Man of Two Worlds by Frank Herbert
Raj Dood, resting naked on Osceola’s bed after his labors, watched her at Work in a corner of the room, preparing a freshly caught pompano for baking in the hot ashes of a firepit sheltered under the shack’s eaves. She wore a brilliant orange dress with tie-dyed splotches of purple like squashed insects.
“You know, Osey,” he said, “it sure takes a lot outa you to create even little things like those wind deflectors. I wonder how Dreens do so much of it and don’t collapse?”
“They’re probably bred for it,” she said, tying leaves around the fish and hefting the bundle. “’Bout six pounds. Gonna be hungry by the time this is ready to eat.”
“How can Dreens be so much better at it than we are and yet so limited?” he asked.
“Said it yourself: idiot savants. Don’t know about other dimensions. Just concentrate on what they have. Prob’ly answers your other question: limit themselves to what they know.”
She went outside with the fish. When she returned, she found him sitting up on the bed, eyes open and with the glassy look of creative concentration.
“Thought you were wore out,” she muttered, reclining beside him on the bed.
He did not respond.
Osceola sighed. Sometimes she wished her lover had never made his weird discoveries. Then again, she would not have developed Spirit Glass nor ways of scooting around the universe. She liked seeing new places but the boredom of long trips took the fun out of it. This way, they had the best of everything. Dood could play his games on Venus and spend his spare time here. And she could go where she wished—within reason.
Wonder what the old fool’s making now?
She stared at him, squinting to tune in on what he was doing. The expected creative surge did not occur. He radiated a random smear of thoughts.
What the devil’s he doin’?
She began to worry. It was not like Dood to take this long at his creative labors. She shook his shoulder.
Slowly, a somnambulist waking, he began to focus his eyes. He turned a frown toward Osceola.
“Sure hope I did the right thing,” he muttered.
“What were you doin’?”
“Making an illusion.”
“Everything’s illusion, you old fool!”
“Osey, the Dreens are sending a ship to wipe out Earth.”
She snapped upright. “Wipe us out? Whatta y’ mean?”
“They’ll erase us just as though we’d never been. Everything associated with us will vanish.”
“We gotta do something!”
“Did. Just hope it’s enough.”
“What have you done?”
“I’ve set a sort of dimensional trip wire to flip their ship out of the Spirals in-between directly over an illusory Earth.”
“Whatta y’ mean, illusory?”
“It looks like Earth but it doesn’t really exist except as a projection from another dimension.”
“What’s that supposed to do?”
“Dreens are peculiar animals, Osey. Ones we’ve studied all have that blind spot. Act like they don’t know about other dimensions. But they must come from another dimension.”
“What good’s it do, us knowin’ that?”
“They’re compulsive passivists until something they’ve created threatens them. And that’s us.”
“We ain’t threatenin’ ’em.”
“I’m afraid we are. Humans find it hard to share space with other animals. We’ve got this ‘them-or-us’ nature. If we can’t cage or control it some way, we want to kill it. Dreens know that. Hell, Osey, they made this world!”
“That’s what you keep saying, but I. . .”
“It’s true, Osey.”
“What’s that have to do with this ship you say is . . .”
“That’s it, don’t you see? To stop us, they have to go against a basic instinct and eliminate something they’ve made. Violence!”
“So what happens when they blow up your illusion?”
“I’m not sure. But this gives us time to think about a more permanent solution. As long as they don’t latch onto other dimensions, I can keep faking them out.”
“How do you know?”
“That Habiba talks to herself a lot. And she keeps a journal and a diary.”
“You been spying on them, you old fool! I thought we agreed that was dangerous.”
“They’re kind of distracted right now, Osey. Not as alert as they were.”
“You went there?”
“No, just sort of looked through the keyhole, like we did when we stumbled onto them. Damndest thing! They’ve got this kinda crude illusion built up around Dreenor, a false Dreenor to make the place look uninhabitable. That’s what gave me the idea how to divert them.”
“Just that one look was enough for me,” she said. “They give me the creepy willies.”
“Dreenor sure is one strange place. Not rightly a planet. Got roots into infinity. They call that ‘ampleness.’ Thinking about infinity seems to give them a pain.”
“Gives me a pain, too.”
“But you’re mortal and know it. They’ve always thought they were sort of immortal. . . except for accidents.”
“This one of your little jokes, Dood?”
“I swear, Osey. I had this bad presentiment and went looking for the cause. You know how I am.”
“Yeah, you’d stick your nose in a cotton gin if you thought they was somethin’ worth seein’ there. You sure your illusion will stop the Dreens?”
“I keep strangers out of our swamp, don’t I?”
“But Dreens ain’t human.”
“They still believe in what they see. No different from a hunter thinking he sees a swamp full of rampagin’ boar ‘gators or believing he’s stumbled into a zillion cotton-mouths.”
“But if you’re wrong, we’ll have a worse problem than explainin’ to some stranger how we come to live way out here.”
“Trust me, Osey. Dreens may be better at making some things than I am, but they’ve no understanding at all about how to set up a con game from another dimension.”
“Sometimes you make my skin crawl, Dood.”
“I tell you what, Osey. While we’re waiting for that fish to cook, why don’t we get into some heavy skin crawling? Here! Let me help you out of that dress.”
***
Life is full of decisions and there is no absolutely safe course. Reason and logic often create only the illusion of safety.
—Earther aphorism, a Dreen collection
Having seen what she expected, that awful Hanson monster having his way with poor Nishi, Mrs. Ebey lifted the blade gun she had purchased in obedience to the note crumpled in Senator Woon’s hat. As the note had said, a mind-stunning amount of money was passed to her later in Morey’s hat with the promise of even greater riches if she did as she was told.
She lifted the weapon, twisted the handle as instructed, aimed it and depressed the trigger. The blade gun performed exactly according to its accompanying manual: only a soft “slap” as the poisoned anesthetic dart struck its target.
Ryll, still gripped by the highest pleasure sensation of his life, felt a brief sting and clutched his buttock.
“Darling Ryll,” Nishi whispered. “Was it good for you, too?”
“Something stung me,” Ryll said.
His groping hand felt wetness. A hard object protruded from his flesh. A numbing sensation spread outward from his buttock. His Dreen senses reported poison.
Wytee, coming out of intimate concentration, became aware of Mrs. Ebey and, too late, read her thoughts.
Bad lady Ebey make poison thing in Ryll!
Ryll felt the Soother go completely out of mental contact.
Lutt intruded. What’s happening? Something’s wrong. Why won’t you let me feel anything?
Ryll blocked him off and concentrated on stopping the slide into unconsciousness. He rolled off of Nishi, who murmured sleepily: “Only you, Ryll. Never Lutt.”
Wytee? Ryll called. But the
Wytee came back slowly from reflexive withdrawal. Nothing in the Soother’s nature allowed for regrets that the dullness of Mrs. Ebey’s mind had led to avoidance of mental contact with her. No recriminations about the fact that the assassination plot had been conducted only with notes and gestures entered the Soother’s awareness. But millennia of breeding for benign therapeutic support of Dreens exploded in Wytee. The Soother went berserk,
Mrs. Ebey dropped her blade gun and screamed. She clutched her head and staggered around the bedroom.
Bad lady Ebey hurt Dreen! Wytee hurt bad lady!
Mrs. Ebey collapsed into a moaning ball. The moaning grew fainter. Her breathing faltered and stopped.
With his last consciousness, Ryll sent a call: Wytee!
Immediately, Ryll felt his consciousness reinforced.
Lutt intruded: We’re dying! I know we are! Do something!
Ryll responded to the panic: Wytee! Lutt’s weakening me! Block him off!
A wall went up in Ryll’s awareness, silencing Lutt, then: What Ryll want?
I’m dying. There’s a way to save me but I missed it in school. Do you know the way?
Wytee help Dreen.
Ryll felt probing tendrils in his mind, a twinge here, a prod there. He felt himself reliving school experiences with a more mature awareness. The path to survival unfolded—memories came into focus. At last, he had his answer!
The way in is the way out. But I need a new body!
Transformation required almost the full power of a Storyship . . . and he had to kill! Or accept flesh already dead.
Bad lady Ebey dead, Wytee offered.
Dismay threatened to sink him into oblivion. Where could he find a Storyship?
Storyship come, Wytee insisted. Here!
Ryll felt himself stretched along a thin thread from Nishi’s bed, coiling outward to the perimeter of the solar system. Like a magnet, the thread’s outer tip locked onto an approaching Storyship and he recognized the captain.
Father!
No time even to wonder if the elder Dreen recognized his son’s thready presence. Survival required concentration. Ryll allowed his thread-self to tap the Storyship’s power and felt infinitely strengthened, possessed of unlimited time.
His thread-self wound around Mrs. Ebey’s body. What shape should he take? Without knowing Wytee supplied the data, Ryll realized Nishi admired dark, Irish types with tightly curled black hair. Holding fast to his thread-self, Ryll almost drained Storyship power to feed a voracious idmaging effort. Mrs. Ebey melted into oblivion, her cellular memories erased by Wytee in the interest of Dreen sanity.
A handsome Earther male took form on the floor of Nishi’s bedroom. Except for Dreen eyes, the face echoed Legion Captain O’Hara but with stronger cheeks and chin.
As he felt his new body take shape, Ryll experienced a surge of reckless elation. Now! Now, he knew what had driven Lutt to risk his life in desperate gambles! What a marvelous sensation of life! So this was what it meant to be alive!
Jongleur, on the erasure ship, looked on what he thought was Earth and saw his instruments register a dangerous energy drain. Earthers are fighting me!
Using emergency power, he flipped through the eight stages of erasure and depressed the final trigger without once thinking about consequences.
Raj Dood’s illusory planet vanished.
Jongleur fell to the deck in shock. I have killed! I have committed mass murder in the name of all Dreens!
His highly charged thought shot outward to be received by all but two of the Dreens in his universe.
Ryll, in the throes of transformation and tied to survival necessities, caught none of his father’s message.
Prosik, at home in Texas and in the deepest bazeel ecstasy of his life, having drunk almost a liter of basil extract, remained a comatose copy of Lew Doughty. Subiyama, beside him in bed, stroked his forehead and wondered about that new liquor he was making.
But all Dreens captive on Earth and the massed throngs of Dreenor received Jongleur’s signal. Instant amnesiacs, they responded to the ancient summons and fled to other dimensions, scattering like dandelion seeds blown on the wind.
It is done, Habiba thought and joined the exodus.
In Nishi’s bedroom, Ryll completed his shapeshift and decided to gather his strength before idmaging clothes. He flexed his new muscles and sat up. This body contained less mass than his old one but Wytee soothed him.
Ryll safe.
What of Lutt? Ryll wondered.
Wytee save Dreen. Lutt Earther dead.
Ryll stood and looked down at the sleeping Nishi. Wytee was a curled ball of fur near her neck. A male form lay beside her . . . unbreathing. Ryll studied the familiar shape he had shared for what seemed eons. A pang of regret flashed through him.
Such a waste!
The lost potential of this Earther life filled Ryll with frustration. If the creature had only tried to learn!
A soft rapping sounded on the bedroom door.
“Mr. President?”
Ryll recognized the voice of a Secret Service guard.
With abrupt dismay, Ryll realized he stood naked in a bedroom with an assassination victim those Secret Service men would identify as the President of the United States. Stalling for time, he pitched his voice in the remembered Lutt tones.
“What is it?”
“The White House is calling, sir. There’s a crisis call from the ZP. Something about Dreen prisoners escaping.”
Fellow Dreens escaping? Ryll grinned with elation. But how should Lutt respond?
“Shit!”
“Sir, they’re insisting,” the Secret Service man said.
“Tell them to keep their pants on. I’ll be with you fast as I can.”
Nishi, awakened by voices, sat up and focused on Ryll’s new body. She put a hand over her mouth. “Who are—”
“It’s Ryll,” he whispered.
She looked at the body beside her, back to the new Ryll.
He bent close to her and whispered, “Mrs. Ebey killed him. I had to make a new body.”
She lowered her hand. “Mrs. Ebey?” She looked around the room. There was no sign of Mrs. Ebey.
“Wytee killed her,” Ryll whispered.
Wytee help.
Nishi cocked her head to one side, then straightened.
“Wytee says you made a body I would like.” She looked him up and down. “Very handsome. I didn’t know you could do that.” She looked at the door. “What now?”
The practicality of the question told Ryll she accepted the situation without more argument. Cross-examination would come later, he realized. Provided there was a later.
Ryll stared at the door, visualizing the impatience out there. What should he do? If he tried a new copy of Lutt, the smaller size would be seen immediately . . . unless . . . No! He would not make another merging with that remembered flesh. Some of Lutt might remain in the cells. One experience of Lutt Hanson, Jr., was enough!
Remove the evidence of assassination?
It would require time to cleanse that body of all poison and even then clever investigators would suspect foul play. He and Nishi would be required to explain the unexplainable. No. That was too risky.
Something clicked in the lock of the bedroom door. It opened a crack. A Secret Service man peered in at him. Seeing a stranger in the room, the guard threw the door open wide.
“Who are you?” He saw the familiar figure of his President on the bed, a very quiet figure not responding to this intrusion. The guard’s hand darted into his jacket and emerged with a deadly stunner.
Wytee, reading new danger to a precious Dreen, attacked.
The Secret Service man dropped his weapon, clutched his head and fell to the floor. He was dead before Ryll could reach him. Ryll took only a moment to make sure the Soother had killed for a second time. So the Soother learned quick violence.
&
Not let bad peoples hurt Dreen!
Ryll stood. “Get dressed, Nishi. We have to run.”
She glanced at the door, eyebrows raised.
Wytee, please. Just hurt their heads a little, Ryll pleaded.
The Soother did not respond.
Hoping the order would be obeyed, Ryll said, “Wytee will help us.”
She accepted this and began dressing, taking the clothes she had left over a chair.
Ryll idmaged a tweed suit with black shoes, white shirt and a dark gray tie. He looked at himself in a bedroom mirror, seeing Nishi behind him already dressed.
“Merde in the fan,” she said, looking at the body on the bed.
“Hey! What’s taking so . . .”
Another Secret Service man stood in the bedroom doorway. He saw his fellow guard on the floor, the still figure on the bed, Nishi and Ryll in street clothes. The man’s hand flashed toward a shoulder holster but did not complete the motion. He fell with a solid “thwock.”
Nishi Ryll take Wytee go now!
The projection from Wytee stunned them.
Take Wytee go!
Wytee emphasized the order with a short jab of pain.
Knowing he could not resist, Ryll grabbed up the aberrant Soother and, Nishi in tow, plunged toward the door.
Screams of agony greeted them in the hallway. Guards lay writhing on the floor, hands clutching their heads.
“Where are we going?” Nishi demanded as Ryll, leaping over and dodging the incapacitated guardians, led her at a run toward the elevators.
“We will find an airplane,” Ryll said. “We must get to France where the Legion will protect you.”
The streets outside the Madison presented a larger repeat of the pandemonium in the upper hall. People lay on the sidewalk and street, some quiet, some screaming.
Ryll assessed the scene. Stalled cars straddled the curbs. Other cars sat smashed against buildings, dripping coolants and oils while their occupants moaned or sat silently immobile.