers to do the job. We never qualify an agent because of his religion, but I'm damned sure they'd
qualify
us on that score. No. We have to find out why! Maybe we can change whatever's bothering them. It's our only hope. Maybe they don't understa…”

“What if they have plans for conquest by war? What then, Stet? A new faction could've come to power on Amel. Why not?”

Stetson looked sad, shrugged. “If you could prove it…” He shook his head.

“When am I going to the medics?”

“They'll come for you.”

“Yeah. Somebody already came for me … it looks like.”

*   *   *

It was early evening in Orne's hospital room at the I–A medical centre—the quiet time between dinner and visiting hours. The nurse had turned on the light beside his bed. It cast a soothing reflection from the green walls. The induction bandage felt bulky under his chin, but the characteristic quick-heal itching had not yet started.

Being in a hospital room made him vaguely uneasy. He knew why: the smells and the sounds reminded him of all the months he'd spent creeping back from death after his injuries in the Heleb uprising. Heleb had been another planet where war just could
not
start. Like Amel.

The door to his hospital room opened. A tech officer strode through, closed the door. The man's uniform bore odd forked lightning insignia. Orne had never seen the emblem before.
Psi?
he wondered. The officer stopped at the foot of the bed, leaned on the cross-bar. His face was bird-like. There was a long nose, pointed chin, narrow mouth. The eyes made quick, darting movements. He was tall, bone skinny, and when he lifted his right hand in a mock salute, the gesture was fluttery.

“Hi,” he said. “I'm Ag Emolirdo, head of our Psi Section. The Ag is for Agony.”

Unable to move his head because of the induction bandage, Orne stared down the length of the bed at Emolirdo. The officer carried an aura of … confidence,
knowing
confidence. He reminded Orne of a priest back on Chargon. This idea made Orne uneasy. He said: “How d'you do.”

“This will have to move rather rapidly,” said the tech. He smiled. “You'll be into parahypnoid sessions by midnight.”

“Join the I–A and learn the mysteries of the universe,” Orne said.

Emolirdo cocked one eyebrow. “Were you aware that you're a psi focus?”

“A what?” Orne tried to sit up, but the bandage restraints held him fast.

“Psi focus,” said Emolirdo. “You'll understand it later. Briefly, you're an island of order in a disordered universe. Four times since you came to the attention of the I–A you've done the impossible. Any one of the incidents you tackled should have led to ferment and then general war. You've brought order out of…”

“So I did what I was trained to do.”

“Trained? By whom?”

“By my government … by the I–A. That's a stupid question.”

“Is it?” Emolirdo found a chair, sat down, his head level with Orne's. “Well, we won't argue the point. The chief thing now is that you know consciously the broad areas to be covered. You understand?”

“I know the parahypnoid technique,” said Orne.

“First, psi focus,” said Emolirdo. “Let us define life as a bridge between Order and Chaos. Then, let us define Chaos as raw energy available to anything that can subdue it—that is, to anything that can put it into some order. Life, then, becomes stored Chaos. You follow?”

“I hear you. Get on with it.”

“Ah impatience of the non-adept,” murmured Emolirdo. He cleared his throat. “To restate the situation, Life feeds on Chaos, but must exist in Order. An apparent paradox. This brings us to the condition called
stasis.
Stasis is like a magnet. It attracts free energy to itself until the pressure of Chaos becomes too great and it explodes … and, exploding, goes back to Chaos. One is left with the unavoidable conclusion that Stasis leads always to Chaos.”

“That's dandy,” said Orne.

Emolirdo frowned. “This rule is true on both the levels of chemical-inanimate and chemical-animate, Mr. Orne. For example, ice, the stasis of water, explodes when brought into abrupt contact with extreme heat. The frozen society explodes when exposed suddenly to the chaos of war or the
apparent
chaos of a strange new society. Nature abhors stasis.”

“Like a vacuum,” said Orne.

“Precisely.”

“Outside of the vacuum in my head, what other little problems do we have?” asked Orne.

“Amel.”

“Oh, yes. Another vacuum?”

“Apparently a stasis that does not explode.”

“Then maybe it isn't static.”

“You're very astute, Mr. Orne.”

“Golly … thanks.”

“You think you're being very humorous, don't you, Mr. Orne?”

“I thought you were the prize joker here. What's all this have to do with Amel?”

“Miracles,” said Emolirdo. “You obviously were summoned to Amel because they consider you a worker of miracles.”

Pain stabbed through Orne's bandaged neck as he tried to turn his head. “Miracles?” he croaked.

“Substitute
psi
for miracle,” said the tech. “
Psi focus,
to be more precise.” A weird half smile flickered across Emolirdo's mouth. It was as though he had fought down an internal dispute on whether to laugh or cry, solved it by doing neither.

Orne felt confused, uneasy. He said: “You've left me.”

“Psi focus is the scientific label for miracle,” said Emolirdo. “It's something that happens outside of recognized channels, in spite of accepted rules. Religions say it's a miracle. Certain scientists say we have encountered a psi focus. That can be either a person or a locale.”

“I'm not reading you at all,” muttered Orne.

“You've heard of the ancient miracle caverns on the older planets?”

Orne blinked. “I've heard the legends.”

“We're convinced that they concealed shapes … convolutions that projected out of our apparent universe. Except at these focus points, the raw energy of outer Chaos cannot be bent to our needs. But
at
these focus points, Chaos—the wild energy—is richly available in a way that can be tamed. It may be moulded in unique ways that defy ordinary rules.” Emolirdo's eyes blazed. He seemed to be fighting a great inner excitement.

Orne wet his lips. “Shapes?”

“Men have bent wires, coiled them, carved bits of plastic, jumbled together odd assortments of apparently unrelated objects. And weird things happen. A smooth piece of metal becomes tacky, as though you'd smeared it with glue. A man draws a pentagram on a certain floor, and flame dances within it. Smoke curls from a strangely shaped bottle and does another man's bidding, obeys his will. Then there are certain men who conceal this focus within themselves. They walk into … nothing, and reappear light years away. They look at a person suffering from an incurable disease. The incurable is cured. They raise the dead. They read minds.”

Orne tried to swallow in a dry throat. “All this is psi?”

“We believe so.” Emolirdo bent towards Orne's bedside light, thrust a fist in between the light and the green wall. “Look at the wall.”

“I can't turn my head,” said Orne.

“Sorry. Just a shadow.” Emolirdo withdrew his hand. “But let us say there were sentient beings confined to the flat plane of that wall. Let us say they saw the shadow of my fist. Could a genius among them imagine the shape that cast the shadow—a shape that projected outside of his dimensions?”

“Good question,” said Orne.

“What if the being in the wall fashioned a device that projected into our dimension?” asked Emolirdo. “He would be like the blind men studying the legendary elephant. His device would respond in ways that do not fit his dimension. He would have to set up all kinds of new postulates.”

Under the bandage, the skin of Orne's neck began to itch maddeningly. He resisted the desire to probe there with a finger. Bits of folklore from Chargon flitted through his memory: the magicians, the little people who granted wishes in a way that made the wisher regret his desires, the cavern where the sick were cured. The quick-heal itching lured his finger with almost irresistible force. He groped for a pill on his bedstand, gulped it down, waited for the relief.

Presently, Orne said: “What's this thing you've put in my neck?”

“It has a dual purpose,” said Emolirdo. “It signals the presence of psi activity—psi
fields,
we call them. And it's an amplifier, giving a boost to any latent … ah, talents you may have. It'll often permit a novice to produce some of the minor psi effects.”

Orne rubbed the outside of his neck bandage, forced his hand away. “Such as what?”

“Oh … resisting psi-induced emotions, detecting motivation in others through some of their emotions. It may give a small degree of prescience. You'd be able to detect extremes of personal danger when they were still some distance off in time. You'll understand about this, after the parahypnoid session.”

Orne felt something tingling in his neck. There was a vacant sensation in the pit of his stomach. “Prescience?”

“You'd recognize it at first as a kind of fear … a
peculiar
kind of fear. Sometimes it's like hunger even though you've just eaten. Something feels like it's lacking … inside you, or in the air you breathe. If you feel it, you'll recognize it. It'll always be a warning of danger. Very trustworthy.”

Orne's skin felt clammy. There was the vacant sensation in his stomach. The air of the room felt stale. His immediate reaction was to reject the sensations and all of the suggestive conversation, but there was still the fact of Stetson. Nobody in the I–A was more coldly objective or quicker to toss out mumbo-jumbo. And Stetson obviously accepted this psi thing. Stetson could be trusted. That was the major fact keeping Orne from booting this … this …

“You look a little pale,” said Emolirdo.

“Probably.” Orne managed a tight smile. “I think I feel your prescience thing right now.”

“Describe your sensations.”

Orne obeyed.

“You feel irritated, jumpy without apparent reason,” said Emolirdo. “Odd that it should happen so soon, before the training, that is. Unless…” He pursed his lips.

“Unless what?”

“Unless your talent … were quite strong. And unless psi training itself were actually dangerous to you. Wouldn't that be interesting, though?”

“Yeah. Fascinating. I can hardly wait to get through this training and be on my way to Amel.”

*   *   *

It was reluctance, Orne decided. There was no real excuse to wait up here on the transport's ramp any longer. Obviously, he had overcome the first staggering impact of the psi fields of Amel. There was still the prescient awareness of danger—like a sore tooth signalling its presence. The day was hot, and the toga was too heavy. He was soaked in perspiration.

Damn! If I wait too long they'll get suspicious.

He took a half step towards the escalfield, still fighting the reluctance. His nostrils caught an acrid bite of incense that had evaded the oil-and-ozone dominance of the landing area. In spite of counter-conditioning and carefully nurtured agnosticism, he felt an abrupt sensation of awe. Amel exuded an aura of magic that defied cynical disbelief.

The chanting and keening that lifted fog-like from the religious warren sparked memory fragments. Shards of his childhood on Chargon tumbled through Orne's mind:
the religious processions on holy days … the image of Mahmud glowering down from the
kiblah …
and the
azan
ringing out across the great square on the day of
Bairam—

“Let no blasphemy occur nor permit a blasphemer to live! May such a one be accursed of God and of the blessed from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head, sleeping and waking, sitting and standing…”

Orne shook his head.

Yes, bow down to Ullun, the star wanderer of the Ayrbs,
he thought. Now would be a great time for him to get religion!

But the roots were deep. He tightened the belt of his toga, strode forward into the escalfield. Its feathery touch dropped him to the ground, disgorged him beside a covered walkway. A cluster of priests and students were pressed into the thin shade of the cover. They began to separate as Orne approached, leaving in pairs—a white-clad priest with each student.

One priest remained facing Orne. He was tall and with a thick body. There was a heavy feeling about him as though the ground would shudder when he walked. His head was shaved bald. Deep lines scratched patterns on his wide jowled face. Dark eyes glowered from beneath overhanging grey brows.

“Are you Orne?” the priest rumbled.

Orne stepped under the walkway. “That's right.” There was a yellowish gleam to the priest's skin.

“I am Bakrish,” said the priest. He put his slab hands on his hips, glared at Orne. “You missed the ceremony of lustration.”

Something about the heavy figure, the glowering face reminded Orne abruptly of an I–A gunnery sergeant he had known. The thought restored Orne's sense of balance, brought a grin to his face.