Four Unpublished Novels

by Frank Herbert

  Then they were past the obstruction.

  Jeb sighed with weariness.

  Monti sat up, and suddenly spoke in a strange flat tone of fear: “Jeb …”

  He looked in at her. She was staring at the floor, every muscle frozen, her attention hypnotically fixed.

  Even before Jeb lowered his eyes he knew what he would see. There was an electric message in Monti’s attitude that said: “Snake!”

  The half-opened door blocked Jeb’s view. He inched back along the pontoon, took a half breath, held it. The brown-hooded head of a fer-de-lance swayed not six inches from Monti’s leg. Its body lay coiled across the barrel of the rifle.

  An essence of every story that Jeb had ever heard about this snake flashed through his mind: the bite was almost certain death.

  “Don’t move!” whispered Jeb.

  Gettler appeared beyond Monti. “Something wrong?”

  “Snake,” breathed Jeb. He looked at the machete beneath the seats. The blade rested within an inch of the snake’s tail.

  Gettler lowered his head, peered under Monti’s legs, drew in his breath. “Careful,” he whispered. “That’s a fer-de-lance—pit viper. Deadly.”

  David stared across the seat back. “Can’t you shoot it?” he whispered.

  Gettler moved slowly to one side. “I can only see part of it. There’s no room for a good shot.”

  “I’ll try for the machete,” said Jeb. He spoke just above a whisper. “Whatever you do, Monti, don’t move or jerk away. Just keep your …”

  “I think I’m going to faint,” she whispered. Her attention remained locked on the snake.

  “No you’re not!” hissed Jeb. He moved his hand toward the machete.

  The snake’s tongue vibrated toward Monti. It drew back an inch.

  “If I had that little revolver I could shoot it from here,” whispered David.

  Jeb hesitated, wet his lips with his tongue. Will Gettler trust the kid with a gun? And if he does …

  “Are you sure you can shoot it from there?” asked Gettler.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Gettler reached across Monti’s shoulders with the twenty-two. “Here it is, son. Move slowly. Don’t attract its attention. Aim for the head.”

  “Have you ever shot a gun like that, David?” whispered Jeb.

  “Yes, sir.” David rested the gun barrel on the back of the seat beside his mother, put his tongue between his lips in concentration.

  “Squeeze the trigger very slowly,” breathed Jeb.

  The snake suddenly stretched upward. Its tongue flickered in blurring motion.

  “David, wait!” hissed Jeb. “Let me get the machete. Then if you miss …”

  “Hurry!” whispered David. “It looks like it’s going to bite!”

  “Please do something,” prayed Monti.

  She stared at the snake’s flickering tongue in complete fascination.

  Jeb moved his right hand closer to the machete … slowly … slowly. His hand passed an invisible point where it came within striking range of the snake. He touched the machete handle, slipped his fingers around it. His gaze centered on the snake’s head. Gently … gently … he lifted the handle, then the blade.

  The fer-de-lance turned, looked at the glinting metal. There was deadly grace in its movement. The tongue flickered. It swung around to face Jeb not two feet from him.

  Jeb locked his muscles into immobility, felt cold perspiration on his forehead. And he thought: If it strikes it’ll get me right in the face! I won’t have time to move!

  David said: “Mr. Logan, I’m going to shoot.”

  The gun’s roar filled the cabin. The snake’s head smashed against the floor from the impact of the bullet. A thrashing, flailing violence exploded beneath Monti’s feet. She leaped onto the seat, then over it and into the rear.

  Jeb lifted the machete, chopped twice at the writhing coils.

  He stepped aside, pulled the snake into the river with the flat of the blade.

  Piranha came to the blood. They surged half out of the water beneath the fuselage, tearing and cutting at the snake. Jeb tore his attention away from the water, looked into the cabin.

  Monti hugged David. Hysterical sobs shook her. David glanced across her shoulder at Jeb, looked at the revolver in his hand. There was a question in the boy’s eyes.

  Jeb’s attention shifted to Gettler.

  The big man filled the opposite door. His bearded chin jutted toward David; the magnum revolver was held ready in his right hand.

  “I’ll take the twenty-two now, David,” said Gettler. He reached toward it with his left hand.

  David continued to stare at Jeb as though waiting for a signal.

  The kid doesn’t have a chance, thought Jeb.

  “Now!” snarled Gettler. A nerve twitched his check.

  “Give him back the gun,” said Jeb.

  A cloud seemed to pass across David’s eyes. He turned, handed the little pistol to Gettler.

  “That was good shooting, son,” said Gettler. He slid the twenty-two into one of the bulging pockets of his jacket.

  “Oh, David!” sobbed Monti.

  “It’s all right, Mother.” David patted her shoulder. “The snake’s dead.”

  “I was paralyzed,” she whispered. “I’ve never been so frightened.” She pulled away from David, slumped back in the seat beside him, put her hands over her eyes.

  Gettler took up his cane pole, fended off a floating island of sedge. Every touch of the pole aroused a cloud of insects.

  “Where’d you learn to shoot like that, David?” asked Jeb.

  “My … dad showed me. Then one of Mother’s bandleaders. He …”

  “Howard,” said Monti. She lowered her hands.

  “Yes,” said David. “He had this target range in his basement where—”

  “I’d almost forgotten about that,” said Monti.

  “They used to leave me … alone there … well, not alone exactly. They …”

  “There was always someone around,” said Monti. “Julio never left the place.” She spoke defensively, then to Jeb: “Julio was Howard’s houseboy.”

  “I see,” said Jeb, but he failed to understand her sudden defensive attitude.

  “One night I shot up a whole case of ammunition,” said David. “Julio said I was even better than him.” He shrugged. “Heck, this was really an easy shot. So close. And I even had an arm rest.” He smiled.

  And for one fleeting moment Jeb saw past the smile to the father, and realized that Roger Bannon’s quiet strength had been transmitted to this boy.

  Jeb glanced at Monti, said: “You don’t have a thing to worry about with a man like this to protect you.”

  A brief hint of a smile touched her lips. She took a quavering breath, patted David’s arm, then spoke abruptly: “Could there be another snake? I mean, how’d that one get in the plane?”

  “They don’t often travel in pairs,” said Jeb.

  “Wrong season,” said Gettler. He spoke without looking up from his pole.

  “That one probably came aboard from those bushes back there where we got the fruit,” said Jeb. He pushed the machete back under the seat, looked lingeringly at the rifle on the floor. It was too far away and pointed the wrong direction. He took up his cane pole, studied the brown current around them.

  The plane drifted almost in the center of a wide reach of water dotted by floating sedge islands, each with a hazy cover of insects. A petrified glaze of heat rebounded from the river, inflated the air beneath the wings and in the cabin. There was an immensity about the river in flood. It was a great broad surface glistening darkly in every open place—as flat and glassy as a pool of dirty oil. There might have been no current at all. The air felt muggy, stagnant—filled with droning insects, strange dank odors and the omnipresent smell of mildew.

  A line of yellow bubbles and foam laced about the pontoons.

  Jeb found the water bag on the floor of the cabin, drank, replaced the bag.

>   All around him the silence trembled in the heat.

  Abruptly, the plane rocked. Gettler cursed, and the pontoon beneath him boomed like a drum as he stamped on it.

  Jeb stooped, peered under the fuselage. “What’s wrong?”

  “Piranha!” snapped Gettler. “I dipped my foot in the water to cool it.” He bent over his left foot, looked at it with something like astonishment. Blood dripped from a gash above his ankle, ran off the float into the river.

  “Are you okay?” asked Jeb.

  “David, get the first aid kit out of the back,” said Monti.

  “Water’s all muddy,” said Gettler. “I had no idea they’d still be with us.”

  “They must’ve been drifting along with us ever since we fed them the snake,” said Jeb.

  “Here’s the first aid kit.” David handed it out the door.

  “Need any help?” asked Monti.

  “No.” Gettler pushed the kit aside. “Hold that thing there. I’m coming inside.” He climbed into the front, took the kit. “Burns like fire!”

  The water beside Gettler’s float suddenly erupted as piranha arose to the dripping blood.

  Jeb snatched the fish line from the floor of the cabin, tossed the bare hook into the boiling mass of fish. The hook was seized immediately. He jerked it back. A frenzied piranha—blunt headed and wild eyed—banged against the strut. Jeb grabbed the machete, dropped the fish onto the cabin floor, smashed it with the flat of the blade.

  In the next few minutes he caught five fish; then the school vanished as abruptly as it had appeared.

  Gettler finished dressing his wound. “Vicious little bastards! Saw them take an Indian once on the Urucú. Canoe tipped over. One yelp and he was gone. Nothing but a big red spot on the river and those fish flashing all over.”

  Monti leaned across the seat back. “If you’ll clean them, I’ll set up the pellet stove and cook them.” She wet her lips with her tongue.

  “Losing your squeamishness, I see,” said Gettler. He handed the first aid kit back to David, slid down to the float, began cleaning the fish.

  Again the water boiled with piranha.

  “They’re hungry,” said Gettler.

  “So’m I,” said Monti, then: “David, help me with this damned stove. I can’t seem to get it going.”

  “Use some of your lighter fluid,” said Jeb.

  Presently, the smell of cooking fish was added to the other odors in the cabin. They ate every scrap of the meat, shared a papaya.

  Gettler leaned back against the strut, belched. “River’s getting pretty damned high,” he said.

  Jeb moved to the front of his pontoon, rested a hand on the cowling, stared ahead. About a half mile downstream the river split off between—he counted them—eight islands. Nine channels.

  “Look down there,” said Jeb.

  “I’ve been looking,” said Gettler.

  Jeb swung up onto the cowling, scrambled onto the wing above the cabin, turned and looked downstream. The river spread in all directions. Little mounds of green were isolated in the water on every side.

  “Which one’s the right channel?” asked Gettler.

  Jeb shook his head. “Dunno. What’ll we do—go eeny, meeny, miney, moe?”

  “Look behind us,” said Gettler.

  Jeb turned, looked upstream.

  Like a grey sheet hanging between the river and a low line of puffy clouds—a rain storm swept down upon them.

  “Rain!” shouted Jeb.

  He slid down to the float and underneath the wing, rigged the sea anchor, dropped it into the brown water.

  The rain hurled itself upon them. Wind shook the plane, skidded it across the floating drag until it swung around pointing upstream.

  Jeb crouched behind the open door, looked into the rear seat at David and Monti.

  “What’d you see from up there on top?” asked David.

  “It looks like a big lake with little islands all over it,” said Jeb. “Channels going every which way.”

  “How do we know which one to take?” asked Monti.

  Gettler leaned in the other door, said: “We don’t.”

  And Jeb thought: Any one of those channels could be a dead end … trailing off into some swamp. And if the river falls, there we’d be: stranded.

  “I think this is an area I’ve heard about,” said Gettler. “If I’m right there’s a swamp on our …”—he paused, squinted in concentration—“on our right. Yes. It’d be on the left when you’re coming upstream.” And he spoke Jeb’s thought: “We could get lost and stranded out there real easy.”

  The wind faded to a series of fretting gusts, died off to stillness that left only the stuttering chop of rain. Jeb straightened, looked around. The plane freed of the wind swung around to the pull of the drag anchor in the current. Again they faced downstream.

  Gettler faced right. “There’s where we don’t want to go.”

  Jeb took up his cane pole, began guiding the plane to the left. When the sea anchor interfered he lifted it from the river, hung it on the strut.

  A drowned island came under the floats. Bushes dragged at the metal. The two men poled across the obstruction, holding steadily to the left through runneled currents flattened by the monotonous pocking of rainfall.

  Jeb paused, listened to the drumming fall of water on the wings. A sodden depression of spirits touched all four in the plane. They drifted through a hissing ghost world saturated with warm, damp vapors.

  An avenue of half submerged trees opened before the plane. The current furrowed over, quickened, hurled the plane through into a maze of narrow channels. No time for decisions. The swiftest current took them—and the men with the poles could only fend off bushes, trees. A tangled wall of vegetation loomed directly ahead. Brown water poured through, foaming around piles of debris, over logs caught in the matted growth. The plane swept headlong into the tangle, snagged, tore free. Vines caught at the wings, broke away, trailed in the water. They scraped and bumped their way into another open reach of boiling current that swept them inexorably toward a solid barricade of trees.

  Jeb tore vines and bushes from the propeller, clambered into the cabin, primed the motor. It caught on the third roll of the starter, coughed and snorted, belched a thick stream of oily smoke. He swung the plane left, quartering against the current until they won their way around the trees into another channel.

  The gauge on the wing tank wavered toward the half mark.

  Jeb shut off the motor, returned to the pontoon.

  The current slowed, but the maze of channels appeared endless.

  What if Gettler had his directions wrong? Jeb asked himself.

  And Gettler stared about with a worried frown, wrestling with the same doubt.

  Again the plane swept toward a line of trees. This time they won around the obstruction with only the poles. Another dead end appeared. Green walls towered on three sides.

  They leaned into the cane poles, thrusting the plane against the flow. A new channel opened before them only to run out in another dead end within twenty minutes.

  Again, Jeb used the motor … and again they poled across the current. He lost track of direction and the number of blind channels they probed.

  Late in the grey afternoon the rain slackened to a random dripping.

  The two men worked like punch-weary fighters, nosed the plane into a grassy, log-mounded hummock: all that remained of an island. Insects clouded the air the moment the floats slipped into the flooded grass.

  Jeb tossed the grapnel onto the hummock, leaned against the cowling, stared exhaustedly at the tangled pile of grey logs on the opposite end of the island. He felt too tired to slap at the insects settling on him.

  Gettler took the rifle, jumped ashore, made his way toward the logs.

  Monti slid down to the float beside Jeb. “You look bushed,” she said.

  David leaned out the door. “Couldn’t I help with the poles?”

  “You’re not heavy enough,” said J
eb.

  “What’s he doing?” asked Monti. She nodded toward Gettler.

  Jeb turned, looked down the island.

  Gettler had taken off his hat, and was collecting something in it from the underside of a log.

  “I dunno,” said Jeb.

  Presently, Gettler returned, held out the hat. “Snails,” he said.

  Monti shuddered convulsively, then: “How do we cook them?”

  “Boil them,” said Gettler. He looked up at David. “Bring down some papaya and the little pan from the pellet stove.”

  David turned to obey.

  Jeb took the machete from the cabin, joined Gettler on the shore.

  “I think there’s some dry rotten wood in those logs,” said Gettler.

  Jeb nodded, pushed his way through a fog of insects across to the piled logs. The center of one gave up dry fuel for a fire. Jeb carried it back to Gettler. Monti joined them, contributed a splash of lighter fluid to start the blaze. David brought the fruit and pan.

  “These are kind of dull eating,” said Gettler. He dumped the hatful of snails into the pan, held it over the flames.

  Monti moved around into the smoke to escape the insects. “Who cares a long as its food?” she asked.

  Jeb squatted in a sodden torpor, stirred only when Gettler handed him a leaf bearing four snails and a quarter of papaya.

  They ate in a kind of despairing silence.

  Gettler finished, stood up, looked downstream. “How far d’you figure we’ve come, Logan?”

  “A little more’n a third of the way,” said Jeb.

  “Christ!” Gettler looked back upstream. “We’ve got to find us a dugout. That metal monster will kill us if we have to horse it through many more days like this one.”

  Jeb shook his head.

  “Have we gotten away from the Indians?” asked David.

  “Not a chance,” snarled Gettler. “They’re in canoes.”

  Night fell across the island: a black pall, warm and dripping, and full of biting insects. A frog chorus swelled around the four humans. From somewhere came the delicate flower scent of orchids. A great crashing sound thumped the dark as a tree—undermined by the flood—toppled into the water.

  The dying fire remained like a single orange eye.