The Green Brain (22 page)

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Authors: Frank Herbert

BOOK: The Green Brain
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Even my father!
Joao thought.
They copy even my father!
He brought the pistol up, its muzzle pointing at his heart. He felt no rage, only an enormous sorrow as he pulled the trigger.
Darkness slammed him.
T
here was a dream of being carried, a dream of tears and shouting, a dream of violent protests and defiance and rejection.
Joao awoke to yellow-orange light and the figure that could not be his father bending over him, thrusting a hand out, saying, “Then examine my hand if you don't believe!”
It cannot be my father, Joao thought. I am dead … he is dead. They've copied him … mimicry, nothing more.
Numbing shock invaded Joao's awareness then.
How am I here?
he wondered. His mind searched back through memories and he saw himself killing Rhin with Vierho's old blunderbuss, then turning the weapon on himself.
Something moved behind the figure that couldn't be his father. Joao's attention jerked that way, saw a giant face at least two meters tall. It was a baleful face in the strange light, eyes brilliant and glaring … . enormous eyes with pupils within pupils. The face turned and Joao
saw that it could be no more than two centimeters thick. Again, the face turned. The strange eyes focused toward Joao's feet.
Joao forced himself to look down, lifting his head, then falling back with a violent trembling. Where his feet should have been he'd seen a foaming green cocoon. Joao lifted his left hand, remembering that it had been broken, but the arm came up without pain and he saw that his skin shared the green tones of that repellent cocoon.
“Examine my hand!” ordered the old-man figure beside him. “I command it!”
“He is not quite awake.”
It was a booming voice, resonant, shaking the air all around them, and it seemed to Joao that the voice came from somewhere beneath that giant face.
What nightmare is this?
Joao asked himself.
Am I in hell?
With an abrupt, violent motion, Joao reached up, clutched the proffered hand.
It felt warm … human.
Tears flooded Joao's eyes. He shook his head to clear them, remembered … somewhere … doing that same thing. But there were more pressing matters than memories. The hand felt real … his tears felt real.
“How can this be?” he whispered.
“Joao, my son,” said his father's voice.
Joao peered up at the familiar face. It was his father and no mistaking, down to the very last feature. “But … your heart,” Joao said.
“My pump,” the old man said. “Look.” He pulled his hand away, turned to display where the back of his suit had been cut away. Its edges appeared to be held by some gummy substance. An oily yellow surface pulsed between those fabric edges.
Joao saw the hair-fine scale lines, the multiple shapes. He recoiled.
So it was a copy, another of their tricks.
The old man turned back to face him, and Joao couldn't avoid the youthful look of glee in the eyes. They weren't faceted, those eyes.
“The old pump failed and they gave me a new one,” his father said. “It shares my blood and lives off me. It'll give me a few more useful years. What do you think our medical men will say about that?”
“It's really you,” Joao gasped.
“All except the pump,” the old man said. “But you, you stupid fool! What a mess you made of yourself and that poor woman.”
“Rhin,” Joao whispered.
“Blew out your hearts and parts of your lungs,” his father said. “And you fell right into the middle of all that corrosive poison you'd sprayed all over the landscape. They not only had to give the two of you new hearts, but whole new blood systems!”
Joao lifted his hands, stared at the green skin. He felt dazzled by it and unable to escape a dream quality in his surroundings.
“They know medical tricks we haven't even imagined,” his father said. “I haven't been this excited since I was a boy. I can hardly wait to get back and … Joao! What is it?”
Joao thrust himself up, glared at the old man. “We're not human anymore! We're not human if … We're not human!”
“Oh, be still,” his father ordered.
“If this is … They're in control!” Joao protested. He forced his gaze onto the giant face behind his father. “They'll
rule
us!”
He sank back, gasping.
“We'll be their slaves,” Joao whispered.
“Such foolishness,” the drum-voice rumbled.
“He always was melodramatic,” the elder Martinho said. “Look at the mess he made of things out there on the river. Of course,
you
had a hand in that. If you'd only listened to me, trusted me.”
“Now we have a hostage,” the Brain rumbled. “Now we can afford to trust you.”
“You've had a hostage ever since you put this pump in me,” the old man said.
“I didn't understand the price you put on the individual unit,” the Brain said. “After all,
we'll
spend almost any unit to save the hive.”
“Not a queen,” the old man said. “You won't spend a queen. And how about yourself? Would you spend yourself?”
“Unthinkable,” the Brain muttered.
Slowly, Joao turned his head, looked beneath the giant face to where the voice originated. He saw a white mass about four meters across, a pulsing yellow sac protruding from it. Wingless insects crawled over it, into fissures along its surface and along the stone floor of the cave underneath. The face reared up from that mass supported by dozens of round stalks. Their scaled surfaces betrayed their nature.
The reality of the situation began to penetrate Joao's shock.
“Rhin?” he whispered.
“Your mate is safe,” the Brain rumbled. “Changed like yourself, but safe.”
Joao continued to stare at the white mass on the cave floor. He saw that the voice issued from the pulsing yellow sac.
“Your attention
is
drawn to our way of answering your threat to us,” the Brain said. “This is our brain. It
is vulnerable, yet strong … just as your brain.”
Joao fought down a shiver of revulsion.
“Tell me,” the Brain said, “how you define slave.”
“I'm a slave now,” Joao whispered. “I'm in bondage to you. I must obey you or you can kill me.”
“But you tried to kill yourself,” the Brain said.
The thought unfolded and unfolded in Joao's awareness.
“A slave is one who must produce wealth for another,” the Brain said. “There is only one true wealth in all the universe. I have given you some of it. I have given your father and your mate some of it. And your friends. This wealth is living time. Time. Are we slaves because we have given you more time to live?”
Joao looked up from the voice sac to the giant, glittering eyes. He thought he detected amusement there.
“We've spared and extended the lives of all those who were with you,” the voice drummed. “That makes us your slaves, does it not?”
“What do you take in return?” Joao demanded.
“Ah, hah!” the voice fairly barked. “Quid pro quo! That's this thing called business which I didn't understand. Your father will leave soon to speak with the men of his government. He is our messenger. He trades us his time. He is our slave as well, is it not so? We are tied to each other by the bond of mutual slavery that cannot be broken. It never could be broken … no matter how hard you tried.”
“It's very simple once you understand the interdependence,” Joao's father said.
“Understand what?”
“Some of our kind lived once in greenhouses,” the voice rumbled. “Their cells remembered the experience. You know about greenhouses, of course.”
The giant face turned to look out at the cavemouth,
where dawn was beginning to touch the world with gray. “That out there, that, too, is a greenhouse.” Again, it peered down at Joao, the giant eyes glittering. “To sustain life, a greenhouse must be maintained in a delicate state of balance by the life within it—enough of this chemical, enough of that one, another substance available when required. That which is poison one day can be the sweetest food the next day.”
“What's all this to do with slavery?” Joao demanded, and he heard the petulance in his own voice.
“Life has developed through millions of years on greenhouse Earth,” the Brain rumbled. “Sometimes it developed in the poison excrement of other life … and then that poison became necessary to it. Without a substance produced by wireworms, that savannah grass out there would die … in time.”
Joao stared up at the rock ceiling, his thoughts turning over like cards in a file. “China's barren earth!” he said.
“Precisely,” the Brain said. “Without substances produced by …
insects
, and other forms of life, your kind of life would perish. Sometimes just a faint trace of the substance is needed, such as the special copper produced by arachnids. Sometimes the substance must pass through many valences, subtly changed each time, before it can be used by a life form at the end of the chain. Break the chain and all die. The more different forms of life there are, the more life the greenhouse can support. The successful greenhouse must enclose many forms of life—the more forms of life, the healthier for all.”
“Chen-Lhu,” Joao said. “He could be made to help. He could go with my father, tell them … Did you save Chen-Lhu?”
“The Chinese,” the Brain said. “He can be said to
live, although you abused him cruelly. The essential structures of the brain are alive, thanks to our prompt action.”
Joao looked down at the bulging, fissured mass on the floor of the cave. He turned away.
“They have given me proof to take back with me,” Joao's father said. “There can be no doubt. No one will doubt. We must stop killing and changing insects.”
“And let them take over,” Joao whispered.
“We say you must stop killing yourselves,” the voice rumbled. “Already the people of your Chen-Lhu are … I believe you would call it
reinfesting
their land. Perhaps they will be in time, perhaps not. Here, it is not too late. In China, they were efficient and thorough … and they may need our help.”
“But you'll be our masters,” Joao said. And he thought:
Rhin … Rhin, where are you?
“We'll merely achieve a new balance,” the Brain said. “It will be interesting to see. But there will be time to discuss this later. You are quite free to move … and capable of it. Just do not come too close to me: my nurses will not permit that. But for now, feel free to join your mate outside. There is sunshine this morning. Let the sun work on your skin and on the chlorophyll in your blood. And when you come back here, tell me if the sun is your slave.”
The Dosadi Experiment
The Eyes of Heisenberg
The Green Brain
The Santaroga Barrier
In the desert, the line between life and death is sharp and quick.
—Zensunni fire poetry from Arrakis
 
 
 
 
F
ar from thinking machines and the League of Nobles, the desert never changed. The Zensunni descendants who had fled to Arrakis scraped out squalid lives in isolated cave communities, barely subsisting in a harsh environment. They experienced little enjoyment, yet fought fiercely to remain alive for just another day.
Sunlight poured across the ocean of sand, warming dunes that rippled like waves breaking upon an imagined shore. A few black rocks poked out of the dust like islands, but offered no shelter from the heat or the demon worms.
This desolate landscape was the last thing he would ever see. The people had accused him, chosen the young man as a scapegoat, and would mete out their punishment. His innocence was not relevant.
“Begone, Selim!” came a shout from the caves above. “Go far from here!” He recognized the voice of his young friend—
former
friend—Ebrahim. Perhaps the other boy was relieved, since by rights it should have been him facing exile and death, not Selim. But no one
would mourn the loss of an orphan, and so Selim had been cast out in the Zensunni version of justice.
A raspy voice said, “May the worms spit out your scrawny hide.” That was old Glyffa, who had once been like a mother to him. “Thief! Water stealer!”
From the caves, the tribe began to throw stones. One sharp rock struck the cloth he had wrapped around his dark hair for protection against the sun. Selim ducked, but did not give them the satisfaction of seeing him cringe. They had stripped almost everything from him, but as long as he drew breath they would never take his pride.
Naib Dhartha, the sietch leader, leaned out. “The tribe has spoken. Your fate rests on your own crimes, Selim.”
Protestations of his innocence would do no good, nor would excuses or explanations. Keeping his balance on the steep path, the young man stooped to grab a sharp-edged stone. He held it in his palm and glared up at the people.
Selim had always been skilled at throwing rocks. He could pick off ravens, small kangaroo mice, or lizards for the community cookpot. If he aimed carefully, he could have put out one of the Naib's eyes. Selim had seen Dhartha whispering quietly with Ebrahim's father, watched them form their plan to cast the blame on him instead of the guilty boy. They had decided Selim's punishment using measures other than the truth.
Naib Dhartha had dark eyebrows and jet-black hair bound into a ponytail by a dull metal ring. A purplish geometric tattoo of dark angles and straight lines marked his left cheek. His wife had drawn it on his face using a steel needle and the juice of a scraggly inkvine the Zensunni cultivated in their terrarium gardens. The Naib glared down as if daring Selim to throw the stone,
because the Zensunni would respond with a pummeling barrage of large rocks.
But such a punishment would kill him far too quickly. Instead, the tribe would drive Selim away from their tight-knit community. And on Arrakis, one did not survive without help. Existence in the desert required cooperation, each person doing his part. The Zensunni looked upon stealing—especially the theft of water—as the worst crime imaginable.
Selim pocketed the stone. Ignoring the jeers and insults, he continued his tedious descent toward the open desert.
Dhartha intoned in a voice that sounded like a bass howl of stormwinds, “Selim, who has no father or mother—Selim, who was welcomed as a member of our tribe—you have been found guilty of stealing tribal water. Therefore, you must walk across the sands.” Dhartha raised his voice, shouting before the condemned man could pass out of earshot. “May Shaitan choke on your bones.”
All his life, Selim had done more work than most others. Because he was of unknown parentage, the tribe demanded it of him. No one helped him when he was sick, except maybe old Glyffa; no one carried an extra load for him. He had watched some of his companions gorge themselves on inflated family shares of water, even Ebrahim. And still, the other boy, seeing half a literjon of brackish water untended, had drunk it, foolishly hoping no one would notice. How easy it had been for Ebrahim to blame it on his supposed friend when the theft was discovered … .
Upon driving Selim from the caves, Dhartha had refused to give him even a tiny water pouch for his journey, because that was considered a waste of tribal resources. None of them expected Selim to survive
more than a day anyway, even if he somehow managed to avoid the fearsome monsters of the desert.
He muttered under his breath, knowing they couldn't hear him, “May your mouth fill with dust, Naib Dhartha.” Selim bounded down the path away from the cliffs, while his people continued to utter curses from above. A hurled pebble bounced past him.
When he reached the base of the rock wall that stood as a shield against the desert and the sandworm demons, he set off in a straight line, wanting to get as far away as he could. Dry heat pounded on his head. Those watching him would surely be surprised to see him voluntarily hike out onto the dunes instead of huddling in a cave in the rocks.
What do I have to lose?
Selim made up his mind that he would never go back and plead for help. Instead, chin high, he strode across the dunes as far as he could. He would rather die than beg forgiveness from the likes of them. Ebrahim had lied to protect his own life, but Naib Dhartha had committed a far worse crime in Selim's eyes, knowingly condemning an innocent orphan boy to death because it simplified tribal politics.
Selim had excellent desert skills, but Arrakis was a severe environment. In the several generations since the Zensunni had settled here, no one had ever returned from exile. The deep desert swallowed them up, leaving no trace. He trudged out into the wasteland with only a rope slung over his shoulder, a stubby dagger at his belt, and a sharpened metal walking stick, a piece he had salvaged from the spaceport junkyard in Arrakis City.
Maybe Selim could go there and find a job with off-world traders, moving cargo from each vessel that landed, or stowing aboard one of the spaceships that plied their way from planet to planet, often taking years
for each passage. But such ships only rarely visited Arrakis, since it was far from the regular shipping lanes. And joining the strange offworlders might make Selim give up too much of himself. It would be better to live alone in the desert—if he could survive … .
He pocketed another sharp rock, one that had been thrown from above. As the mountain buttress shrank into the distance, he found a third shard that seemed like a good throwing stone. Eventually, he would need to capture food. He could suck a lizard's moist flesh and live for just a little while longer.
As he made his way into the restless wasteland, Selim gazed toward a long peninsula of rock, far from the Zensunni caves. He'd be apart from the tribe there, but could still laugh at them every day he survived his exile. He could thumb his nose and call out jokes that Naib Dhartha would never hear.
Selim poked his walking stick into the soft dunes, as if stabbing an imaginary enemy. He sketched a deprecating Buddislamic symbol in the sand, with an arrow on it that pointed back toward the cliff dwellings. He took a special satisfaction from his defiance, even though the wind would erase the insult within a day. With a lighter step, he climbed a high dune and skidded down into the trough.
He began to sing a traditional song, maintaining an upbeat composure, and increased his speed. The distant peninsula of rock shimmered in the afternoon, and he tried to convince himself that it looked inviting. His bravado increased as he drew farther from his tormentors.
But when he was within a kilometer of the sheltering black rock, Selim felt the loose sand tremble under his feet. He looked up, suddenly realizing his danger, and saw ripples that marked the passage of a large creature deep beneath the dunes.
Selim ran. He slipped and scrambled across the soft ridge, desperate not to fall. He kept moving, racing along the crest, knowing that even this high dune would prove no obstacle for the oncoming sandworm. The rock peninsula remained impossibly far away, and the demon came ever closer.
Selim forced himself to skid to a halt, though his panicked heart urged him to keep running. Worms followed any vibration, and he had run like a terrified child instead of freezing in place like the wily desert hare. This behemoth had certainly targeted him by now. How many others before him had stood terrified, falling to their knees in final prayer before being devoured? No person had ever survived an encounter with one of the great desert monsters.
Unless he could fool it … distract it.
Selim willed his feet and legs to turn to stone. He took the first of the fist-sized stones he carried and hurled it as far as he could into the gully between dunes. It landed with a
thump
—and the ominous track of the approaching worm diverted just a little.
Selim tossed another rock, and a third, in a drumbeat pattern intended to lure the worm away from him. He threw the rest of his stones, and the beast turned only slightly, still rising up below him.
Empty handed, Selim now had no other way to divert the creature.
Its maw open wide, the worm gulped sand and stones, searching for a morsel of meat. The dune beneath Selim's boots shifted and crumbled, and he knew the monster would swallow him. He smelled an ominous cinammon stench on the worm's breath, saw glimpses of fire in its gullet.
Naib Dhartha would no doubt laugh at the young
thief's fate. Selim shouted a loud curse. And rather than surrender, he decided to attack.
Closer to the cavernous mouth, the odor of spice intensified. The young man gripped his metal walking stick and whispered a prayer. As the worm lifted itself from beneath the dune, Selim leaped onto its curved and crusty back. He raised the metal staff like a spear and plunged the sharpened tip into what he thought would be tough, armored wormskin. Instead, the point slipped between segments, into soft pink flesh.
The beast reacted as if it had been shot with a hundred maula cannons. It reared up, thrashed and writhed.
Surprised, Selim drove the spear deeper and held on with all his strength. He squeezed his eyes shut, clenching his teeth and pulling back to keep himself steady. He would have no chance if he let go.
The little spear couldn't have wounded the demon; this was merely a human gesture of defiance, a biting fly thirsty for a sweet droplet of blood. Any moment now the worm would dive back beneath the sand and drag Selim down with it.
Surprisingly, though, the creature raced forward, keeping itself high out of the dunes where the exposed tissue would not be abraded by sand.
Terrified, Selim clung to the implanted staff—then laughed as he realized he was actually
riding
the monster! Shaitan himself! Had anyone ever done such a thing? If so, no man had ever lived to tell about it.
Selim made a pact with himself and with Buddallah that he would not be defeated, not by Naib Dhartha and not by this desert demon. He pulled back on his spear and pried the fleshy segment even wider, making the worm climb out of the sand, as if it could outrun the annoying parasite on its back … .
The young exile never made it to the strip of rock where he had hoped to establish a private camp. Instead, the worm careened into the deep desert … carrying Selim far from his former life.

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