The Book of Frank Herbert Read online

  “What about that machinery in the mortuary basement?” asked Lewis.

  Bellarmine stood up, began to pace the floor, back and forth at the foot of the bed. Presently, he stopped, put his hands on the rail, stared at Lewis. “I spent half the night examining that layout,” he said. “It was one of the most beautifully designed and executed rigs I’ve ever seen. Its major purpose was to take cadaver blood and fractionate the protein.”

  “You mean like for making plasma and stuff like that?” asked Lewis.

  “Well, something like that,” said Bellarmine.

  “I didn’t think you could use the blood of a corpse for that,” said Lewis.

  “We didn’t either,” said the surgeon. “The Russians have been working on it, however. Our experience has been that it breaks down too quickly. We’ve tried—”

  “You mean this was a Communist setup?”

  Bellarmine shook his head. “No such luck. This rig wasn’t just foreign to the U.S.A. It was foreign to Earth. There’s one centrifugal pump in there that spins free in an air blast. I shudder every time I think of the force it must generate. We don’t have an alloy that’ll come anywhere near standing up to those strains. And the Russians don’t have it, either.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “For one thing, there are several research projects that are awaiting this type of rig and the Russians have no more results on those projects than we have.”

  “Then something was produced from cadaver blood and was stored in those tanks,” said Lewis.

  Bellarmine nodded. “I checked. A fitting on the tanks matched one on the machinery.”

  Lewis pushed himself upright, ignoring the pain in his chest. “Then this means an extraterrestrial in—” The pain in his chest became too much and he sagged back to the pillow.

  Dr. Bellarmine was suddenly at his side. “You fool!” he barked. “You were told to take it easy.” He pushed the emergency button at the head of the bed, began working on the bandages.

  “What’s matter?” whispered Lewis.

  “Hemorrhage,” said Bellarmine. “Where’s that fool nurse? Why doesn’t she answer the bell?” He stripped away a length of adhesive.

  The door opened and a nurse entered, stopped as she saw the scene.

  “Emergency tray,” said Bellarmine. “Get Dr. Edwards here to assist! Bring plasma!”

  Lewis heard a drum begin to pound inside his head—louder, louder, louder. Then it began to fade and there was nothing.

  He awoke to a rustling sound and footsteps. Then he recognized it. The sound of a nurse’s starched uniform as she moved about the room. He opened his eyes and saw by the shadows outside that it was afternoon.

  “So you’re awake,” said the nurse.

  Lewis turned his head toward the sound. “You’re new,” he said. “I don’t recognize you.”

  “Special,” she said. “Now you just take it easy and don’t try to move.” She pushed the call button.

  It seemed that almost immediately Dr. Bellarmine was in the room bending over Lewis. The surgeon felt Lewis’ wrist, took a deep breath. “You went into shock,” he said. “You have to remain quiet. Don’t try to move around.”

  His voice low and husky, Lewis said, “Could I ask some questions?”

  “Yes, but only for a few minutes. You have to avoid any kind of exertion.”

  “What’d the sheriff find out about the tanks?”

  Bellarmine grimaced. “They couldn’t open them. Can’t cut the metal.”

  “That confirms it,” said Lewis. “Think there are any other rigs like that?”

  “There have to be,” said Bellarmine. He sat down on a chaff at the head of the bed. “I’ve had another look at that basement layout and took a machinist with me. He agrees. Everything about it cries out mass production. Mostly cast fittings with a minimum of machining. Simple, efficient construction.”

  “Why? What good’s the blood from human cadavers?”

  “I’ve been asking myself that same question,” said Bellarmine. “Maybe for a nutrient solution for culture growths. Maybe for the antibodies.”

  “Would they be any good?”

  “That depends on how soon the blood was extracted. The time element varies with temperature, body condition, a whole barrel full of things.”

  “But why?”

  The surgeon ran a hand through his gray hair. “I don’t like my answer to that question,” he said. “I keep thinking of how we fractionate the blood of guinea pigs, how we recover vaccine from chick embryos, how we use all of our test animals.”

  Lewis’ eyes fell on the dresser across his room. Someone had taken the books from his night stand and put them on the dresser. He could still see the bug-eyed monster cover.

  “From what I know of science fiction,” said Lewis, “that silver grid in the hall must be some kind of matter transmitter for sending the tanks to wherever they’re used. I wonder why they didn’t put it downstairs with the machinery.”

  “Maybe it had to be above ground,” said Bellarmine. “You figure it the same way I do.”

  “You’re a hard-headed guy, Doc,” said Lewis. “How come you go for this bug-eyed monster theory?”

  “It was the combination,” said Bellarmine. “That silver grid, the design of the machinery and its purpose, the strange metals, the differences in Johnson. It all spells A-L-I-E-N, alien. But I could say the same holds for you, Lewis. What put you wise?”

  “Johnson. He called me a mere human. I got to wondering how alien a guy could be to separate himself from the human race.”

  “It checks,” said Bellarmine.

  “But why guinea pigs?” asked Lewis.

  The surgeon frowned, looked at the floor, back at Lewis. “That rig had a secondary stage,” he said. “It could have only one function—passing live virus under some kind of bombardment—X-ray or beta ray or whatever—and depositing the mutated strain in a little spray container about as big as your fist. I know from my own research experience that some mutated virus can be deadly.”

  “Germ warfare,” whispered Lewis. “You sure it isn’t the Russians?”

  “I’m sure. This was a perfect infecting center. Complete. Banbury would’ve been decimated by now if that’s what it was.”

  “Maybe they weren’t ready.”

  “Germ warfare is ready when one infecting center is set up. No. This rig was for producing slight alterations in common germs or I miss my guess. This little spray container went into a…”

  “Rack on Johnson’s desk,” said Lewis.

  “Yeah,” said Bellarmine.

  “I saw it,” said Lewis. “I thought it was one of those deodorant things.” He picked a piece of lint off the covers. “So they’re infecting us with mutated virus.”

  “It scares me,” said Bellarmine.

  Lewis squinted his eyes, looked up at the surgeon. “Doc, what would you do if you found out that one of your white rats was not only intelligent but had found out what you were doing to it?”

  “Well—” Bellarmine looked out the window at the gathering dusk. “I’m no monster, Lewis. I’d probably turn it loose. No—” He scratched his chin. “No, maybe I wouldn’t at that. But I wouldn’t infect it anymore. I think I’d put it through some tests to find out just how smart it was. The rat would no longer be a simple test animal. Its usefulness would be in the psychological field, to tell me things about myself.”

  “That’s about the way I had it figured,” said Lewis, “How much longer am I going to be in this bed?”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve figured a way for the guinea pigs to tell the researchers the jig’s up.”

  “How? We don’t even know their language. We’ve only seen one specimen and that one’s dead. We can’t be sure they’d react the same way we would.”

  “Yes they would,” said Lewis.

  “How can you say that? They must already know we’re sentient.”

  “So’s a rat sentient—to a degree,”
said Lewis. “It’s all in the way you look at it. Sure. Compared to us, they’re vegetables. That’s the way it’d be with—”

  “We don’t have the right to take risks with the rest of humanity,” protested Bellarmine. “Man, one of them tried to kill you!”

  “But everything points to that one being defective,” said Lewis. “He made too many mistakes. That’s the only reason we got wise to him.”

  “They might dump us into the incinerator as no longer useful,” said Bellarmine. “They—”

  Lewis said, “They’d have to be pretty much pure scientists. Johnson was a field man, a lab technician, a worker. The pure scientists would follow our human pattern. I’m sure of it. To be a pure scientist you have to be able to control yourself. That means you’d understand other persons’—other beings’—problems. No, Doc. Your first answer was the best one. You’d put your rats to psychological tests.”

  Bellarmine stared at his hands. “What’s your idea?”

  “Take a white rat in one of those little lab cages. Infect it with some common germ, leave the infecting hypo in the cage, put the whole works—rat and all—in front of that silver grid. Distort—”

  “That’s a crazy idea,” said Bellarmine. “How could you tell a hypothetical something to look at your message when you don’t even know the hypothetical language—how to contact them in the first place.”

  “Distort the field of that grid by touching the wires with a piece of metal,” said Lewis. “Tie the metal to the end of a pole for safety.”

  “I’ve never heard a crazier idea,” said Bellarmine.

  “Get the white rat, the cage and the hypo and I’ll do it myself,” said Lewis.

  Bellarmine got to his feet, moved toward the door. “You’re not doing anything for a couple of weeks,” he said. “You’re a sick man and I’ve been talking to you too long already.” He opened the door, left the room.

  Lewis stared at the ceiling. A shudder passed over his body. Mutated virus!

  The door opened and an orderly and nurse entered. “You get a little tube feeding of hot gelatin,” said the nurse. She helped him eat it, then, over his protests, gave him a sedative.

  “Doctor’s orders,” said the nurse.

  Through a descending fog, Lewis murmured, “Which doctor?”

  “Dr. Bellarmine,” she said.

  The fog came lower, darkened. He drifted into a nightmare peopled by thousands of Johnsons, all of them running around with large metal tanks asking, “Are you human?” and collecting blood.

  Sheriff Czernak was beside the bed when Lewis awoke. Lewis could see out the window that dawn was breaking. He turned toward the sheriff. “Mornin’, John,” he whispered. His tongue felt thick and dry.

  “’Bout time you woke up,” said Czernak. “I’ve been waiting here a coupla hours. Something fishy going on.”

  “Wind my bed up, will you?” asked Lewis. “What’s happening?”

  Czernak arose, moved to the foot of the bed and turned the crank.

  “The big thing is that Doc Bellarmine has disappeared,” he said. “We traced him from the lab here to the mortuary. Then he just goes pffft!”

  Lewis’ eyes widened. “Was there a white rat cage?”

  “There you go again!” barked Czernak. “You tell me you don’t know anything about this, but you sure know all the questions.” He bent over Lewis. “Sure there was a rat cage! You better tell me how you knew it!”

  “First tell me what happened,” said Lewis.

  Czernak straightened, frowning. “All right, Welby, but when I get through telling, then you better tell.” He wet his lips with his tongue. “I’m told the Doc came in here and talked to you last night. Then he went down to the lab and got one of them white rats with its cage. Then he went over to the mortuary. He had the cage and rat with him. Our night guard let him in. After a while, when the Doc didn’t come out, the guard got worried and went inside. There in the back hall is the Doc’s black bag. And over where this silver wire stuff was he finds—”

  “Was?” Lewis barked the word.

  “Yeah,” said Czernak wearily. “That’s the other thing. Sometime last night somebody ripped out all them wires and didn’t leave a single trace.”

  “What else did the guard find?”

  Czernak ran a hand under his collar, stared at the opposite wall.

  “Well?”

  “Welby, look, I—”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, the night guard—it was Rasmussen—called me and I went right down. Rasmussen didn’t touch a thing. There was the Doc’s bag, a long wood pole with a tire iron attached to it and the rat cage. The rat was gone.”

  “Was there anything in the cage?”

  Czernak suddenly leaned forward, blurted, “Look, Welby, about the cage. There’s something screwy about it. When I first got there I swear it wasn’t there. Rasmussen doesn’t remember it either. My first idea when I got there was that the Doc’d gone out the back way, but our seal was still on the door. It hadn’t been opened. While I was thinkin’ that one over—I was standing about in the middle of the hall—I heard this noise like a cork being pulled out of a bottle. I turned around and there was this little cage on the floor. Out of nowhere.”

  “And it was empty?”

  “Except for some pieces of glass that I’m told belonged to a hypo.”

  “Broken?”

  “Smashed to pieces.”

  “Was the cage door open?”

  Czernak tipped his head to one side, looked at the far wall. “No, I don’t believe it was.”

  “And exactly where was this cage?” Lewis’ eyes burned into the sheriff’s.

  “Like I said, Welby. Right in front of where the wires was.”

  “And the wires were gone?”

  “Well—” Again the sheriff looked uncomfortable. “For just a second there when I turned around after hearing that noise—for just a second there I thought I saw ’em.”

  Lewis took a deep breath.

  Czernak said, “Now come on and give, will you? Where’s the Doc. You must have some idea, the way you been askin’ questions.”

  “He’s taking his entrance exams,” said Lewis. “And we’d all better pray that he passes.”

  Gambling Device

  “Desert Rest Hotel—No Gambling”

  The blue and white sign, scraggly alkali sedge clustering around its supports, stood by itself at the edge of the lonely road.

  Hal Remsen read it aloud, stopped his convertible at the hotel drive and glanced down at his bride of six hours. The heavy floral scent of her corsage wafted up to him. He smiled, the action bringing his thin dark features into vivid aliveness.

  Ruth Remsen’s short blond hair had been tangled by the long drive in the open car. Her disarrayed hair, backlighted now by a crimson sunset, accented a piquant doll quality in her small features.

  “Well?” he said.

  “Hal, I don’t like the looks of that place,” she said. Her eyes narrowed. “It looks like a prison. Let’s try farther on.”

  She suddenly shivered, staring across her husband at the blocky structure nestled in dry sand hills to their left. The hotel’s shadowed portico gaped like a trap at the end of the dark surfaced driveway.

  Hal shrugged, grinned. It gave him the sudden look of a small boy about to admit who stole the cookies.

  “I have a confession,” he said. “Your husband, the irreplaceable trouble shooter of Fowler Electronics, Inc., is lost.” He hesitated. “That left turn at Meridian…”

  “I still don’t like the looks of that place,” she said. Her face sobered. “Darling, it’s our wedding night.”

  He turned away from her to look at the hotel.

  “It’s just the way the sunset’s lighting it,” he said. “It makes those windows look like big red eyes.”

  Ruth chewed her lower lip, continued to stare at the building in the parched hills. Rays of the setting sun, reflected off mineral sands, painted red streak
s across the structure, gleamed like fire on the windows and their metal frames.

  “Well…” She allowed her voice to trail off.

  Hal put the car in gear, turned into the drive.

  “It’ll be dark soon,” he said. “There’s no dusk on the desert. We’d better take this while we can.”

  He stopped the car in the gloom of the portico.

  An ancient bellboy with a leathery mask of a face, and wearing a green uniform, came down the two steps at their right. Yellow lobby lights pouring through the double doors behind him silhouetted his stick-like frame.

  Without speaking, he opened the car door for Ruth.

  Hal slid across the seat after her, nodded toward the rear. “Those two bags on the seat,” he said. “We’ll just be staying the night.”

  He left the keys in the car.

  The lobby held a cool stillness after the desert’s heat. The tapping of their heels echoed across the tile floor. Hal was struck by the curious absence of plants, furniture and people. The quiet held an eerie, waiting quality.

  They crossed to a marble-topped semi-circular desk at the far side. Hal pushed a call button on the desk. He heard a double click behind him, turned to see the bellboy putting down then luggage.

  If he were a woman, they’d call him a “crone,” thought Hal. The word “warlock” popped into his mind.

  The man moved around behind the desk with a kind of slithering, shambling walk. He pushed register and pen toward Hal.

  Ruth looked at the register, glanced at Hal.

  Suddenly conscious of his newly married status, Hal cleared his throat.

  “Do you have a suite?” he asked.

  “You have room 417 in the northwest corner,” said the man.

  “Is that all you have?” asked Hal. He glanced down at Ruth, took a deep breath to overcome an abrupt feeling of disquiet. He looked back at the man across the desk.

  “That’s your room, sir,” said the man. He touched the edge of the register.

  “Oh, take it,” said Ruth. “It’s just for tonight.”

  Hal shrugged, took up the pen, signed, “Mr. and Mrs. Harold B. Remsen, Sonoma, California” with an overdone flourish.

  The man took the pen from Hal, put it in the fold of the register. He came back around the desk, still with that peculiar shambling gait—an almost mechanical motion.