The Book of Frank Herbert by Frank Herbert
“I missed you,” he said.
She pulled away, looked up. “Did you dream about me?”
He kissed her. “Just a normal dream.”
“Doctor!”
A smile took the sting out of the exclamation. She pulled away, slipped off her fur-lined cape. From an inner pocket of the cape she extracted a flat blue booklet. “Here’s the diagram. Pete didn’t suspect a thing.”
Abruptly, she reeled toward him, clutched at his arm, gasping.
He steadied her, frightened. “What’s the matter, darling?”
She shook her head, drawing deep, shuddering breaths.
“It’s nothing; just a… little headache.”
“Little headache nothing.” He put the back of his wrist against her forehead. The skin held a feverish warmth. “Do you feel ill?”
She shook her head. “No. It’s going away.”
“I don’t like this as a symptom. Have you eaten?”
She looked up, calmer. “No, but I seldom eat breakfast… the waistline.”
“Nonsense! You come in here and eat some fruit.”
She smiled at him. “Yes, doctor… darling.”
The reflection on the musikron’s inner control surfaces gave an underlighted, demoniacal cast to Pete’s face. His hand rested on a relay switch. Hesitant thought: Colleen, I wish I could control your thoughts. I wish I could tell you what to do. Each time I try, you get a headache. I wish I knew how this machine really works.
Eric’s lab still bore the cluttered look of his night’s activities. He helped Colleen up to a seat on the edge of the bench, opened the musikron booklet beside her. She looked down at the open pages.
“What are all those funny looking squiggles?”
He smiled. “Circuit diagram.” He took a test clip and, glancing at the diagram, began pulling leads from the resonance circuit. He stopped, a puzzled frown drawing down his features. He stared at the diagram. “That can’t be right.” He found a scratch pad, stylus, began checking the booklet.
“What’s wrong?”
“This doesn’t make sense.”
“How do you mean?”
“It isn’t designed for what it’s supposed to do.”
“Are you certain?”
“I know Dr. Amanti’s work. This isn’t the way he works.” He began leafing through the booklet. A page flopped loose. He examined the binding. The booklet’s pages had been razored out and new pages substituted. It was a good job. If the page hadn’t fallen out, he might not have noticed. “You said it was easy to get this. Where was it?”
“Right out on top of the musikron.”
He stared at her speculatively.
“What’s wrong?” Her eyes held open candor.
“I wish I knew.” He pointed to the booklet. “That thing’s as phony as a Martian canal.”
“How do you know?”
“If I put it together that way”—a gesture at the booklet—“it’d go up in smoke the instant power hit it. There’s only one explanation: Pete’s on to us.”
“But how?”
“That’s what I’d like to know… how he anticipated you’d try to get the diagram for me. Maybe that busboy—”
“Tommy? But he’s such a nice young fellow.”
“Yeah. He’d sell his mother if the price was right. He could have eavesdropped last night.”
“I can’t believe it.” She shook her head.
In the webwork of the musikron, Pete gritted his teeth. Hate him! Hate him! He pressed the thought at her, saw it fail. With a violent motion, he jerked the metal hemisphere off his head, stumbled out of the musikron. You’re not going to have her! If it’s a dirty fight you want, I’ll really show you a dirty fight!
Colleen asked, “Isn’t there some other explanation?”
“Can you think of one?”
She started to slide down from the bench, hesitated, lurched against him, pressing her head against his chest “My head… my head—” She went limp in his arms, shuddered, recovered slowly, drew gasping breaths. She stood up. “Thank you.”
In a corner of the lab was a canvas deck chair. He led her over to it, eased her down. “You’re going to a hospital right now for a complete check-up—tracers, the works. I don’t like this.”
“It’s just a headache.”
“Peculiar kind of a headache.”
“I’m not going to a hospital.”
“Don’t argue. I’m calling for reservations as soon as I can get over to the phone.”
“Eric, I won’t do it!” She pushed herself upright in the chair. “I’ve seen all the doctors I want to see.” She hesitated, looked up at him. “Except you. I’ve had all those tests. There’s nothing wrong with me… except something in my head.” She smiled. “I guess I’m talking to the right kind of a doctor for that.”
She lay back, resting, closed her eyes. Eric pulled up a stool, sat down beside her, holding her hand. Colleen appeared to sink into a light sleep, breathing evenly. Minutes passed.
If the teleprobe wasn’t practically dismantled, I could test her, he thought.
She stirred, opened her eyes.
“It’s that musikron,” he said. He took her arm. “Did you ever have headaches like this before you began working with that thing?”
“I had headaches, but… well, they weren’t this bad.” She shuddered. “I kept having horrible dreams last night about all those poor people going insane. I kept waking up. I wanted to go in and have it out with Pete.” She put her hands over her face. “How can you be certain it’s the musikron? You can’t be sure. I won’t believe it! I can’t.”
Eric stood up, went to the bench and rummaged under loose parts for a notebook. He returned, tossed the book I too her lap. “There’s your proof.”
She looked at the book without opening it. “What is this?”
“It’s some figures on your itinerary. I had a travel bureau check your departure times. From the time Pete would have been shutting down the musikron to the moment all hell broke loose there’s an even twenty-eight-hour time lapse. That same time lag is present in each case.”
She pushed the notebook from her lap. “I don’t believe it. You’re making this up.”
He shook his head. “Colleen, what does it mean to you that you have been each place where the Syndrome hit… that there was a twenty-eight-hour time lapse in each case. Isn’t that stretching coincidence too far?”
“I know it’s not true.” Her lips thinned. “I don’t know what I’ve been thinking of to even consider you were right.” She looked up, eyes withdrawn. “It can’t be true. If it was, it would mean Pete planned the whole thing. He’s just not that kind of a guy. He’s nice, thoughtful.”
He started to put his hand on her arm. “But, Colleen, I thought—”
“Don’t touch me. I don’t care what you thought, or what I thought. I think you’ve been using your psychological ability to try to turn me away from Pete.”
He shook his head, again tried to take her arm.
She pulled away. “No! I want to think and I can’t think when… when you touch me.” She stared at him. “I believe you’re just jealous of Pete.”
“That’s not—”
A motion at the lab door caught his eye, stopped him. Pete stood there, leaning on his cane.
Eric thought, How did he get there? I didn’t hear a thing. How long has he been there? He stood up.
Pete stepped forward. “You forgot to latch your door, doctor.” He looked at Colleen. “Common enough thing. I did, too.” He limped into the room, cane tapping methodically. “You were saying something about jealousy.” A pause. “I understand about jealousy.”
“Pete!” Colleen stared at him, turned back to Eric. “Eric, I—” She began, and then shrugged.
Pete rested both hands on his cane, looked up at Eric. “You weren’t going to leave me anything, were you, doctor—the woman I love, the musikron. You were even going to hang me for this Syndrome thing.”
He handed it to Pete, who turned it over, looked at the back.
“The proof’s in there. There’s a twenty-eight-hour time lag between the moment you leave a community and the moment madness breaks out. You already know it’s followed you around the world. There’s no deviation. I’ve checked it out.”
Pete’s face paled. “Coincidence. Figures can lie; I’m no monster.”
Colleen turned toward Eric, back to Pete. “That’s what I told him, Pete.”
“Nobody’s accusing you of being a monster, Pete… yet,” Eric said. “You could be a savior. The knowledge that’s locked up in that musikron could practically wipe out insanity. It’s a positive link with the unconscious… can be tapped any time. Why, properly shielded—”
“Nuts! You’re trying to get the musikron so you can throw your weight around.” He looked at Colleen. “And you sugar-talked her into helping you.” He sneered. “It’s not the first time I’ve been double-crossed by a woman; I guess I should’ve been a psychiatrist.”
Colleen shook her head. “Pete, don’t talk that way.”
“Yeah… How else do you expect me to talk? You were a nobody; a canary in a hula chorus and I picked you up and set you down right on the top. So what do you do—” He turned away, leaning heavily on the cane. “You can have her, Doc; she’s just your type!”
Eric put out a hand, withdrew it. “Pete! Stop allowing your deformity to deform your reason! It doesn’t matter how we feel about Colleen. We’ve got to think about what the musikron is doing to people! Think of all the unhappiness this is causing people… the death… the pain—”
“People!” Pete spat out the word.
Eric took a step closer to him. “Stop that! You know I’m right. You can have full credit for anything that is developed. You can have full control of it. You can—”
“Don’t try to kid me, Doc. It’s been tried by experts. You and your big words! You’re just trying to make a big impression on baby here. I already told you you can have her. I don’t want her.”
“Pete! You—”
“Look out, Doc; you’re losing your temper!”
“Who wouldn’t in the face of your pig-headedness?”
“So it’s pig-headed to fight a thief, eh, Doc?” Pete spat on the floor, turned toward the door, tripped on his cane and fell.
Colleen was at his side. “Pete, are you hurt?”
He pushed her away. “I can take care of myself!” He struggled to his feet, pulling himself up on the cane.
“Pete, please—”
Eric saw moisture in Pete’s eyes. “Pete, let’s solve this thing.”
“It’s already solved, Doc.” He limped through the doorway.
Colleen hesitated. “I have to go with him. I can’t let him go away like this. There’s no telling what he’ll do.”
“But don’t you see what he’s doing?”
Anger flamed in her eyes; she stared at Eric. “I saw what you did and it was as cruel a thing as I’ve ever seen.” She turned and ran after Pete.
Her footsteps drummed up the stairs; the outer door slammed.
An empty fibreboard box lay on the floor beside the teleprobe. Eric kicked it across the lab.
“Unreasonable… neurotic… flighty… irresponsible—”
He stopped; emptiness grew in his chest. He looked at the teleprobe. “Sometimes, there’s no predicting about women.” He went to the bench, picked up a transistor, put it down, pushed a tumble of resistors to the back of the bench. “Should’ve known better.”
He turned, started toward the door, froze with a thought which forced out all other awareness:
What if they leave Seattle?
He ran up the stairs three at a time, out the door, stared up and down the street. A jet car sped past with a single occupant. A woman and two children approached from his left. Otherwise, the street was empty. The unitube entrance, less than half a block away, disgorged three teenage girls. He started toward them, thought better of it. With the tubes running fifteen seconds apart, his chance to catch them had been lost while he’d nursed his hurt.
He re-entered the apartment
I have to do something, he thought. If they leave, Seattle will go the way of all the others. He sat down by the vidiphone, put his finger in the dial, withdrew it.
If I call the police, they’ll want proof. What can I show them besides some time-tables? He looked out the window at his left. The musikron! They’ll see— Again he reached for the dial, again withdrew. What would they see? Pete would just claim I was trying to steal it.
He stood up, paced to the window, stared out at the lake.
I could call the society, he thought.
He ticked off in his mind the current top officers of the King County Society of Psychiatric Consultants. All of them considered Dr. Eric Ladde a little too successful for one so young; and besides there was the matter of his research on the teleprobe; mostly a laughable matter.
But I have to do something… the Syndrome— He shook his head. I’ll have to do it alone, whatever I do. He slipped into a black cape, went outside and headed for the Gweduc Room.
A cold wind kicked up whitecaps in the bay, plumed spray onto the waterfront sidewalk. Eric ducked into the elevator, emerged into a lunchroom atmosphere. The girl at the checktable looked up.
“Are you alone, doctor?”
“I’m looking for Miss Lanai.”
“I’m sorry. You must have passed them outside. She and Mr. Serantis just left.”
“Do you know where they were going?”
“I’m sorry; perhaps if you come back this evening—”
Eric returned to the elevator, rode up to the street vaguely disquieted. As he emerged from the elevator dome, he saw a van pull away from the service dome. Eric played a hunch, ran toward the service elevator which already was whirring down.
“Hey!”
The whirring stopped, resumed; the elevator returned to the street level, in it Tommy, the busboy.
“Better luck next time, Doc.”
“Where are they?”
“Well—”
Eric jammed a hand into his coin pocket, fished out a fifty-buck piece, held it in his hand.
Tommy looked at the coin, back at Eric’s eyes. “I heard Pete call the Bellingham skytrain field for reservations to London.”
A hard knot crept into Eric’s stomach; his breathing became shallow, quick; he looked around him.
“Only twenty-eight hours—”
“That’s all I know, Doc.”
Eric looked at the busboy’s eyes, studying him.
Tommy shook his head. “Don’t you start looking at me that way!” He shuddered. “That Pete give me the creeps; always staring at a guy; sitting around in that machine all day and no noises coming out of it.” Again he shuddered. “I’m glad he’s gone.”
Eric handed him the coin. “You won’t be.”
“Yeah,” Tommy stepped back into the elevator. “Sorry you didn’t make it with the babe, Doc.”
“Wait.”
“Yeah?”
“Wasn’t there a message from Miss Lanai?”
Tommy made an almost imperceptible motion toward the inner pocket of his coveralls. Eric’s trained eyes caught the gesture. He stepped forward, gripped Tommy’s arm.
“Give it to me!”
“Now look here, Doc.”
“Give it to me!”
“Doc, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Eric pushed his face close to the busboy’s. “Did you see what happened to Los Angeles, Lawton, Portland, all the places where the Syndrome hit?”
The boy’s eyes went wide. “Doc, I—”
“Give it to me!”
Tommy darted his free hand under his coveralls, extracted a thick envelope, thrust it into Eric’s hand.
Eric released the boy’s arm. Scrawled on the envelope was: “This will prove you were wrong about Pete.” I
“You were going to keep this?” Eric asked.
Tommy’s lips twisted. “Any fool can see it’s the plans for the musikron, Doc. That thing’s valuable.”
“You haven’t any idea,” Eric said. He looked up. “They’re headed for Bellingham?”
“Yeah.”
The nonstop unitube put Eric at the Bellingham field in twenty-one minutes. He jumped out, ran to the station, jostling people aside. A skytrain lashed into the air at the far end of the field. Eric missed a step, stumbled, caught his balance.
In the depot, people streamed past him away from the ticket window. Eric ran up to the window, leaned on the counter. “Next train to London?”
The girl at the window consulted a screen beside her. “There’ll be one at 12:50 tomorrow afternoon, sir. You just missed one.”
“But that’s twenty-four hours!”
“You’d arrive in London at 4:50 P.M., sir.” She smiled. “Just a little late for tea.” She glanced at his caduceus.
Eric clutched at the edge of the counter, leaned toward her. “That’s twenty-nine hours—one hour too late.”
He pushed himself away from the window, turned.
“It’s just a four-hour trip, doctor.”
He turned back. “Can I charter a private ship?”
“Sorry, doctor. There’s an electrical storm coming; the traveler beam will have to be shut down. I’m sure you couldn’t get a pilot to go out without the beam. You do understand?”
“Is there a way to call someone on the skytrain?”
“Is this a personal matter, doctor?”
“It’s an emergency.”
“May I ask the nature of the emergency?’“
He thought a moment, looking at the girl. He thought, Same problem here… nobody would believe me.
He said, “Never mind. Where’s the nearest vidiphone? I’ll leave a message for her at Plymouth Depot.”
“Down that hallway to your right, doctor.” The girl went back to her tickets. She looked up at Eric’s departing back. “Was it a medical emergency, doctor?”
He paused, turned. The envelope in his pocket rustled. He felt for the papers, pulled out the envelope. For the second time since Tommy had given them to him, Eric glanced inside at the folded pages of electronic diagrams, some initialed “C.A.”