The Eyes of Heisenberg (18 page)

Authors: Frank Herbert

BOOK: The Eyes of Heisenberg

3.61Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

But there had to be a breaking point. The Cyborgs had seen this, and in their emotionless manner had missed the real consequences.

The Optimen had themselves hemmed in with euphemisms. They had pharmacists, not doctors, because doctors meant sickness and injury, and that equaled the unthinkable. They had only their pharmacy and its countless outlets never more than a few steps from any Optiman. They never left Central and its elaborate safeguards. They existed as perpetual adolescents in their nursery prison.

“So you won't speak,” Calapine said.

“Wait,” Svengaard said as her hand moved toward the buttons beneath him. “When you've killed all the viables and only you remain, when you see yourselves dying one by one, what then?”

“How dare you?” she said. “You think to question an Optiman whose experience of life makes yours no more than that!” She snapped her fingers.

He looked at her bruised nose, the blood.

“Optiman,” Svengaard said. “A Sterrie whose constitution will accept the enzyme adjustment for infinite life â¦ until destruction comes from within. I think you want to die.”

Calapine drew herself up, glared at him. As she did, she became aware of a sudden odd silence in the hall. She swept a glance around her, saw intent watchfulness in every eye focused upon her. Realization came slowly.
They see the blood on my face.

“You had infinite life,” Svengaard said. “Does that make you necessarily more brilliant, more intelligent? No. You merely lived longer, had more time for experience and education. Very likely, most of you are educated beyond your intelligence, else you'd have seen long ago that this moment
was inevitableâthe delicate balance destroyed, all of you dying.”

Calapine took a step backward. His words were like painful knives burning into her nerves.

“Look at you!” Svengaard said. “All of you sick. What does your precious pharmacy do? I know without being told: It prescribes wider and wider variant prescriptions, more frequent dosages. It's trying to check the oscillations because that's how it's programmed. It'll go on trying as long as you permit it, but it won't save you.”

Someone screamed behind her, “Silence him!”

The cry was taken up around the hall, a deafening chant, foot stamping, hands pounding, “Si-lence him! Si-lence him! Si-lence him!”

Calapine pressed her hands to her ears. She could still feel the chant through her skin. And now she saw Optimen start down off the benches toward the prisoners. She knew bloody violence was only a heartbeat away.

They stopped.

She couldn't understand why, and dropped her hands away from her ears. Screams rained down on her. The names of half-forgotten dieties were invoked. Eyes stared at something on the floor at the head of the hall.

Calapine whirled, saw Nourse writhing there, foamy spittle around his mouth. His skin was a mottled reddish purple and yellow. Clawed hands reached out, scraped the floor.

“Do something!” Svengaard shouted. “He's dying!” Even as he shouted, he felt the strangeness of his words.
Do something!?
His medical training surfaced and spoke no matter what happened.

Calapine backed away, put out her hands in a warding gesture as old as witchcraft. Schruille leaped up, stood on the bench where he'd been sitting. His mouth moved soundlessly.

“Calapine,” Svengaard said, “if you won't help him, release me so I can do it.”

She leaped to obey, filled with gratitude that she could give this hideous responsibility to another.

The restraining shells fell away at her touch. Svengaard
leaped down, almost fell. His legs and arms tingled from the long confinement. He limped toward Nourse, his eyes and mind working as he moved.
Mottled yellow in the skinâmost probably an immune reaction to pantothenic acid and a failure of adrenalin suppression.

The red triangle of a pharmacy outlet glowed on the wall at his left above the benches. Svengaard stooped, picked up Nourse's writhing form, began climbing toward the symbol. The man was a sudden death weight in his arms, no movement except a shallow lifting of the breast.

Optimen fell back from him as though he carried plague. Abruptly, someone above him shouted, “Let me out!”

The mob turned away. Feet pounded on the plasmeld. They jammed up at the exits, clawed and climbed over one another. There were screams, curses, hoarse shouts. It was like a cattle pen with a predator loose in the midst of the animals.

Part of Svengaard's awareness registered on a woman at his right. He passed her. She lay stretched across two banks of seats, her back at an odd angle, mouth gaping, eyes staring, blood on her arms and neck. There was no sign of breath. He climbed past a man who dragged himself up the tiered benches, one leg useless, his eyes intent on an exit sign and a doorway which appeared to be filled with writhing shapes.

Svengaard's arms ached from his load. He stumbled, almost fell up the last two steps as he eased Nourse to the floor beside the pharmacy outlet.

There were voices down behind him nowâDurant and Boumour shouting to be released.

Later,
Svengaard thought. He put his hand to the door control on the pharmacy outlet. The doors refused to open.
Of
course
, he thought.
I'm not an Optiman.
He lifted Nourse, put one of the Optiman's hands to the control. The doors slid aside. Behind them lay what appeared to be the standard presentation of a priority rackâpyrimidines, aneurin â¦

Aneurin and inositol, he thought. Got to counteract the immune reaction.

A familiar flow-analysis board occupied the right side with a gap for insertion of an arm and the usual vampire needles protruding from their gauges. Svengaard tripped the keys on the master flow gauge, opened the panel. He traced back the aneurin and inositol feeders, immobilized the others, thrust Nourse's arm beneath the needles. They found veins, dipped into flesh. Gauges kicked over.

Svengaard pinched off the return line to stop feedback. Again, the gauges kicked over.

Gently, Svengaard disengaged Nourse's arm from the needles, stretched him on the floor. His face was now a uniform pale white, but his breathing had deepened. His eyelids flickered. His flesh felt cold, clammy.

Shock, Svengaard thought. He removed his own jacket, put it around Svengaard, began massaging the arms to restore circulation.

Calapine came into view on his right, sat down at Nourse's head. Her hands were clasped tightly together, knuckles white. There was an odd clarity in her face, the eyes with a look of staring into distances. She felt she had come a much farther distance than up from the floor of the hall, drawn by memories that would not be denied. She knew she had gone through madness into an oddly detached sanity.

The red ball of the Survey Globe caught her eye, the egg of enormous power that did her bidding even now. She thought about Nourse, her many-times playmate. Playmate and toys.

“Will he die?” she asked. She turned to watch Svengaard.

“Not immediately,” Svengaard said. “But that final burst of hysteria â¦ he's done irreparable damage to his system.”

He grew aware that there were only muted moans and a very few controlled commands in the hall now. Some of the acolytes had rallied to help.

“I released Boumour and the Durants and sent a plea for more â¦ medical help,” Calapine said. “There are a number of â¦ dead â¦ many injured.”

Dead, she thought. What an odd word to apply to an Optiman. Dead â¦ dead â¦ dead â¦

She felt then how necessity had forced her into a new kind of living awareness, a new rhythm. It had happened down there in a burst of memories that trailed through forty thousand years. None of it escaped herânot a moment of kindness nor of brutality. She remembered all the Max All-goods, Seatac â¦ every lover, every toy â¦ Nourse.

Svengaard glanced around at a shuffling sound, saw Boumour approaching with a woman limp in his arms. There was a blue bruise across her cheek and jaw. Her arms hung like sticks.

“Is this pharmacy outlet available?” Boumour asked. His voice held that chilled Cyborg quality, but there was shock in his eyes and a touch of horror.

“You'll have to operate the board manually,” Svengaard said. “I keyed out the demand system, jammed the feedback.”

Boumour stepped heavily around him with the woman. How fragile she looked. A vein pulsed thickly at her neck.

“I must concoct a muscle relaxant until we can get her to a hospital,” Boumour said. “She broke her own armsâcontramuscular strain.”

Calapine recognized the face, remembered they had disputed mildly about a man onceâabout a playmate.

Svengaard moved to Nourse's right arm, continued massaging. The move brought the floor of the hall into view and the tumbril. Glisson sat impassively armless in his restraining shell. Lizbeth lay at one side with Harvey kneeling beside her.

“Mrs. Durant!” Svengaard said, remembering his obligation.

“She's all right,” Boumour said. “Immobilization for the past few hours was the best thing that could've happened to her.”

Best thing!
Svengaard thought
. Durant was right: These Cyborgs are as insensitive as machines.

“Si-lence him,” Nourse whispered.

Svengaard looked down at the pale face, saw the broken veins in the cheeks, the sagging, unresponsive flesh. Nourse's eyelids flickered open.

“Leave him to me,” Calapine said.

Nourse moved his head, tried to look at her. He blinked, having obvious trouble focusing. His eyes began to water.

Calapine lifted his head, slid under him until he rested on her lap. She began stroking his brow.

“He used to like this,” she said. “Go help the others, Doctor.”

“Cal,” Nourse said. “Oh, Cal â¦ I â¦ hurt.”

“W
hy do you help them?” Glisson asked. “I don't understand you, Boumour. Your actions aren't logical. What use is it to help them?”

He looked up through the open segment of the Survey Globe at Calapine sitting alone on the dais of the Tuyere. The lights of the interior played a slow rhythm across her face. A glowing pyramid of projected binaries danced on the air in front of her.

Glisson had been released from his shell of restraint, but he still sat on the tumbril, his arm connections dangling empty. A medicouch had been brought in for Lizbeth Durant. She lay on it with Harvey seated beside her. Boumour stood with his back to Glisson, looking up into the globe. His fingers moved nervously, clenching, opening. There was a streak of dried blood down his right sleeve. The elfin face held a look of puzzlement.

Svengaard came in from behind the globe, a slowly moving figure in the red shadows. Abruptly, the hall glared with light. The main globes had gone on automatically as darkness fell outside. Svengaard stopped to check Lizbeth, patted Harvey's shoulder. “She will be all right. She's strong.”

Lizbeth's eyes followed him as he moved around to look into the Survey Globe. Svengaard's shoulders sagged with
fatigue, but there was a look of elation in his face. He was a man who'd found himself.

“Calapine,” Svengaard said, “that was the last of them going out to hospitals.”

“I see it,” she said. She looked up at the scanners, every one lighted. Somewhat more than half of the Optimen were under restraintâmad. Thousands had died. More thousands lay sorely injured. Those who remained watched their globe. She sighed, wondering at their thoughts, wondering how they faced the fact that all had fallen from the tight wire of immortality. Her own emotions confused her. There was an odd feeling of relief in her breast.

“What of Schruille?” she asked.

“Crushed at a door,” Svengaard said. “He's â¦ dead.” She sighed. “And Nourse?”

“Responding to treatment.”

“Don't you understand what's happened to you?” Glisson demanded. His eyes glittered as he stared up at Calapine.

Calapine looked down at him, spoke clearly, “We've undergone an emotional stress that has altered the delicate balance of our metabolism,” she said. “You tricked us into it. The evidence is quite clearâthere's no turning back.”

“Then you understand,” Glisson said. “Any attempt to force your systems back into the old forms will result in boredom and a gradual descent into apathy.”

Calapine smiled. “Yes, Glisson. We'd not want that. We've been addicted to a new kind of â¦ aliveness that we didn't know existed.”

“Then you do understand,” Glisson said and there was a grudging quality to his voice.

“We broke the rhythm of life,” Calapine said. “All life is immersed in rhythm, but we got out of step. I suppose that was the
outside
interference in those embryosârhythm asserting itself.”

“Well then,” Glisson said, “the sooner you can turn things over to us, the sooner things will settle down intoâ”

“To you?” Calapine asked scornfully. She looked out into the quick contrasts of the hall's glaring light. How
black and white it all was. “I'd sooner condemn us all,” she said.

“But you're dying!”

“So are you,” Calapine said.

Svengaard swallowed. He could see that the old animosities would not be suppressed easily. And he wondered at himself, a second-rater surgeon who had suddenly found himself as a doctor, ministering to people who needed him. Durant had seen
that
âthe need to be needed.

“I may have a plan we could accept, Calapine,” Svengaard said.

“To you we will listen,” Calapine said, and there was affection in her voice. She studied Svengaard as he searched for words, remembering that this man had saved the lives of Nourse and many others.

We made no plans for the unthinkable, she thought, Is it possible that this nobody who was once a target for kindly sneers can save us?
She dared not let herself hope.

“The Cyborgs have techniques for bringing the emotions into a more or less manageable stasis,” Svengaard said. “Once that's done, I believe I know a way to dampen the enzymic oscillations in most of you.”

Calapine swallowed. The scanner-eye lights above her began to flash as the watchers signaled for her to let them into the communications channels. They had questions, of course. She had questions of her own, but she didn't know that she could speak them. She caught a reflection of her own face in one of the prisms, was reminded of the look in Lizbeth's eyes as the woman had pleaded from the tumbril.

“I can't promise infinite life,” Svengaard said, “but I believe many of you can have many more thousands of years.”

“Why should we agree to help them?” Glisson demanded. There was a measuring quality in his voice, a hint of the querulous.

“You're failures, too!” Svengaard said. “Can't you see that?” He realized he had shouted with the full power of his disillusionment.

“Don't shout at me!” Glisson snapped.

So they do have emotions,
Svengaard thought.
Pride â¦ anger â¦

“Are you still suffering under the delusion that you're in control of this situation?” Svengaard asked. He pointed to Calapine. “That one woman up there could still exterminate every non-Optiman on earth.”

“Listen to him, you Cyborg fool,” Calapine said.

“Let's not be too free with that word âfool',” Svengaard said. He stared up at Calapine.

“Watch your tongue, Svengaard,” Calapine said. “Our patience is not infinite.”

“Nor is your gratitude, eh?” Svengaard said.

A bitter smile touched her mouth. “We were talking about survival,” she said.

Svengaard sighed. He wondered then if the patterns of thought conditioned by the illusion of infinite life could ever be truly broken. She had spoken there like the old Tuyere. But her resiliency had surprised him before.

The outburst had touched Harvey's fears for Lizbeth. He glared at Svengaard and Glisson, tried to control his terror and rage. This hall awed him with its immensity and its remembered bedlam. The globe towered over him, a monstrous force that could crush them.

“Survival, then,” Svengaard said.

“Let us understand each other,” Calapine said. “There are those among us who will say that your help was merely our due. You are still our captives. There are those who'll demand you submit and reveal your entire Underground to us.”

“Yes, let us understand each other,” Svengaard said. “Who are your prisoners? Myself, a person who was not a member of the Underground and knows little about it. You have Glisson, who knows more, but assuredly not all. You have Boumour, one of your escaped
pharmacists,
who knows even less than Glisson. You have the Durants, whose knowledge probably goes little beyond their own cell group. What will you gain even if you milk us dry?”

“Your plan to save us,” Calapine said.

“My plan requires cooperation, not coercion,” Svengaard said.

“And it will only give us a continuation, not restore us to our original condition, is that it?” Calapine asked.

“You should welcome that,” Svengaard said. “It would give you a chance to mature, become useful.” He waved a hand to indicate their surroundings “You've frozen yourselves in immaturity here! You've played with toys! I'm offering you a chance to live!”

Is that it?
Calapine wondered.
Is this new aliveness a by-product of the knowledge that we must die?

“I'm not at all sure we'll cooperate,” Glisson said.

Harvey had had enough. He leaped to his feet, glared at Glisson. “You want the human race to die, you robot! You! You're another dead end!”

“Prattle!” Glisson said.

“Listen,” Calapine said. She began sampling the communications channels. Bits of sentences poured out into the hall:

“We can restore enzymic balance with our own resources!” â¦ “Eliminate these creatures!” â¦ “What's his plan? What's his plan?” â¦ “Begin the sterilization!” â¦ “ â¦ his plan?” â¦ “How long do we have it â¦” â¦ “There's no doubt we can â¦”

Calapine silenced the voices with a flick of a switch. “It will be put to a vote,” she said. “I remind you of that.”

“You will die, and soon, if we don't cooperate,” Glisson said. “I want that fully understood.”

“You know Svengaard's plan?” Calapine asked.

“His thought patterns are transparent,” Glisson said.

“I think not,” Calapine said. “I saw him work on Nourse. He manipulated a dispensary to produce a dangerous overdose of aneurin and inostol. Remembering that, I ask myself how many of us will die in the attempt to arrest this process we can all feel within ourselves? Would I have risked such an overdose upon myself? How does this relate to the excitement we feel? Will any of us, having tasted excitement, wish to sink back into a non-emotional â¦
boredom?” She looked at Svengaard. “These are some of my questions.”

“I know his plan,” Glisson sneered. “Quell your emotions and implant an enzymic dispensary within each of you. Make Cyborgs of you.” A tight grin etched a line of teeth in Glisson's face. “It's your only hope. Accepting it, you will have lost to us at last.”

Calapine glared down at him, shocked.

Harvey was caught by the carping meanness in Glisson's voice. His own schism from the Underground had always known the Cyborgs were too calculating and narrow-minded to be trusted with purely human decisions, but he had never before seen the fact so clearly demonstrated.

“Is that your plan, Svengaard?” Calapine demanded.

Harvey jumped up. “No! That's not his plan!”

Svengaard nodded to himself.
Of course! A fellow human, and a father would know.

“You pretend to know what I, a Cyborg, do not know?” Glisson asked.

Svengaard looked at Harvey with raised eyebrows.

“Embryos,” Harvey said.

Svengaard nodded, looked up at Calapine. “I propose to keep you continually implanted with living embryos,” he said. “Living monitors that will make you adjust to your own needs. You will regain your emotions, your â¦ zest for life, this excitement you prize.”

“You propose to make of us living
vats for embryos?”
Calapine asked, wonder in her voice.

“The gestation process can be delayed for hundreds of years,” Svengaard said. “With proper hormone adjustment, this can be applied even to men. Caesarian delivery, of course, but it need not be painful â¦ or frequent.”

Calapine weighed his words, wondering why she felt no disgust at the suggestion. Once she had felt disgust at the realization that Lizbeth Durant carried an embryo within her, but Calapine realized now her disgust had been compounded of jealousy. Not all the Optimen would accept this, she knew. Some would hope for a return to the old ways. She looked up at the globe's telltales. No one had escaped
the poisoning excitement, though. They would have to understand that everyone was going to die â¦ sooner or later. Choice of time was all they had.

We didn't have immortality after all, she thought, only the illusion. We had that, though â¦ for eons.

“Calapine!” Glisson said. “You're not going to accept thisâthis foolish proposal?”

The mechanical man is outraged at a living solution,
she thought. She said, “Boumour, what do you say?”

“Yes,” Glisson said, “speak up, Boumour. Point out the illogicality of this â¦
proposal.”

Boumour turned, studied Glisson, glanced at Svengaard, at the Durants, stared up at Calapine. There was a look of secret wisdom in Boumour's pinched face. “I can still remember â¦ how it was,” he said. “I â¦ think it was better â¦ before I â¦ was changed.”

“Boumour!” Glisson said.

Hit him in his pride,
Svengaard thought.

Glisson glared up at Calapine with mechanical intensity. “It's not yet determined that we'll help you!”

“Who needs you?” Svengaard asked. “You've no monopoly on your techniques. You'd save a little time and trouble, that's all. We can find embryos.”

Glisson stared from one to the other. “But this isn't the way it was computed! You're not supposed to help them!”

The Cyborg fell silent, eyes glassy.

“
Doctor
Svengaard,” Calapine said, “could you give us elite, viable embryos such as the Durants'? You saw the arginine intrusion. Nourse believes this possible.”

Other books

Offside by M. G. Higgins

A Place Called Wiregrass by Michael Morris

Land of a Thousand Dreams by BJ Hoff

2 Bodies for the Price of 1 by Stephanie Bond

Family Linen by Lee Smith

Boogaloo On 2nd Avenue by Mark Kurlansky

Absolutely True Lies by Rachel Stuhler

Once More With Feeling by Emilie Richards

Raquel Byrnes by Whispers on Shadow Bay

Quiver (a Suspenseful Romance Novel) by Beaumont, Emilia