Frank Herbert - The Lazarus Effect

"Your arm is long," Noah said. "Don't see anything wrong in that if it's useful. You got a good face. Lots of wrinkles. You live outside a lot. You see any sign of my Abimael yet?"

Twisp swallowed. "No."

"Don't you be frightened of me just because I talk to Ship," Noah said. "This new ark of ours is out on dry land once and for all. We're going to leave the sea."

Noah pulled away from Twisp and returned to the workbench.

A hand touched Twisp's right arm. Startled, he whirled and confronted Nakano. The big Merman had approached without a sound.

"Gallow wants to see you now," Nakano said.

"Where is that Abimael?" Noah asked.

Duque ignored the gasps of the watchers ringed around the constant gloom of the Vata Pool. His ears did not register the strangled moan that came clearly from the wide, flaccid throat of the C/P. The heavy fist that Vata clamped to his genitals captured Duque's attention completely. Her fervor hurled him painfully out of pseudosleep, but her touch softened with every blink. The poolside gasps were replaced by sporadic mutterings and a few hushed giggles. When Duque's hand began its complementary stroking of Vata's huge body the room stilled. Vata moaned. The poolside watchers were soaked by the wave set up under the rhythmic strokes of her mighty hips.

"They're going to pair!"

"Her eyes are open," one said, "and look, they move!"

Vata licked her lips, pinned Duque to the bottom of the pool and straddled him there. Her head and the tops of her shoulders broke the surface and she gasped great, long breaths with her head thrown back.

"Yes!" Vata said, and the C/P's mind registered, Her first word in almost three hundred years. How could the circumstances of that first word be explained to the faithful?

It's to punish me! The thought flooded Simone Rocksack's mind. She saw it all. The C/P wondered, then, what sort of punishment Vata might have in mind for Gallow.

It was then the C/P noted that the sloshing from the Vata Pool was not all resulting from the activity inside. The decks themselves heaved in the same slow rhythm.

"What's happening?" The C/P caught herself muttering the question and glanced around to see that she had not been overheard.

A series of tight-throated moans from Vata, then another explosive, breathless "Yes!" Duque was nearly undetectable under her rippling flanks and hamlike hands.

The C/P's eyes widened in horror and humiliation as she realized that Vata's performance with Duque was a grotesque parody of her last hours with Gallow. Her position wouldn't even allow her to leave the room, to escape the heat that crept outward from the collar of her blue robe to burn her cheeks and her breasts. A trace of sweat graced her upper lip and temples.

Someone burst into the room and shouted, "The kelp!" The voice strained to reach over the babblings of a crowd that was well into a serious hysteria. "The kelp's rocking the Island. It's rocking the whole fucking sea!"

The little stump-legged messenger clapped a fingerless hand over his mouth when he caught sight of the C/P.

There were three sudden cries that brought a chill to the C/P's spine; Vata's thighs shuddered in their grip on Duque and Vata fell back into the pool, wide-eyed and smiling, still anchored to him by their short but stout tether.

The heavy rocking of the decks slackened. The crowd at poolside had stilled with the outburst from Vata. The C/P knew better than to lose this moment. She swallowed hard, lifted her robe to clear her ankles and knelt at the rim of the quieting pool.

"Let us pray," she said, and bowed her head. Think, she thought to herself, think! Her eyes squinted shut against fear, reality and those difficult traitors, tears.

On the way down to confront Gallow, Twisp ignored the spying devices in the ceiling and spoke openly to Nakano. Twisp no longer doubted that Nakano was playing a devious double game. What did it matter? Meeting the carpenter, Noah, had heartened Twisp. Gallow would have to accept the new realities of Pandora. The kelp wanted him dead and would have him dead. The open land belonged to everyone. Gallow could only delay the inevitable; he could not prevent it. He was a prisoner here. All of his people were prisoners here.

Nakano only laughed when Twisp spoke of this. "He knows he's a prisoner. He knows Kareen and Scudi are out there, one step out of reach."

"He'll never get them!" Twisp said.

"Maybe not. But he has the Chief Justice. A bargain may be possible."

"It's strange," Twisp said. "Before I met that carpenter up there, I didn't really know what I was bargaining for."

"What carpenter?" Nakano asked.

"The man I was talking to topside. Noah. Didn't you hear him talking about the ark and Ship speaking to him?"

"There was no man up there! You were alone."

"He was right there! How could you have missed him? Long beard down to here." Twisp passed a hand across his belt line. "He was calling for a child - Abimael."

"You must've been hallucinating," Nakano said, his voice mild. "You were probably narced by the dive."

"He gave me a cake," Twisp whispered.

Remembering the fruity flavor of the cake, the sticky feeling of it on his fingers, Twisp lifted his right hand to the level of his eyes and rubbed his fingers together. There was no stickiness. He smelled the fingers. No smell of the cake. He touched his tongue to his fingers. No taste of the cake.

Twisp began to tremble.

"Hey! Take it easy," Nakano soothed. "Anyone can be narced."

"I saw him," Twisp whispered. "We spoke together. Ship made him a promise: 'I will not again curse the ground for mankind's sake.'"

Nakano took a backward step away from Twisp. "You're crazy! You were standing out in the sun all alone."

"No workshop?" Twisp asked, his voice plaintive. "No bearded man in the shadows?"

"There were no shadows. You probably had a touch of the sun. No hat. Big Sun beating down on you. Forget it."

"I can't forget it. I felt him touch me, his finger on my face. He was blind."

"Well, put it behind you. We're about to see GeLaar Gallow and if you're going to bargain with him you'll need your wits about you."

The moving cubicle came to a stop and the hatch opened onto a passage. Nakano and Twisp emerged and were flanked immediately by six armed Mermen.

"This way," Nakano said. "Gallow is waiting for you."

Twisp took a deep, trembling breath and allowed himself to be escorted along the Merman corridor with its sharp corners and hard sides, its unmoving, solid deck.

That Noah was really there, Twisp told himself. The experience had contained too much sense of reality. The kelp! He tingled out to the tips of his fingers with realization. Somehow, the kelp had insinuated itself into his mind, taken dominion over his senses!

The realization terrified him and his step faltered.

"Here! Keep up, Mute!" one of the escort barked.

"Easy does it," Nakano cautioned the guard. "He's not used to a deck that doesn't move."

Twisp was surprised by the friendliness in Nakano's voice, his sharpness with the escort. Does Nakano really sympathize with me?

They stopped at a wide, rectangular hatchway open to the passage. The room exposed beyond it was large by Islander standards - at least six meters deep and about ten or eleven meters wide. Gallow sat before a bank of display screens near the back wall. He turned as Twisp and Nakano entered, leaving the escort in the passage.