Read The Eyes of Heisenberg Online
Authors: Frank Herbert
The Eyes of Heisenberg (16 page)
T
he Hall of Counsel had not seen such a gathering since the debate over legalizing limited Cyborg experiments on their own kind some thirty thousand years before. The Optimen occupied a rainbow splashing of multicolored cushions on the banks of plasmeld benches. Some appeared nude, but most out of awareness of such a gathering's traditional nature came clothed in garments of their immediate historical whims. There were togas, kilts, gowns and ruffs, three-cornered hats and derbies, G-strings and muu-muus, fabrics and styles reaching back into pre-history.
he Hall of Counsel had not seen such a gathering since the debate over legalizing limited Cyborg experiments on their own kind some thirty thousand years before. The Optimen occupied a rainbow splashing of multicolored cushions on the banks of plasmeld benches. Some appeared nude, but most out of awareness of such a gathering's traditional nature came clothed in garments of their immediate historical whims. There were togas, kilts, gowns and ruffs, three-cornered hats and derbies, G-strings and muu-muus, fabrics and styles reaching back into pre-history.
Those who could not jam into the hall watched through half-a-million scanner eyes that glittered around the upper line of the walls.
It was barely daylight over Central, but not an Optiman slept.
The Survey Globe had been moved aside and the Tuyere occupied a position on the front bench center at the end of the hall. The prisoners had been brought in on a pneumoflot tumbril by acolytes. They sat on the tumbril's flat surface immobilized within dull blue plasmeld plastrons that permitted only the shallowest of breaths.
As she looked down on them from her bench, seeing the five figures so rigidly repressed, Calapine permitted herself
a faint pity for them. The womanâsuch terror in her eyes. The rage in Harvey Durant's face. The resigned waiting in Glisson and Boumour. And Svengaardâa look of wary awakening.
a faint pity for them. The womanâsuch terror in her eyes. The rage in Harvey Durant's face. The resigned waiting in Glisson and Boumour. And Svengaardâa look of wary awakening.
Yet Calapine felt something was missing here. She couldn't name the missing thing, felt it only as a negative blankness within herself.
Nourse is right,
she thought.
These five are important.
she thought.
These five are important.
Some Optiman up near the front of the hall had brought a tinkle-player and its little bell music could be heard above the murmurous whispering of the throng in the hall. The sound appeared to grow louder as the Optimen quieted in anticipation. The tinkle-player was stilled in mid-melody.
It grew quieter and quieter in the hall.
Despite her fear, Lizbeth stared around her in the growing silence. She had never before seen an Optiman in the fleshâonly on the screens of the public announcement system. (In her lifetime it'd been mostly the members of the Tuyere, although older Folk mentioned the Kagiss trio preceding them.) They looked so varied and colorfulâand so distant. She had the demoralizing feeling that nothing of this moment had happened by chance, that there was a terrifying symmetry in being here, now with this company.
“They are completely immobilized,” Schruille said. “There's nothing to fear.”
“Yet they are terrified,” Nourse said. And he recalled suddenly a moment out of his youth. He'd been taken to an antiquary's home, one of the Hedonists proudly displaying his plasmeld copies of lost statues. There'd been a giant fish, one headless figure on a horse (very daring, that), a hooded monk and a man and woman clasped in a mutual embrace of terror. The man and woman, he realized now, had been recalled by the faces of Lizbeth and Harvey Durant.
They are, in a way,
our parents, Nourse thought.
We spring from the Folk.
our parents, Nourse thought.
We spring from the Folk.
Calapine realized abruptly what it was she missed here. There was no Max. He was gone, she knew, and she wondered momentarily what had happened to him. Outgrew his
usefulness, she decided. The new Max must not be ready yet.
usefulness, she decided. The new Max must not be ready yet.
Odd that Max should go just like that, she thought. But the lives of the Folk were like gossamer. One day you saw them; the next day you saw through the place where they had been. I must ask what happened to Max.
But she knew she wouldn't ever get around to that. The answer might require a disgusting word, a concept where even euphemisms would be repellent.
But she knew she wouldn't ever get around to that. The answer might require a disgusting word, a concept where even euphemisms would be repellent.
“Pay particular attention to the Cyborg Glisson,” Schruille said. “Isn't it strange that our instruments reflect no emotions from him?”
“Perhaps he has no emotions,” Calapine said.
“Hah!” Schruille barked. “Very good.”
“I don't trust him,” Nourse said. “My grandsire spoke of Cyborg tricks.”
“He's virtually a robot,” Schruille said. “Programed to respond with the closest precise answer to preserve his being. His present docility is interesting.”
“Isn't it our purpose to interrogate them?” Nourse asked.
“In a moment,” Schruille said. “We will peel them down to the raw brain and open their memories to our examination. First, it is well to study them.”
“You're so callous, Schruille,” Calapine said.
A murmurous agreement spread upward through the hall.
Schruille glanced at her. Calapine's voice had sounded so strange then. He found himself filled with a sudden disquiet.
Glisson's Cyborg eyes moved, heavy-lidded, coldly probing, glistening with their lensed alterations that expanded his spectrum of visibility.
“Do you see it, Durant?” he asked, his voice chopped into bits by the necessity of short breaths.
Harvey found his voice. “I ⦠can't ⦠believe ⦠it.”
“They are talking,” Calapine said, her voice bright. She looked at the Durant male, surprised a look of loathing and pity in his eyes.
Pity?
she wondered.
she wondered.
A glance at the tiny repeater bracelet on her wrist, confirmed
the assessment of the Survey Globe.
Pity. Pity! How dare he pity me!
the assessment of the Survey Globe.
Pity. Pity! How dare he pity me!
“Har ⦠vey,” Lizbeth whispered.
Frustrated rage contorted Harvey's face. He moved his eyes, could not quite swing them far enough to see her. “Liz,” he muttered. “Liz, I love you.”
“This is a time for hate, not love,” Glisson said, his detached tone giving the words an air of unreality. “Hate and revenge,” Glisson said.
“What are you saying?” Svengaard asked. He'd listened with mounting amazement to their words. For a time, he'd thought of pleading with the Optimen that he'd been a prisoner, held against his will, but a sixth sense told him the attempt would be useless. He was nothing to these lordly creatures. He was foam in the backwash of a wave at a cliff base. They were the cliff.
“Look at them as a doctor,” Glisson said. “They are dying.”
“It's true,” Harvey said.
Lizbeth had pressed her eyes closed against tears. Now, her eyes sprang open and she stared up at the people around her, seeing them through Harvey's eyes and Glisson's.
“They
are
dying,” she breathed.
are
dying,” she breathed.
It was there for the trained eyes of an Underground courier to read. Mortality on the faces of the immortals! Glisson had seen it, of course, through his Cyborg abilities to see and respond, read-and-reflect.
“The Folk are
so
disgusting at times,” Calapine said.
so
disgusting at times,” Calapine said.
“They can't be,” Svengaard said. There was an unreadable tone in his voice and Lizbeth wondered at it. The voice lacked the despair she could have expected.
“I say they
are
disgusting!” Calapine intoned. “No mere pharmacist should contradict me.”
are
disgusting!” Calapine intoned. “No mere pharmacist should contradict me.”
Boumore stirred out of a profound lethargy. The asyet alien computer logic within him had recorded the conversation, replayed it, derived corollary meanings. He looked up now as a new and partial Cyborg, read the subtle betrayals in Optiman flesh. The thing was there! Something had gone wrong with the live-forevers. The shock of it left
Boumour with a half-formed feeling of emptiness, as though he ought to respond with some emotion for which he no longer had the capacity.
Boumour with a half-formed feeling of emptiness, as though he ought to respond with some emotion for which he no longer had the capacity.
“Their words,” Nourse said. “I find their conversation mostly meaningless. What is it they're saying, Schruille?”
“Let us ask them now about the self-viables,” Calapine said. “And the substitute embryo. Don't forget the substitute embryo.”
“Look up there in the top row,” Glisson said. “The tall one. See the wrinkles on his face?”
“He looks so old,” Lizbeth whispered. She felt a curiously empty feeling. As long as the Optimen were thereâunchangeable, eternalâher world contained a foundation that could never tremble. Even as she'd opposed them, she'd felt this. Cyborgs died ⦠eventually. The Folk died. But Optimen went on and on and on â¦
“What is it?” Svengaard asked. “What's happening to them?”
“Second row on the left,” Glisson said. “The woman with red hair. See the sunken eyes, the stare?”
Boumour moved his eyes to see the woman. Flaws in Optiman flesh leaped out as his gaze traversed the short arc permitted him.
“What're they saying?” Calapine demanded. “What is this?” Her voice sounded querulous even to her own ears. She felt fretful, annoyed by vague aches.
A muttering sound of discontent moved upward through the benches. There were little pockets of giggling and bursts of peevish anger, laughter.
We're supposed to interrogate these criminals,
Calapine thought.
When will it start? Must I begin it?
Calapine thought.
When will it start? Must I begin it?
She looked at Schruille. He had scrunched down in his seat, glaring at Harvey Durant. She turned to Nourse, encountered a supercilious half-smile on his face, a remote look in his eyes. There was a throbbing at Nourse's neck she had never noticed before. A mottled patch of red veins stood out on his cheek.
They leave everything to me,
she thought.
she thought.
With a fretful movement of her shoulders, she touched
her bracelet controls. Lambent purple light washed over the giant globe at the side of the hall. A beam of the light spilled out from the globe's top as though decanted onto the floor. It reached out toward the prisoners.
her bracelet controls. Lambent purple light washed over the giant globe at the side of the hall. A beam of the light spilled out from the globe's top as though decanted onto the floor. It reached out toward the prisoners.
Schruille watched the play of light. Soon the prisoners would be raw, shrieking creatures, he knew, spilling out all their knowledge for the Tuyere's instruments to analyze. Nothing would remain of them except nerve fibers along which the burning light would spread, drinking memories, experiences, knowledge.
“Wait!” Nourse said.
He studied the light. It had stopped its reaching movement toward the prisoners at his command. He felt they were making some gross error known only to himself and he looked around the abruptly silent hall wondering if any of the others could identify the error or speak it. Here was all the secret machinery of their government, everything planned, ordained. Somehow, the inelegant unexpectedness of naked Life had entered here. It was an error.
“Why do we wait?” Calapine asked.
Nourse tried to remember. He knew he had opposed this action. Why?
Pain!
“We must not cause pain,” he said. “We must give them the chance to speak without duress.”
“They've gone mad,” Lizbeth whispered.
“And we've won,” Glisson said. “Through my eyes, all my fellows can seeâwe've won.”
“They're going to destroy us,” Boumour said.
“But we've won,” Glisson said.
“How?” Svengaard asked. And louder: “How?”
“We offered them Potter as bait and gave them a taste of violence,” Glisson said. “We knew they'd look. They had to look.”
“Why?” Svengaard whispered.
“Because we've changed the environment,” Glisson said. “Little things, a pressure here, a shocking Cyborg there. And we gave them a taste for war.”
“How?” Svengaard asked. “How?”
“Instinct,” Glisson said. The word carried a computed finality, a sense of inhuman logic from which there was no escape. “War's an instinct with humans. Battle. Violence. But their systems have been maintained in delicate balance for so many thousands of years. Ah, the price they paidâtranquillity, detachment, boredom. Comes now violence with its demands and their ability to change has atrophied. They're heterodyning, swaying farther and farther from that line of perpetual life. Soon they'll die.”
“War?” Svengaard had heard the stories of the violence from which the Optimen preserved the Folk. “It can't be,” he said. “There's some new disease orâ”
“I have stated the fact as computed to its ultimate decimal of logic,” Glisson said.
Calapine screamed, “What're they saying?”
She could hear the prisoners' words distinctly, but their meaning eluded her. They were speaking obscenities. She heard a word, registered it, but the next word replaced it in her awareness without linkage. There was no intelligent sequence. Only obscenities. She rapped Schruille's arm. “What are they saying?”
“In a moment we will question them and discover,” Schruille said.
“Yes,” Calapine said. “The very thing.”
“How is it possible?” Svengaard breathed. He could see two couples dancing on the benches high up at the back of the hall. There were couples embracing, making love. Two Optimen began shouting at each other on his rightânose to nose. Svengaard felt that he was watching buildings fall, the earth open and spew forth flames.
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