The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert (42 page)

“Did you not prefer the light, Orne?”

“No.”

“But you must have understood this test: you're standing … unafraid of my warning.”

“This machine obeys my uncensored will,” said Orne. “That's faith: the uncensored will.”

“You
do
understand. And still you preferred the dark?”

“Does that bother you, Bakrish?”

“Yes, it does.”

“Good.”

“I see.” Bakrish bowed. “Thank you for sparing me.”

“You know about that?”

“I felt flames and heat, smelled the burning…” The priest shook his head. “The life of a guru here is not safe. Too many possibilities.”

“You were safe,” said Orne. “I censored my will.”

“The most enlightened degree of faith,” murmured Bakrish.

“Is that all there is to my ordeal?” Orne glanced around at the darkened cell walls.

“Merely the first step,” said Bakrish. “There are seven steps in all: the test of faith, the test of the miracle's two faces, the test of dogma and ceremony, the test of ethics, the test of the religious ideal, the test of service to life, and the test of the mystical experience. They do not necessarily fall in that order.”

Orne felt the absence of immediate prescient fear. He tasted a sense of exhilaration. “Then let's get on with it.”

Bakrish sighed. “Holy Empress defend me,” he muttered, then: “Yes, of course. Your next step: the miracle's two faces.”

And the prescient sense of peril began to flicker within Orne. Angrily, he put it aside.
I have faith,
he thought.
Faith in myself. I've proved I can conquer my fear.

“Well, what're we waiting for?” he demanded.

“Come along,” said Bakrish. He turned with a swirl of his white robe, led the way down the hall.

Orne followed. “By miracle, do you mean psi focus?”

“What difference does it make what we call it?” asked Bakrish.

“If I solve all your riddles, do you take the heat off the I–A?” asked Orne.

“The heat … Oh, you mean … That is a question for the Halmyrach Abbod to decide.”

“He's nearby, eh?”

“Very near.”

Bakrish stopped before a heavy bronze door at the end of the hall, turned an ornate handle at one side, threw his shoulder against the door. It creaked open. “We generally don't come this way,” he said. “These two tests seldom follow each other.”

Orne blinked, followed the priest through the door into a gigantic round room. Stone walls curved away to a domed ceiling far above them. In the high curve of the ceiling slit windows admitted thin shafts of light that glittered downwards through gilt dust. Orne followed the light downwards to its focus on a straight barrier wall about twenty metres high and forty or fifty metres long, chopped off and looking incomplete in the middle of the room. The wall was dwarfed in the immensity of the domed space.

Bakrish circled around behind Orne, swung the heavy door closed, nodded towards the central barrier. “We go over there.” He led the way.

Their slapping footsteps echoed off the walls. The damp stone smell was strong, like a bitter taste. Orne glanced left, saw doors evenly spaced around the room's perimeter, bronze doors like the one they had entered.

As they approached the barrier, Orne centred his attention on it. The surface looked to be a smooth grey plastic—featureless, but somehow menacing.

Bakrish stopped about ten metres from the middle of the wall. Orne stopped beside him, became conscious of prescient fear: something to do with the wall. Within him there was a surging and receding like waves on a beach. Emolirdo had described this sensation and interpreted it:
Infinite possibilities in a situation basically perilous.

A blank wall?

“Orne, is it not true that a man should obey the orders of his superiors?” Bakrish's voice carried a hollow echo in the immensity of the room.

Orne's throat felt dry. He cleared it, rasped: “I suppose so … if the orders make sense. Why?”

“You were sent here as a spy, Orne. By rights, anything that happens to you is no concern of ours.”

Orne tensed. “What're you driving at?”

Bakrish looked down at Orne, large eyes dark and glistening. “Sometimes these machines frighten us. Their methods are so unpredictable, and anyone who comes within the field of one of them can be subjected to its power.”

“Like back there in that cell when you hung at the edge of the inferno?”

Bakrish shuddered. “Yes.”

“But I still have to go through with this thing?”

“You must. It is the only way you will accomplish what you were sent here to do … and … you could not stop now, anyway. The ball is rolling down the hill. You don't even want to stop.”

Orne tested this against his own feelings, shrugged. “I
am
curious.”

“The thing is, Orne, you suspect us and fear us. These lead to hate. We saw that back there at the cell. But hate can be supremely dangerous to you in this present test. You…”

A scraping sound behind them brought Orne's attention around. Two oblate brothers deposited a heavy, square-armed chair on the stone floor facing the wall. They cast frightened glances at Orne, the wall, turned and scampered towards one of the heavy bronze doors.

“As I was saying, Orne, I am merely following orders here. I beg of you not to hate me, nor to hate anyone. You should not harbour hate during this test.”

“What frightened those two fellows who brought that chair?” asked Orne. He watched the pair scurry through their door, slam it behind them.

“They know the reputation of this test. The very fabric of our universe is woven into it. Many things can hang in the balance here. Infinite possibilities.”

Cautiously, Orne probed for Bakrish's motives. The priest obviously sensed the probe. He said: “I am afraid, Orne. Is that what you wanted to know?”

“Why are you afraid?”

“In
my
ordeal, this test proved nearly fatal. I had sequestered a core of hate. This place clutches at me even now.” He shivered.

Orne found the priest's fright unsteadying. He looked at the chair. It was squat, ugly. An inverted metallic bowl projected on an arm over the seat. “What's the chair?”

“You must sit down in it.”

Orne glanced at the grey wall, at Bakrish, back to the chair. There was tension here as though each heartbeat pumped pressure into the room. The surging and receding of his prescient sense increased, but he felt himself committed to this blind course.

“Sometimes we must go for the sake of going.”
The words rang in his memory. Who had said them?

He crossed to the chair, turned, sat down. In the act of sitting, the prescient sense of peril came to full surge, stayed. But there was no time for a change of heart. Metal bands leaped from concealed openings in the chair, pinned his arms, circled his chest and legs. Orne surged against them, twisting.

“Do not struggle,” warned Bakrish. “You cannot escape.”

Orne sank back.

“Please, Orne: you must not hate us. Your danger is magnified manyfold if you do. Hate could make you fail.”

“Dragging you down with me, eh?”

“Quite possibly,” muttered Bakrish. “One never quite escapes the consequences of one's hate.” He stepped behind the chair, lowered the inverted bowl over Orne's head. “If you move suddenly or try to jerk away the microfilament probes within this bowl will cause you great pain.”

Orne felt something touch his scalp, crawling, tickling. “What is this?”

“One of the great psi machines.” Bakrish adjusted something on the chair. Metal clicked. “Observe the wall. It can manifest your most latent urges. You can bring about miracles, call forth the dead, do many wonders. You may be on the brink of a deep mystical experience.”

Orne swallowed in a dry throat. “You mean if I wanted my father to appear here he would?”

“He is deceased?”

“Yes.”

“Then it could happen. But I must caution you. The things you see here will not be hallucination. And one thing more: If you are successful in calling forth the dead, you must realize that what you call forth will be that dead person, and yet not that dead person.”

The back of Orne's right arm itched. He longed to scratch it. “How can…”

“The paradox is like this: any living creature manifested here through your will must be invested with your psyche as well as its own. Its matter will impinge on your matter. All of your memories will be available to whatever living flesh you call forth.”

“But…”

“Hear me out, Orne. In some cases, your
creates
may fully understand their duality. Others will reject your half out of hand because they have not the capacity. Some may even lack sentience.”

Orne felt the fear driving Bakrish's words, sensed truth in them.
He believes this, anyway.
He said: “But why trap me here in this chair?”

“It's important that you do not run away from yourself.” Bakrish's hand fell on Orne's shoulder. “I must leave you now. May grace guide you.”

There was a swishing of robes as the priest strode away. Presently a door closed, its sound a hollow sharpness. Orne felt infinitely alone.

A faint humming became audible—distant bee sound. The booster in his neck tugged sharply, and he felt the flare of a psi field around him. The barrier wall blinked alive to the color of grass green, and immediately began to crawl with iridescent purple lines. They squirmed and writhed like countless glowing worms trapped in a viscid green aquarium.

Orne drew in a shuddering breath. Prescient fear hammered at him. The crawling purple lines held hypnotic fascination. Some appeared to waft out towards him. The shape of Diana's face glowed momentarily among them. He tried to hold the image, saw it melt away.

Because she's alive?
he wondered.

Shapeless deformities squirmed across the wall, coalesced abruptly into the outline of a
shriggar,
the saw-toothed lizard that Chargonian mothers invoked to frighten their children into obedience. The image took on more substance, developed yellow scale plates, stalk eyes.

Time suddenly slowed to a grinding, creeping pace within Orne. He thought back to his childhood on Chargon: terror memories.

But even then shriggar were extinct,
he told himself.

Memory persisted down a long corridor full of empty echoes that suggested gibbering insanity. Down … down … down … He remembered childish laughter, a kitchen, his mother. And there were his sisters screaming derisively. And he remembered himself cowering, ashamed. He couldn't have been more than three years old. He had come running into the house to babble that he had seen a
shriggar
 … in the deep shadows of the creek gully.

Laughing girls! Hateful little girls! “He thinks he saw a shriggar!” “Hush now, you two.”

On the green wall, the
shriggar
outline bulged outwards. A taloned foot extended. It stepped from the wall on to the stone floor: half again as tall as a man, stalked eyes swivelling right, left …

Orne jerked out of his reverie, felt painful throbbing as his head movement disturbed the microfilament probes.

There was scratching of talons on stone as the
shriggar
took three tentative steps away from the wall. Orne tasted the fear within himself, thought:
Some ancestor of mine was hunted by such a creature! The panic goes too deep!
It was a clear thought that flickered through his mind while every sense remained focused on the nightmare lizard.

Its yellow scales rasped with every breath it took. The narrow, birdlike head twisted to one side, lowered. Its beak mouth opened to reveal a forked tongue and saw teeth.

Primordial instinct pressed Orne back in his chair. He smelled the stink of the creature: sickly sweet with overtones of sour cheese.

The
shriggar
bobbed its head, coughed:
“Chunk!”
Its stalk eyes moved, centred on Orne. One taloned foot lifted and it plunged into motion towards the figure trapped in the chair. Its high-stepping lope stopped about four metres away, and the lizard cocked its head to one side while it examined Orne.

He stared up at it, his only bodily sensation a vague awareness of tightness across chest and stomach. The beast stink was almost overpowering.

Behind the
shriggar,
the green wall continued to wriggle with iridescent purple lines. It was a background blur on Orne's eyes. The lizard moved closer, and he smelled a draught of breath as fetid as swamp ooze.

No matter what Bakrish said, this has to be hallucination,
he told himself.
Shriggar have been extinct for centuries.
But another thought blinked at him:
The priests could have bred zoo specimens to maintain the species. How does anyone know what's been done here in the name of religion?

The
shriggar
cocked its head to the other side.

At the green wall, lines solidified. Two children dressed in scanty sun aprons skipped out on to the stone floor. Their footsteps echoed, and childish giggling echoed in the vast emptiness. One child appeared to be about five years old, the other slightly older—possibly eight. The older child carried a small bucket with a toy shovel protruding from it. They stopped, looked around, confused.

The
shriggar
turned its head, bent its stalk eyes towards them. It swivelled its body back towards the wall, poised one foot, lunged into its high-stepping lope.

The youngest child looked up, squealed.

The
shriggar
increased its speed.

Shocked, Orne recognized the children: his two sisters, the ones who had laughed at his fearful cries on that long ago day. It was as though he had brought this incident to life for the sole purpose of venting his hate, inflicting on those children the thing they had derided.