The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert (67 page)

How right he is,
thought Saim.

“You … monster,” whispered Ren.

ó Plar glanced at the doctor. “Me? You malign me. I did a necessary thing, and I'll pay for it much more heavily than you'll pay for what you did.
You
don't have to re-experience Ultimate Conditioning once a year.”

ó Katje dropped the compress from her jaw. “ó Plar! I did not think … ohhhh…”

“Yes, a terrible thing to take into the
kabah
room,” said ó Plar. “I most likely won't survive it.”

Saim got to his feet. All during ó Plar's recital he had felt darkness peeling away from his mind like onion skins. He felt terrified and exalted.
Kabah
room without end down a corridor of time. Each constricting the will, subjecting the individual life to a dull pattern of placidity.

“I died,” whispered George.

“Only once,” said Saim. “I've died times without number.” He glanced at ó Plar. “In the
kabah
room eh,
Uncle
?”

“Saim!” ó Plar raised his staff.

In one stride, Saim was beside ó Plar, wrenched the staff from still old fingers and smashed it against the table.

“There was no Millennial Display planned, was there,
Uncle
?” demanded Saim.

ó Plar drew himself up in frozen dignity. “We had every reason to suspect an accident would…”

“One rocket is all it'd take, eh, Uncle?” Saim glanced at the others in the room, patted Jeni's shoulder, “One rocket. Other rockets are keyed to defensive systems and would go up to knock down an invading rocket. Fear would take care of the rest.”

Jeni said: “Saim, you're frightening me!”

“The whole world's like a mindfield, eh,
Uncle
?” asked Saim. “Just waiting to be set off.”

George straightened, spoke more strongly. “I died. You said … virus.” He glanced up at Saim, then at the others. “You must be descended from whoever started it.”

ó Plar said: “Saim, I don't understand. The Ultimate Conditioning. You've been … how can you … why don't the inhibitions…”

“Let me answer poor George's questions,” said Saim. He slipped into Ancienglis, and the others stared at the fluidity with which he spoke. It wasn't like the thin Educator-veneer over Haribic at all.

“We don't know if it
was
started, George,” said Saim. “The virus killed almost every adult. There was an immunity among children below the ages of 12-13-14. Below 12 the virus didn't strike. It took a few 13-year-olds, more 14-year-olds. Above 14 it took all but a small group of adults.”

“You can't know this,” protested ó Plar. “The last time, when you came out of the
kabah
…”

“Be quiet,
Uncle,
” said Saim.

George said: “You spoke of some adults pulling through it. Why didn't they get it?”

“They were a sect of Buddhist monks in Arkansas. They'd built themselves a shelter. They expected a war and wanted to preserve their teachings for the survivors.”

“You must not bring the names of the Eight Patriarch Bodhisattvas into this room!” protested ó Plar. He felt a giant outrage.
The violence! The defilement!

“The Bodhisattvas,” mused Saim. “Arthur Washington, Lincoln Howorth, Adoula Sampson, Samuael…”

“Saim, please!” begged ó Plar, and he stood there trembling between his human hope and his conditioned impulses.

Saim's voice softened. “It's all right, my friend. The dying days are gone. I'm just working myself up to it.”

ó Plar closed his eyes, unable to act because that would require violence, but still impelled by
kabah
demands. The dangerous alternative was to resign himself to negative thought. He let the accident prayer well up into consciousness.

“But I was in a shelter,” said George. “And I got this virus. How is that possible?”

“You probably had contact with people from the outside,” said Saim. “Our Patriarchs didn't. They were in their shelter, breathing filtered air, when the virus came. They didn't even know of it. They stayed there, deep in contemplation until long after the virus was past. Thus did Lord Buddha preserve them. For when they emerged, there were only children in the world.”

“Only children,” murmured George. “Then my kids, and my wife, all…” He broke off, and for a long moment stared up at Saim. Presently, he said in a flat voice: “My world's gone, isn't it?”

“Gone,” agreed Saim. “And while it had its share of mistakes, we made a bigger one.”

ó Katje said: “Profanity!”

Saim ignored her. “There was an electronics specialist among our Patriarchs,” he said. “He thought he could enforce peace for evermore. To do this, he built an instrument that shocks the primitive part of the human mind. The shocks revive terrors from the womb. With this you can introduce terrible enforcements for any behaviour desired. The staff you saw me break? That's a relatively mild form of this instrument. A reminder.”

“What behavior?” whispered George. He felt a sense of mounting horror at the logical projection of what Saim had said.

“Aversion to violence,” said Saim. “That was the basic idea. It got out of hand for a stupidly simple reason that our Patriarch Samuael should have foreseen.”

“Saim, Saim,” whispered ó Plar. “I cannot hold out much longer:”

“Patience,” said Saim. He faced George. “Do you see it? Many things can be interpreted as violent: Surgery. Sex. Loud noises. Each year the list grows longer and the number of humans grows smaller. There are some the
kabah
tanks cannot revive. The flesh is there, but the will is gone.”

ó Katje clasped her hands in front of her, said: “Saim, how can you do this terrible…”

“An accident,” said Saim. “Eh,
Uncle
?” He glanced at the bowed head of ó Plar. “That's what you've hoped for, isn't it? Deep down where the
kabah
room never quite touches? Down where the little voices whisper and protest?”

“Accident,” said Ren. “ó Katje said something about an accident.”

“What's this about
kabah
room and accident?” demanded George. “What the hell's a
kabah
?”

Saim looked at the ceiling, then to the door on his right. Out there—the hall, another room, the control panel he'd seen George operating. His memory focused on a red handle. That'd be the one, of course. Even without George's example, he'd have known. His hands would have known what they had probed and studied to exhaustion.

“Won't anybody explain anything?” demanded George.

A few more moments won't matter,
thought Saim. He said: “The
kabah
room? That's the great granddaddy of the staffs. That's the personality carver, the shaper, the twister, the…”

“Stop it!” screamed ó Katje.

“Help her, Ren,” said Saim.

Ren shook himself out of his shock, moved to ó Katje's side.

“Don't touch me!” she hissed.

“You'll take a tranquillizer,” said Saim.

It was a flat, no-nonsense command. She found herself taking a pill from Ren's palm, gulping it. The others waited for her to sink back against her chair.

Saim returned his attention to George. “I'm stalling, of course. I've a job to do.”

“You'll do it?” whispered ó Plar.

“I'll do it.”

George said: “This
kabah
, this instrument you…”

“Ultimate Conditioning,” said Saim. “Priests and Priestesses must go through it each year. Renewal. If your unconscious protest at the way of things isn't too strong, you get some new personality carving, and you're sent out to live another year, and to herd the flock.”

“Saim?” pleaded Jeni. “You
are
Saim, aren't you?”

“I'm Saim,” he said, but he kept his attention on George. “So that's how it is, George. Each year the shepherds are re-examined for deviation from the non-violent norm. If you fail…” He hesitated. “… you lose all your memories, and you spend some time in a big
kabah
rejuvenation tank. When a doctor brings you out of the tank, you're farmed out and raised just like a child.” He turned to ó Plar. “Isn't that right,
Uncle
?”

“Please, Saim?” begged ó Plar. “What you're doing to my inhi…”

“The explosion!” said Jeni. She rose half out of her chair. “When you died, and I made Ren steal a
kabah
tank to … That's what did it. We couldn't understand. For a time, you spoke like a Priest, and acted like a Priest and…”

“Then you went blank,” said Ren. “And later, you were Saim again.”

“Saim!” whispered Jeni. “You were a Priest who failed in the
kabah
!”

Again, Saim patted Jeni's shoulder. “Ren's tank renewed old patterns with the recent ones, but the
kabah
erasure of my memories was recent and strong. Ren contributed to this moment by not connecting the suppressors in the tank. I suspect he didn't know what they were.”

“What could we have been thinking of?” whispered Ren. Shame and guilt were submerged in him, cowering behind a massive sense of horror. The fact that he knew this horror came from conditioning helped not at all. “Revive the science of the Elders? Revive violence?”

“I'm beginning to see it,” mused George. “A thousand years of this? Christ!”

“What we overlooked when we built the first
kabah
rooms,” said Saim. “This is a violent universe. It takes a certain amount of violence to survive in it. But the conditioning prevents violence according to increasingly limited interpretations. In ultimate silence, dropping a pin is violent. The more peaceful we became, the narrower became the interpretation of violence. But if you subtract all violence … that's death.”

Again Saim patted Jeni's shoulder. “Well, I was hoping somewhat that George would … but, no, this is my job.” He took a deep breath. “Yes. My job. I'd suggest you all stay down here under cover where you'll be safe from the Millennial Display. Soon, now, the
kabah
rooms will be gone.”

ó Plar stood up, spoke slowly against his inhibitions: “You … are … going … to … explode … the … weapons?”

“I'm going to send them winging,” said Saim. It was an almost non-committal statement in its tone.

“But all that death,” whispered Jeni. “Saim, think of all the people who'll die!”

“That's all right,” said Saim. “They've died before.”

And he turned, walked towards the door into the hall.
My name is Samuael,
he thought.
Patriarch Samuael.

 

THE TACTFUL SABOTEUR

“Better men than you have tried!” snarled Clinton Watt.

“I quote paragraph four, section ninety-one of the Semantic Revision to the Constitution,” said saboteur extraordinary Jorj X. McKie. “‘The need for obstructive processes in government having been established as one of the chief safeguards for human rights, the question of immunities must be defined with extreme precision.'”

McKie sat across a glistening desk from the Intergalactic Government's Secretary of Sabotage, Clinton Watt. An air of tension filled the green-walled office, carrying over into the screenview behind Watt which showed an expanse of the System Government's compound and people scurrying about their morning business with a sense of urgency.

Watt, a small man who appeared to crackle with suppressed energy, passed a hand across his shaven head. “All right,” he said in a suddenly tired voice. “This is the only Secretariat of government that's never immune from sabotage. You've satisfied the legalities by quoting the law. Now, do your damnedest!”

McKie, whose bulk and fat features usually gave him the appearance of a grandfatherly toad, glowered like a gnome-dragon. His mane of red hair appeared to dance with inner flame.

“Damnedest!” he snapped. “You think I came in here to try to unseat you? You think that?”

And McKie thought:
Let's hope he thinks that!

“Stop the act, McKie!” Watt said. “We both know you're eligible for this chair.” He patted the arm of his chair. “And we both know the only way you can eliminate me and qualify yourself for the appointment is to overcome me with a masterful sabotage. Well, McKie, I've sat here more than eighteen years. Another five months and it'll be a new record. Do your damnedest. I'm waiting.”

“I came in here for only one reason,” McKie said. “I want to report on the search for saboteur extraordinary Napoleon Bildoon.”

McKie sat back wondering:
If Watt knew my real purpose here would he act just this way? Perhaps.
The man had been behaving oddly since the start of this interview, but it was difficult to determine real motive when dealing with a fellow member of the Bureau of Sabotage.

Cautious interest quickened Watt's bony face. He wet his lips with his tongue and it was obvious he was asking himself if this were more of an elaborate ruse. But McKie had been assigned the task of searching for the missing agent, Bildoon, and it was just possible …

“Have you found him?” Watt asked.

“I'm not sure,” McKie said. He ran his fingers through his red hair. “Bildoon's a Pan-Spechi, you know.”

“For disruption's sake!” Watt exploded. “I know who and what my own agents are! But we take care of our own. And when one of our best people just drops from sight … What's this about not being sure?”

“The Pan-Spechi are a curious race of creatures,” McKie said. “Just because they've taken on humanoid shape we tend to forget their five-phase life cycle.”