Frank Herbert - The Godmakers

“Reason for Operation: (Bloody stupidity!) R&R—after two months of contact with Sheleb—failed to detect signs of militancy.

“Major indicators: (The whole damn spectrum!)

“1.) A ruling caste restricted to women.

“2.) Disparity between numbers and activities of males and females far beyond the Lutig norm!

“3.) The full secrecy/hierarchy/control/security syndrome.

“Senior Field Agent Lewis Orne found that the ruling caste was controlling the sex of offspring at conception (see details attached) and had raised a male slave army to maintain its rule. The R&R agent had been drained of information, replaced with a double and killed. Arms constructed on the basis of that treachery caused critical injuries to Senior Field Agent Orne. He is not expected to survive. I am hereby recommending that Orne receive the Galaxy Medal and that his name be added to the Roll of Honor.”

Stetson pushed the report aside. That was enough for ComGo. The commander of galactic operations never went beyond the raw details. The fine print would be for his aides to digest and that could come later. Stetson punched his call box for Orne’s service record, set himself to the task he most detested: notifying next of kin. He studied the record, pursing his lips. “Home Planet: Chargon. Notify in case of accident or death: Mrs. Victoria Orne, mother.”

He scanned through the record, reluctant to send the hated message. Orne had enlisted in the Federation Marines at age seventeen standard (a runaway from home) and his mother had given post-enlistment consent. Two years later: scholarship transfer to Uni-Galacta, the R&R school here on Marak. Five years of school, one R&R field assignment under his belt, and he had been drafted into the I-A for brilliant detection of militancy on Hamal. Two years later—a crechepod!

Abruptly, Stetson hurled the service record at the gray metal wall across from him; then he got up, brought the record back to his desk. There were tears in his eyes. He flipped the proper communications switch, dictated the notification to Central Secretarial, ordered it transmitted Priority One. He went groundside then and got drunk on Hochar brandy, Orne’s favorite drink.

The next morning there was a reply from Chargon: “Lewis Orne’s mother too ill to be notified or to travel. Sisters being notified. Please ask Mrs. Ipscott Bullone of Marak, wife of the High Commissioner, to take over for family.” It was signed: “Madrena Orne Standish, sister.”

With some misgivings, Stetson called the Residency for Ipscott Bullone, leader of the majority party in the Federation Assembly. Mrs. Bullone took the call with blank screen. There was a sound of running water in the background.

Stetson stared into the grayness swimming in his desk screen. He always disliked blank screens. His head ached from the Hochar brandy and his stomach kept insisting this was an idiot call. There had to be a mistake.

A baritone husk of a voice came from the speaker beside the screen: “This is Polly Bullone.”

Telling his stomach to shut up, Stetson introduced himself, relayed the Chargon message.

“Victoria’s boy dying? Here? Oh, the poor thing! And Madrena’s back on Chargon—the election. Oh, yes, of course. I’ll get right over to the hospital.”

Stetson signed off with thanks, broke the contact. He leaned back in his chair, puzzled. The High Commissioner’s wife! He felt stunned. Something didn’t track here. He recalled it then: The First Contact! Hamal! A blunderbrain named Andre Bullone!

Using his scrambler, Stetson called for the follow-up report on Hamal, found that Andre Bullone was a nephew of the High Commissioner. Nepotism began on high, obviously. But there was no apparent influence in Orne’s case. A runaway in his teens. Brilliant. Self-motivated. Orne had denied any knowledge of a connection between Andre Bullone and the High Commissioner.

He was telling the truth , Stetson thought. Orne didn’t know about this family connection.

Stetson continued scanning the report. A mess! The nephew had been transferred to a desk job far back in the bureaucracy: report juggler. There was a green check mark beside the transfer notice, indicating pressure from on high.

Now—a family linkup between Orne and the Bullones.

Still puzzled, but unable to see a way through the problem, Stetson scrambled an eyes-only memo to ComGo, then turned to the urgent list atop his work-in-progress file.

At the I-A medical center, the oval crechepod containing Orne’s flesh dangled from ceiling hooks in a private room.

There were humming sounds in the dim, watery green of the room, and rhythmic chuggings, sighings, clackings. Occasionally, a door opened quietly and a white-clad figure would enter, check the graph tapes on the crechepod’s instruments, examine the vital connections, then depart.

In the medical euphemism, Orne was lingering .

He became a major conversation piece at the interns’ rest breaks: “That agent who was hurt on Sheleb, he’s still with us. Man, they must build those guys different from the rest of us!… Yeah. I heard he only has about one-eighth of his insides—liver, kidneys, stomach, all gone… Lay you odds he doesn’t last out the month… Look at what old sure-thing Tavish wants to bet on!”

On the morning of his eighty-eighth day in the crechepod, the day nurse entered Orne’s room for her first routine check. She lifted the inspection hood, looked down at him. The day nurse was a tall, lean-faced professional who had learned to meet miracles and failures with equal lack of expression. She was just here to observe . The daily routine with the dying (or already dead) I-A operative had lulled her into a state of psychological unpreparedness for anything but closing out the records.

Any day now, poor guy, she thought.

Orne opened his only remaining eye and she gasped as he said in a low whisper: “Did they clobber those dames on Sheleb?”

“Yes, sir!” the day nurse blurted. “They really did, sir!”

“Another damn mess,” Orne said. He closed his eye. His breathing-simulation deepened and heart-demand increased.

The nurse rang frantically for the doctors.

For Orne, there had been an intermediate period in a blank fog, then a time of pain and the gradual realization that he was in a crechepod. He had to be. He could remember the sudden disrupter explosion on Sheleb… the explosion like a silent force thrusting at him—no sound, just an enveloping nothingness.

Good old crechepod. It made him feel safe, shielded from outside perils. Things still went on inside him, though. He could remember… dreams? He wasn’t sure they really were dreams. There was something about a hoe and handles. He tried to recall the elusive thought pattern. He sensed his linkage with the crechepod and, beyond that, a connection with some kind of merciless manipulative system, a mass effect reducing all existence to a base level.