Frank Herbert - The Eyes of Heisenberg

“Make them shut up!” Calapine shouted. She leaped to her feet, advanced on the prisoners.

Harvey watched, fascinated, terrified. There was a disjointed quality in her movement, in every response—except her anger. Rage burned at him from her eyes. A violent trembling swept through his body.

“You!” Calapine said, pointing at Harvey. “Why do you stare at me and mumble? Answer!”

Harvey found himself frozen in silence, not by his fear of her anger, but by a sudden overwhelming awareness of Calapine’s age. How old was she? Thirty thousand years? Forty thousand? Was she one of the originals—eighty thousand or more years old?

“Speak up and say what you will,” Calapine commanded. “I, Calapine, order it. Show honor now and perhaps we will be lenient.”

Harvey stared, mute. She seemed unaware of the growing uproar all around.

“Durant,” Glisson said, “you must remember there are subterranean things called instincts which direct destiny with the inexorable flow of a river. This is change. See it around us. Change is the only constant.”

“But she’s dying,” Harvey said.

Calapine couldn’t make sense of his words, but she found herself touched by the tone of concern for her in his voice. She consulted her bracelet linkage with the globe. Concern! He was worried about her, about Calapine, not about himself or his futile mate!

She turned into an oddly enfolding darkness, collapsed full length on the floor with her arms outstretched toward the benches.

A mirthless chuckle escaped Glisson’s lips.

“We have to do something for them,” Harvey said. “They have to understand what they’re doing to themselves!”

Schruille stirred suddenly, looked up at the opposite wall, saw dark patches where scanners had been deactivated, abandoned by the Optimen who couldn’t jam into the hall. He felt an abrupt alarm at the eddies of movement in the crowd all around. Some of the people were leaving—swaying, drifting, running, laughing, giggling…

But we came to question the prisoners, Schruille thought.

The hysteria in the hall slowly impressed itself on Schruille’s senses. He looked at Nourse.

Nourse sat with eyes closed, mumbling to himself. “Boiling oil,” Nourse said. “But that’s too sudden. We need something more subtle, more enduring.”

Schruille leaned forward. “I have a question for the man Harvey Durant.”

“What is it?” Nourse asked. He opened his eyes, pushed forward, subsided.

“What did he hope to gain by his actions?” Schruille asked.

“Very good,” Nourse said. “Answer the question, Harvey Durant.”

Nourse touched his own bracelet The purple beam of light inched closer to the prisoners.

“I didn’t want you to die,” Harvey said. “Not this.”

“Answer the question!” Schruille blared.

Harvey swallowed. “I wanted to -”

“We wanted to have a family,” Lizbeth said. She spoke clearly, reasonably. “That’s all. We wanted to be a family.” Tears started in her eyes and she wondered then what her child would have been like. Certainly, none of them were going to survive this madness.

“What is this?” Schruille asked. “What is this family nonsense?”

“Where did you get the substitute embryo?” Nourse asked. “Answer and we may be lenient.” Again the burning light moved toward the prisoners.

“We have self-viables immune to the contraceptive gas,” Glisson said. “Many of them.”

“You see?” Schruille said. “I told you so.”

“Where are these self-viables?” Nourse asked. He felt his right hand trembling, looked at it wonderingly.

“Right under your noses,” Glisson said. “Scattered through the population. And don’t ask me to identify them. I don’t know them all. No one does.”

“None will escape us,” Schruille said.

“None!” Nourse echoed.

“If we must,” Schruille said, “we’ll sterilize all but Central and start over.”

“With what will you start over?” Glisson asked.

“What?” Schruille screamed the word at the Cyborg.

“Where will you find the genetic pool from which to start over?” Glisson asked. “You are sterile—and terminating.”

“We need but one cell to duplicate the original, Schruille said, his voice sneering.

“Then why haven’t you duplicated yourselves?” Glisson asked.

“You dare question us?” Nourse demanded.

“I will answer for you then,” Glisson said. “You’ve not chosen duplication because the doppleganger is unstable. The trend of the duplicates is downward—extinction.”

Calapine heard scattered words—"Sterile… terminating… unstable… extinction…” They were hideous words that crept down into the depths where she lay watching a string of fat sausages parade in glowing order before her awareness. They were like seeds with a lambent radiance moving against a background of oiled black velvet. Sausages. Seeds. She saw them then not precisely as seeds, but as encapsulated life—walled in, shielded, bridging a period unfavorable to life. It made the idea of seeds less repellent to her. They were life… always life.

“We don’t need the genetic pool,” Schruille said.

Calapine heard his voice clearly, felt she could read his thoughts. Words out of one of the glowing sausages forced themselves upon her: We have our millions in Central. We are enough by ourselves. Feeble, short-lived Folk are a disgusting reminder of our past. They are pets and we no longer need pets.

“I’ve decided what we can do to these criminals,” Nourse said. He spoke loudly to force his voice over the growing hubbub in the hall. “We will apply nerve excitation a micron at a time. The pain will be exquisite and can be drawn out for centuries.”

“But you said you didn’t want to cause pain,” Schruille shouted.

“Didn’t I?” Nourse’s voice sounded worried.

I don’t feel well, Calapine thought. I need a long session in the pharmacy. Pharmacy. The word was a switch that turned on her consciousness. She felt her body stretched out on the floor, pain and wetness at her nose where it had struck the floor in her fall.

“Your suggestion contains some merit, however,” Schruille said. “We could restore the nerves behind our ministrations and carry on the punishment indefinitely. Exquisite pain forever!”

“A hell,” Nourse said, “Appropriate.”

“They’re insane enough to do it,” Svengaard rasped. “How can we stop them?”

“Glisson!” Lizbeth said. “Do something!”

But the Cyborg remained silent.

“This is something you didn’t anticipate, isn’t it, Glisson?” Svengaard said.

Still, the Cyborg held to silence.

“Answer me!” Svengaard grated.

“They were just supposed to die,” Glisson said, voice dispassionate.

“But now they could sterilize all the earth except Central and go on in their madness by themselves,” Svengaard said. “And we could be tortured forever!”

“Not forever,” Glisson said. “They’re dying.”

A cheer went up from the Optimen at the rear of the hall. None of the prisoners could turn to see what had aroused the sound, but it added a new dimension to the sense of urgency around them.

Calapine lifted herself from the floor. Her nose and mouth throbbed with pain. She turned toward the tumbril, saw a commotion among the Optimen beyond it. They were leaping on benches to watch some excited activity hidden in their midst. A naked body lifted suddenly above the throng, turned over and went down again with a sodden thump. Again, a cheer shook the hall.

What’re they doing? Calapine wondered. They’re hurting each other — themselves.