Whipping Star by Frank Herbert
“Stellar selfdom,” Furuneo said, shaking his head.
“Incorrect term?” the Caleban asked, “Energy selfdom, perhaps.”
“She’s saying,” McKie said, “that use of S’eye doors has tangled us with her life some way. Her death will reach out like a stellar explosion along all these tangled networks and kill us.”
“That’s what you think she’s saying,” Furuneo objected.
“That’s what I have to believe she’s saying,” McKie said. “Our communication may be tenuous, but I think she’s sincere. Can’t you still feel the emotions radiating from her?”
“Two species can be said to share emotions only in the broadest way,” Furuneo said. “She doesn’t even understand what we mean by pain.”
“Scientist of your planguinity,” the Caleban said, “explains emotional base for communication. Lacking emotional commonality, sameness of labels uncertain. Emotion concept not certain for Calebans. Communication difficulty assumed.”
McKie nodded to himself. He could see a further complication: the problem of whether the Caleban’s words were spoken or radiated in some unthinkable manner completed their confusion.
“I believe you’re right in one thing,” Furuneo said.
“Yes?”
“We have to assume we understand her.”
McKie swallowed in a dry throat. “Fanny Mae,” he said, “have you explained this ultimate discontinuity prospect to Mliss Abnethe?”
“Problem explained,” the Caleban said. “Fellow Calebans attempt remedy of error. Abnethe fails of comprehension, or disregards consequences. Connectives difficult.”
“Connectives difficult,” McKie muttered.
“All connectives of single S’eye,” the Caleban said. “Master S’eye of self creates mutual problem.”
“Don’t tell me you understand that,” Furuneo objected.
“Abnethe employs Master S’eye of self,” the Caleban said. “Contract agreement gives Abnethe right of use. One Master S’eye of self. Abnethe uses.”
“So she opens a jumpdoor and sends her Palenki through it,” Furuneo said. “Why don’t we just wait here and grab her?”
“She could close the door before we even got near her,” McKie growled. “No, there’s more to what this Caleban’s saying. I think she’s telling us there’s only one Master S’eye, the control system, perhaps, for all the jumpdoors . . . and Fanny Mae here is in control of it, or the channel operation or . . .”
“Or something,” Furuneo snarled.
“Abnethe control S’eye by right of purchase,” the Caleban said.
“See what I mean?” McKie said. “Can you override her control, Fanny Mae?”
“Terms of employment require not interfere.”
“But can’t you still use your own S’eye doors?” McKie pressed.
“All use,” the Caleban said.
“This is insane!” Furuneo snapped.
“Insanity defines as lack of orderly thought progression in mutual acceptance of logical terms,” the Caleban said. “Insanity frequent judgment of one species upon other species. Proper interpretation otherwise.”
“I think I just had my wrist slapped,” Furuneo said.
“Look,” McKie said, “the other deaths and insanity around Caleban disappearances substantiate our interpretation. We’re dealing with something explosive and dangerous.”
“So we find Abnethe and stop her.”
“You make that sound so simple,” McKie said. “Here are your orders. Get out of here and alert the Bureau. The Caleban’s communication won’t show on your recorder, but you’ll have it all down in your memory. Tell them to scan you for it.”
“Right. You’re staying?”
“Yes.”
“What’ll I say you’re doing?”
“I want a look at Abnethe’s companions and her surroundings.”
Furuneo cleared his throat. Gods of the underworld, it was hot! “Have you thought of, you know, just bang?” He made the motion of firing a raygen.
“There’s a limit on what can go through a jumpdoor and how fast,” McKie chided. “You know that.”
“Maybe this jumpdoor’s different.”
“I doubt it.”
“After I’ve reported in, what then?”
“Sit tight outside there until I call you—unless they give you a message for me. Oh, and start a general search on Cordiality . . . just in case.”
“Of course.” Furuneo hesitated. “One thing—who do I contact at the Bureau? Bildoon?”
McKie glanced up. Why should Furuneo question whom to call? What was he trying to say?
It dawned on McKie then that Furuneo had hit on a logical concern. BuSab director Napoleon Bildoon was a Pan Spechi, a pentarchal sentient, human only in appearance. Since McKie, a human, held nominal charge of this case, that might appear to confine control of it, excluding other members of the ConSentiency. Interspecies political infighting could take odd turns in a time of stress. It would be best to involve a broad directorate here.
“Thanks,” McKie said. “I wasn’t thinking much beyond the immediate problem.”
“This is the immediate problem.”
“I understand. All right, I was tapped for this chore by our Director of Discretion.”
“Gitchel Siker?”
“Yes.”
“That’s one Laclac and Bildoon, a Pan Spechi. Who else?”
“Get somebody out of the Legal Department.”
“Bound to be a human.”
“The minute you stretch it that far, they’ll all get the message,” McKie said. “They’ll bring in the others before making any official decision.”
Furuneo nodded. “One other thing.”
“What?”
“How do I get out of here?”
McKie faced the giant spoon. “Good question. Fanny Mae, how does my companion leave here?”
“He wishes to journey where?”
“To his home.”
“Connectives apparent,” the Caleban said.
McKie felt a gush of air. His ears popped to a change in pressure. There was a sound like the pulling of a cork from a bottle. He whirled. Furuneo was gone.
“You . . . sent him home?” McKie asked.
“Correct,” the Caleban said. “Desired destination visible. Sent swiftness. Prevent temperature drop below proper level.”
McKie, feeling perspiration roll down his cheeks, said, “I wish I knew how you did that. Can you actually see our thoughts?”
“See only strong connectives,” the Caleban said.
Discontinuity of meaning, McKie thought.
The Caleban’s remark about temperature came back to him. What was a proper temperature level? Damn! It was boiling in here! His skin itched with perspiration. His throat was dry. Proper temperature level?
“What’s the opposite of proper?” he asked.
“False,” the Caleban said.
The play of words can lead to certain expectations which life is unable to match. This is a source of much insanity and other forms of unhappiness.
—Wreave Saying
For a reflexive time which he found himself unable to measure, McKie considered his exchange with the Caleban. He felt cast adrift without any familiar reference points. How could false be the opposite of proper? If he could not measure meanings, how could he measure time?
McKie passed a hand across his forehead, gathering perspiration which he tried to wipe off on his jacket. The jacket was damp.
No matter how much time had passed, he felt that he still knew where he was in this universe. The Beachball’s interior walls remained around him. The unseeable presence of the Caleban had not become less mysterious, but he could look at the shimmering existence of the thing and take a certain satisfaction from the fact that it spoke to him.
The thought that every sentient who had used a jumpdoor would die if this Caleban succumbed sat on McKie’s awareness. It was muscle-numbing. His skin was slick with perspiration,
Everyone who’d used a jumpdoor.
Damnation of all devils! Had he interpreted the Caleban correctly? It was the logical assumption. Deaths and insanity around the Caleban disappearances said he must exclude any other interpretation.
Link by link, this trap had been forged. It would crowd the universe with dead flesh.
The shimmering oval above the giant spoon abruptly waved outward, contracted, flowed up, down, left. McKie received a definite impression of distress. The oval vanished, but his eyes still tracked the Caleban’s unpresence.
“Is something wrong?” McKie asked.
For answer the round vortal tube of a S’eye jumpdoor opened behind the Caleban. Beyond the opening stood a woman, a figure dwarfed as though seen through the wrong end of a telescope. McKie recognized her from all the newsvisos and from the holoscans he had been fed as background briefing for this assignment.
He was confronting Mliss Abnethe in a light somewhat reddened by its slowed passage through the jumpdoor.
It was obvious that the Beautybarbers of Steadyon had been about their expensive work on her person. He made a mental note to have that checked. Her figure presented the youthful curves of a pleasurefem. The face beneath fairy-blue hair was focused around a red-petal mouth. Large summery green eyes and a sharply cleaving nose conveyed odd contrast—dignity versus hoyden. She was a flawed queen, age mingled with youth. She must be at least eighty standard years, but the Beautybarbers had achieved this startling combination: available pleasurefem and remote, hungry power.
The expensive body wore a long gown of grey rainpearls which matched her, movement for movement, like a glittering skin. She moved nearer the vortal tube. As she approached, the edges of the tube blocked off first her feet, then her legs, thighs, waist.
McKie felt his knees age a thousand years in that brief passage. He remained crouched near the place where he’d entered the Beachball.
“Ahhh, Fanny Mae,” Mliss Abnethe said. “You have a guest.” Jumpdoor interference caused her voice to sound faintly hoarse.
“I am Jorj X. McKie, Saboteur Extraordinary,” he said.
Was that a contraction in the pupils of her eyes? McKie wondered. She stopped with only her head and shoulders visible in the tube’s circle.
“And I am Mliss Abnethe, private citizen.”
Private citizen! McKie thought. This bitch controlled the productive capacity of at least five hundred worlds. Slowly McKie got to his feet.
“The Bureau of Sabotage has official business with you,” he said, putting her on notice to satisfy the legalities.
“I am a private citizen!” she barked. The voice was prideful, vain, marred by petulance.
McKie took heart at the revealed weakness. It was a particular kind of flaw that often went with wealth and power. He had had experience in dealing with such flaws.
“Fanny Mae, am I your guest?” he asked.
“Indeed,” the Caleban said. “I open my door to you.”
“Am I your employer, Fanny Mae?” Abnethe demanded.
“Indeed, you employ me.”
A breathless, crouching look came over her face. Her eyes went to slits. “Very well. Then prepare to fulfill the obligations of . . .”
“One moment!” McKie said. He felt desperate. Why was she moving so fast? What was that faint whine in her voice? “Guests do not interfere,” Abnethe said.
“BuSab makes its own decisions about interference!” McKie said.
“Your jurisdiction has limits!” she countered.
McKie heard the beginnings of many actions in that statement: hired operatives, gigantic sums spent as bribes, doctored agreements, treaties, stories planted with the visos on how this good and proud lady had been mistreated by her government, a wide enlistment of personal concern to justify—what? Violence against his person? He thought not. More likely to discredit him, to saddle him with onerous misdeeds.
Thought of all that power made McKie wonder suddenly why he made himself vulnerable to it. Why had he chosen BuSab? Because I’m difficult to please, he told himself. I’m a Saboteur by choice. There was no going back on that choice now. BuSab appeared to walk down the middle of everywhere and always wound up on the high road.
And this time BuSab appeared to be carrying most of the sentient universe on its shoulders. It was a fragile burden perched there, fearful and feared. It had sunk stark claws into him.
“Agreed, we have limits,” McKie growled, “but I doubt you’ll ever see them. Now, what’s going on here?”
“You’re not a police agent!” Abnethe barked.
“Perhaps I should summon police,” McKie said.
“On what grounds?” She smiled. She had him there and knew it. Her legal staff had explained to her the open association clause in the ConSentient Articles of Federation: “When members of different species agree formally to an association from which they derive mutual benefits, the contracting parties shall be the sole judges of said benefits, providing their agreement breaks no law, covenant, or legative article binding upon said contracting parties; provided further that said formal agreement was achieved by voluntary means and involves no breach of the public peace.”
“Your actions will bring about the death of this Caleban,” McKie said. He didn’t hold out much hope for this argument, but it bought a bit more time.
“You’ll have to establish that the Caleban concept of discontinuity interprets precisely as death,” Abnethe said. “You can’t do that, because it’s not true. Why do you interfere? This is just harmless play between consenting ad—”
“More than play,” the Caleban said.
“Fanny Mae!” Abnethe snapped. “You are not to interrupt! Remember our agreement.”
McKie stared in the direction of the Caleban’s unpresence, tried to interpret the spectrum-flare that rejected his senses.
“Discern conflict between ideals and structure of government,” the Caleban said.
“Precisely!” Abnethe said. “I’m assured that Calebans cannot suffer pain, that they don’t even have a term for it. If it’s my pleasure to stage an apparent flogging and observe the reactions of . . .”
“Are you sure she suffers no pain?” McKie asked.
Again a gloating smile came over Abnethe’s face. “I’ve never seen her suffer pain. Have you?”
“Have you seen her do anything?”
“I’ve seen her come and go.”
“Do you suffer pain, Fanny Mae?” McKie asked.
“No referents for this concept,” the Caleban said.
“Are these floggings going to bring about your ultimate discontinuity?” McKie asked.
“Explain bring about,” the Caleban said.
“Is there any connection between the floggings and your ultimate discontinuity?”
“Total universe connectives include all events,” the Caleban said.
“I pay well for my game,” Abnethe said. “Stop interfering, McKie.”
“How’re you paying?”
“None of your business!”
“I make it my business,” McKie said. “Fanny Mae?”
“Don’t answer him!” Abnethe snapped.
“I can still summon police and the officers of a Discretionary Court,” McKie said.
“By all means,” Abnethe gloated. “You are, of course, ready to answer a suit charging interference with an open agreement between consenting members of different species?”
“I can still get an injunction,” McKie said. “What’s your present address?”
“I decline to answer on advice of counsel.”
McKie glared at her. She had him. He could not charge her with flight to prevent prosecution unless he had proved a crime. To prove a crime he must get a court to act and serve her with the proper papers in the presence of bonded witnesses,
“Offer judgment,” the Caleban said. “Nothing in Abnethe contract prohibits revelation of payment. Employer provides educators.”
“Educators?” McKie asked.
“Very well,” Abnethe conceded. “I provide Fanny Mae with the finest instructors and teaching aids our civilization can supply. She’s been soaking up our culture. Anything she requested, she’s got. And it wasn’t cheap.”
“And she still doesn’t understand pain?” McKie demanded.
“Hope to acquire proper referents,” the Caleban said.
“Will you have time to acquire those referents?” McKie asked.
“Time difficult concept,” the Caleban said. “Statement of instructor, to wit: ‘Relevancy of time to learning varies with species.’ Time possesses length, unknown quality termed duration, subjective and objective dimension. Confusing.”
“Let’s make this official,” McKie said. “Abnethe, are you aware that you’re killing this Caleban?”
“Discontinuity and death are not the same,” Abnethe objected. “Are they, Fanny Mae?”
“Wide disparity of equivalents exists between separate waves of being,” the Caleban said.
“I ask you formally, Mliss Abnethe,” McKie said, “if this Caleban calling herself Fanny Mae has told you the consequences of an event she describes as ultimate discontinuity.”
“You just heard her say there are no equivalents!”
“You’ve not answered my question.”
“You’re quibbling!”
“Fanny Mae,” McKie said, “have you described for Mliss Abnethe the consequences of . . .”
“Bound by contract connectives,” the Caleban said.
“You see!” Abnethe pounced. “She’s bound by our open agreement, and you’re interfering.” Abnethe gestured to someone not visible in the jumpdoor’s vortal tube.
The opening suddenly doubled its diameter. Abnethe stepped aside, leaving half her head and one eye visible to McKie. A crowd of watching sentients could now be discerned in the background. Into Abnethe’s place darted the turtle form of a giant Palenki. Its hundreds of tiny feet flickered beneath its bulk. The single arm growing from the top of its ring-eyed head trailed a long whip in a double-thumbed hand. The arm thrust through the tube, jerked the whip against jumpdoor resistance, lashed the whip forward. The whip cracked above the spoon bowl.