Frank Herbert - The Godmakers

Polly shot a demanding look at Stetson. “Is he always that sharp?”

“Every time,” Stetson said.

“If you want to go into politics, Lewis,” Polly said, “I’d be delighted to…”

“I’m already in politics,” Orne growled. “What I want now is to settle down with Di and catch up on some of the living I’ve missed.”

Diana stiffened, addressed the wall beyond Orne: “I never want to see, hear from or hear of Lewis Orne ever again! That is final, emphatically final!”

Orne’s shoulders drooped. He turned away, stumbled and abruptly collapsed full length on the thick carpets. A collective gasp came from behind him.

Stetson shouted: “Call a doctor! They warned me at the hospital that he was still very weak.”

There was the sound of Polly’s heavy footsteps running toward the communications alcove in the hall.

“Lew!” It was Diana’s voice. She dropped to her knees beside him, soft hands fumbling at his neck, his head.

“Turn him over and loosen his collar,” Spencer said. “Give him air.”

Gently, they turned Orne onto his back. He looked pale.

Diana loosened his collar, buried her face in his neck. “Oh, Lew, I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I didn’t mean it. Please, Lew… please don’t die. Please!”

Orne opened his eyes, looked up through the red-gold haze of Diana’s hair at Spencer and Stetson. There was the sound of Polly’s voice giving rapid instructions at the communications center. Orne felt Diana’s cheek warm against his neck, the dampness of her tears. Slowly, deliberately, Orne winked at the two men.

Diana shook convulsively against his neck. Her movement activated the transceiver stud. Orne heard the carrier wave hiss in his ears. The sound filled him with anger and he thought: That damn thing has to go! I wish it were at the bottom of the deepest sea on Marak!

As he thought this, Orne felt an abrupt vacuum in his flesh where the transceiver had been. The hissing carrier wave cut off sharply. With an abrupt feeling of blank shock, Orne realized the tiny instrument was gone.

A slow sensation of awareness flooded through him. He thought: Psi! For the love of all that’s holy, I’m a Psi!

Gently, he disengaged himself from Diana, allowed her to help him to a sitting position.

“Oh, Lew,” she whispered, stroking his cheek.

Polly appeared behind them. “Doctor’s on his way. He said to keep the patient warm and inactive. Why’s he sitting up?”

Orne only half-heard them. He thought: I’ll have to go to Amel. No helping that. He didn’t know how he was going to do it, but he knew it would happen.

To Amel.

The instant he stepped out of the transport’s shields into the warmth of Amel’s sunlight on the exit ramp, Orne felt the Psi forces at play in this place. It was like being caught in competing magnetic fields. He caught the ramp’s handrail as dizziness held him. The sensation passed and he stared down some two hundred meters at the glassy tricrete of the spaceport. Heat waves shimmered off the glistening surface, baking the air even at his height. No wind stirred the air, but hidden gusts of psi force howled against his recently awakened senses.

When he had broached the subject of Amel, his affairs had moved abruptly and with a mysterious fluidity in that direction. Psi detection and amplification equipment had been brought to him and concealed within his flesh. No one had remarked on the disappearance of the transceiver from his neck, and he had not asked to have it replaced.

A technician from the Psi Branch of I-A had been found to train Orne in the use of the new equipment, how to select out the first sharp signals of primary psi detection, how to focus on discrete elements of this new spectrum.

Orders had been cut, signed by Stetson and Spencer—even by Scottie Bullone—although Orne had been made aware that such orders were a mere formality .

It had been a busy time—meeting his new responsibilities of political selection, preparing for his wedding to Diana, learning the inner workings of the I-A which he had known before only through their surface currents, coming to grips with a new and peculiar kind of fear which arose from his psi awareness.

As he stood on the landing ramp above Amel’s spaceport, Orne recalled that fear clearly. He shuddered. Amel crawled with skin-creeping sensations. Weird urges flickered through his mind like flashes of heat lightning. One second, he wanted to grunt like a wallowing kiriffa ; the next instant he felt laughter welling in him while simultaneously a sob tore at his throat.

He thought: They warned me it would be bad at first.

Psi training did not ease the fear; it only made him more aware. Without the training, his mind might have confused the discrete sensations, combined them into a blend of awe-fear—perfectly logical emotions for an acolyte disembarking on the priest planet .

All around him now was holy ground, sanctuary for all the religions of the known universe (and, some said, for all of the religions in the unknown universe).

Orne forced his attention onto the inner focus as he had been taught to do. Slowly, the crushing awareness dimmed to background annoyance. He drew in a deep breath of the hot, dry air. It was vaguely unsatisfying as though lacking an essential element to which his lungs were accustomed.

Still holding tightly to the rail, he waited to make certain the ghost urges had been subdued. Who knew what one of those compelling sensations might thrust upon him? The glistening inner surface of the opened port beside him reflected his image, distorting it slightly in a way that accepted his differences from the slender norm. The reflected image gave him the appearance of a demigod reincarnated from Amel’s ancient past: square and solid with corded neck muscles. A faint scar marked the brow line of his closely cropped red hair. Other tiny scars on his bulldog face were visible because he knew where to look. His memory told him of more scars on his heavy body, but he felt completely recovered from Sheleb—although he knew Sheleb had not recovered from him. There was a humorous observation in the I-A that senior field agents could be detected by the number of scars and medical patches they carried. No one had ever made a similar observation about the numerous worlds where the I-A had interceded.

He wondered if Amel would require that treatment , or if the I-A could intercede here. Neither question had a certain answer.

Orne studied the scene around him, still waiting out the psi control. The transport’s ramp commanded a sweeping view—a patchwork of towers, belfries, steeples, monoliths, domes, ziggurats, pagodas, stupas, minarets, dagobas… They cluttered a flat plain that stretched to a horizon dancing in the heat waves. Golden sunlight danced off bright primary colors and weathered pastels: buildings in tile and stone, tricrete and plasteel and the synthetics of a thousand thousand civilizations.

The yellow sun, Dubhe, stood at the meridian in a cloudless blue sky. It hammered through Orne’s toga with oppressive warmth. The toga was a pale aqua and he resented the fact that he could wear no other garment here. The color marked him as a student and he did not feel that he was here to study in the classic sense. But that had been a requirement of admission to Amel. The weight of the garment held perspiration to his body.