The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert (22 page)

“We don't have the right to take risks with the rest of humanity,” protested Bellarmine. “Man, one of them tried to kill you!”

“But everything points to that one being defective,” said Lewis. “He made too many mistakes. That's the only reason we got wise to him.”

“They might dump us into the incinerator as no longer useful,” said Bellarmine. “They—”

Lewis said, “They'd have to be pretty much pure scientists. Johnson was a field man, a lab technician, a worker. The pure scientists would follow our human pattern. I'm sure of it. To be a pure scientist you have to be able to control yourself. That means you'd understand other persons'—other beings'—problems. No, Doc. Your first answer was the best one. You'd put your rats through psychological tests.”

Bellarmine stared at his hands. “What's your idea?”

“Take a white rat in one of those little lab cages. Infect it with some common germ, leave the infecting hypo in the cage, put the whole works—rat and all—in front of that silver grid. Distort—”

“That's a crazy idea,” said Bellarmine. “How could you tell a hypothetical something to look at your message when you don't even know the hypothetical language—how to contact them in the first place?”

“Distort the field of that grid by touching the wires with a piece of metal,” said Lewis. “Tie the metal to the end of a pole for safety.”

“I've never heard a crazier idea,” said Bellarmine.

“Get me the white rat, the cage and the hypo and I'll do it myself,” said Lewis.

Bellarmine got to his feet, moved toward the door. “You're not doing anything for a couple of weeks,” he said. “You're a sick man and I've been talking to you too long already.” He opened the door, left the room.

Lewis stared at the ceiling. A shudder passed over his body.
Mutated virus!

The door opened and an orderly and nurse entered. “You get a little tube feeding of hot gelatin,” said the nurse. She helped him eat it, then, over his protests, gave him a sedative.

“Doctor's orders,” said the nurse.

Through a descending fog, Lewis murmured, “Which doctor?”

“Dr. Bellarmine,” she said.

The fog came lower, darkened. He drifted into a nightmare peopled by thousands of Johnsons, all of them running around with large metal tanks asking, “Are you human?” and collecting blood.

*   *   *

Sheriff Czernak was beside the bed when Lewis awoke. Lewis could see out the window that dawn was breaking. He turned toward the sheriff. “Mornin', John,” he whispered. His tongue felt thick and dry.

“'Bout time you woke up,” said Czernak. “I've been waiting here a coupla hours. Something fishy's going on.”

“Wind my bed up, will you?” asked Lewis. “What's happening?”

Czernak arose, moved to the foot of the bed and turned the crank.

“The big thing is that Doc Bellarmine has disappeared,” he said. “We traced him from the lab here to the mortuary. Then he just goes
pffft
!”

Lewis's eyes widened. “Was there a white rat cage?”

“There you go again!” barked Czernak. “You tell me you don't know anything about this, but you sure know all the questions.” He bent over Lewis. “Sure, there was a rat cage! You better tell me how you knew it!”

“First tell
me
what happened,” said Lewis.

Czernak straightened, frowning. “All right, Welby, but when I get through telling, then you better tell.” He wet his lips with his tongue. “I'm told the Doc came in here and talked to you last night. Then he went down to the lab and got one of them white rats with its cage. Then he went over to the mortuary. He had the cage and rat with him. Our night guard let him in. After a while, when the Doc didn't come out, the guard got worried and went inside. There in the back hall is the Doc's black bag. And over where this silver wire stuff was he finds—”

“Was?” Lewis barked the word.

“Yeah,” said Czernak wearily. “That's the other thing. Sometime last night somebody ripped out all them wires and didn't leave a single trace.”

“What else did the guard find?”

Czernak ran a hand under his collar, stared at the opposite wall.

“Well?”

“Welby, look, I—”

“What happened?”

“Well, the night guard—it was Rasmussen—called me and I went right down. Rasmussen didn't touch a thing. There was the Doc's bag, a long wood pole with a tire iron attached to it and the rat cage. The rat was gone.”

“Was there anything in the cage?”

Czernak suddenly leaned forward, blurted, “Look, Welby, about the cage. There's something screwy about it. When I first got there, I swear it wasn't there. Rasmussen doesn't remember it, either. My first idea when I got there was that the Doc'd gone out the back way, but our seal was still on the door. It hadn't been opened. While I was thinking that one over—I was standing about in the middle of the hall—I heard this noise like a cork being pulled out of a bottle. I turned around and there was this little cage on the floor. Out of nowhere.”

“And it was empty?”

“Except for some pieces of glass that I'm told belonged to a hypo.”

“Broken?”

“Smashed to pieces.”

“Was the cage door open?”

Czernak tipped his head to one side, looked at the far wall. “No, I don't believe it was.”

“And exactly where was this cage?” Lewis's eyes burned into the sheriff's.

“Like I said, Welby. Right in front of where the wires was.”

“And the wires were gone?”

“Well—” Again the sheriff looked uncomfortable. “For just a second there, when I turned around after hearing that noise—for just a second there I thought I saw 'em.”

Lewis took a deep breath.

Czernak said, “Now come on and give, will you? Where's the Doc? You must have some idea, the way you been askin' questions.”

“He's taking his entrance exams,” said Lewis. “And we'd all better pray that he passes.”

 

OCCUPATION FORCE

He was a long time awakening. There was a pounding somewhere. General Henry A. Llewellyn's eyes snapped open. Someone at his bedroom door. Now he heard the voice. “Sir … sir … sir…” It was his orderly.

“All right, Watkins, I'm awake.”

The pounding ceased.

He swung his feet out of the bed, looked at the luminous dial on his alarm clock—two-twenty-five. What the devil? He slipped on a robe, a tall, ruddy-faced man—chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Watkins saluted when the general opened the door. “Sir, the President has called an emergency cabinet meeting.” The orderly began to talk faster, his words running all together. “There's an alien spaceship big as Lake Erie sailing around the earth and getting ready to attack.”

It took a second for the general to interpret the words. He snorted. Pulp magazine poppycock! he thought.

“Sir,” said Watkins, “there is a staff car downstairs ready to take you to the White House.”

“Get me a cup of coffee while I dress,” said the general.

*   *   *

Representatives of five foreign nations, every cabinet officer, nine senators, fourteen representatives, the heads of the secret service, FBI and of all the armed services were at the meeting. They gathered in the conference room of the White House bomb shelter—a panelled room with paintings around the walls in deep frames to simulate windows. General Llewellyn sat across the oak conference table from the President. The buzzing of voices in the room stopped as the President rapped his gavel. An aide stood up, gave them the first briefing.

A University of Chicago astronomer had picked up the ship at about eight
P.M.
It was coming from the general direction of the belt of Orion. The astronomer had alerted other observatories and someone had thought to notify the government.

The ship had arrowed in at an incredible rate, swung into a one-and-one-half-hour orbit around Earth. It was visible to the unaided eye by that time, another moon. Estimates put its size at nineteen miles long, twelve miles wide, vaguely egg-shaped.

Spectroscopic analysis showed the drive was a hydrogen ion stream with traces of carbon, possibly from the refractor. The invader was transparent to radar, responded to no form of communication.

Majority opinion: a hostile ship on a mission to conquer Earth.

Minority opinion: a
cautious
visitor from space.

Approximately two hours after it took up orbit, the ship put out a five-hundred-foot scout which swooped down on Boston, grappled up a man by the name of William R. Jones from a group of night workers waiting for a bus.

Some of the minority went over to the majority. The President, however, continued to veto all suggestions that they attack. He was supported by the foreign representatives who were in periodic communication with their governments.

“Look at the size of the thing,” said the President. “An ant with an ant-size pea-shooter could attack an elephant with the same hopes of success we would have.”

“There's always the possibility they're just being prudent,” said a State Department aide. “We've no evidence they're dissecting this Jones from Boston, as I believe someone suggested.”

“The size precludes peaceful intent,” said General Llewellyn. “There's an invasion army in that thing. We should fire off every atomic warhead rocket we can lay hand to, and…”

The President waved a hand to silence him.

General Llewellyn sat back. His throat hurt from arguing, his hand ached from pounding the table.

At eight
A.M.
, the spaceship detached a thousand-foot scout as it passed over the New Jersey coast. The scout drifted down over Washington, D.C. At eight-eighteen
A.M.
, the scout contacted Washington airport in perfect English, asked for landing instructions. A startled tower operator warned the scout ship off until Army units had cleared the area.

General Llewellyn and a group of expendable assistants were chosen to greet the invaders. They were at the field by eight-fifty-one. The scout, a pale robins-egg blue, settled to a landing strip which cracked beneath it. Small apertures began flicking open and shut on the ship's surface. Long rods protruded, withdrew. After ten minutes of this, a portal opened and a ramp shot out, tipped to the ground. Again silence.

Every weapon the armed services could muster was trained on the invader. A flight of jets swept overhead. Far above them, a lone bomber circled, in its belly THE BOMB. All waited for the general's signal.

Something moved in the shadow above the ramp. Four human figures appeared at the portal. They wore striped trousers, cutaways, glistening black shoes, top hats. Their linen shone. Three carried briefcases, one had a scroll. They moved down the ramp.

General Llewellyn and aides walked out to the foot of the ramp.
They look like more bureaucrats,
thought the general.

The one with the scroll, a dark-haired man with narrow face, spoke first. “I have the honor to be the ambassador from Krolia, Loo Mogasayvidiantu.” His English was faultless. He extended the scroll. “My credentials.”

General Llewellyn accepted the scroll, said, “I am General Henry A. Llewellyn”—he hesitated—“representative of Earth.”

The Krolian bowed. “May I present my staff?” He turned. “Ayk Turgotokikalapa, Min Sinobayatagurki and William R. Jones, late of Boston, Earth.”

The general recognized the man whose picture was in all of the morning newspapers.
Here's our first Solar quisling,
he thought.

“I wish to apologize for the delay in our landing,” said the Krolian ambassador. “Occasionally quite a long period of time is permitted to elapse between preliminary and secondary phases of a colonial program.”

Colonial program!
thought the general. He almost gave the signal which would unleash death upon this scene. But the ambassador had more to say.

“The delay in landing was a necessary precaution,” said the Krolian. “Over such a long period of time our data sometimes becomes outmoded. We needed time for a sampling, to talk to Mr. Jones, to bring our data up to date.” Again he bowed with courtly politeness.

Now General Llewellyn was confused:
Sampling … data
 … He took a deep breath. Conscious of the weight of history on his shoulders, he said, “We have one question to ask you, Mr. Ambassador. Do you come as friends or conquerors?”

The Krolian's eyes widened. He turned to the Earthman beside him. “It is as I expected, Mr. Jones.” His lips thinned. “That Colonial Office! Understaffed! Inefficient! Bumbling…”

The General frowned. “I don't understand.”

“No, of course,” said the ambassador. “But if our Colonial Office had kept track…” He waved a hand. “Look around at your people, sir.”

The general looked first at the men behind the ambassador. Obviously human. At a gesture from the Krolian, he turned to the soldiers behind himself, then toward the frightened faces of the civilians behind the airport fences. The general shrugged, turned back to the Krolian. “The people of Earth are waiting for the answer to my question. Do you come as friends or conquerors?”

The ambassador sighed. “The truth is, sir, that the question really has no answer. You must surely notice that we are of the same breed.”

The general waited.

“It should be obvious to you,” said the Krolian, “that we have already occupied Earth … about seven thousand years ago.”

 

THE NOTHING

If it hadn't been for the fight with my father I'd never have gone down to the Tavern and then I wouldn't have met the
Nothing
. This
Nothing
was really just an ordinary looking guy. He wasn't worth special attention unless, like me, you were pretending you were Marla Graim, the feelies star, and him Sidney Harch meeting you in the bar to give you a spy capsule.