Frank Herbert - The Godmakers

Is it possible that Man invented war and was trapped by his own invention? Orne wondered. Who are we in the I-A to set ourselves up as a board of angels to mediate in the affairs of all sentient life we contact?

Is it possible we are influenced by our universe in ways we don’t readily recognize?

He sensed his brain/mind/awareness churning, visualized all of this activity as a bizarre tool for symbolizing the drives and energy desires of all life. Somewhere within himself, he felt there was an ancient function, a thing of archaic tendencies which remained constant despite the marks of the evolution through which it had passed.

Abruptly, he felt himself in the presence of an overwhelming thought/presence. The most misguided effort of sentience is the attempt to alter the past, to weed out discrepancies, to insist on fellow-happiness at any price. To refrain from harming others is one thing; to design and order happiness for others and to enforce delivery invites an equal-and-opposite reaction.

Orne drifted off to sleep with this convoluted thought winding and twisting in his awareness.

Orne began to show small but steady signs of recovery. Within a month, the medics ventured an intestinal transplant which increased his response rate. Two months later, they placed him on an atlotl/gibiril regimen, forcing the energy transfer which allowed him to regrow his lost fingers and eye, restore his scalp line and erase the other internal-external damage.

Through it all, Orne found himself wrestling with his soul. He felt strangled by the patterns he had once accepted, as though he had passed through profound change which had removed him from the body of his past. All of the assumptions of his former existence took on the character of shadows, passionless and contrary to the new flesh growing within him. He felt that he had been surprised by his own death, and had accepted the total denial of a life which had melted into a sandpile. Now, he was rebuilding, willfully accepting only a one part definition of existence.

I am one being , he thought. I exist. That is enough. I give life to myself.

The thought slipped into him like a fire which bore him forward out of an ancestral cave. The wheel of his life was turning, and he knew it would go full circle. He felt that he had gone down into the intestines of the universe to see how everything was made.

No more old taboos , he thought. I have been both alive and dead.

Fourteen months, eleven days, five hours and two minutes after he had been picked up on Sheleb “as good as dead,” Orne walked out of the hospital on his own two legs, accompanied by an oddly silent Umbo Stetson.

Under the dark-blue I-A field cape, Orne’s coverall uniform fitted his once-muscular frame like a deflated bag. The pixie light had returned to his eyes, though—even to the new eye which had grown parallel with his new awareness. Except for the loss of weight, he appeared to be the old Lewis Orne. It was a close enough resemblance that most former acquaintances could have recognized him after only a moment’s hesitation. The internal differences did not show themselves to the casual eye.

Outside the hospital, clouds obscured Marak’s greenish sun. It was midmorning. A cold spring wind bent the pile lawn, tugged fitfully at border plantings of exotic flowers around the hospital’s landing pad.

Orne paused on the steps above the pad, breathed deeply of the chill air. “Beautiful day,” he said. His new kneecap felt strange, a better fit than the old one. He was acutely conscious of all his new parts and the regrowth syndrome which made all crechepod graduates share the unjoke label of “twice-born.”

Stetson reached out a hand to help Orne down the steps, hesitated, put the hand back in his pocket. Beneath the section chief’s look of weary superciliousness there was a note of anxiety. His big features remained set in a frown. The drooping eyelids failed to conceal a sharp, measuring stare.

Orne glanced at the sky to the southwest.

“Flitter ought to be here soon,” Stetson said.

A gust of wind tugged at Orne’s cape. He staggered, caught his balance. “I feel good,” he said.

“You look like something left over from a funeral,” Stetson growled.

“My funeral,” Orne said. He grinned. “Anyway, I was getting tired of that walkaround-style morgue they call a hospital. All of my nurses were married or otherwise paired.”

“I’d stake my life that I could trust you,” Stetson muttered.

Orne glanced at him, puzzled by the remark. “What?”

“Stake my life,” Stetson said.

“No, no, Stet. Stake my life. I’m used to it.”

Stetson shook his head bearlike from side to side. “Be funny! I trust you, but you deserve a peaceful convalescence.”

“Get it off your chest,” Orne said. “What’s brewing?”

“We’ve no right to saddle you with an assignment at a time like this,” Stetson said.

Orne’s voice came out low and amused: “Stet?”

Stetson looked at him. “Huh?”

“Save the noble act for someone who doesn’t know you,” Orne said. “You’ve a job for me. All right. You’ve made the gesture for your conscience.”

Stetson managed a wry grin. He said: “The problem is we’re desperate and we haven’t much time.”

“That sounds familiar,” Orne said. “But I’m not sure I want to play the old games. What’s on your mind?”

Stetson shrugged. “Well… since you’re going to be a house-guest at the Bullones’ anyway, we thought… well, we suspect Ipscott Bullone of heading a conspiracy to take over the government, and if you…”

“What do you mean take over the government! ” Orne demanded. “The Galactic High Commissioner is the government—subject to the Constitution and the Assemblymen who elected him.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“What do you mean?”

“Orne, we may have an internal situation which could explode us into another Rim War. We think Bullone’s at the heart of it,” Stetson said. “We’ve found eighty-one touchy planets, all old-line steadies that’ve been in the Galactic League for centuries. And on every damn one of them we’ve reason to believe there’s a gang of traitors who’re sworn to overthrow the League. Even on your home planet—Chargon.”

“On Chargon?” Orne’s whole stance signaled disbelief.

“That’s what I said.”

Orne shook his head. “What is it you want from me? Do you want me to go home

for my convalescence? I haven’t been there since I was seventeen, Stet. I’m not sure I…”

“No, dammit! We want you as the Bullones’ houseguest. And speaking of that, do you mind explaining how they were chosen to ride herd on you?”

“That’s odd, you know,” Orne said, withdrawing reflexively. “All those trite little jokes in the I-A about old Upshook Ipscott… then I discover that his wife went to school with my mother—roommates, for the love of all that’s holy!”

“Your mother never mentioned it?”

“It never came up that I can recall.”

“Have you met Himself?”

“He brought his wife to the hospital a couple of times. Seems like a nice enough fellow, but somewhat stiff and reserved.”

Stetson pursed his lips in thought, glanced to the southwest, back to Orne. He said: “Every school kid knows how the Nathians and the Marakian League fought it out in the Rim Wars—how the old civilization fell apart. It all seems kind of distant now that the Marakian League has become the Galactic League and we’re knitting it back together.”