The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert (119 page)

The receptionist glanced at the Shipcloth bag on Nikki's other shoulder. “What you bring?”

“Personal possessions, clothes … a few keepsakes.”

“Hrrrm.” The man made another notation, delivered himself of his longest speech. “You're assigned to Tamarack Kapule. Meet her at Quarters.” A nod indicated the rear hatch and the gate swung open. “Through there. Follow signs.”

It was a long, brightly lighted passage lined with hatches and punctuated by the signs which flashed on at his approach:

COMMISSARY … VITRO LABS … RECORDS … MAIN SECTION … LIFE SUPPORT … CLINIC … WORSHIP …

It was as though he had never left Ship.

This is a test,
he reminded himself.

It had to be a test. Ship was God and God was Ship. Ship could do things mortal flesh could not. Normal dimensions of space dissolved before Ship. Time carried no linear restrictions for Ship.

And I, too, am God … but I am not Ship.

Or am I?

It was a question he had never resolved, although he knew the history which Ship taught. There had been a time when Ship was
the ship,
a vehicle of mortal intelligence. The ship had existed in the limited dimensions of space which any human could sense and it had known a destination. It had also known a history of madness. Then … the ship had encountered the Holy Void, the reservoir of intelligent chaos against which all beings were required to measure themselves. And the hybernating humans on the ship had awakened to find themselves the creatures of Ship.

QUARTERS … QUARTERS … QUARTERS …

He stepped right through the flashing sign while becoming aware of it. The sign obviously had been keyed for his approach. Nikki opened the indicated hatch, stepped through into a half-hub from which many passages fanned out.

Down the passage directly in front of him a woman stood beckoning, impatient. He had never seen a woman of such compelling appearance … the
differences
about her jammed his awareness. He responded only to her impatient beckoning until the strong contralto of her voice added emphasis to her gestures.

“I'm Tamarack Kapule, you can call me Tam. You'll be working with me starting in ten minutes down at Behavioral. We're in a rush so I'll fill you in as we go. This is your room.” She opened a hatch at her side. “Leave everything here but your recorder.”

He peered through the hatch at Shipstyle quarters, a familiar foldout desk … but there were differences. He glimpsed a real bed. He'd only seen holos of beds. You slept in a net on Ship.

Nikki tossed his bag inside, closed the hatch.

She was already leaving, talking in that same husky rush as she moved.

“Your records are incomplete. What do we call you?”

“Nikki.”

By the time he'd made sure he had spare charges for the recorder and a notebook in his pocket she was well down the passage and she did not look back to watch him catch up.

Her brusqueness was neither cold nor angry, he decided. She had a job to do and little else mattered. Nikki trotted to keep up with her, working out what her appearance told him. Her hair was as close to absolute white as he'd ever seen. Her eyes were shaped much like his own, and when she glanced at him he saw a quick flash of blue, a cold blue that, he was convinced, expected and got the truth from any other eyes they confronted. Her skin, though pale at a distance, was backlit by a reddish glow when seen this close.

“Well?” she demanded.

Nikki realized that he had been staring.

“Local mutation,” he said. “Quite striking.”

“How do you know I wasn't born this way?”

“You're too old to be Shipborn,” he said. “You have to be one of the originals chosen for this colony.”

“So?”

“Preliminary data on Medea showed the occasional high bursts of ultraviolet. People with abnormally low pigmentation would've been excluded.”

Her blush deepened.

“What else do you know about me?”

She slowed her pace, tense, face straight ahead.

“Your name, Kapule. That's from one of the old Pacific Ocean nations, probably Polynesian. My eye structure's similar to yours.”

She looked at his eyes, turned away.

“Your eyes were brown at one time,” he said.

She shrugged, opened a hatch and stood aside for him, then followed. They were in another passage at right angles to the one they'd left. She struck off to the right.

Nikki kept pace, talking as they went. She had asked a question and he was determined to give her a full answer, although he now saw that she regretted her curiosity.

“Tamarack is a variety of tree. It grew in Canada and the Northwestern United States of Old Terra. Conifer with deciduous behavior—dramatic color changes each fall and spring. You have changed colors.”

They stopped outside a hatch signed BEHAVIORAL.

Nikki looked down at her and smiled with a confidence and maturity which drew her to him despite some deep resistance. He spoke to soothe her.

“My mother's family also was of the Pacific nations.”

She looked him full in the eyes. Yes, he was colored much as she'd been when she'd first set foot on Medea. And he had seen this thing about her which neither Ship nor any of the Holy Sciences would explain. She recalled how her questions had ignited nervous words from the experts.

“Perhaps these changes in you were caused by freak energy bursts from the suns.”

She studied the face of this perceptive young man. Would some bizarre and undetected pulse from the red heart of Argo work its changes on him, too? Whatever it was that caused this, it began slowly, an irreversible wash of pigment from the body. First, her hair. Gray at twenty-two, white by thirty. And this Nikki was only eighteen, half her age. By thirty her skin had lightened noticeably and by thirty-five was nearly translucent. Just this year, the curious red tinge had formed deep within her skin and she had grown to like this effect of the changeling process.

“Is there more?” she asked.

Something in the soft
voice
of her question compelled his attention. There was something important, something she needed which only he could supply.

Nikki closed his eyes and tapped into the oneness which his mother had taught.

“You're self-conscious about working with someone so much younger than yourself.”

“Do you know how important our project is?” she asked.

Her voice told him she was ready to retreat—like the
Narcissus
 … like the maintenance man. Where was her place of armored security?

He spoke softly.

“There's confusion in your mind about your project and those working on it with you.”

“It's the most important project in the colony,” she said. “Life and death…”

“It's urgent,” he agreed.

Nikki opened his eyes and looked directly into hers. “And you're self-conscious about working with a male who's so much younger than you.”

She lowered her gaze and sighed. The blush faded.

“You didn't arrive at all that through logic.”

“That's why I'm here,” he said. “Logic's failed.”

She reached out and shook his hand—strange antique gesture, the remnant of a caress, and it kept them at a distance.

“In here.”

She followed him into a laboratory room. He recognized most of the instruments and knew he'd learn the strange ones soon enough.

Tam was busy swinging out a voder and its screen. She spoke as she worked.

“You have to learn a floater's instrumentation and controls. This voder has a mock-up program. Sit here.” She indicated a foldout seat at the screen.

Floaters,
he thought, his pulse quickening.

The idea of these colony craft, lighter than air, fascinated him. How vulnerable they were, subject to any whim of an atmosphere which could not be completely predicted.

He sat in the indicated place and looked at the simulation of controls and instruments. His stomach felt cold with apprehension. He sensed the prickling of his scalp.

But this is only simulation!

His body continued to send out panic signals which he could not ignore.

“Is something wrong?” Concern edged Tam's voice.

Nikki realized that he was trembling. He put a hand on the control panel to steady himself, found his own muscles pushing him away. He tried to tell himself this was a Medean reaction, the accumulation of subtle oddities for which Ship had not quite prepared him. This peculiar planet set up too many conditions for flight from danger. But he could not prevent himself from standing and backing away from the simulator.

“What's wrong?” Tam demanded.

“Did you prepare that?” He pointed at the voder/simulator.

Tam studied his face. He appeared actually ill. Was this an adverse reaction to something Medean?

Nikki saw her puzzled frown, the way she divided her attention between him and the simulator.

“Answer my question.”

“Tom Root prepared this mock-up. He's our project director. Why?”

Nikki groped for words and found this the most peculiar thing of all. Words did not usually evade him.

“This … this is
against
Ship,” he said. “This is contraShip … wrong. It's … evil.”

There! The word fitted precisely. It was evil, this simulator.

Her puzzlement deepened.

“Nothing here can be against Ship.”

He was certain now and not to be deflected. “That is.” He nodded at the simulator. “It would teach me to do something wrong.”

“It's … it's just a machine, a simulator!”

She slipped onto the seat, hesitated, then punched a button marked
balance.
Red lights flashed, a klaxon behind the screen began hooting. Tam whirled to her right, hit the PROGRAM button, began scanning the numbers and other symbols which replaced the red lights to parade across the screen. The klaxon fell silent.

Nikki's fear signals began to dampen out.

Presently, Tam turned and looked up at him.

“How did you know?”

“How did I know what?” His mouth felt dry.

She ran a hand through her hair, glanced at the now empty screen.
Why do I feel angry?

“There's a fault in PROGRAM acceptance,” she said. “I don't know exactly where the problem's located. One of the technical people will have to look at this.”

Nikki swallowed, regaining his composure. He realized he had not answered her question, did not know
how
to answer it.

How did I know?

“What are you?” she demanded.

“A … poet.”

“Until you asked for
balance
controls, this simulator would've conditioned you to do … dangerous things.”

“Is it supposed to do that?”

“No!” She stood up. “Come along. We've scavenged the console from a wrecked floater. You can use that until they find out what's wrong with this simulator. You can at least learn how the instruments are supposed to work and where they are.”

The rest of the day went well, although Nikki had to force himself not to question Tam about why she had punched first thing for
balance
on the simulator. Training with the recovered console taught him this was seldom the first thing you asked of your controls. Floaters were built to take dramatic imbalance and the
balance
gyros put a strain on the power system.

And it was disquieting that he could not explain, even to himself, how he had known. What hidden signal receivers did his body contain? Were there petit perceptions for which only he was the sensitive receiver?

He began to suspect there might be an odd rapport between Tam and himself. She remained watchful of him all through the day, suspicious. All of this was held beneath the surface, submerged in the training routine, in the study session which paraded for him the latest records of Medea's bloom behavior.

The gasbags—airborne globes—fascinated him. They behaved as though directed by a single intelligence, sometimes merely beautiful—a display. Other times, they were definitely malevolent, killing … maiming.

At the day's end, Tam handed him a torn piece of computer printout.

“Here's a map for your appointments tomorrow and the schedule. See you at early.”

She left him to find his own way back to the Commissary and his quarters. Nothing unusual about that. Shiptrained people seldom had trouble with enclosed passages.

When he sealed the hatch of his room behind him, only then did he allow himself to accept the accumulated aching fatigue. Was this an accurate forecast of Medean routine? Could her pace be normal here? Could he perform under such pressures? Where was the “life and death” focus of her project?
Of Root's project,
he corrected himself. When was he going to meet this Tom Root whose name he had only heard today? Why hadn't Ship given him at least profiles on his workmates? Something here went far deeper than the apparent physical threats which Medea sent against the intruders.

Nikki stowed his bag in a locker, examined the bed. There was no enfolding net, no crashbag. The bed was flat. He pressed it with one hand. Resilient. He stripped, doused the light and climbed into the bed. Rough blankets. Medean fabric? So many questions … his first night in a real bed and sleep swept over him as soon as he closed his eyes.

There was a loud thump, cold … pain.

It took several heartbeats for Nikki to realize that he had fallen out of the bed. Still half asleep, he was as much amused as surprised. He rubbed at a bruised elbow and tried to remember the dream he'd been having. As rush-rush as everything had been since he'd landed on Medea, he felt that the whole day had been a dream and he was only now awakening. Images from the dream fled through his mind: