The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert (125 page)

An explosive
clap
stunned their nest. It came simultaneously with a blast of sulfurous golden light which engulfed the world all around them.

The fall, though short, plunged the floater under the surface in a twisting dive.

Tam gripped the sides of her seat, praying for the chemically activated pontoons to inflate. Dim green light suffused the nest but there were no spurts of water. The hatches were holding.

Root whirled and hit all of the keys on his console.

Nothing.

In a suspended silence, they turned and looked out the bow bubble. Strands of kelp all around. The floater's descent slowed, stopped. It slewed itself upright and they heard the pontoons filling with air beneath them. They began a gentle ascent. Long whips of kelp caged their world and they saw clumps of polyps on the leaves. Each clump sent out slender tendrils and at the end of each tendril small bulbs swelled, drifted to the surface.

Nikki imagined those bulbs breaking free of the mother plant and the sea, drifting away in the magnificent colors of the bloom. The entire system snicked into place within his awareness.

“What do you propose to do now?” Root asked. There was a charged calm in his voice.

“I'll continue learning their language,” Nikki said. “I have the key to it.”

The nest popped to the surface, draping remnants of the exploded bag over the transparent ceiling. It rocked violently in a wind-whipped tidal rip and, through the shreds of the red bag, they glimpsed the bay's distant shore, forbidding black cliffs. The wind had them now and it drove them toward the open sea, but a vagrant current caught the pontoons, whirled them and swept them into a kelp-subdued pocket of calm beneath the headlands.

“The nest can take it,” Tam said. “We could float here forever.”

“Forever is a long time,” Root said. “I don't think you grasp quite how long.” He turned toward Nikki. “What do you intend doing with your little patch of time—besides perfecting your grasp of the gasbags' language?”

“Do you really have the key to it?” Tam asked.

Root was scornful. “Don't be a complete fool, Tam. Of course he has it.”

Nikki marvelled at how subdued Root appeared. How calm. But it was only appearance, a pose, a role, a reflected and insubstantial performance. How lonely the man must be within that shell of limited emotions—his rage was real and, perhaps, jealousy. The vengeful awareness of his own crippled being … that was real. Everything else was sham.

“How?” Tam asked, staring at Nikki.

“Planarians,” Nikki said. “With a difference.” He pointed to the currents boiling up through the kelp around them. “The living, thinking creature is really the kelp. The globes are its eyes, its ears, its arms and voice … its contact with the universe through which it learns.”

“Planarians?” Tam was confused.

Root appeared lost in thought.

“A small earthside flatworm,” Nikki said. “I once asked Ship about a poem—‘Food of the Gods'—and Ship included planarians in the answer.”

“I've never heard of them. What…”

“Although primitive, they can be taught to run mazes,” Root said. He was looking at Nikki with renewed interest.

How long has he known?
Nikki wondered. He said: “And they can learn without being taught.”

Tam leaned forward to the extent her harness permitted. “They can learn without…”

“They can reproduce whole individuals from just a small part,” Nikki said. “Cut out a middle section and your worm will grow a head and tail. The tail will regenerate a new head and middle…”

“But you said they learn without…”

“Yes. Grind up one that's learned the maze and feed it to a young worm that's never run the maze. The young one learns the maze with remarkable speed. Grind up this young one and feed it to another—the new one learns the maze even faster. Go through the process again and the new worm learns faster yet.”

“The skins dissolve in the water,” Tam said, looking out at the bay. “The sludge…”

“Food of the immortal kelp,” Nikki said. “I wonder how long it's been alive and learning? We must be a fascinating diversion.”

“This is all very interesting,” Root said. “But we're still trapped here with no way to contact the colony, no means of returning…”

“Since you intended to return alone on foot after a tragic crash and heroic odyssey through the demon lands,” Nikki said, “what do you suggest?”

“I intend to wait,” Root said, grinning.

Ship save us!
Tam thought.
He's admitted that Nikki's right. But how …

“Tam survived two ventures out there because you saved her both times, didn't you?” Nikki asked.

Root shrugged. It was a pointless question and besides the look on Tam's face was answer enough.

Tam stared at Root. “How?”

“He's not quite human,” Nikki said. “I don't know what he is or where he comes from, but he can do things we can't.”

“Ship save us,” Tam whispered.

“Ship save us,” Root mimicked. “You fools haven't the faintest idea of what's happening on Medea, why you're here or what you're doing.”

Nikki smiled, a slow, almost sleepy smile. “But we're learning. We see to learn, listen to learn, touch and smell to learn and…”

“And maybe someday…” Root pointed out at the heaving bay. “… you hope you'll drink a broth made from your ‘teachers' and
that's
how you'll learn.”

Root released himself from the seat, stood up and opened a hatch. A cold ozone-washed breeze blew in the opening. It was a clean, invigorating smell with only a touch of damp decay at the edge.

On the breeze came the sound of rhythmic whistles and moans. In the background there was a fluting song, compelling in its siren beauty. Nikki's head nodded to the rhythm. He released his harness and signalled Tam to do the same.

As she stood and peered out through the remnants of their bag, Tam stifled a gasp. A mob of globes—purple, red, green, yellow, blue … an iridescent rainbow play of them was drifting down on the nest. At the forefront was a giant globe almost as big as the floater. It played a symphony of red and purple across its shimmering surface.

A light rain of sweet-smelling dust began to sift through the open hatch. Nikki pushed Root aside and clambered out onto the platform created by the inflated pontoon. Tam followed him. Root remained at the open hatch.

The storm had passed out to sea leaving only a warm breeze and the air filled with disintegrating bits of globes which had been destroyed by lightning. Eddies of pastel dust swirled around the nest and a cloudy mist of them obscured the bay's inner shoreline. More globes were rising from the water to replace the lost ones.

Now, the onrushing mob swooped on the nest and circled until their dangling tentacles brushed Nikki's upturned face. He held out his arms to them, his expression rapturous, but Tam cowered away. Root moved to join them on the pontoon but a brushing tentacle left a livid streak across his forehead. He screamed and jerked back into the nest.

Nikki gave no sign that he had heard.

The chittering globes continued to rhapsodize around Nikki, singing to him. Tam pressed herself against the nest, fascinated by the rainbow dance and the fluting songs.

Presently, Nikki began to sing back to the globes in a language Tam could not understand. His voice echoed in her breast until she thought she would choke with longing for the beauty of it. A heightened state of excitement filled her. The gentle rock of the nest on the water, the balmy wind, the rhythmic lick of waves against the pontoon—everything blended with the dance and song of the globes.

The circling mob opened a space around Nikki then and he leaped to the top of the nest where he began to dance while he sang: strange paddling motions, sweeping gestures with both hands, gentle interlacings of his palms …

From within the nest, Root demanded: “What's he doing up there?”

“He's dancing.”

The globes moved closer, cradling their tentacles around Nikki while he danced. The play of colors was dazzling. Gently, the movement slowed, the colors shifted to a universal brilliant silver with soft veins of red.

Nikki brought his hands to his sides, bowed his head, shuddered and stood still.

Tam looked at his feet. They were stained with Argo red from the remnants of the floater bag on the nest's roof. Bits of color washed from the bag trailed down the sides of the nest into the water.

Nikki's voice, so matter of fact, shocked her.

“They don't understand why the bag isn't dissolving.”

“Why aren't they touching me?”

“Because I told them you were afraid.”

“You're talking to them!”

“That's right.”

“How do you do it?”

“It's in the no-place, the betweens and in the honesty of the songs.”

“Why were you dancing?”

“Talking, more talking. I was talking my ancestors to them: the weavers and gardeners, the samurai, the pottery makers, the canoe people, the commuters and keepers of offices, the warriors around the fires…”

“They understood?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Why're they keeping Root in the nest?”

“I don't know. That's their idea.”

“Do they know what Root is?”

“Yes. Ship made him. He's like a partial God who was made that Ship might understand some things better.”

She didn't understand this but put it aside.

“Are you through talking to them?”

“No—they've asked me to talk one more thing to them.”

“What?”

“The perfect biological principle.”

A raucous laugh erupted within the nest.

“I don't understand,” Tam said.

“They wish to exchange their information for ours—the perfect biological principle: replication.”

She didn't understand for a moment, then: “You don't mean…”

“Come up.” He held a hand out to her and a gentle golden stir wafted through the slowly circling globes. “You must help me talk to them. We will talk the making of a baby.”

Not here!
she thought.

A globe dropped close to her and the first tentacle brushed against her shoulder and neck. It was a caress! She leaned into it.

Tam didn't remember taking off her clothes nor seeing Nikki disrobe, but there remained a memory of the globes helping her to the top of the nest and Nikki reclining there, long-limbed, dark and muscular, as though he lay on a grassy earthside meadow soaking up sun after a swim or a hard day in the fields.

She saw their clothes scattered around the nest's top. A shield of rainbow domes covered the sky.

Slowly, she moved toward him. First, a hand touching hand, then, like the tentacles which brushed them both, they matched touch for touch in the nooks and crannies of their curious bodies. Chittering groans filled the air overhead.

“I want you,” Tam whispered. “How can I do this here and say such a thing without feeling self-conscious?”

Nikki kissed her, then: “Where have we put our
selves
?”

He had never been with a woman. Ship urged couplings among adolescents. It helped in the selection of breeding pairs and relieved tensions. But Nikki's creative energies had been focused into the feeling words of his poetry. And Ship had helped in some strange way he had never understood—perhaps something in his food.

Now with tentacles reaching and searching across his body, with the sweetness of the air thick around them, with Tam's silky white skin warm and glowing beside him, he knew there was nothing he'd rather do and no one he'd rather have as a companion in ecstasy. Fingers and tongues joined in the tangle of legs and tentacles, then she was on top of him, moving so very slowly, smiling down at him with tears in her eyes, and Nikki felt that he had been introduced to the most ancient language of humans, a true clear conversation which transcended all words, all dialects, all explanations.

Once more, the globes were a dancing splendor of color and song above them. Tam lay quietly beside Nikki and watched his eyes. How beautiful they were! He traced soft designs on her breasts. She touched his cheek.

“The globes say we have made a baby, we truly have,” Nikki said.

“I love you,” she whispered. Then, eyes wide: “How do they know?”

“They know. They say the moment of replication is also their greatest joy and they can measure it.”

“But we weren't selected as a breeding pair.”

“Except by our Medean hosts.” He sat up. “We should get dressed. The ultraviolet … the globes won't be able to shield us much longer.”

Nikki slipped into his clothes. Presently, she followed his example, her gaze searching all around the bay as she moved.

“We're still trapped here, Nikki.”

He stood atop the nest. “No. The globes will take us home to the colony. Five or six of the big ones…”

She slipped down to the pontoon and peered through the hatch into the nest.

“Nikki!”

“Yes?”

“He's gone. Root's gone. Where'd he go?”

“Maybe he didn't go; maybe he was protean and merely took another shape.”

“Stop that! They've taken him, haven't they?”

“I don't know. I didn't see them. Did you?”

She blushed, then: “How will we explain it?”

“We'll let the globes explain it after I've taught their language to others.”

Nikki turned, lifted his arms and began to sing, swaying and gesturing toward the shore.

Presently, eight of the largest globes moved down in concert and, as Nikki sang, they shifted their color to a uniform Argo red, affixed their tentacles to the nest and lifted it gently from the water.

 

FROGS AND SCIENTIST