The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert (47 page)

“After you've pried and tested us to your satisfaction, yes. You said it yourself, you know: Faith is the uncensored will. Doubt is a censor we'd rather you didn't have.”

Orne nodded, and a new thought hit him. “Do you have enough faith in me to let me return to Marak and make over the I–A along lines you'd approve?”

The Abbod shook his head. “Faith in you, we have that. But your I–A has gone too far along the road to power. You understand, my son, that a bureau is like an individual. It will fight for survival. It will seek power. Your I–A has a personality made up of all its parts. Some such as yourself we would trust. Others … I'm afraid not. No. Before we permit you to leave here, the I–A will be dead, and other bureaus will be feeding on the remains.”

Orne stared at the ancient face. Presently, he said: “I guess I failed them.”

“Perhaps not. Your original purpose is still intact. Peace as a self-discipline can be more gratifying than any other kind. It grows more slowly, to be sure, but it's confident growth that counts.”

Orne still tasted a certain bitterness. “You seem pretty confident that I'll join you.”

“You've already passed that decision,” murmured the Abbod. “When you asked to return and make over the I–A.”

This time Orne's chuckle was aimed at himself. “Know me pretty well, don't you.”

“We know your purpose, your religion, as it were. You share our faith in humankind. When we learned that, we knew you were already one of us.” The Abbod smiled, and the old face seemed to light up. “There's much ground to prepare, and we have need of many farmers.”

“Yeah, I'm a hayseed, all right,” said Orne.

“After you have pried into Amel to your heart's content, come back and talk to me. I know there's a certain young lady awaiting you on Marak. Perhaps we could discuss your returning to another bureau—Rediscovery and Re-education.”

“R & R! Those bumbleheads! They're the…”

“You have an interesting conditioned reaction there,” said the Abbod. “For now I will only remind you that any bureau is the sum of its parts.”

*   *   *

In his office on Marak, Tyler Gemine, director of Rediscovery & Re-education, faced Orne across an immense blackwood desk. Behind Gemine a wide window looked out on the packed office buildings of Marak's central government quarter. The director was a rounded outline against the window, a fat and genial surface with smiling mouth and hard eyes. Frown wrinkles creased his forehead.

The office fitted Gemine. On the surface it seemed built for comfort: soft chairs, thick carpet, unobtrusive lighting. But three walls held file cases geared to a remote search control at the desk. Six auto-secretaries flanked the desk.

Sitting opposite the director, Orne still wore his aqua toga from Amel. R & R security police had rushed him here from the spaceport, giving him no time to change.

“All of this haste must appear unseemly to you, Mr. Orne,” said Gemine. “Separating you from your fiancée at the spaceport like that. Rude of us.” The hard eyes bored into Orne.

Orne hid his amusement under a mask of concern. “I know you must have good reasons, sir.”

Gemine leaned back. “Indeed we do.” He pulled a stack of papers towards him on the desk, squared them. “Before the I–A took you away from us, Mr. Orne, you were an agent of the R & R.”

“Yes, sir. They drafted me.”

“That unfortunate business on Hamal!”

“There was nothing I could do, sir.”

“No blame attaches to you, Mr. Orne. But you understand that we do have some curiosity about you now that we have superseded the I–A.”

“You want to know where my loyalties are?”

“Precisely.”

“The R & R's purpose is still my purpose, sir.”

“Good! Good!” Gemine patted the stack of papers in front of him. “Ahhh, this mission to Amel. What about that?”

“Why was I sent?”

Gemine's stare was cold and measuring. “Yes.”

“It was very simple. The I–A executive staff heard about the move to do away with their department. They had reason to believe the priests were a prime factor in the move. I was sent to Amel to see if they could be circumvented.”

“And you failed.” It was a flat statement.

“Sir, I beg to remind you that I once volunteered for the R & R. I was one of your agents before the I–A took me away from you.” He managed a tight smile. “And it didn't take a giant brain to realize that you would take over the I–A's functions once they were out of the way.”

Gemine's eyes clouded with thought. He cleared his throat. “What about this psi thing? In the final audit of I–A we came across this odd department. Unfortunately…” Gemine studied a paper in front of him. “… the director, one Ag Emolirdo, has disappeared. There were records, though, showing that you were trained by him before your recent … ah, mission.”

So Agony took it on the lam,
thought Orne.
Gone home to report, no doubt.
He said: “It was a questionable field. Oriented along ESP lines.” (And he thought:
That'll fit this little hack's executive logic!
) “They were looking for rules to explain certain non-chance phenomena,” he went on. “Their results were debatable.”

Gemine restacked the papers in front of him. “As I suspected. Well … we can go into it in more detail later. I confess it sounded extremely far-fetched in outline. Typical of I–A wastefulness.” He leaned back, steepled his hands in front of him. “No, Mr. Orne, as you know, we are taking over the key functions of the I–A. But we're running into stupid resistance. That's where I've hoped you could come in.”

“My record with R & R is clear, sir.”

Gemine swivelled his chair, looked out of the window at Marak's executive warren. “You know both the R & R and the I–A, Mr. Orne. It's in my mind to attach you to my office—as a special executive assistant. Your duties would be to facilitate absorption of the I–A.” He turned back to look at Orne. “What would you say to that?”

Orne hesitated just the right length of time. “I'd … I'd consider that an honor, sir.”

“Excellent!” Gemine bent forward. “You'll want to get situated first, of course.” His manner became more confidential. “You'll be getting married, I understand. Take what time you need. Say, a month.”

“That's very kind of you, sir.”

“Not at all. I want you to be happy with us.” He wet his lips with his tongue. “Miss Bullone may not have had the time to tell you … about her father, that is. He is no longer our high commissioner. Lost out in the recent shake-up. A pity after so many years of excellent service.”

“Has he stayed on in the Assembly?”

“Oh, yes. He's still an important member. Minority leader.” Gemine stared at Orne. “We'd like to have you act—unofficially, you understand—as a sort of liaison with Mr. Bullone.”

“I'm sure something could be worked out, sir.”

Gemine smiled, relaxed. He nodded.

Orne said: “What about my staff, sir?”

“Staff?”

“I'll need assistants of my own if I'm to do this job correctly.”

Sudden tension filled the room. “Anyone special in mind?”

Gently,
thought Orne.
This is the delicate part.
He said: “All the time I was in the I–A, I was directly under one man. When he said frog, I jumped. Wherever he pointed, that's where I went.”

“Ahhh … Mr. Umbo Stetson.”

“I see you know him.”

“Know him? He's a major source of resistance!”

“That'd make it even more pleasant,” said Orne.

Gemine chortled. He radiated gleeful sadism. “Take him! Any authority you need to whip him into line, it's yours!”

Orne matched Gemine's smile. “This is going to be even more fun than I thought.”

Gemine arose. “I'll have an office fitted for you next to mine, Lewis. Want everything cosy and neat.” He nodded. “I think this is going to work out very well. Indeed I do.”

Orne stood up. “I hope I'll live up to all your expectations, sir.”

“You already are, my boy! You know what's expected of you, and you know how to deliver.” He gave Orne a knowing smile. “And I won't soon forget your
failure
on Amel.” He chortled. “Eh?”

From the secret report: Lewis Orne to the Halmyrach Abbod:

Gemine was every bit as easy as you said he would be. He has already given me Stetson, and through Stetson I'll bring in the others. This is fallow ground, indeed. Needs the ministrations of a trained farmer.

It was fascinating to talk to Gemine. There was the pattern just as you anticipated it. The weak was absorbing the strong, completely unaware that the strong could eat it up from within. But this time, only a selective seed of the strong.

Stetson raised no objections at all. The idea he found particularly intriguing was this:
We must find a way of preventing war without making war impossible.
For myself, I find this no paradox. In a universe without limits, life must grow through self-imposed limits. Every teaching turns on its
discipline.
And what is a discipline but a limit self-imposed for the benefits derived? My new
matrix
needs no distortion to encompass this concept.

Out of all this, one thought keeps coming back to me. I will mention it this once. It occurs to me that the most effective government is that one where the governed do not know they are being governed, but believe they govern themselves.

 

Your obed't farmer,

Lewis Orne.

 

EGG AND ASHES

For a week now the Siukurnin had hung above the hunters' camp disguised as a pine cone. One of the ropes holding their tent fly passed within inches of it, and when the cold evening wind blew, as it was doing now, the rope hummed. This created a masking harmonic that had to be filtered out (along with many other “noises”) before the Siukurnin could concentrate on the vibrations coming from the figures around the fire.

Already imprinted and stored in the Siukurnin's subcellular structure was a long catalogue of light-reflected
shapes
and vibration meanings from this place and the other places. It knew that when one of the carbon life-forms moved to the nearby flowing liquid, the creature was going to the
water.
(And that was one of the vibrations for the great heaving expanse of liquid beyond the mountains to the east.) And it knew that when one of these creatures became dormant for the night (low vibration period), that was
sleep.

Oh, there were so
many
vibration meanings.

The Siukurnin tried reproducing the vibrations for
sleep
and
water
at a subaural level, gloried in its growing mastery of these subtleties.

An aroma of coffee and broiled meat arose from the fire. The Siukurnin listened to these for a moment, savoring the full roundness of the vibration spectrum in this enchanting place. As yet it had not thought of the necessity for a non-
chilitigish
vibration to refer to itself.

(You must understand that when it thought of itself at this stage [which was seldom], it did not think: “I am a Siukurnin.” In the first place a natural mechanism inhibited prolonged introspection. In the second place, “Siukurnin” is a make-do vibration—a limited auditory approach to the actual “term” that is used only in communicating with creatures who do not hear into the visual spectrum, and who are not yet able to detect the
chilitigish
spectrum. Since this is only a start at communication, it's perfectly all right for you to think of this creature as a “Siukurnin,” but you should keep in mind that there's a limitation.)

*   *   *

Before coming to this hunters' camp, the Siukurnin had spent two weeks as a false rivet head in the wardroom of a long gray warship. It had left the warship as a coating of “film” on a garbage container, and had arrived here in the pine glade as a length of “wire” in the trunk lid of a used car that had been sold to one of the hunters.

Between the garbage container and the used car there had been several other shape-aliases, all characterized by solid color and smoothness and all difficult to reproduce. The Siukurnin looked on its present pine cone form almost as a rest.

Once started on its repertoire of new vibration meanings, the Siukurnin was like a
lilim
with a new
arabeg,
or, as you might say, like a child with a new toy. Presently, it recalled the period on the warship. “Now hear this! Now hear this!” it chanted to itself at a level too low to be detected by the figures beneath it.

Darkness folded over the camp in the pine trees and the fire flickered low. The upright creatures retired into their tent. (To
sleep,
you understand.) Among these creatures was one identified by the primitive (non-
chilitigish
) vibration: “Sam.”

Now the Siukurnin listened to the soughing of the wind through the branches around it, to the scrabbling of night creatures—and once there was a figurative scream of skunk odor nearby. Much later, the Siukurnin defied its inhibitions, tried to recall a time before the awakening at the warship. Only faint fog memory came: a sensation of swimming upward through dark
water.

The effort of memory brought the inhibition mechanism into action. Destructive hunger gnawed at the Siukurnin. It sensed changes going on within its structure—a maturation of sorts.

To put down the hunger, the Siukurnin imagined itself as one of the flying creatures to be
seen
in the delightful harmonics of sky above it—soaring … soaring …

But this, too, became disturbing because its self-image insisted on resolving into a giant red-gold winged thing unfamiliar to these skies (but feeling disquietingly familiar to the Siukurnin).