Frank Herbert - The Godmakers

Someone in the line said: “Shhhhh!”

Orne picked out a dim figure at the end of the procession, stepped into line. Immediately, warning prescience sapped his energy. He stumbled, faltered.

Bakrish whispered: “Keep up! Keep up!”

Orne recovered his stride, but still felt the klaxon emptiness in his vitals. His light cast a dull-green reflection off the priest ahead.

A murmurous rhythm began to sound from the procession far ahead, growing louder as it passed down the line, riding over the shuffling and slither of robes, drowning out the chitter of insects in tall grass beside their path. It was a wordless sound: “Ahhh-ah-huh! Ahhh-ah-huh!”

The way grew steeper, twisting back upon itself, a meandering line up the hill—bobbing lights, dim shapes, chant, root stumbles in the path, pebbles, slippery places, cold air.

Bakrish whispered at Orne’s ear: “You’re not chanting!”

The sense of danger, his own feelings of being out of place, combined to fill Orne with rebellion. He whispered back: “I’m not in good voice tonight!”

Ahhh-ah-huh!

What utter nonsense. He felt like throwing the light down the hill and striding off into the night.

The line and chanting stopped so abruptly Orne almost collided with the priest ahead of him. Orne stumbled, regained his balance, straightened his pole to keep from hitting someone. People were bunching up all around him, moving off the trail.

He followed, breaking a way through a low thicket. There was a shallow amphitheater beyond the thicket, a stone stupa within it about twice the height of a man. Priests began separating from the students, who formed a semicircle flowing down to the stupa. Their lights bounced multicolored reflections off the stones.

Where was Bakrish? Orne looked around, realized he had been separated from Bakrish. What was he supposed to do here? How could this show piety? A bearded priest came from behind the stupa, stood in front of it. He wore a black robe, a three-cornered red hat. His eyes glistened in the light. The students grew silent.

Orne, standing in the outer ring, wondered how this could be part of an ordeal. What were they going to do?

The red-hatted priest spread his arms wide, lowered them. He spoke in a resonant bass voice: “You stand before the shrine of Purity and the Law. These are the two inseparables in all true belief. Purity and Law! Here is the key to the Great Mystery which leads on to paradise.”

Orne felt the tension of his warning prescience and, now, the impact of an enormously swelling psi force. This psi was different, somehow, from what he had experienced before. It beat like a metronome with the cadence of the bearded priest’s words, blossoming and amplifying as the passion of his speech increased.

Orne focused on the words: “…the immortal goodness and purity of all great prophets! The breath of eternity given for our salvation! Conceived in purity, born in purity, their thoughts ever bathed in purity! Untouched by base nature in all of their aspects, they show us the way!”

With a shock of realization, Orne recognized that this psi force around him now arose not from some machine, but from a mingling of emotions arising out of the massed listeners. He sensed the emotional content, subtle harmonics on the overriding psi field. The bearded priest played his audience like a musician playing his instrument.

“Have faith in the eternal truth of this divine dogma!” the priest shouted.

Incense wafted across Orne’s nostrils. A hidden voder began emitting low organ notes, a melody full of rumbling and sonorous passages which came up behind the priest’s voice, but never drowned it.

Orne saw a graveman circling the massed

audience to the right, priests there waving censers. Blue smoke wafted over the listeners in ghostly curls. A bell tinkled in abrupt cadence as the priest paused. It rang seven times.

Like a man hypnotized, Orne absorbed the whole scene, thinking: Massed emotions act like a psi force! What is this power? The priest at the stupa raised both arms, fists clenched, shouted: “Eternal paradise to all true believers! Eternal damnation to all unbelievers!” His voice lowered: “You, who seek the eternal truth, fall to your knees and beg for enlightenment. Pray for the veil to be lifted from your eyes. Pray for the purity, which brings holy understanding. Pray for salvation. Pray for the All-One to cast his benediction upon you.”

A shuffling whisper of robes came from the students as they sank to their knees around Orne. But Orne remained standing, his whole being caught up in discovery: Massed emotions produce a psi force!

He felt elevated, cleansed, standing on the brink of a great revelation. He wanted to call out to Bakrish, to shout his discovery.

Angry muttering flowed through the kneeling students, catching Orne’s attention only in part. Glares of protest were directed at him. The muttering grew louder. Prescient awareness roared within Orne. He came out of his reverie to recognize the danger all around him.

At the far corner of the kneeling crowd a student lifted an arm, pointed at Orne. “What about him? He’s a student! Why isn’t he kneeling with the rest of us?”

Orne cast searching glances all around. Where was Bakrish? Someone tugged at Orne’s robe, urging him to kneel, but Orne backed off. The trail was right behind him through the thicket.

Someone in the massed students screamed: “Unbeliever!”

Orne felt the force of it like a psi net hurled across him, dimming his awareness, blocking reason.

Others began taking up the word in a mindless chant: “Unbeliever! Unbeliever! Unbeliever!…”

Orne inched his way backward through the thicket, fear sharp within him. The tension of the crowd was a tangible thing, a fuse that smoked and sizzled its way toward a massive explosion.

The bearded priest glared up at Orne, the dark face contorted in the kaleidoscopic gleams of the students’ torches. The amphitheater suddenly was a nightmare scene to Orne, a demoniac place, and he realized he still carried his own torch like a waving beacon. Its light revealed the trail beside him leading off into blackness.

Abruptly, the priest at the stupa raised his voice to an insane scream: “Bring me the head of that blasphemer!”

Orne hurled his light like a spear as the students jumped to their feet with a roar. He whirled, fled along the trail hearing the thunder and shouts of pursuit.

As his eyes adjusted to starlight, Orne discerned the trail, a black line on black. He discarded caution, ran all out. A ragged yell lifted into the night from his pursuers.

The trail curved to the left and a blotch of deeper blackness loomed at the turn. Woods? Branches whipped his face.

The trail dipped, twisted to the right, then left. He tripped on a root, almost fell.

His robe caught on a bush and he lost seconds releasing it. The mob was a roaring, waving pack of lights almost upon him. Orne plunged off the trail downhill to his right and parallel to a line of trees. Bushes snagged his robe. He fumbled with the belt, left the robe behind.

Someone above him shouted: “I hear him! Down there!”

The pursuers came to a plunging stop, held silence for a heartbeat. Orne’s crashing flight dominated all other sounds.

“There he goes! Down that way!”

They were after him. He heard them breaking through the brush and trees, the curses and shouts. “Here’s his robe! I’ve got his robe!”

“Get his head!” someone screamed. “Tear his head off him!”

Orne ducked a limb, scrambled and slid down a hill, plunged across the trail and tore his way through a thicket. He felt cold and exposed in only sandals and the light shorts he had worn beneath the robe. Branches clawed at his skin. He heard the mob, a human avalanche on the hill above him—curses, tearing sounds, thumps.