The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert (44 page)

Orne grasped his light standard tightly, began inching his way to the right. Tension in the crowd was like a fuse smoking and sizzling towards a mass of explosives.

The red-hatted priest glared at Orne, dark face contorted in the kaleidoscopic gleams of the students' lights. He thrust out an arm towards Orne. “Death to unbelievers!”

Students began climbing to their feet.

Orne moved faster, stumbling back into the darkness beyond the lights, realized he still carried his own light like a waving beacon. Its colored reflections picked out a side trail leading off into blackness.

The priest's voice behind him leaped to an insane pitch: “Bring me the head of that blasphemer!”

Orne hurled his light standard like a spear at the suddenly congested group behind him, whirled, fled along the trail.

A ragged, demoniacal yell lifted into the night from the mass of students. A thunder of footsteps pounded after him.

Orne put on more speed. His eyes adjusted to the starlight, and he could just make out the line of the trail curving around the slope to the left. A blotch of deeper blackness loomed ahead.

The woods?

The scrambling mob sound filled the night behind him.

Under Orne's feet, the path became uneven, twisted to the right down a steep slope, turned left. He tripped, almost fell. His robe caught on bushes, and he lost seconds freeing himself, glanced back. Another few seconds and the lights of the mob would reveal him. He came to a split-second decision, plunged off the trail downhill to the right and parallel to the line of trees. Bushes snagged his robe. He fumbled with the belt, shed the robe.

“I hear him!” someone screamed from above.

The mob came to a plunging stop, held silent. Orne's crashing progress dominated the night sounds.

“Down there!”

And they were after him.

“His head!” someone screamed. “Tear his head off him!”

Orne plunged on, feeling cold and exposed in nothing but sandals and the light shorts he had worn beneath the robe. The mob was a crashing avalanche on the hill above him: curses, thumps and tearing sounds, waving lights. Abruptly, Orne stumbled on to another trail, was almost across it before he could turn left. His legs ached. There was a tight band across his chest. He plunged into deeper darkness, glanced up to see trees outlined against the stars. The mob was a confused clamour behind.

Orne stopped, listened to the voices: “Part of you go that way! We'll go this way!”

He drew in gasping breaths, looked around.
Like a hunted animal!
he thought. And he remembered Bakrish's words: “…
caution is the brother of fear
…” He smiled grimly, slipped off the trail downhill to the right, ducked beneath low limbs, crawled behind a log. Moving softly, silently, he dug dirt from beside the log, smeared it over his face and chest.

Lights came closer along the trail. He heard the angry voices.

Keeping his head down, Orne wriggled deeper into the trees, arose to his knees, slid down a hill. He worked his way to the right down the hill. The mob sounds grew dim, faded. He crossed another trail, melted through more trees and bushes. His wounded arm ached, and unaccountably this reminded him of the itching sensation he had felt while strapped in the chair …
an itching like a healing wound but
before
the wound!
He felt that he had met another clue, but its meaning baffled him.

The trees thinned, bushes grew farther apart. He came out on to the flat park area, a lawn underfoot. Beyond the park he saw the wall, and above that street lights and glowing windows.

Bakrish said the Halmyrach Abbod is in this city,
thought Orne.
Why bother with the lower echelons? I'm a field agent of the I–A. It's time I got down to work.
And in the back of his mind another thought niggled:
Did I pass that last test?
Angrily, he pushed the thought aside, crouched as footsteps sounded on a path to his left.

Through the thin starlight filtered by scattered trees he saw a priest in white walking along the path. Orne flattened himself against a tree, waited. Fragrance of night-blooming flowers crossed his nostrils. Birds whirring and rustling sounded from the branches overhead. The footsteps came closer.

Orne waited for the priest to pass, slipped out behind him.

Presently, Orne strode towards the wall and the street lights. The priest's robe hung a little long. He tucked a fold under the belt, smiled. In the dark bushes at the edge of the park lay an unconscious figure bound and gagged with strips torn from his own underclothing.

Now, we see what makes this place tick,
thought Orne. He paused while still in the shadows of the park, scrubbed at the dirt on his face and chest with an under corner of the robe, then continued on his way calmly—a priest out on normal business.

No movement showed beyond the low wall. Orne walked along it, entered by a gate, crossed to an alley. A sour smell of cooking tainted the narrow way. The slapping of his sandalled feet made a double echo off the stone walls. Ahead, a standard light showed the crossing of another narrow alley.

Orne stopped as thin shadows projected across the intersection. Two priests strode into view. Orne hurried ahead, recalled a religious greeting from his own childhood training on Chargon. “Shari'a, gentle sirs,” he said. “God grant you peace.”

The pair stopped with their faces in shadows half turned his direction. The near one spoke: “May you follow the highway of divine command and guidance.” The other said: “May we be of service?”

“I am from another sector and have been summoned to the Halmyrach Abbod,” said Orne. “I seem to have lost my way.” He waited, alert to every movement from the pair.

“These alleys are like a maze,” said the nearest priest. “But you are near.” He turned, and the street light revealed a pinched-in face, narrow eyes. “Take the next turning to your right. Follow that way to the third turning left. That street ends at the court of the Abbod.”

“I am grateful,” murmured Orne.

“A service to one of God's creatures is a service to God,” said the priest. “May you find wisdom.” The pair bowed, passed around Orne, went on their way.

Orne smiled into the darkness, thinking:
Old I–A maxim—Go straight to the top.

The street of the Abbod proved to be even narrower than the others. Orne could have stretched out his arms to touch both walls. At the end of the alley a door glowed dimly grey in reflected starlight. The door proved to be locked.

A locked door?
he thought.
Can all be sweetness and purity here?
He stepped back, peered up at the wall. Dark irregularities there suggested spikes or a similar barrier. His thought was cynically amused:
Such civilized appointments on this
peaceful
planet!

A glance back up the alley showed it still empty. He shed the priestly robe, swung a hemmed corner up on to the wall, pulled. The robe slipped back slightly, caught. There was a small tearing sound as he tested it, but the robe held. He tried his weight on it. The fabric stretched, but remained firmly caught.

Scrabbling sounds marked his passage up the wall. He avoided sharp spikes on the top, crouched there. One window in the building opposite him glowed with a dim rose color behind loose draperies. He glanced down, saw a starlit courtyard, tall pots in rows topped with flowering bushes. Another glance at the window, and he felt the abrupt stab of prescient fear.
Danger there!
An air of tension hung over the courtyard.

Orne freed the robe from the spike, dropped into the courtyard, crouched in shadows while he slipped back into the priest's garment. One deep breath, and he began working his way around the courtyard to the left, hugging the shadows. Vines dropped from a balcony below the lighted window. He tested one, found it too fragile, moved farther along the wall. A draught touched his left cheek. Darker blackness there—an open door.

Prescient fear tingled along his nerves. Angrily, he put down the fear, slipped through the door into the hall.

Light glared in the hall!

Orne froze, then suppressed laughter as he saw the beam switch beside the door. He stepped back: darkness. Forward: light.

Stairs climbed curving to the left at the end of the hall. Orne moved quietly along the hall, paused at the foot of the stairs and looked up at a heavy wooden door with golden initials on it in bas relief: “H.A.”

Halmyrach Abbod! Right to the top!

He slipped up the stairs, cautiously gripped the door handle, turned it with the gentlest of pressure. The lock clicked. He threw the door open, lunged through, slammed the door behind him.

“Ah, Mr. Orne. Very resourceful of you.” It was a faintly tenor masculine voice with just an edge of quaver to it.

Orne slewed around, saw a wide-hooded bed. Remote in the bed like a dark-skinned doll sat a man in a nightshirt. He was propped up by a mound of pillows. The face looked familiar. It was narrow, smooth-skinned with a nose that hung like a precipice over a wide mouth. His head was polished dark baldness.

The wide mouth moved, and the faintly quavering tenor voice said: “I am the Halmyrach Abbod. You wished to see me?”

An aura of oldness hung over the man in the bed like an ancient odour of parchment.

Orne took two steps towards the bed, his prescient fear clamouring. He paused, recalling the resemblance. “You look like Emolirdo.”

“My younger brother, Mr. Orne. Do be seated.” He gestured towards a chair beside the bed. “Forgive me for receiving you this way, but I find myself jealous of my rest in these later years.”

Orne moved to the chair. Something about this skinny ancient spoke of deadliness beyond anything Orne had ever before encountered. He glanced around the room, saw dark hangings on the walls covered with weird shapes: curves and squares, pyramids, swastikas and a repetitive symbol like an anchor—a vertical line with an arc at its base. The floor was black and white tile of gigantic pentagonal pieces, each at least two metres across. Furniture of polished woods was crowded into the corners: a desk, a low table, chairs, a tape rack and a stand in the shape of a spiral staircase.

“Have you already summoned your guards?” asked Orne.

“I have no need of them, Mr. Orne. Please sit down.” Again the skeletal arm gestured towards the chair.

Orne looked at the chair. It had no arms to conceal secret bindings.

“The chair is just a chair,” said the Abbod.

Orne sat down like a man plunging into cold water, tensed.

The Abbod smiled. “You see?”

Orne wet his lips with his tongue. Something was wrong here. This was not working out at all as he had imagined. “I came here to find out some things,” he said.

“Good. We shall share information.”

“Why're you people out to get the I–A?”

“First things first, Mr. Orne. Have you deciphered the intent of your ordeal?” The Abbod's large eyes, brown and glossy, stared at Orne. “Do you know why you co-operated with us?”

“What else could I do?”

“Many things, as you have demonstrated just this night.”

“All right, I was curious.”

“About what?”

Orne lowered his eyes, felt something quicken within himself.

“Be honest with yourself, Mr. Orne.”

“I … I suspected you were teaching me things about myself that … that I didn't already know.”

“Superb!” The Abbod smiled. “But you were a product of the Marakian civilization. All aberrative tendencies had been removed at an early age by microsurgical
atenture.
How, then, could there be left anything about yourself that you did not know?”

“There just
was.
I found out I could be afraid without knowing why. I…”

“Had you ever heard of the thaumaturgic psychiatrists of the ancient Christian era?”

“What era was that?”

“Long ago. So long ago that there are left only small, tantalizing fragments to tell us of those days. The Christeros religion derives from that period.”

“What about it?”

“You have not heard of these ancient practices?”

“I know there were mental sciences before the microsurgical techniques were developed. Is that what you mean?”

“In a way.” The Abbod fell silent, waiting.

Orne swallowed. This was not going the way it should have gone. He felt on the defensive, and all he faced was one skinny old man in a ridiculous nightshirt. Anger swelled in Orne. “I came here to find out if you people were fomenting war!”

“And what if we were? What then? Were you prepared to be the surgeon, to cut out the infection and leave society in its former health?”

Orne's anger receded.

“Do you not see the parallel, Mr. Orne?” The Abbod frowned. “The best of a supreme mechanistic science worked you over and declared you sane, balanced, clear. Yet there remained something more that they had not touched.”

“Then there's something the I–A isn't … touching?”

“But of course.”

“What?”

“Most of every iceberg is beneath the surface of the sea,” said the Abbod.

A tiny wave of Orne's anger surged back. “Now what's
that
supposed to mean?”

“Then let us approach it this way,” said the Abbod. “The Guru called Pasawan, who led the Ramakrishnanas into the Great Unifying we know as the Ecumenical Truce, was a follower of the Hynd doctrine. This has always taught the divinity of the soul, the unity of all existence, the oneness of the Godhead and the harmony of all religions.”

Orne stiffened. “You're not going to get anywhere trying to force a lot of religious pap down my throat!”

“One does not successfully force religion on to anyone,” murmured the Abbod. “If it pleases you to do so, you may consider this in the nature of a history lesson.”