The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert (41 page)

“Sorry,” said Orne. “I was enjoying the view.”

“You find something amusing?” demanded Bakrish.

“This humble face reflects happiness,” said Orne. “Happiness to be on Amel.”

“Oh. Well, come along.” Bakrish turned away, strode off under the covered walk, not looking to see if Orne followed.

Orne shrugged, set off after the priest, found that he had to force himself to a half trot to keep up with the other's long-legged stride.

No moving walks, no hopalongs,
thought Orne.
This place is primitive.

The walk jutted like a long beak from a windowless, low stone building. Double doors opened into a dim hall. The doors had to be opened manually, and one of them creaked. Bakrish led the way past rows of narrow cells open to the hall, came finally to another door. It opened into a cell slightly larger than the others, big enough to accommodate one small desk and two chairs. Pink light filled the room from concealed exciters.

Bakrish crossed the cell ahead of Orne, crunched into the chair behind the desk, motioned for Orne to take the other seat. “Sit down.”

Orne complied, but with a sudden feeling of wariness. Something here failed to add up for his highly tuned senses.

“As you know, we here on Amel live under the Ecumenical Truce,” said Bakrish. “Your intelligence service will have briefed you on some of the significance behind that fact, of course.”

Orne concealed his surprise at this turn in the conversation. He nodded.

Bakrish smiled. “The main thing you need to understand about it now is that there is nothing unusual in my being assigned as your guru.”

“I
don't
understand.”

“You are a follower of Mahmud. I am a Hynd and a
Wali,
under divine protection. Under the Truce, all of us serve the one God who has many names. You understand?”

“I see.”

Bakrish nodded. “When Emolirdo told us about you, we had to see for ourselves, of course. That is why you are here.”

Emolirdo a traitor!
Iron control kept Orne from revealing his shock.

“You pose a fascinating problem,” said Bakrish.

Anger coursed through Orne.
What a foul-up!
He set his face in a wolfish grin, probed with his newly awakened psi awareness for some weakness here, an emotion, a clue to the feeling of oddness about the room. “I'm so happy you've found something to keep you occupied,” he said.

Bakrish leaned forward, glanced behind Orne, nodded. In the same instant, Orne felt the sensation of oddness dissipate. He whirled, caught a flicker of robe and a wheeled object being pulled away from the open door.

“That's better,” said Bakrish. “Now we have the tensor phase pattern of your equipment. We can nullify it at will, or destroy you with it.”

Orne froze.
What kind of a bomb did Emolirdo have the medics plant in me?

“However, we do not wish to destroy you,” said Bakrish. “For the time being we will not tamper with your equipment. We
want
you to use it.”

Orne took two deep breaths. Without volition, his psi training took over. He concentrated on the inner focus for calmness. It came like a wash of cool water: icy, observant calm.

Boxed! All it took was one traitor!
The thoughts blazed through his mind. But outwardly he remained calm, alert.

“Have you nothing to say?” asked Bakrish.

“Yes.” Orne cleared his throat. “I want to see the Halmyrach Abbod. I've got to find out why you're trying to destroy the…”

“All in due time,” said Bakrish.

“Where's the Abbod?”

“Nearby. When the time comes for you to have your audience with him it will be arranged.”

“Meanwhile, I just wait for you to blow me up!”

“Blow you…” Bakrish looked puzzled. “Believe me, my young friend, we have no desire to cause your destruction. That is merely a necessary precaution. Now, there are two facts here: You want to find out about us, and we want to find out about you. The best way for both of us to accomplish our aims would be for you to submit to your ordeal. You really don't have any choice, of course.”

“You mean I let you lead me around like a
grifka
being brought to the slaughterhouse! Either that or else you destroy me.”

“It would be better if you just looked on this as an interesting test,” murmured Bakrish. “Your bloody thoughts really aren't suitable.”

“Somehow, I'm going to find out what makes you tick,” grated Orne. “When I do, I'm going to smash your mainspring!”

Bakrish frowned, swallowed. “You
must
be exposed to the holy mysteries,” he said. His yellow skin paled.

Orne leaned back. His sudden burst of bravado had left an aftermath of embarrassment. He thought:
This joker should've laughed at me. He's in the driver's seat. But my threat frightened him. Why?

“Do you submit to your ordeal?” asked Bakrish.

Orne pushed himself up out of the chair. “You said it for me: I really don't have any choice.”

*   *   *

“This is the cell of meditation-on-faith,” said Bakrish. “Stretch out on the floor, flat on your back. Do not try to sit up or stand until I give you permission. It is very dangerous.”

“Why?” Orne looked around the room. It was high and narrow. Walls, floor and ceiling looked like white stone veined by thin brown lines like insect tracks. Pale white light, sourceless and as flat as skimmed milk, filled the room. A damp stone smell permeated the place.

“Flat on your back you are relatively safe,” said Bakrish. “Accept my word for it. I have seen the results of disbelief.”

Orne cleared his throat, feeling suddenly cold. He sat down, stretched out on the floor. The stone was chill against his back.

“Once started on your ordeal, the only way out is to go through it,” said Bakrish.

“Have
you
been through this?” asked Orne.

“But of course.”

Orne probed for the other's motive-emotions, met a sense of cold sympathy … if the psi awareness could be trusted. After all, much of it had come from Emolirdo, a traitor.

“So I've crawled into your tunnel … or is it a cave?” said Orne. “What's at the other end?”

“That's for you to discover.”

“You're using me to find out something, Bakrish. What if I refuse to co-operate? Is that stalemate?”

A sense of tentative regret radiated from Bakrish. “When the scientist sees that his experiment has failed, he is not necessarily barred from further experiments … with new equipment. You truly have no choice.”

“Then let's get on with it.”

“As you will.” Bakrish moved to the end wall. It swung open to reveal the outer hallway, closed behind the priest. There was an abrupt feeling of increased pressure.

Orne studied the cell. It appeared to be about four metres long, two metres wide, some ten metres high. But the mottled stone ceiling appeared blurred. Perhaps the room was higher. The pale lighting could be designed for confusing the senses. He probed the prescient sense, felt its amorphous twinge—peril.

The priest's voice suddenly filled the room, booming from a concealed speaker: “You are enclosed within a psi machine. This ordeal is ancient and exacting: to test the quality of your faith. Failure means loss of your life, your soul or both.”

Orne clenched his hands. Perspiration made his palms oily. An abrupt increase in background psi activity registered on his booster.

“Immerse yourself in the mystical stream,” said Bakrish. “Of what are you afraid?”

Orne thought of the pressures focused on him, all the evidence of deep and hidden intent. “I don't like to act just on faith. I like to know where I'm going.”

“Sometimes you must go for the sake of going,” said Bakrish. “In fact, you do this all the time when…”

“Nuts!”

“When you press the stud to turn on a room's lights, you act on faith that there will be light,” said Bakrish.

“Faith in past experience.”

“And what about the first time?”

“I guess I must've been surprised at the light.”

“Then prepare yourself for surprises, because there is no lighting mechanism in your cell. The light you see there exists because you desire it, and for no other reason.”

“What…”

Darkness engulfed the room.

Bakrish's voice filled the darkness with a husky whisper. “Have faith.”

The prescient warning gripped Orne: writhing terror. He fought down the desire to jump up and dash for the door wall. The priest's warning, grimly matter of fact, had rung true. Death lay in flight.

Smoky glowing appeared near the ceiling, coiled down towards Orne.

Light?

Orne lifted his right hand. He couldn't see the hand. The radiance cast no light into the rest of the cell. The sense of pressure in the cell increased with each heartbeat.

Light if I wish it? Well … it became dark when I doubted.

He thought of the milky light.

Shadowless illumination flickered into being, but near the ceiling where he had seen the glowing radiance there boiled a black cloud. It beckoned like the outer darkness of space.

Orne froze, staring.

Darkness filled the room.

Again, radiance glowed at the ceiling.

The klaxon of prescient fear cried through Orne. He closed his eyes in the effort of concentration. Immediately, fear lessened. His eyes snapped open in shock.

Fear!

And the ghostly glowing crawled nearer.

Eyes closed.

Still the sense of peril, but without immediacy.

Fear equals darkness. Even in the light, darkness beckons.
He stilled his breathing, concentrated on the inner focus.
Faith?
Blind
faith? What do they want of me? Fear brings the dark.

He forced his eyes to open, stared into the lightless void of the cell. Radiance coiling downwards.
Even in the darkness there is light. But it's not really light because I can't see by it.

It was like a time he could remember—long ago in childhood: darkness in his own bedroom. Mooncast shadows transmuted to monsters. He had clenched his eyes tightly closed, fearful that if he opened them he would see a thing too horrible to face.

Orne stared up at the coiling radiance.
False light. Like false hope.
The radiance coiled backwards into itself, receding.
Utter darkness equals utter fear.

The radiance winked out.

Dank, stone-smelling darkness permeated the cell, a darkness infected with creeping sounds—claw scrabbles and hisses, little slitherings …

Orne invested the sounds with every shape of terror his imagination could produce: poisonous lizards, insane monsters … The peril sense enfolded him, and he hung there suspended in it.

Bakrish's hoarse whisper snaked through the darkness: “Orne? Are your eyes open?”

His lips trembled with the effort to speak: “Yes.”

“What do you
see,
Orne?”

An image suddenly danced on to the black field in front of Orne: Bakrish in an eerie red light, leaping and capering, grimacing …

“What do you see?” hissed Bakrish.

“You. I see you in Sadun's inferno.”

“The hell of Mahmud?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Orne, do you not prefer the light?”

“Why do I see you?”

“Orne, I
beg
of you! Choose the…”

“
Why
do I see you in…” Orne broke off. He had the feeling that something peered inside him with heavy deliberation, checked his thoughts, his vital processes, weighed them. He knew suddenly that if he willed it, Bakrish would be cast into the deepest torture pit dreamed of in Mahmud's nightmares.
Why not? Then again: why? Who am I to decide? He may not be the right one. Perhaps the Halmyrach Abbod …

Groaning, creaking filled the stones of the cell. A tongue of flame lanced out of the darkness above Orne, poised. It cast a ruddy glow on the stone walls.

Prescient fear clawed at him.

Faith?
He had the inner knowledge—not faith—that in this instant he could do a dangerous and devilish thing: cast a man into eternal torture.
Which man and why? No man.
He rejected the choice.

Above him, the dancing flame receded, winked out, leaving only darkness and its slithering noises. Realization swept over Orne: he felt his own fingernails trembling and scrabbling against the stone floor—
claws!
He laughed aloud, stilled his hands. The claw sound stopped. He felt his feet writhing with involuntary efforts at flight. He stilled his feet, recognized the absence of the suggestive slithering. And the hissing! He focused on it, realized that it was his own breath fighting through clenched teeth.

Orne laughed.

Light?

In sudden perversity, he rejected the idea of light. Somehow, he knew this machine was responding to his innermost wishes, but only to those wishes uncensored by a doubting consciousness. Light was his for the willing of it, but he chose the darkness, and in the sudden release of tension, ignored Bakrish's warning, got to his feet. He smiled into the darkness, said: “Open the door, Bakrish.”

Again, Orne felt something peer inside him, and recognized it for a psi probe—greatly magnified from the training probe used by Emolirdo. Someone was checking his motives.

“I'm not afraid,” said Orne. “Open the door.”

A scraping sound grated in the cell. Light fanned inwards from the hall as the end wall swung open. Orne looked out at Bakrish, a shadow framed against the light like a robed statue.

The Hynd stepped forwards, jerked to a halt as he saw Orne standing.