The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert

by Frank Herbert

  “Indeed! They’re highly explosive in more ways than one. And the key to them has to be in their language.”

  Nikki produced an emotionless smile right out of Root’s own repertoire. “And that, of course, is why you brought me into your project.”

  Was that a flicker of real rage in Root’s eyes? Nikki could not be sure. Before he could explore it, Tam came hurrying up. She flashed a personal, no-barriers smile to Nikki, glanced once at the Argo red of the floater bag before focusing on Root.

  “Sorry I’m late. I stopped at meteorology on the way. Since we’re coming in from the Argo side. They think we stand a reasonable chance of getting a good float.”

  “Do they have an optimum course?” Root asked. “I told them to plot it as late as they could.”

  Tam tapped a pocket of her slicker. “It’s a wide sweeping loop from the ocean side, but you know how chancy the winds are out there.”

  “I’ll look at it in a moment,” Root said. “Nikki is telling me how he learned caution from the songs of the globes.”

  Tam sensed the sneering tone in Root’s voice, shot a warning look at Nikki. He ignored it.

  “We’re dealing with what may be the first sentient species of plant we’ve ever discovered. We don’t know their language, their customs, how they reproduce…”

  “And you’ll teach us all that from their songs … and you’ll teach us before we have a disaster because of our massive ignorance.”

  “If we’re going to share limited territory with another intelligent species, we need a breakthrough before they learn enough about us to take deliberate, concentrated action.”

  “Stop this!” Tam flared. “We have to work together. Nikki, do you have anything really useful out of those globe recordings?”

  “Some technical data viewed from my own specialty.”

  There was no mistaking Root’s quickened interest.

  Tam glanced at Root. “Do we have time?”

  “The floater has to dry a bit longer. Do give us your technical data, Nikki.”

  “The shortest whole song is just under six minutes duration and the longest just over thirty. There’s a good deal of noise between songs.”

  “Which means?” Root sounded disappointed.

  “It may mean nothing, but it could be chatter—talk, gossip or prose as opposed to the rhythmic, well-structured songs.”

  “Structure is not necessarily language.”

  “True. And the duration of each song is probably directly proportional to bag size, the volume of gas. They stop when they’ve expelled gas to a critical point.”

  “How can you be sure they sing by expelling gas?” Tam asked.

  “I assume it, partly because of the way the songs often stop in mid-note and partly because they can be observed to grow smaller as they sing.”

  “Reasonable,” Root agreed. “But what does all this tell us?”

  “When a globe’s in a singing mood it moves from song to song with pauses between—rests in my terminology—that are the same duration as the pauses between individual notes.”

  “How does…”

  “Plenty of concept but little punctuation,” Nikki said.

  “I see. A high-density communications system.”

  One of the ground crew was whistling nearby. Nikki hooked a thumb toward the whistler.

  “Their songs may be no more than that—self-entertainment, a release from boredom. I hope not, because the chatter between songs is very difficult to break into patterns.”

  “And you’re defining pattern as song,” Root said.

  “They are meticulously regular, complete sequences of tones repeated intact at various intervals. And they are not rote. They vary from individual to individual and incident to incident.”

  “Tam has detected similar structures…”

  “Yes, but each song contains the personality or particular interpretation of the singer. And then there are the color changes.”

  “A semaphore of some kind,” Root said. “We have people working on that in another section. Didn’t Ship tell you?”

  He sounds so derisive when he says Ship, Nikki thought.

  “I saw some studies that didn’t seem to be leading us anywhere. At least, not yet.”

  The floater beside them began a slow scrape across the hangar floor, back and forth.

  “They’ve topped off our bag,” Root said. He held a hand toward Tam. “Let me have that course plot.” He took a folded paper from her and led them into the suspended nest. As he began strapping himself into the command seat, he glanced back at Nikki, then at Tam. “Oh, by the way, Tam, Nikki suggests that we brought him into our project for the wrong reasons.”

  She finished securing her web harness.

  “Did he?”

  She looked across at Nikki, who was already secured and running the preliminary checks on his console.

  “Yes, that’s exactly what he suggested.” Root spoke as he ran through his own console preliminaries. “Did you discuss that last night?”

  “No.”

  “I guess you didn’t discuss much of anything. I’m told you went to your own quarters rather early.”

  Tam looked up to find Nikki staring at her, supportive, waiting. She knew that if she made the slightest signal to him, he would shift the attack to Root.

  Attack!

  That was it. Something good happened to me last night—from Nikki’s mother through Nikki to me. I touched something truly powerful.

  Root had sensed this and that was what he had brought under attack. She looked across at Nikki. Their gazes met. Yes, all barriers were down between them.

  Why was Root attacking?

  Without knowing how they did it (without caring), Tam knew that she and Nikki shared this awareness of Root’s behavior. They held the same question in their minds.

  “Perhaps it was a futile discussion and you don’t care to share it,” Root said. “Stand by for lift.”

  Nikki spoke directly to Tam.

  “My mother once said a strange thing. She said: ‘Bring in the sacred fools and we’ll fill the well with snow together.’ She meant that in times of crisis it’s better to do something futile with people of magical spirit than to do nothing at all.”

  As he finished speaking, they heard the ceiling doors open. The light around them changed to dull gray and the floater lifted out of the hangar, swinging across the colony in the grip of a hard wind.

  Magical spirit, Tam thought. That’s what I touched last night. And I’m no longer afraid of Root.

  And the strangest part of this metamorphosis was that she had never recognized her own fear until after she had lost it.

  At his console, Nikki sat in the way his mother had taught: head balanced on the living pole of his spine, his attention focused inward. Part of him carried out the routine of his duties to the floater, but a more important part thought back into words that had passed from his mother’s father out of a lore buried in the dark blood of a memory kinship which traced itself through the mother of her father.

  “Only because of ignorance and attachment to the world are you unable to come home.”

  What am I ignorant of? Where am I attached?

  By the time the red grin of Argo spread across their horizon, Nikki knew what he had to do. And he knew where he had heard a voice like Root’s. Ship spoke like that.

  He saw that they were making good speed in their long loop out over the sea. Root was spending fuel, both jet and compressor, with a profligate hand.

  A heavy wall of mist swirled up ahead and was just beginning to clear as they approached the bay where Nikki had seen his first bloom. The water surface about three hundred meters below the nest was choppy, but he could see beneath the surface the pulsing expanse of kelp.

  Where will the bloom begin?

  Root spoke in a quiet, conversational tone.

  “What was the wrong reason for bringing you here, Nikki?”

  “To sense the panic and signal you w
hen it happened.”

  “Why should you be here?”

  “Because I’m young and comparatively uninfluenced by previous data, by any information other than what you give me or allow me to see.”

  “How do you know that’s not why we brought you?”

  “Because your behavior and your questions try to divert me away from anything which springs spontaneously out of my own creative understanding.”

  “Creative understanding!”

  “The globes that bloom here today will be much like me: minimal information to begin with, perhaps some skeletal data to improve their survival chances, but open receptors with little to block their gathering of new facts.”

  Abruptly, Nikki felt that he had floated free of his seat and the restraining harness. He could see nothing clearly but there was light all around, beautiful light. He was not afraid. The beginning of great joy sat somewhere within him. And out of some dim corner of his consciousness, he heard Root say:

  “Here they come!”

  From where she sat, Tam could not see Nikki’s face unless he turned. And Nikki was her barometer. She felt a deep necessity to see him. One touch to a key and she had linked a corner of her viewscreen to a receptor on Nikki’s panel.

  She stared at the face on her screen. Nikki’s features were trance-like, still—filled with a calm such as she had never seen before. A smile twitched at the corners of her own mouth and the anxious knots which usually cramped her stomach during these flights washed away. It was several heartbeats before she realized they were in the thick of the bloom. The iridescent globes lifted all around, colors flashing. When she activated the external sensors, the sounds of joyful fluting filled the nest.

  Root’s voice was like cold water dashed in her face.

  “There’s a storm coming, lightning.”

  As though his words had created the scene, she looked out and up toward the bay’s landward rim, saw tentative yellow flickers licking back and forth between clouds. A boiling black mass of storm lifted off the land. It rolled closer as she watched and flickering streaks began touching the crags and chimneys and buttes that were Medea’s testimony to her violent past.

  “What do we do now?” Root asked. His voice was gloating.

  He peered back at Nikki and his lips drew away from his teeth. It was a voracious look, a predator’s look, and Tam felt that her breath froze in her throat.

  As though her fear alerted him, Nikki turned. His face was beautiful in its stillness.

  “We will go down to the water and stay here,” Nikki said.

  “Are you crazy?” Root demanded. He turned toward his controls. “We have to try to run for the colony. Tam, restrain him if he tries to interfere.”

  Tam heard the false notes in his voice and made her choice. The magical spirit must have its chance. She reached under Root’s elbow, grasped the interlock cable from his console and ripped it out. Now, each floater console was locked into its function and Root could not override from his position.

  “What’re you…”

  But Nikki already had depressed the DUMP switch on his console. Hydrogen began valving out of the bag above them and the floater started a swiftly controlled descent. The bag above them billowed out like a giant parachute.

  “You fools!” There was real rage in Root’s face. He had been thwarted from an unexpected direction. “Tam! How could…”

  “She knew instinctively what I know consciously,” Nikki said. “You didn’t leave us enough fuel to reach the colony. You never intended us to get back.”

  The nest was swinging wildly now, caught by the leading edge of the storm. The hiss of hydrogen valving from the bag was a monstrous serpent sound all around.

  “You!”

  Root struck out at Nikki.

  It was an anticipated blow and Nikki met it with an open hand which grasped Root’s arm just above the wrist. The arm felt insubstantial, as though it were something less than flesh. There was a writhing, twisting strength in it, though, and Root jerked free. He began unfastening his harness.

  In that instant, with less than twenty meters left beneath them to the bay’s churning surface, Nikki stiffened. Tam saw his eyes go wide. He said: “Ohhh…”

  An explosive clap stunned their nest. It came simultaneously with a blast of sulfurous golden light which engulfed the world all around them.

  The fall, though short, plunged the floater under the surface in a twisting dive.

  Tam gripped the sides of her seat, praying for the chemically activated pontoons to inflate. Dim green light suffused the nest but there were no spurts of water. The hatches were holding.

  Root whirled and hit all of the keys on his console.

  Nothing.

  In a suspended silence, they turned and looked out the bow bubble. Strands of kelp all around. The floater’s descent slowed, stopped. It slewed itself upright and they heard the pontoons filling with air beneath them. They began a gentle ascent. Long whips of kelp caged their world and they saw clumps of polyps on the leaves. Each clump sent out slender tendrils and at the end of each tendril small bulbs swelled, drifted to the surface.

  Nikki imagined those bulbs breaking free of the mother plant and the sea, drifting away in the magnificent colors of the bloom. The entire system snicked into place within his awareness.

  “What do you propose to do now?” Root asked. There was a charged calm in his voice.

  “I’ll continue learning their language,” Nikki said. “I have the key to it.”

  The nest popped to the surface, draping remnants of the exploded bag over the transparent ceiling. It rocked violently in a wind-whipped tidal rip and, through the shreds of the red bag, they glimpsed the bay’s distant shore, forbidding black cliffs. The wind had them now and it drove them toward the open sea, but a vagrant current caught the pontoons, whirled them and swept them into a kelp-subdued pocket of calm beneath the headlands.

  “The nest can take it,” Tam said. “We could float here forever.”

  “Forever is a long time,” Root said. “I don’t think you grasp quite how long.” He turned toward Nikki. “What do you intend doing with your little patch of time—besides perfecting your grasp of the gasbags’ language?”

  “Do you really have the key to it?” Tam asked.

  Root was scornful. “Don’t be a complete fool, Tam. Of course he has it.”

  Nikki marvelled at how subdued Root appeared. How calm. But it was only appearance, a pose, a role, a reflected and insubstantial performance. How lonely the man must be within that shell of limited emotions—his rage was real and, perhaps, jealousy. The vengeful awareness of his own crippled being … that was real. Everything else was sham.

  “How?” Tam asked, staring at Nikki.

  “Planarians,” Nikki said. “With a difference.” He pointed to the currents boiling up through the kelp around them. “The living, thinking creature is really the kelp. The globes are its eyes, its ears, its arms and voice … its contact with the universe through which it learns.”

  “Planarians?” Tam was confused.

  Root appeared lost in thought.

  “A small earthside flatworm,” Nikki said. “I once asked Ship about a poem—‘Food of the Gods’—and Ship included planarians in the answer.”

  “I’ve never heard of them. What…”

  “Although primitive, they can be taught to run mazes,” Root said. He was looking at Nikki with renewed interest.

  How long has he known? Nikki wondered. He said: “And they can learn without being taught.”

  Tam leaned forward to the extent her harness permitted. “They can learn without…”

  “They can reproduce whole individuals from just a small part,” Nikki said. “Cut out a middle section and your worm will grow a head and tail. The tail will regenerate a new head and middle…”

  “But you said they learn without…”

  “Yes. Grind up one that’s learned the maze and feed it to a young worm that’s never run the maze
. The young one learns the maze with remarkable speed. Grind up this young one and feed it to another—the new one learns the maze even faster. Go through the process again and the new worm learns faster yet.”

  “The skins dissolve in the water,” Tam said, looking out at the bay. “The sludge…”

  “Food of the immortal kelp,” Nikki said. “I wonder how long it’s been alive and learning? We must be a fascinating diversion.”

  “This is all very interesting,” Root said. “But we’re still trapped here with no way to contact the colony, no means of returning…”

  “Since you intended to return alone on foot after a tragic crash and heroic odyssey through the demon lands,” Nikki said, “what do you suggest?”

  “I intend to wait,” Root said, grinning.

  Ship save us! Tam thought. He’s admitted that Nikki’s right. But how …

  “Tam survived two ventures out there because you saved her both times, didn’t you?” Nikki asked.

  Root shrugged. It was a pointless question and besides the look on Tam’s face was answer enough.

  Tam stared at Root. “How?”

  “He’s not quite human,” Nikki said. “I don’t know what he is or where he comes from, but he can do things we can’t.”

  “Ship save us,” Tam whispered.

  “Ship save us,” Root mimicked. “You fools haven’t the faintest idea of what’s happening on Medea, why you’re here or what you’re doing.”

  Nikki smiled, a slow, almost sleepy smile. “But we’re learning. We see to learn, listen to learn, touch and smell to learn and…”

  “And maybe someday…” Root pointed out at the heaving bay. “… you hope you’ll drink a broth made from your ‘teachers’ and that’s how you’ll learn.”

  Root released himself from the seat, stood up and opened a hatch. A cold ozone-washed breeze blew in the opening. It was a clean, invigorating smell with only a touch of damp decay at the edge.

  On the breeze came the sound of rhythmic whistles and moans. In the background there was a fluting song, compelling in its siren beauty. Nikki’s head nodded to the rhythm. He released his harness and signalled Tam to do the same.