Frank Herbert - The Godmakers

Orne nodded, dazzled by this thought. “It could be.” But he still felt the premonition, not focused on the cart now, but going beyond it to Amel. “Are you sure it’s me they’ve summoned?”

“We’re sure and we’re anxious.”

“You haven’t explained that, Stet.”

Stetson sighed. “Lew, we just had confirmation on it this morning: At the next session of the Assembly there’s going to be a motion to do away with the I-A, turning all of its functions over to Rediscovery & Reeducation.”

“Oh, you must be joking.”

“I’m not.”

“Under Tyler Gemine and his Rah-Rah boys?”

“None other.”

“Why… that political hack! Half our problems come from Rah-Rah stupidities. They’ve damn near bumbled us into another Rim War dozens of times. I thought Gemine was our target number one for removal from office.”

“Mmmmm, hmmmm,” Stetson agreed. “And at the next Assembly session, less than five months away now, this motion will come up and it has the full support of Amel’s priesthood.”

“ All of the priesthood?”

“All of it.”

“But that’s asinine! I mean, look at the…”

“Do you have any doubts that religious heat can carry this motion through?” Stetson asked.

Orne shook his head. “But there are thousands of religious sects on Amel… millions, maybe. The Ecumenical Truce doesn’t allow for…”

“The Truce doesn’t say anything about not gunning for the I-A,” Stetson said.

“But it doesn’t fit, Stet. If the priests are after us, why would they invite me as a student at the same time?”

“Now you see why we’re so anxious,” Stetson said. “Nobody—repeat: nobody! —has ever before been able to put an agent onto Amel. Not the I-A. Not the old Marakian Secret Service. Not even the Nathians. All attempts have been met with polite ejection. No agent has ever gone farther than twenty meters from his landing site.”

“What’s on that cart you brought?” Orne asked.

“All of the stuff you were supposed to study for the next six months. You have six days.”

“What provisions will there be for getting me off if Amel goes sour?”

“None.”

Orne stared at him incredulously. “None?”

“Our best information indicates that your training on Amel—they call it ‘The Ordeal’—takes about six months. If there’s no word from you within that limit, we’ll make inquiries.”

“Like: ‘What’ve you done with his body?’ ” Orne snarled. “Hell! There might not even be an I-A to make inquiry in six months!”

“There will, at least, be some concerned citizens, your friends.”

“The friends who sent me in there!”

“I’m sure you see the necessity. Diana saw it.”

“She knows all this?”

“Yes. She cried, but she saw the necessity and she went to Franchi Primus as ordered.”

“I’m your last resort, eh?”

Stetson nodded. “We have to find out why the center of all religions has turned against us. We haven’t a prayer, if you’ll excuse the reference, of going in there and subduing them. We might try it, but it’d start religious uprisings all through the federation. Make the Rim Wars look like a game of ball at a girls’ school.”

“But you haven’t ruled that out?”

“Of course not. But I’m not certain we could get enough volunteers to do the job. We never qualify personnel by religion. But I’m damned sure they qualify us if we made a move against Amel. That’s touchy ground, Lew. No, we have to find out why! Maybe we can change whatever’s bothering them. It’s our only hope. Maybe they don’t understand our…”

“What if they have plans for conquest by war, Stet? What then? A new faction could’ve come to power on Amel. Why not?”

Stetson looked sad. “If you could prove it…” He shrugged.

“What’s first on the agenda?” Orne asked.

Stetson hooked a thumb at the cart. “Dive into that material. You’ll be going back to the medics later today for a new and better psi amplifier.”

“When do I go to the medics?”

“They’ll come for you.”

“Somebody’s always coming for me,” Orne muttered.

Evening light sent long shadows into Orne’s hospital room at the I-A Medical Center. It was the quiet time between dinner and visiting hours. The psuedoperspective of the room had been closed in to produce surroundings of restful security . Decoracol stood at low-green, lights dim. The induction bandage felt bulky under his chin, but the characteristic quick-heal itching had not yet started.

Being in a hospital made Orne vaguely uneasy. He knew why. The smells and the sounds reminded him of all the months he’d spent creeping back from death after Sheleb. He recalled that Sheleb had been another planet where war could not originate.

Like Amel.

The door to his room slid aside, admitting a tall, bone-skinny tech officer with the forked lightning insignia of Psi Branch at his collar. The door closed behind him.

Orne studied the man—an unknown face: birdlike with long nose, pointed chin, narrow mouth. The eyes made quick, darting movements. He lifted his right hand in a fluttery salute, leaned on the crossbar at the foot of Orne’s bed.

“I’m Ag Emolirdo,” he said, “Head of Psi Branch. The Ag is for Agony.”

Unable to move his head because of the induction bandage, Orne stared along his own nose down the length of the bed at Emolirdo. So this was the shy and mysterious Chief of Psi in the I-A. The man radiated an aura of knowing confidence.

He reminded Orne of a priest back on Chargon—another Amel graduate. The reminder made Orne uneasy. He said: “I’ve heard of you. How d’you do?”

“We’re about to find out how I do,” Emolirdo said. “I’ve reviewed your records. Fascinating. Are you aware that you may be a psi focus?”

“A what?” Orne tried to sit up, but the bandage restraints held him fast.

“Psi focus,” Emolirdo said. “I’ll explain in a moment.”

“Please do that,” Orne said. He found himself not liking Emolirdo’s glib, all-knowing manner.

“You may consider this the beginning of your advanced training,” Emolirdo said. “I decided to take it on myself. If you’re what we suspect… well, it’s extremely rare.”

“How rare?”

“Well, the only others are lost behind the mythical veils of antiquity.”

“I see. This psi focus thing, is that it?”

“That’s what we call the phenomenon. If you are a psi focus, then you’re… well, a god.”

Orne blinked, sat in frozen shock. He felt the wheel of his life turning, the sense of his one-being aflame with a terrifying passion for existence. An overriding awareness churned within him, bringing up all the ancient functions of life for his review.

He thought: Nothing can be excluded from life. It is all one thing.

“You don’t question that?” Emolirdo asked.

Orne swallowed, said: “I have questions, plenty of them.”

“Ask.”