Nikki expected them to expand on this, but Root was forced to concentrate on a course change as the wind shifted, backing around to their stem. First the jets, then the compressors were shut down and they drifted silently before the wind. The view ahead filled with a thick yellow-brown froth breaking across the kelp.
“Thousands of them come off the water at the bloom,” Tam said. “But wind and electrical activity allow only a fraction of them to make it inland.”
Root was busy venting gas, dropping their floater closer to the sea. It was now less than five hundred meters below them and the high walls of the bay’s surrounding cliffs created a pocket of deceptive calm at the sea surface.
“Look! There!” Tam pointed across Root.
“At seven o’clock,” Root said.
At first Nikki saw only waves and froth churning over the kelp. Then, slowly, bubbles in the froth began to swell and rise, each in its own violet, green or yellow. Each trailed a long thin strand of itself, much like its tentacles, that appeared to be attached to the kelp. As they rose, the umbilicus stretched thin and broke. The bags floated free and, within seconds, began to play every color of the visible spectrum across their surfaces. Water and air swirled with dancing colors.
Root keyed in the external sensors and, above the high-pitched shriek of wind through the floater’s lines, they heard the tentative flutings of the gasbags—clear whistles and odd cadences.
Nikki felt deep within his shoulderblades that those whistles were directed at him. He was both stimulated and upset in ways he could not define. He found it hard to imagine danger in that airborne display of beauty, but knew they could drift down on a colony installation and, unless thwarted, could engulf with flame everything they touched.
“They’re a dream,” Nikki whispered. “They’re all the beauty of a child’s best dream.”
Neither Root nor Tam responded. All three of them sat enthralled within the nest, rocking in the wind, and watched as thousands of the colorful bags broke the sea’s drab surface, swelled and lifted.
Nikki listened to the siren fluting of the bags as they lifted closer and closer, hearing distinct voices waver through the colorful mob. He spoke in a whisper.
“They sound like Ship children when they get up in the morning. They come out of their cubbies and into the dressing room and they jabber themselves awake.”
Tam looked at him with a curious softness.
“I would like to see children. I haven’t seen a child in almost ninety years.”
Root laughed, oddly harsh and when her blue eyes snapped a demanding look at him, he cleared his throat, spoke placatingly.
“Tam, you slept more than fifty of those years in the hyb tanks. Look down there.” He stretched his hand across the view, alive now with gasbags tumbling over themselves in the fits and starts of the wind. “These are children that only we three have seen. We saw them born … or hatched.”
“I find no comfort in that,” she said.
What an odd turn of phrase, Nikki thought. He felt that he’d been an eavesdropper on an exchange with deep and portentous meanings.
Once more, Nikki scanned his console, still curious about the helium but even more curious at this real-time observation of a bloom.
“Tam and I have watched four blooms this year,” Root said. “Are you superstitious, Nikki?”
He’s goading me again, Nikki thought. When he spoke, he couldn’t conceal resentment.
“There are certain things … powers we can’t measure. And you’re right that all things are possible; maybe luck works somewhere in that. But I wouldn’t call myself superstitious.”
“Good!” Root sounded elated. He glanced at Tam who was busy adjusting the external monitors. “Out of four trips here and a total crew of fourteen, we’re the only two survivors.”
Nikki felt as though the bottom had dropped out of his stomach and it was not the lurching of the floater. He was in genuine physical danger with no Ship to guard him. He was actually exposed to dangerous elements.
Constant danger.
Is this what Ship meant?
Even as he thought this he knew it was too easy to be true. Ship had something else concealed in that warning. Nikki knew this with a sure instinct.
“Listen!”
It was Tam, speaking as she increased the volume on the external sensors. The hesitant, youthful jabber of the rising globes was being replaced by babbling confusion. Quickly, it built into the short, unmistakable sounds of creatures in panic.
As though the sound threw a switch within Nikki, he felt the panic in his own breast.
Evil!
Evil!
Evil!
He didn’t know whether he was crying it or just thinking it. But there were screams in his throat and he saw his own gloved fists pound at the console in front of him, then move toward the release catches of his safety harness, fingers clawing.
Through all of this, he was aware of Root watching him with a distant, clinical coldness. Root made no move to help, no comment.
Tam threw a switch on her panel to take over Nikki’s controls. The floater first! In the same motion, she kicked the safety interlock which secured Nikki in his seat. Nikki thrashed and twisted there like a tortured animal, screaming and crying.
Why wasn’t Root doing something to help?
But Root had turned his attention to the forward bubble and its view of the colorful bloom.
“Tam, please observe,” he said.
She turned her attention to the view and saw thousands of whirling bags as one boiling mass of visible scream. Color flamed in them. The external sensors relayed a diminishing babble. Only a scattered few of the bags had escaped the destructive dance and she knew from experience that those few would assemble and guide themselves toward the colony with violent intent.
The wind was picking up, tearing at the whirling mass below them. The babble of screams faded and most of the bags emptied, scattering like torn fabric across the surface of the sea. Only the few survivors moved inland.
Nikki had subsided into moaning unconsciousness.
“How very interesting,” Root said. “We were correct in asking for this young man.”
“His hands are bleeding. Shouldn’t we do something?” Tam asked.
“Yes. We should save ourselves by returning to the colony. The young man will be all right until we deliver him to the medics.”
“Why is it you’re always right?” Tam demanded.
“Careful, Tam. It’s my function to be right. And that’s why we’re alive while the others are dead.”
“I still wish we could warn our people.” She nodded toward the surviving globes which were now beyond the cliff tops headed toward the distant colony.
“It’s only a small attack,” Root soothed her. “Security will handle it quite easily.”
* * *
Nikki awoke to the low sound of murmuring voices. They were sickroom voices filled with well-trained concern. A female voice said: “All right. We’ll leave him with you now.”
He opened his eyes and saw a beige wall only a few millimeters away. Rough blankets covered him. A bed. He was in a bed. His hands ached and there was a smell of disinfectants.
Slowly, he turned onto his back, saw Tam seated on the edge of the bed reading his biostats from a console attached to the footboard. Nikki recognized his own quarters. The hatch was open to the outer passage and Root stood just inside it, leaning against the wall, a look of intense observation on his face … calculating. Root’s attention was on Tam.
“I’m glad you’re awake,” Tam said. There was real concern in her voice.
Root smiled.
Nikki felt a knot of sickness in his stomach. The pain in his hands. He lifted them, saw the transparent swathing of celltape. The curved edges of many cuts smiled up at him through the tape and he remembered once Shipside, a fall at play and a cut leg, his real mother applying celltape.
“You’ll learn to like celltape,” she’d
said. “It makes you heal faster and you can watch yourself mend at the same time.”
Tosa Nikki … whatever happened to you?
“Whatever it was, you left it back there at the bloom,” Tam said. She switched off the biostat console, turned that searching blue gaze on him. “We have to know what happened.”
Nikki turned his head away toward the wall. Her words called back the panic … horror. He remembered pounding the floater console, screams … trying to escape from … what? From his own body? How was that possible?
“Come, come. We have to know.” That was Root.
Nikki knew the questions they would ask. Afraid of heights? Afraid of closed spaces? Of people? Death? They would have pulled all of Ship’s records on him by now and none of the answers to these questions would be yes. Except for death. Something animal responded to that threat and Ship would never explain it.
“It was a rough ride,” Tam said, “and your first. Were we too rough on you?”
Nikki recalled a brief instruction record Ship had provided him when he was sixteen:
For five hundred years of earthside history, most humans prejudged poets to be biologically inferior. Remnants of that judgment tend to cling to the human psyche.
Nikki turned his head, stared across the room at Root. “You don’t seriously believe that?”
The man appeared genuinely surprised.
“Maybe not. But remember we were not in simulated danger out there. It was real.”
Tam touched his shoulder. “We lost you when Root told you about the other crews. Could…”
“No. I don’t know what happened to me; I just know what it wasn’t. How long have we been back?”
“About five hours,” Tam said. “Are you hungry?”
The thought of food made his stomach churn. “No. No food. Do you have the nest recordings from our trip?”
“Complete tapes,” Root said. “Would you like to review them?”
Was that a protesting glare Tam directed at Root?
“Shouldn’t we let him recover completely?” she asked.
“The decision’s his,” Root said.
“Bring them,” Nikki said.
“We have to take you to them,” Root said.
What was that pouncing expectancy in Root’s manner?
“Why?” Nikki asked.
“We have to use the floater consoles. All others are linked to the colony and … Ship. Only the floater is independent.”
“Why?”
“We think Ship has been influencing our project.”
“Ship doesn’t have to influence such things. Ship is God.”
Root leaned toward Nikki. “So Ship says. But Ship alone knows what Ship sees for Itself. Like any other being, Ship must choose to see some things and ignore others.”
“But Ship’s immortal!” Nikki protested. “Without any limits of time, Ship could…”
“Ship had you for only eighteen years,” Root said. “How long will you have yourself? Five hundred years? A thousand? More than…”
Root broke off as Nikki turned away and rubbed his forehead with a celltape-swathed hand.
“Shall we go?” Tam asked. “Or would you rather…”
“No. Let’s go review those records.”
She helped him to stand on wobbly legs and he was surprised to see that he still wore the clothing he’d worn on the floater. They had stripped off only the slicker and the gloves which he’d torn injuring his hands.
None of them spoke on the walk to the hangar, not until they were alone in the floater.
“What if Ship chose to hear what you said back there?” Nikki asked, confronting Root.
“I think Ship is bored,” Root said. “At the very least, we’re entertaining.”
The answer filled Nikki with confusion. He stood in the confined nest unable to respond while Root readied the replay. How confident Root appeared! He moved with such sureness, not slinking around like someone who felt the least bit guilty. And Tam—while matter-of-fact, she wasn’t cold. She assisted Root as though she understood a definite time-table. That was it! They were on a time-table toward some specific goal. But Tam, while committed, was afraid of something … or someone.
She’s afraid of Root!
“Is there evidence to support your notion that Ship is influencing your project?” Nikki asked.
“I’m afraid it’s not a notion,” Tam said.
“But even so, if Ship…”
“We’re ready for the replay,” Root said. He turned and stared at Nikki. It was the stare of a technician toward a test animal.
“Evidence,” Nikki insisted.
“We’ll show you later,” Tam said. “It became clear when we questioned Ship about the purpose of the colony.”
“You questioned Ship’s purpose?”
“Are you horrified, repelled?” Root asked.
“Ship and I used to play a question and answer game,” Nikki said. “If I asked a question, Ship always answered truthfully. But Ship didn’t always answer in terms I could understand.”
“Are you trying to delay the replay?” Tam asked. She indicated the console which Root had readied.
“No, let him go on,” Root said. “Was Ship trying to confuse or mislead you?”
“That would’ve broken a basic rule of the game,” Nikki said. “That would’ve been untruthful. No … Ship was teaching me that the answers are always somewhere in the formation of the question.”
“How trusting you are,” Root said.
“In the question … the answer?” Tam asked.
Root leaned forward, staring at Nikki. How did the poet understand his own role in Ship’s purpose … whatever that purpose? “Do continue.”
“Ship might answer me philosophically in conversational terms,” Nikki said. “I soon learned how to play the philosophy game. Then It shifted to complex mathematical constructions which I had to learn to discover the answer.”
“You were providing your own answers,” Tam said.
“In a way. I had to learn how to ask my question in a specific enough way that I could be sure of understanding the answer. And then I found that the form of the question carried the language of the answer. Even more: a sufficiently precise question carried the information of the answer.”
“Why do you now recount this game?” Root asked.
“Because … however you asked your questions of Ship, the form of your questions imposed the role that you insisted Ship play. That’s the rule of the game.”
“The better you get at asking questions, the fewer questions you have to ask,” Tam said. She stared at Nikki as though seeing him for the first time. She felt that she was poised on the edge of a new, liberating awareness.
Root was glowering, rubbing at his chin.
Nikki glanced at the ready console, recalling a question he’d asked during the flight to the bloom.
“When I asked about helium today, for example, my question carried the form and the language of the answer. Helium adjusted to a Medean sea level referent should read two point seven six Kg over m cubed. I got two point nine. That’s the figure for hydrogen.”
Root glanced at the sealed hatch on his right, returning his attention to Nikki.
Tam was holding her breath.
“Are you trying to say that we’re flying hydrogen?” Root asked.
“Yes. We’re flying what the globes fly. Highly flammable in this electrically active atmosphere. In effect, we’re a giant flying bomb.”
Surprisingly, Root chuckled.
Tam shuddered.
“What amuses you?” Nikki asked. He felt that he had just performed precisely as expected and that this boded no good for him.
“Ship has restricted many of your records,” Root said. “Tam assumed that this indicated social or moral problems. Isn’t that right, Tam?”
She shook her head: negative.
“Then what did you assume?”
“That Ship wants to keep Nikki a mystery.”
“Yes! There’s no telling what he knows.”
“How did you exchange hydrogen for helium?” Nikki asked. “If your ground crew knew about it, you’d be flying a shovel and rake in one of the cattle compounds.”
“But they do know,” Tam said. “It’s the lesser of several dangers.” She glanced upward at the hovering bag.
“We’re the only floater that those gasbag globes won’t attack,” Root said. “We have a good ground crew, the best. A good ground crew will take big risks to keep its flying crew alive.”
“Who else knows?”
“Nobody.”
“Maybe Ship knows,” Tam said.
“Ship is nobody,” Root said.
Tam put a hand to her mouth.
Nikki had heard a measured calculation in Root’s voice and studied the man carefully. Sacrilege to shock us! But Root’s behavior was always seated in many reasons. What else did he want?
“The mystery today,” Root said, “is not just that you panicked, but that the bags panicked. Why? There was only one significant difference about our floater today—you.”
“You’re telling me that when you fly hydrogen the bloom will come right up to you and it won’t attack.”
“They tend to ignore us,” Tam said.
Nikki looked at the console beside Root. “Let’s see what happened today.”
Root reached down, flicked a switch. The three screens around them came alive with views of the flight and the sounds were played through the sensor relays.
Nikki divided his attention among the screens, was aware that his companions were watching him. He closed his eyes when the replay came to the part where he had lost control. Terror? He felt nothing but the memory of his panic and even that was not immediate. He could extinguish it at will. But as he listened to his own frantic screams and the strident squeals of the gasglobes, another memory image insinuated itself into his awareness. He saw a clear picture of the floater from outside and he thought of it as a giant member of the bloom. The image projected itself into his awareness without compromise and he felt himself falling, falling away from the giant globe … the floater.
The image ended. It shut off like the stopping of a tape.
He opened his eyes, signalled for Tam to shut down the console. She reached across Root to depress the switch.
The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert Page 92