The Jesus Incident w-2

by Frank Herbert

  She remembered the man who had been nailed to the rigid cross-piece on the hill. Barbaric!

  Yaisuah.

  She whispered it: "Yaisuah."

  It was understandable how this name had evolved into that of Jesu.... and even to the Hesoos of Jesus Lewis.

  But nowhere could she find understanding of why she had been taken to witness that agonizing scene. Nowhere. And she found it odd that she had never encountered historical records of that faraway event - not in Ship's teachings nor in the memories of Shipmen who came from Earth.

  In the first moments of her return, she had asked Ship why she had been shown that brutal incident, and had received an enigmatic response.

  Because there are things from the human past that no creature should forget.

  "But why me? Why now?"

  The rest was silence. She assumed that the answers were her own to find.

  She stared at the com-console. The seat there at the instruction terminal was her seat now; she knew it. Kerro was gon.... groundside. Ship had introduced her to this place, had given it to her.

  The message was clear: No more Kerro Panille here.

  A shuddering wave of loss shot through her, and she shook tears from her eyes. This was no place to stay now. She stood, took up her pribox and slipped out the way she had entered.

  Why me?

  She wound her way out of softwares and into D passage leading back to Medical, into the workings of Ship's body.

  The beep of her pribox startled her.

  "Ekel here," she said, surprised at the youthfulness of her own voice - not at all like the ancient quavering of that old woman's voice she had borrowed.

  Her pribox crackled, then: "Ekel, report to Dr. Ferry's office."

  She found a servo and, instead of walking, rode to Medical.

  Ferry, she thought. Could it mean reassignment? Could I be joining Kerro groundside?

  The thought excited her, but the idea of groundside duty remained fearful. So many nasty rumors. And lately, all groundside assignments seemed permanent. Except for the tight-knit political circle at Medical, no one made the return trip. Pressures of work had kept her from thinking much about this before, but suddenly it became vital.

  What are they doing with all our people?

  The drain on equipment and food from Ship was a topic for constant anxious conversation; recurrent dayside orders exhorted greater production effort.... but few speculated about missing people.

  We've been conditioned not to face the finality of absolute endings. Is that why Ship showed me Yaisuah?

  The thought stood there in her awareness, riding on the hum of the servo carrying her toward Medical and Ferry.

  It was clear to her that Yaisuah had ended, but his influence had not ended. Pandora was a place of endings. It gulped food and people and equipment. What influences were about to be sent reverberating from that place?

  Endings.

  The servo fell silent, stopped. She looked up to see Medical's servo gate and, across the passage, the hatch to Ferry's offices. She did not want to go through that hatch. Her body still throbbed with sensitivities ignited by what Ship had shown her. She did not want Ferry touching her body. It was more than her dislike for him - the silly old fool! He drank too much of the alcohol which came up from Colony and he always reached out to put a hand on her somewhere.

  Everyone knew the Demarest woman brought him his wine from groundside. He always had plenty of it after her visits.

  His food chits can't support that kind of drinking.

  She stared at the dogged hatch across the way. Something was definitely wrong - shipside and groundside. Why did Rachel Demarest bring wine up to Ferry?

  If she brings him wine, what does she get in return?

  Love? Why not? Even neurotics like Ferry and Demarest needed love. O.... if not love, at least an occasional couch partner.

  A remembered image of Foul-breath shuddered through her mind. She could almost feel the touch of his hand translated to her own young flesh. Involuntarily, she brushed her arm.

  Maybe that's how they get so foul. No lov.... no lovers.

  There was no evading the summons, though. She slid off the servo and crossed to Ferry's hatch. It snicked open at her approach. Why was she reminded of a sword leaving its scabbard?

  "Ahhh, dear Hali." Ferry opened his palms to her as she entered.

  She nodded. "Dr. Ferry."

  "Sit down wherever you like." His hand rested on the arm of a couch, inviting her to the place beside him. She chose a seat facing him, cleared off the mess of papers and computer discs that covered it. The whole office smelled sour in spite of Ship's air filtration. Ferry appeared to be drun.... at least happy.

  "Hali," he said, and recrossed his legs so one foot reached out to touch hers. "You're being reassigned."

  Again, she nodded. Groundside?

  "You're going to the Natali," Ferry said.

  It was totally unexpected, and she blinked at him stupidly. To the Natali? The elite corps which handled all natural births had never been her ambition. Not even her hope. A dream, ye.... but she was not the type to hope for the impossible.

  "How do you feel about that?" Ferry asked, moving her foot with his.

  The Natali! Working daily with the sacrament of WorShip!

  She nodded to herself as the reality of it seeped through her. She would join the elite who opened the hatchway to the mystery of lif.... she would help rear the children shipside until they were assigned to their own schools and quarters at the age of seven annos.

  Ferry smiled a red-stained smile. "You look stunned. Don't you believe me?"

  She spoke slowly. "I believe you. I suspected that thi...." She waved a hand at his office. "...was for reassignment, bu...."

  Ferry made no move to respond, so she went on.

  "I thought I'd be going groundside. Everyone seems to be going there, lately."

  He steepled his fingers and rested his chin on them.

  "You're not happy with this assignment?"

  "Ohhh, I'm very happy with it. It's jus...." She put a hand to her throat. "I never though......mea.... Why me?"

  "Because you deserve it, my dear." He chuckled. "And there's talk of moving the Natali groundside. You may get the best of both worlds."

  "Groundside?" She shook her head. Too many shocks were coming at her one after the other.

  "Yes, groundside." He spoke as though explaining something simple to an errant child.

  "But I though.... I mean, the foremost provision of WorShip is that we give our children to Ship until they're seven. Ship designated the Natali as the trustees of birt.... and their quarters are here, the estat...."

  "Not Ship!" Ferry's interruption was guttural. "Some Ceepee did it. This is a matter for our determination."

  "But doesn't Shi...."

  "There's no record of Ship doing this. Now, our Ceepee has ruled that it is no violation of WorShip to move the Natali ground-side."

  "Ho.... how lon.... unti.... ?"

  "Perhaps a Pandoran anno. You know - quarters, supplies, politics." He waved it all off.

  "When do I go to the Natali?"

  "Next diurn. Take a break. Get your things moved over. Talk tooo...." He picked up a note from the jumble on his desk, squinted. "...Usija. She'll take care of you from there."

  His foot brushed the back of her heel, then rubbed her instep.

  "Thank you, Doctor." She pulled her foot back.

  "I don't feel your gratitude."

  "But I do thank you, especially for the time off. I have some notes to catch up on."

  He held up an empty glass. "We could have a drin.... to celebrate."

  She shook her head, but before she could say no, he leaned forward, grinning.

  "We'll be neighbors, soon, Hali. We could celebrate that."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Groundside." He pushed the glass toward her. "After the Natali go.

  "But who'll be left here?"

&
nbsp; "Production facilities, mostly."

  "Ship? A factory?" She felt her face blaze red.

  "Why not? What other use will we have for Ship when we're groundside?"

  She jumped to her feet. "You would lobotomize your own mother!" Whirling from his startled gaze, she fled.

  All the way back to her quarters, she heard the drum of Yaisuah's voice in her ears: "If they do these things in a green tree, what will they do in a dry?"

  ***

  I like seeing things fall into place.

  - Kerro Panille, The Notebooks

  NIGHTSIDE AFTER nightside, always nightside! The horror! Legata awoke on the deck in a shipside cubby, her hammock hanging around her like the torn shreds of her nightmares. Sweat and fear chilled her in the dark.

  Slowly, reason returned. She felt the remnants of the hammock on and under her, the cold of the deck against her palms.

  I'm shipside.

  She had come up earlier at Oakes' command to check out reports that Ferry was too far gone on alcohol to be effective. It had shocked her, getting off the shuttle in a familiar shipbay, to see how few Shipmen formed the arrival crew. Staffing raids by Lewis were decimating the shipside work force to replace losses at the Redoubt.

  How many people did they really lose?

  She tugged pieces of hammock out from under her, hurled them into the darkness.

  Ferry, warned of her approach, had gulped too many 'wakepills and had been a jittering mess when she found him. She had dressed him down in fury which had surprised even her, and had removed the last of his Colony liquor supply.

  At least, she hoped it was the last of it.

  I have to do something about these nightmares.

  Some details remained unclear upon waking, but she knew she dreamed of blood and her most tender flesh peeled back by dozens of needlenosed instruments - all of this backed by the feverish glitter of Morgan Oakes' smile. Oakes' thick-lipped smil.... but Murdoch's eyes. An.... somewhere in the backgroun.... Lewis laughing.

  She found pieces of her bedding, an intact cushion, pulled them together and, still in the dark, dragged herself across the cubby to a mat. Only once before had she felt this beaten, this empt.... this helpless.

  The Scream Room.

  It was why she had run th...to regain some pieces of her self-respect. Self-respect regaine.... but no important memories.

  What happened in that room? What kind of a game is Morgan playing? Why did he send me in there?

  She remembered the preliminaries. Innocent enough. Oakes had given her a few drinks, left her with a holo canister which detailed as he put it, "a few of the treats available to those who can afford them."

  He had begun by showing her technical summaries and graphs of the work Lewis was doing on E-clones. The drinks fuzzed her thinking, but most of it remained in memory.

  "Lewis has made remarkable modifications in the cloning system," Oakes said.

  Remarkable, indeed.

  Lewis could grow a clone to age thirty annos in ten diurns.

  He could engineer clones for special functions.

  It had occurred to her as she watched the holo display of Lab One's clones that she could begin playing this game with Oakes, but that they must switch to her rules.

  I didn't even know the game!

  When Oakes had suggested she inspect Lab One, she had not suspected that he wanted her t.... that she was expected t....

  Nothing is sacred!

  The thought kept returning. She breathed in a deep lungful of the sweetly filtered shipside air. How different it was from ground-side. She knew she was wasting time. There were things she must remember before returning to Oakes.

  He believes he has nothing to fear from me now. I had better keep it that way.

  His powers were not diminished. But after all he had done to her, after the Scream room, she still felt that she was the only person who knew him well enough to beat him. There would be no opposition from him as long as he did not consider her a threa.... or a challenge.

  As long as he wants my bod.... and now that I know the game we're really playin....

  Anxiety began to build in her - the nightmare.... the lost memorie....

  She pounded the deck beside her with both fists. The anxiety rose in her like some thing, like a bastard child got by rape. The unresolved emotions in her were a place, immediately demanding, and she felt that she looked down upon her present upset as the dying were said to look down upon themselves from some high and unresolved corner.

  Her hands pained her where she had pounded the deck.

  A Chaplain is supposed to ease anxiety, not cause it!

  Chaplain - she had searched the word out once and the readout had surprised her: Keeper of the sacred relics.

  What were Ship's sacred relics?

  Humans?

  Slowly, she forced herself to relax in the darkness of the ship-side cubby, but her mind remained a blur of unanswered questions, and once more she caught herself gasping for breath. In sudden dizziness, she saw a memory image of herself touching a dial in the Scream Room. Just a glimpse, and across from her, that twisted clone fac.... those wide terrified eye....

  Did I turn that dial? I have to know!

  She hugged her knees to keep herself from pounding the deck.

  Did I turn that dial myself or did Oakes force my hand?

  She held her breath, knowing that she had to remember. She had to. And she knew she would have to destroy Oakes, that she was the only one who could do it.

  Even Ship cannot destroy him. She peered up into the cubby's darkness. You can't do it, can You, Ship?

  She felt that someone else's thoughts spun in her head - dizziness, dizziness. She shook her head sharply to rid it of the feeling.

  Nothin.... i.... sacred.

  Violent trembling shook her body.

  The Scream Room. She had to remember what happened there! She would have to know her own limits before she went after someone else's limits. She had to face the blank places in her mind or Oakes would continue to own her - not her body, but her most private self. He would own her.

  Her hands clenched into fists against her legs. Her palms ached from the bite of her own fingernails.

  I must remembe.... I mus....

  There was one fogged memory and she clung to it: Jessup kneading her maimed flesh with oddly gentle fingers whose deformity she had not even minded.

  That memory was real.

  She forced herself to open her clenched fists, relax her legs. She sat cross-legged on the mat, sweating and nude. One hand went out in the dark and groped for one of the bottles of wine she had taken from Ferry. Her hands were shaking so badly she was afraid she would crush a glass - besides, that would require her to stand, turn on lights, open a locker. She uncapped the raw wine and drank straight from the bottle.

  Presently, a semblance of calm restored, she found the light control, tuned it for a low yellow, and returned to the bottle she had left on the deck. More of that? She had visions of herself reduced to Ferry's condition. No! There had to be a better way. She recapped the bottle, stuffed it in a locker, and sat on her mat, feet stretched out straight.

  What to do?

  Her gaze fell on her reflection in the mirror beside her hatch and what she saw made her groan. She liked her body - the suppleness, the firmness. To men, it appeared intensely female and soft, an illusion attributable to large breasts. But even her breasts were firm to touch, toned by a rigorous physical program which few besides herself and Oakes knew she enjoyed. Now, though, she saw red marks across her stomach, down one arm - the beginnings of softness down her thighs where there were more red streaks from her nightmare struggle with the hammock.

  She held up her left hand and stared at it. The fingers ached. In that slender arm and those fingers she held the strength of five men. She had discovered this early and, afraid it would mean a life of body-work instead of mind-work, she had concealed this genetic gift. But she could not hide from what the mirro
r showed - the shambles she had made of her hammock and the marks on her flesh.

  What to do?

  She refused to go back to the wine. Sweat was beginning to cool on her skin. Her thick hair was stuck to her face and neck - damp dark at the ends. She no longer felt perspiration trickle down the small of her back.

  Her green eyes stared back at her from the mirror and pried into her like Oakes' spying sensors.

  Damn him!

  She closed her eyes in a grimace. There had to be some way of breaking through the memory barrier! What happened to me?

  Scream Room.

  She spoke it aloud: "Scream Room."

  Jessup's terrible fingers kneaded her neck, her back.

  Abruptly, images began to rush through her mind like a storm. Bits and shards at first: a glimpse of a face here, an agony there. Writhings and couplings. There was a rainbow of sad clones mounting each other, always sweating, their freak organs slick, wavin....

  I took none of them!

  Her terrible strength had stunned the clones.

  Blood! She saw blood on her arms.

  But I did not join them! None of it! She knew it. And because she knew it, there was a new strength in her. An objectifying freedom glared from her eyes when she stared once more into the mirror.

  The holorecord!

  Oakes had offered to play it for her, amusement in his eye.... and something else ther.... a fearful watching. She had refused.

  "No-o-o. Perhaps some other time."

  And her stomach was a knot of terror.

  The wine or the holorecord? There was a certainty in her that it had to be one or the other, and she experienced an abrupt wave of sympathy for old Win Ferry.

  What did they do to that poor old bastard?

  There was no doubt about her choice. It had to be the holo, not the bottle. She had to see herself as she had appeared to Oakes. This was the horror required of her before the nightmares could be stopped.

  Before Oakes and Lewis and Murdoch could be stopped.

  If they're stopped, who keeps Colony alive?

  Shipmen had tried four times - four leaders, four failures. "Failure" was the Shipman euphemism for the reality - revolt, slaughter, suicide, massacre. The records were there for a good Search Technician to winkle out.