The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert (45 page)

Orne sank back in the chair. “So get on with it.”

“Thanks to Pasawan, we believe we have developed here a science of religion. The discovery of psi powers and an interpretation of their significance tends to confirm our postulates.”

“Which are?”

“That mankind, acting somewhat as a great psi machine, does create a force, an energy system. We may refer to this system as religion, and invest it with an independent focus of action which we will call God. But remember that a god without discipline faces the same fate as the merest human under the same circumstances. It is unfortunate that mankind has always been so attracted by visions of absolutes—even in his gods.”

Orne recalled his experience that night when he had felt a psi field surging out of the emotions in the massed students. He rubbed his chin.

“Let us consider this idea of absolutes,” said the Abbod. “Let us postulate a finite system in which a given
being
may exhaust all avenues of knowledge—know everything, as it were.”

In an intuitive leap, Orne saw the image being painted by the Abbod's words. He blurted: “It'd be worse than death!”

“Unutterable, deadly boredom would face such a being. Its future would be endless repetition, replaying all of its old tapes. A boredom worse than extinction.”

“But boredom is a kind of stasis,” said Orne. “Stasis would lead to chaos.”

“And what do we have?” asked the Abbod. “We have chaos: an infinite system where
any
thing can happen—a place of constant change. And let us recognize one of the inevitable properties of this infinite system. If
any
thing can happen, then our hypothetical
being
could be extinguished. Quite a price to pay to escape boredom, eh?”

“All right. I'll go along with your game and your hypothetical
being.
Couldn't it find some kind of … well, insurance?”

“Such as scattering its eggs in an infinite number of baskets, eh?”

“Life's done just that, hasn't it? It's scattered all over the universe in billions of forms.”

“Yet
any
thing can happen,” murmured the Abbod. “So we have two choices: infinite boredom or infinite chance.”

“So what?”

“Do you wish me to continue with the history lesson?”

“Go ahead.”

“Now, behind or beneath or projecting into this scattered
Life,
let us postulate a kind of consciousness that…” He raised a hand as Orne's face darkened. “Hear me out, Mr. Orne. This
other
consciousness has been suspected for countless centuries. It has been called such things as ‘collective unconscious,' ‘the paramatman,' ‘urgrund,' ‘sanatana dharma,' ‘super mind,' ‘ober palliat' … It has been called many things.”

“None of which makes it any more real!” snapped Orne. “Let's not mistake
clear
reasoning for
correct
reasoning. The fact that a name exists for something doesn't mean that thing exists.”

“You are then an empiricist,” said the Abbod. “Good. Did you ever hear the legend of Doubting Thomas?”

“No.”

“No matter,” said the Abbod. “He was always one of my favorite characters. He refused to take crucial facts on faith.”

“Sounds like a wise man.”

The Abbod smiled. “A moment ago I said that mankind generates a power we may call religion, and within that religion a focus of independent action you may refer to as God.”

“Are you sure it isn't the other way around?”

“That's of no importance at the moment, Mr. Orne. Let us go on to a corollary of the original postulate, which is that mankind also generates prophets in the same way—men who point out the paths that lead to degeneracy and failure. And here we come to a function of our order as I see it. We find these prophets and educate them.”

“You educate men like Mahmud?”

“Mahmud escaped us.”

Orne suddenly sat up straight. “Are you implying that
I'm
a prophet?”

“But of course you are. You're a man with extraordinary powers. Psi instruments have only sharpened and brought to focus what was already there, latent within you.”

Orne slapped a hand on to his right knee. “If this isn't the wildest train of…”

“I'm serious, Mr. Orne. In the past, prophets have tended to preach without restriction—uninhibited and really undisciplined. The results were always the same: temporary order that climbed towards greater and greater power, then the inevitable degeneration. We, on the other hand, have another method. We seek the slow, self-disciplined accumulation of data that will extend our science of religion. The broad course ahead of us is already becoming…”

“Do you mean to tell me that you people presume to educate prophets?”

An inner light glittered in the Abbod's glossy eyes. “Mr. Orne, have you any idea how many innocents have been tortured to death in the name of religion during the course of Man's bloody history?”

Orne shrugged. “There's no way of knowing how many.”

“Countless?”

“Certainly.”

“That is one of the things which always happen when religions run wild, Mr. Orne. War and bloodshed of countless sorts develop from undisciplined religion.”

“And you think I'm a prophet?”

“We
know
you are. It is uncertain whether you could start a new religion, but you
are
a prophet. We had you out on that mountainside tonight for just one purpose. Your fellow students did not turn out to be prophets. They will never rise above the oblate brotherhood. We know their character, however, and we know your character. Put the two together, and you should have learned a lesson.”

“Sure! That I could get my head torn off by a mob!”

“That would have meant you failed the test,” said the Abbod. “Now, please be calm and tell me the basic significance of your experience out there.”

“Wait a minute,” said Orne. “How'd
you
know what happened out there?”

“I knew within seconds when you ran away from the mob,” said the Abbod. “I was waiting for the report. We suspected you would come here.”

“Of course. And you just sat here and waited for me.”

“Of course. Now answer the question: What's the basic significance of your experience?”

Orne turned his head, looked out of the corners of his eyes at the Abbod. “That there's a great amount of explosive energy in religion. That's what I learned.”

“You already knew this, naturally.”

“Yes. You just made the fact important to me.”

“Mr. Orne, I will tell you about just one of the many prophets we have on Amel. His talents are extreme. He can cause a glowing aura to appear around his body. He can levitate. What we understand as space does not exist for him. Seemingly, he can step from planet to planet as easily as a normal person would cross the…”

“Is this that fellow who was on Wessen? The one the feature scribes went nuts over when…”

“I see you've heard of him. We got to him barely in time, Mr. Orne. I ask you now: What would happen if he were to appear to a crowd, say, on Marak, that enlightened center of our government, and display there his full powers?”

Orne frowned.

“Is it likely they would put a religious interpretation on his activities?” demanded the Abbod.

“Well … probably.”

“Most certainly! And what if he did not fully understand his own talents? Picture it. He knows the true from the false by some inner sense—call it instinct. Around him he sees much that is false. What's he likely to do?”

“All right!” barked Orne. “He'd probably start a new religion! You've made your point.”

“A
wild
religion,” corrected the Abbod. He glared at Orne, pointed to Orne's left. “Look there!”

Orne turned, saw a dancing sword of flame about two meters away. Its point was aimed at his head. He shivered, felt perspiration drench his body. Prescient fear screamed within him.

“The first lone man to tap that source of energy was burned alive as a sorcerer by his fellow humans,” said the Abbod. “The ancients thought that flame was alive. They gave it religious significance, called it a
salamander.
They thought of it as a demon. And when you don't know how to control it, the thing does act like a wild demon with a life and will of its own. It's raw energy, Mr. Orne.
I
direct it through a psi focus. You act so superior. You think of yourself as a servant of a great organization that prevents war. Yet I—one man alone—could utterly annihilate any military force you could bring against me … and I would use nothing but this ancient discovery!”

The old man sank back against his pillows, closed his eyes. Presently, he opened his eyes, said: “Sometimes I forget my years, but they never forget me.”

Orne drew in a ragged breath. The deadliness that he had suspected in this skeletal human had taken on form and dimension: deadliness magnified to new dimensions.

“When Emolirdo informed us of you, we had to bring you here, test you, see for ourselves,” murmured the Abbod. “So many do not test out. In your case, though, the tests proved Emolirdo correct. You…”

“I did things Emolirdo taught me how to do, and
with
equipment he had put in my body!”

“Your
equipment
has been nullified by a dampening projection since your interview with Bakrish at your arrival,” said the Abbod.

Orne opened his mouth to protest, closed it. He recalled his sensation of strangeness during that first interview.
Nullified?
Yet he still sensed danger all around.

“What Emolirdo did was to force you to accept the things you already could do,” said the Abbod. “Your first lesson: faith in yourself.” He looked grimly amused. “But it is plain that you still cherish doubts.”

“You're damn' right I do! I think this whole hocus pocus was designed to confuse me, put me off the track!”

“You doubt the existence of a superior consciousness that manifests itself in gods and prophets and even sometimes in our machines,” said the Abbod.

“I think you may have stumbled on to something with your psi powers, but you've mucked it up with your mystical hogwash! There's a scientific explanation for these things that'd appear if you blew away all this fog.”

“The empiricist demands his demonstration,” murmured the Abbod. “Very well. Let us introduce you to the graduate school, Mr. Orne. Thus far, you've been playing with toys. Let's see how you react when we threaten the basic fiber of your being!”

Orne pushed himself to his feet, reached behind for the back of the chair. He glanced left at the dancing point of flame, saw it sweep around in front of his eyes. Burning, prickling sensations crawled along his skin. The flame grew to a ball almost a meter in diameter, pressed forwards. Orne stumbled backwards, knocked over the chair. Heat blasted his face.

“How now?” cried the Abbod.

He's trying to panic me,
thought Orne.
This could be an illusion.
He darted to the left, and the flame shot ahead of him, cutting him off, pressed even closer.

Orne retreated. His face burned where the flame seared against it.

“Is this illusion, Mr. Orne?” called the Abbod.

Doggedly, Orne shook his head. His eyes smarted. The flaming ball pressed him backwards. He shook perspiration from his head, glanced down at the floor.
Pentagonal tiles. Giant pentagonal tiles at least two meters across.
He stepped to the center of a white tile, immediately felt the heat diminish.

“Psi must be faced with psi,” called the Abbod.

Orne nodded, wet his lips with his tongue, swallowed. He tried to focus on the inner awareness as Emolirdo had taught him. Nothing. He closed his eyes, concentrated, felt something give.

Somewhere, there was a great howling of not-sound. He was being pulled inwards, distorted. Twisted in a vortex that sucked him down … down … down … down …

The thought of ticking seconds blazed within him.

TIME!

No sensation except a dim touch of the pentagram as though it pressed against his body at every point: a pentagram, a box, a cage. And the ticking seconds. His mind boiled with the thought of
TIME!

Time and tension
, he thought. And his mind juggled symbols like blocks of energy, manipulated energy like discrete signals. There was a problem.
Tension! Tension
=
energy source. Energy
+
opposition
=
growth of energy. To strengthen a thing, oppose it. Growth of energy
+
opposition
=
opposites blending into a new identity.

“You become like the worst in what you oppose,
” he thought. It was a quotation. He had heard it somewhere.
Priest slips into evil. The great degenerates into the small.

And he remembered his wounded arm, the itching before the wound.

TIME!

Beyond the pentagram he sensed a place where chaotic energy flowed. A great blank not-darkness filled with not-light and a ceaseless flowing. And he felt himself as on a mountaintop—as though he
were
the mountaintop. Pressing upwards but still connected to a living earth below. Somewhere he felt the touch of the pentagram: a shape that could be remembered and located.

A voice came from below the mountain: “Mr. Orne?”

He felt the pentagram press more tightly.

“Mr. Orne?”

The Abbod's voice.

Orne felt himself flowing back, compressed, twisted. The shape of his body became a new distortion to his senses. He wanted to resist.