Frank Herbert - The Godmakers

“He is deceased?”

“Yes.”

“Then it could happen.”

“It would really be my father, alive… himself?”

“Yes. But let me caution you. The things you see here will not be hallucinations. If you are successful in calling forth the dead, what you call forth will be that dead person and… something more.”

The back of Orne’s right arm tingled and itched. He longed to scratch it. “What do you mean more?”

“It is a living paradox,” Bakrish said. “Any creature manifested here through your will must be invested with your psyche as well as its own. Its matter will impinge upon your matter in ways which cannot be predicted. All of your memories will be available to whatever living flesh you call forth.”

“My memories? But… "

“Hear me, Orne. This is important. In some cases, your creations may fully understand their duality. Others will reject your half of the creation out of hand. They may not have the capacity to straddle this dependence. Some of them may even lack sentience.”

Orne felt the fear driving Bakrish’s words, sensed the sincerity, and thought: He believes this.

That didn’t make all of this true, but it added a peculiar weight to the priest’s words.

“Why have I been trapped in this chair?” Orne asked.

“I am not sure. Perhaps it was important that you not run away from yourself.” Bakrish put a hand on Orne’s shoulder, pressed gently. “I must leave now, but I will pray for you. May grace and faith guide you.”

Orne heard a swishing of robes as the priest strode away. A door banged with a hollow sharpness which lost itself in the giant room. Infinite loneliness penetrated Orne.

Presently, a faint humming like a distant bee sound grew audible. The psi amplifier in Orne’s neck tugged painfully, and he felt the flare of psi forces around him. The barrier wall blinked alive, became a rich and glassy green. It began to crawl with iridescent purple lines. They squirmed and writhed like countless glowing worms trapped in a viscid green aquarium.

Orne drew in a shuddering breath. Fear hammered at him.

The crawling purple lines held a hypnotic fascination. Some appeared to waft out of the wall toward him. The shape of Diana’s face glowed momentarily among the lines. He tried to hold the image, saw it melt away.

I don’t want her here in this dangerous place , he thought.

Shapes of deformity squirmed across the wall. They coalesced abruptly into the outline of a Shriggar, the saw-toothed lizard Chargonian mothers invoked to frighten their children into obedience. The image took on more substance. It developed scaly yellow plates and stalk eyes.

Time slowed to a grinding, creeping pace for Orne. He thought back to his Chargon childhood, to the terror memories, told himself: But even then the Shriggar were extinct. My great-great-grandfather saw the last specimen.

Memories persisted, driving him down a long corridor full of empty echoes that suggested insanity, drugged gibbering. Down… down… down… He recalled childish laughter, a kitchen, his mother as a young woman. There were his sisters screaming derisively as he cowered, ashamed. He had been three years old and he had come running into the house to babble in terror that he had seen a Shriggar in the deep shadows of the creek gully.

Laughing girls! Hateful little girls! “He thinks he saw a Shriggar!” “Hush now, you two.” Amusement, even there in his mother’s voice. He knew it now.

On the green wall, the Shriggar outline bulged outward. One taloned foot extended itself to the floor. The Shriggar stepped fully from the wall. It was twice as tall as a man and with stalked eyes swiveling right, left…

Orne jerked his awareness out of the memories, felt painful throbbing as his head movement disturbed the microfilament probes.

Talons scratched on the floor as the Shriggar took three investigative steps away from the wall.

Orne tasted the sourness of terror in his mouth. He thought: My ancestors were hunted by such a creature. The panic was in his genes. He recognized this as every sense focused on the nightmare lizard.

Yellow scales rasped with every breath the thing took. The narrow, birdlike head twisted to one side, lowered. Its beak mouth opened to reveal a forked tongue and sawteeth. Primordial instinct pressed Orne back in his chair. He smelled the stink of the creature—sickly sweet with overtones of sour cream and swamp.

The Shriggar bobbed its head and coughed: “Chunk!” Stalk eyes moved, centered on Orne. One taloned foot lifted and it plunged into motion toward the man trapped in the chair. The high-stepping lope stopped about four meters away. The lizard cocked its head to one side while it examined Orne.

The beast stink of the thing almost overpowered Orne’s senses. He stared up at it, aware of painful constriction across his chest, the probing eyes.

The green wall behind the Shriggar continued to wriggle with iridescent purple lines. The movement was a background blur on Orne’s vision. He could not shift his focus from the lizard. The Shriggar ventured closer. Orne smelled the fetid swamp ooze on its breath.

This has to be hallucination, Orne told himself. I don’t care what Bakrish said: This is hallucination. Shriggar are extinct. Another thought blinked at him in the sway of the lizard’s terrible beak: The priests of Amel could’ve bred zoo specimens. How does anyone know what’s been done here in the name of religion?

The Shriggar cocked its head to the other side, moved its stalked eyes to within a meter of Orne’s face. Something else solidified at the green wall. Orne moved only his eyes to discover what lay in this new movement.

Two children dressed in scanty sun aprons skipped onto the stone floor. Their footsteps echoed. Childish giggling rang in the vast emptiness of the domed room. One child appeared to be about five years old, the other slightly older—possibly eight.

They betrayed the Chargon heaviness of body. The older child carried a small bucket and a toy shovel. They stopped, looked around them in sudden confused silence.

The smaller one said: “Maddie, where are we?”

At the sound, the Shriggar turned its head, bent its stalked eyes toward the children.

The older child shrieked.

The Shriggar whirled, talons scratching and slipping, lunged into its high-stepping lope.

In horrified shock, Orne recognized the children: his two sisters, the ones who’d laughed at his fearful cries on that long-ago day. It was as though he had brought this incident into being for the sole purpose of venting his hate, inflicting upon these children the thing they had derided.

“Run!” he shouted. “Run!”

But there was no moving the two children from their frozen terror.

The Shriggar swooped upon the children, blocking them from Orne’s view. There was a childish shriek which was cut off with abrupt finality. Unable to stop, the lizard hit the green wall and melted into it, became wriggling lines.

The older child lay sprawled on the floor still clutching her bucket and toy shovel. A red smear marked the stones beside her. She stared across the room at Orne, slowly got to her feet.

This can’t be real , Orne thought. No matter what Bakrish said.

He stared at the wall, expecting the Shriggar to reappear, but aware the beast had served its purpose. Without words, it had spoken to him. He saw that it had really been a part of himself. That was what Bakrish had meant. That thing was my beast.

The child began walking toward Orne, swinging her bucket. Her right hand clutched the toy shovel. She glared fixedly at Orne.

It’s Maddie , he thought. It’s Maddie as she was. But she’s a grown woman now, married and with children of her own. What have I created?