The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert (105 page)

Someone emerged from an opening on his left, strode toward him across the floor of the amphitheater: Vicentelli.

The Tegas stared at the approaching man, noted the eyes favored by deep shadows: dense black eyes cut into a face where lay a verseless record—hard glyphs of cheeks, stone-cut mouth. Everything was labor in that face: work-work-work. It held no notion of fun. It was a contrivance for asserting violence, both spectator and participant. It rode the flesh, cherishing no soft thing at all.

A vat of liquid as blue as glowing steel arose from the floor beside the Tegas. Android hands gripped him tightly as he jerked with surprise.

Vicentelli stopped in front of him, glanced once at the surrounding banks of faces, back to his victim.

“Perhaps you're ready to save us the trouble of an interrogation in depth,” he said.

The Tegas felt his body tremble, shook his head.

Vicentelli nodded.

With impersonal swiftness, the androids stripped the clothing from the Tegas host, lifted him into the vat. The liquid felt warm and tingling. A harness was adjusted to hold his arms and keep his face just above the surface. An inverted dome came down to rest just above his head. The day became a blue stick of light and he wondered inanely what time it was. It'd been early when he'd entered the Euthanasia Center, now, it was very late. Yet, he knew the day had hardly advanced past mid-morning.

Again, he probed the emotional aura, recoiled from it.

What if they kill me coldly?
he wondered.

Where he could single out individuals, he was reminded of the play of lightning on a far horizon. The emotional beacons were thin, yet filled with potency.

A room full of rulers. The Tegas could imagine no more hideous place.

Something moved across his stick of light: Vicentelli.

“Who are you?” Vicentelli asked.

I'm Joe Carmichael,
he thought.
I must be only Joe Carmichael.

But Carmichael's emotions threatened to overwhelm him. Outrage and submissive terror flickered through the neural exchanges. The host body twitched. Its legs made faint running motions.

Vicentelli turned away, spoke to the surrounding watchers:

“The problem with Joseph Carmichael is this violent incident which you're now seeing on your recorders. Let me impress upon you that this incident was not predicted. It was outside our scope. We must assume, therefore, that it was not a product of Joseph Carmichael. During this examination, each of you will study the exposed profile. I want each of you to record your reactions and suggestions. Somewhere here there will be a clue to the unknowns we observed in William Bailey and before that in Almiro Hsing. Be alert, observant.”

God of Eternity!
the Tegas thought.
They've traced me from Hsing to Bailey!

This change in human society went back farther than he'd suspected. How far back?

“You will note, please,” Vicentelli said, “that Bailey was in the immediate vicinity when Hsing fell from the Peace Tower at Canton and died. Pay particular attention to the material which points to a previous association between Hsing and Bailey. There is a possibility Bailey was at that particular place on Hsing's invitation. This could be important.”

The Tegas tried to withdraw his being, to encyst his emotions. The ruling humans had gone down a developmental side path he'd never expected. They had left him somewhere.

He knew why: Tegas-like, he had immersed himself in the concealing presence of the mob, retreated into daily drudgery, lived like the living. Yet, he had never loved the flesh more than in this moment when he knew he could lose it forever. He loved the flesh the way a man might love a house. This intricate structure was a house that breathed and felt.

Abruptly, he underwent a sense of union with the flesh more intimate than anything of his previous experience. He knew for certain in this instant how a man would feel here. Time had never been an enemy of the Tegas. But Time was man's enemy. He was a man now and he prepared his flesh for maximum reactions, for high-energy discharge.

Control: That was what this society was up to—super control.

Vicentelli's face returned to the stick of light.

“For the sake of convenience,” he said, “I'll continue to call you Carmichael.”

The statement told him baldly that he was in a corner and Vicentelli knew it. If the Tegas had any doubts, Vicentelli now removed them.

“Don't try to kill yourself,” Vicentelli said. “The mechanism in which you now find yourself can sustain your life even when you least wish that life to continue.”

Abruptly, the Tegas realized his Carmichael self should be panic-stricken. There could be no Tegas watchfulness or remoteness here.

He was panic-stricken.

The host body thrashed in the liquid, surged against the bonds. The liquid was heavy—oily, but not oily. It held him as an elastic suit might, dampening his movements, always returning him to the quiescent, fishlike floating.

“Now,” Vicentelli said.

There was a loud click.

Light dazzled the Carmichael eyes. Color rhythms appeared within the light. The rhythms held an epileptic beat. They jangled his mind, shook the Tegas awareness like something loosed in a violent cage.

Out of the voice which his universe had become there appeared questions. He knew they were spoken questions, but he saw them: word shapes tumbling in a torrent.

“Who are you?”

“What are you?”

“We see you for what you are. Why don't you admit what you are? We know you.”

The aura of the surrounding watchers drummed at him with accusing vibrations: “We know you—know you—know you—know you…”

The Tegas felt the words rocking him, subduing him.

No Tegas can by hypnotized,
he told himself. But he could feel his being coming out in shreds. Something was separating. Carmichael! The Tegas was losing his grip on the host! But the flesh was being reduced to a mesmerized idiot. The sense of separation intensified.

Abruptly, there was an inner sensation of stirring, awakening. He felt the host ego awakening, was powerless to counter it.

Thoughts crept along the dancing, shimmering neural paths—

“Who … what are … where do…”

The Tegas punched frantically at the questings: “I'm Joe Carmichael … I'm Joe Carmichael … I'm Joe Carmichael…”

He found vocal control, mouthed the words in dumb rhythm, making this the one answer to all questions. Slowly, the host fell silent, smothered in a Tegas envelope.

The blundering, bludgeoning interrogation continued.

Shake-rattle-question.

He felt himself losing all sense of distinction between Tegas and Carmichael. The Bacit half, whipped and terrorized by the unexpected sophistication of this attack, strewed itself in tangles through the identity net.

Voices of old hosts came alive in his mind: “… you can't … mustn't … I'm Joe Carmichael … stop them … why can't we…”

“You're murdering me!” he screamed.

The ranked watchers in the ampitheater united in an aura of pouncing glee.

“They're monsters!” Carmichael thought.

It was a pure Carmichael thought, unmodified by Tegas awareness, an unfettered human expression surging upwards from within.

“You hear me, Tegas?” Carmichael demanded. “They're monsters!”

The Tegas crouched in the flesh not knowing how to counter this. Never before had he experienced direct communication from a host after that final entrapment. He tried to locate the source of communication, failed.

“Look at 'em staring down at us like a pack of ghouls!” Carmichael thought.

The Tegas knew he should react, but before he could bring himself to it, the interrogation assumed a new intensity: shake-rattle-question.

“Where do you come from? Where do you come from? Where do you come from?”

The question tore at him with letters tall as giant buildings—faceless eyes, thundering voices, shimmering words.

Carmichael anger surged across the Tegas.

Still, the watchers radiated their chill amusement.

“Let's die and take one of 'em!” Carmichael insisted.

“Who speaks?” the Bacit demanded. “How did you get away? Where are you?”

“God! How cold they are.” That had been a Bailey thought.

“Where do you come from?” the Bacit demanded, seeking the host awareness. “You are here, but we cannot find you.”

“I come from Zimbue,” Carmichael projected.

“You cannot come from Zimbue,” the Tegas countered. “I come from Zimbue.”

“But Zimbue is nowhere,” the Bacit insisted.

And all the while—shake-rattle-question—Vicentelli's interrogation continued to jam circuits.

The Tegas felt he was being bombarded from all sides and from within. How could Carmichael talk of Zimbue?

“Then whence comest thou?” Carmichael asked.

How could Carmichael know of this matter? the Tegas asked himself. Whence had all Tegas come? The answer was a rote memory at the bottom of all his experiences: At the instant time began, the Tegas intruded upon the blackness where no star—not even a primal dust fleck—had tracked the dimensions with its being. They had been where senses had not been. How could Carmichael's ego still exist and know to ask of such things?

“And why shouldn't I ask?” Carmichael insisted. “It's what Vicentelli asks.”

But where had the trapped ego of the host flesh hidden? Whence took it an existence to speak now?

The Bacit half had experienced enough. “Say him down!” the Bacit commanded. “Say him down! We are Joe Carmichael! You are Joe Carmichael! I am Joe Carmichael!”

“Don't panic,” Carmichael soothed. “You are Tegas/Bacit, one being. I am Joe Carmichael.”

And from the outer world, Vicentelli roared: “Who are you? I command you to tell me who you are! You must obey me! Are you William Bailey?”

Silence—inward and outward.

In the silence, the Tegas probed the abused flesh, understood part of the nature behind Vicentelli's attack. The liquid in which the host lay immersed: It was an anesthetic. The flesh was being robbed of sensation until only inner nerve tangles remained. Even more—the anesthetized flesh had been invaded by a control device. A throbbing capsule lay against the Carmichael spine—signalling, commanding, interfering.

“The capsule has been attached,” Vicentelli said. “I will take him now to the lower chamber where the interrogation can proceed along normal channels. He's completely under our control now.”

In the trapped flesh, the Bacit half searched out neural connections of the control capsule, tried to block them, succeeded only partly. Anesthetized flesh resisted Bacit probes. The Tegas, poised like a frightened spider in the host awareness, studied the softly throbbing neural currents for a solution. Should he attack, resume complete control? What could he attack? Vicentelli's interrogation had tangled identities in the host in a way that might never be unravelled.

The control capsule pulsed.

Carmichael's flesh obeyed a new command. Restraining bands slid aside. The Tegas stood up in the tank on unfeeling feet. Where his chest was exposed, sensation began to return. The inverted hemisphere was lifted from his head.

“You see,” Vicentelli said, addressing the watchers above them. “He obeys perfectly.”

Inwardly, Carmichael asked: “Tegas, can you reach out and see how they feel about all this? There might be a clue in their emotions.”

“Do it!” the Bacit commanded.

The Tegas probed surrounding space, felt boredom, undertones of suspicion, a cat-licking sense of power. Yes, the mouse lay trapped between claws. The mouse could not escape.

Android hands helped the Tegas out of the tank, stood him on the floor, steadied him.

“Perfect control,” Vicentelli said.

As the control capsule commanded, the Carmichael eyes stared straight ahead with a blank emptiness.

The Tegas sent a questing probe along the nearest channels, met Bacit, Carmichael, uncounted bits of others.

“How can you be here, Joe Carmichael?” he asked.

The host flesh responded to a capsule command, walked straight ahead across the floor of the ampitheater.

“Why aren't you fleeing or fighting me?” the Tegas insisted.

“No need,” Carmichael responded. “We're all mixed up together, as you can see.”

“Why aren't you afraid?”

“I was … am … hope not to be.”

“How do you know about the Tegas?”

“How not? We're each other.”

The Tegas experienced a shock-blink of awareness at this, felt an uneasy Bacit-projection. Nothing in all Tegas experience recalled such an inner encounter. The host fought and lost or the Tegas ended there. And the lost host went … where? A fearful questing came from the Bacit, a sense of broken continuity.

That damnable interrogation!

The host flesh, responding to the capsule's commands, had walked through a doorway into a blue hallway. As sensation returned, Tegas/Carmichael/Bacit grew aware of Vicentelli following … and other footsteps—android law-niks.

“What do you want, Joe Carmichael?” the Tegas demanded.

“I want to share.”

“Why?”

“You're … more than I was. You can give me … longer life. You're curious … interesting. Half the creeps we got at the E-Center were worn down by boredom, and I was almost at that stage myself. Now … living is interesting once more.”

“How can we live together—in here?”

“We're doing it.”

“But I'm Tegas! I must rule in here!”

“So rule.”

And the Tegas realized he had been restored to almost complete contact with the host's neural system. Still, the intrusive Carmichael ego remained. And the Bacit was doing nothing about this situation, appeared to have withdrawn to wherever the Bacit went. Carmichael remained—a slithering, mercuric thing: right there! No! Over here! No.… no.… not there, not here. Still, he remained.