Frank Herbert - The Eyes of Heisenberg

Hesitantly, Lizbeth took the capsule. It felt cold and gelatinous against her fingers—repulsive. She wanted to hurl the thing at Igan, but Harvey touched her cheek.

“Maybe you’d better take it,” he said. “For the baby.”

She brought up her hand, popped the capsule against the back of her tongue, gulped it. It must be all right if Harvey agreed. But she didn’t like the hurt, baffled look in his eyes.

“Now relax,” Igan said. “It’s fast acting—three or four minutes and you’ll feel quite calm.” He sat back, glanced down at Svengaard. The trussed figure still appeared to be unconscious, chest rising and falling in an even rhythm.

For what felt like a long time now, Svengaard had been increasingly aware of hunger and a swooping, turning motion that rolled his body against a hard surface. There was a sensation of swiftness about the motion. He smelled human perspiration, heard the roar of turbines. The sound was beginning to press on his consciousness. There was light, dim and fuzzy through uncooperative eyelids. He felt a gag biting his lips, bindings on hands and feet.

Svengaard opened his eyes.

For a moment, he failed to focus, then he found himself staring up at a low ceiling, a tiny glowtube in the corner with a speaker grill beneath it bulging beside a dull ruby call light. The ceiling seemed too close to him and there was a blurred shadow shape to his right—a leg stretched across him. The single light emitted a yellow glow that almost failed to dispel the darkness.

The ruby light began winking, red fire flashing on and off, on and off.

“Checkpoint!” Igan hissed. “Silence everyone!”

They sensed the van begin to slow. Its air suspension became softer and softer. The turbines whined downscale. They rocked to a stop and the turbines whispered into standby.

Svengaard’s gaze darted around the enclosure. A rough bench above him to his right… two figures seated on it. A sharp edge of metal protruded from the bench support beside his cheek. Softly, gently, Svengaard moved his head toward the metal projection, felt it touch flesh through the gag. He gave a gentle push of his head upward and the gag pulled down slightly. The projection scratched his cheek, but he ignored it. Another gentle tug and the gag lowered another fraction of a millimeter. He turned his eyes, checking his surroundings, saw Lizbeth’s face above him to the left, her eyes closed, hands in front of her mouth. There was a sense of suspended terror about her.

Again, Svengaard moved his head.

There were voices somewhere in a remote distance—sharp sounds of questions, murmurous answers.

Lizbeth’s hands lowered to reveal her mouth. The lips moved soundlessly.

The sound of talking had stopped.

Slowly, the van began to move.

Svengaard twisted his head. The binding of his gag broke free. He coughed it from his mouth, shouted, “Help! Help! I’m a prisoner! Help!”

Igan and Boumour leaped with shock. Lizbeth screamed, “No! Oh, no!”

Harvey surged forward, crashed a fist into Svengaard’s jaw, fell on him with one hand over the man’s mouth. They held their positions in an agony of listening as the van continued to gather speed.

Igan took a trembling breath, looked across into the wide staring eyes of Lizbeth.

The voice of their driver came through the speaker grill: “What is the trouble? Can’t you observe the simplest precautions?”

The dispassionate, accusing quality of the voice chilled Harvey. He wondered about the driver then, why the creature took this tone rather than telling them if they’d been exposed. Svengaard felt limp and unconscious beneath him, Harvey realized. He experienced a wild desire to throttle the surgeon here and now, could almost feel his hands around the man’s throat.

“Did they hear us?” Igan whispered.

“Apparently not,” the driver rasped. “No sign of pursuit. I presume you’ll not permit another such lapse. Please report on what happened.”

“Svengaard wakened from the narcotic sooner than we expected.”

“But he was gagged.”

“He… managed to get the gag off, somehow.”

“Perhaps you should kill him. Obviously, he will not take reconditioning.”

Harvey pushed himself off Svengaard. Now that the Cyborg had made the suggestion, he no longer felt like killing Svengaard. Who was it up there in the van’s cab? Harvey wondered. Cyborgs tended to sound alike, that computer personality with its altitude of logic so far above the human. This one, though, came through even more remote than usual.

“Well… consider what to do,” Igan said.

“Svengaard is again secure?”

“He’s been taken care of.”

“No thanks to you,” Harvey said, staring at Igan. “You were right over him.”

Igan’s faced paled. He remembered his frozen immobility after that leap of fear. Anger surged through him. What right had this clod to question a surgeon? He spoke stiffly, “I regret that I’m not a man of violence.”

“Something you’d better learn,” Harvey said. He felt Lizbeth’s hand on his shoulder, allowed her to guide him back onto their bench. “If you have more of that knock-out stuff, maybe you’d better use another dose of it on him before he wakes up again.”

Igan suppressed a sharp reply.

“In the bag under our bench,” Boumour said. “A reasonable suggestion.”

Woodenly, Igan groped for a slapshot and administered it to Svengaard.

Again, the driver’s voice barked through the speaker: “Attention! We must not presume from the lack of immediate and obvious pursuit that they failed to hear the outcry. I am executing Plan Gamma.”

“Who is that driver?” Harvey whispered.

“I didn’t see which one they programed,” Boumour said. He studied Harvey. That had been an appropriate question. The driver did sound odd, much more so than the usual Cyborg abnormality. They’d said the driver would be a programed reflex computer, a machine designed to give the surest response to achieve their escape. Who did they choose for that program?

“What’s Plan Gamma?” Lizbeth whispered.

“We’re abandoning the prepared escape route,” Boumour said. He stared at the forward wall of their box. Abandoning the prepared route… which meant they’d be completely dependent now upon the abilities of the Cyborg driver… and whichever scattered cells of the Underground remained and were available. Any one of those cells could’ve been compromised, of course. Boumour’s usually stolid nature began to entertain odd wisps of fear.

“Driver!” Harvey called.

“Silence,” the driver snapped.

“Stick to the original plan,” Harvey said. “They have the medical facilities there if my wife -”

“Your wife’s safety is not the overriding factor,” the driver said. “Elements along the prepared route must not be discovered. Do not distract me with your objections. Plan Gamma is being executed.”

“Easy does it,” Boumour said as Harvey surged forward, supporting himself with a hand on the bench. “What can you do, Durant?”

Harvey sagged back onto the bench, groped for and found Lizbeth’s hand. She squeezed it, signaled, “ Wait. Don’t you read the doctors? They’re frightened too… and worried.”

“I’m worried about you,” Harvey signaled.

So her safety — and presumably ours — aren’t the overriding concern, Boumour thought. What then is the overriding concern? What program controls our computer-in-flesh?

Only Nourse of the Tuyere occupied a throne in the Survey Globe, his attention on the rays, the winking lights and gauges, the cascading luminescences that reported affairs of the Folk. A telltale told him it was night outside in this hemisphere—darkness that spread across the land from Seatac to the megalopolis of N’Scotia. He saw the physical darkness as a sign of frightening events to come and wished Schruille and Calapine would return.