Frank Herbert - The Featherbedders

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The Featherbedders

Frank Herbert, 1968

'Once there was a Slorin with a one-syllable name who is believed to have said: 'niche for

every one of us and every one of us in Ms niche.''

- Folk saying of the Scattership People

There must be a streak of madness in a Slorin who'd bring his only offspring, an untrained

and untried youth, on a mission as potentially dangerous as this one, Smeg told himself.

The rationale behind his decision remained clear: The colonial nucleus must preserve its

elders for their detail memory. The youngest of the group was the logical one to be

volunteered for this risk. Still ...

Smeg forced such thoughts out of his mind. They weakened him. He concentrated on

driving the gray motor-pool Plymouth they'd signed out of the government garage in the state

capital that morning. The machine demanded considerable attention.

The Plymouth was only two years old, but this region's red rock roads and potholes had

multiplied those years by a factor of at least four. The steering was loose and assorted

squeaks arose from front and rear as he negotiated a rutted down-grade. The road took them

into a shadowed gulch almost bare of vegetation and across the rattling planks of a wooden

bridge that spanned a dry creekbed. They climbed out the other side through ancient erosion

gullies, past a rone of scrub cottonwoods and onto the reaching flat land they'd been crossing

for two hours.

Smeg risked a glance at Rick, his offspring, riding silently beside him. The youth had come

out of the pupal stage with a passable human shape. No doubt Rick would do better next time

- provided he had the opportunity. But he was well within the seventy-five percent accuracy

limit the Slorin set for themselves. It was a universal fact that the untrained sentience saw

what it thought it saw. The mind tended to supply the missing elements.

A nudge from the Slorin mind-cloud helped, of course, but this carried its own perils. The

nudged mind sometimes developed powers of its own - with terrifying results. Slorin had

learned long ago to depend on the directional broadcast of the mind's narrow band, and to

locate themselves in a network limited by the band's rather short range.

However, Rick had missed none of the essentials for human appearance. He had a gentle,

slender face whose contours were difficult to remember. His brown eyes were of a limpid

softness that made human females discard all suspicions while the males concentrated on

jealousy. Rick's hair was a coarse, but acceptable black. The shoulders were a bit high and

the thorax somewhat too heroic, but the total effect aroused no probing questions.

That was the important thing: no probing questions.

Smeg permitted himself a silent sigh. His own shape - that of a middle-aged government

official, gray at the temples, slightly paunchy and bent of shoulder, and with weak eyes

behind gold-rimmed glasses - was more in the Slorin tradition.

Live on the margins, Smeg thought. Attract no attention.

In other words, don't do what they were doing today.

Awareness of danger forced Smeg into extreme contact with this body his plastic genes

had fashioned. It was a good body, a close enough duplicate to interbreed with the natives,

but he felt it now from the inside, as it were, a fabric of newness stretched over the ancient

substance of the Slorin. It was familiar, yet bothersomely unfamiliar.

I am Sumctroxelunsmeg, he reminded himself. I am a Slorin of seven syllables, each

addition to my name an honor to my family. By the pupa of my jelly-sire whose name took

fourteen thousand heartbeats to pronounce, I shall not fail!

There! That was the spirit he needed - the eternal wanderer, temporarily disciplined, yet

without boundaries. 'If you want to swim, you must enter the water,' he whispered.

'Did you say something, Dad?' Rick asked.

Ahhh, that was very good, Smeg thought. Dad - the easy colloquialism.

'I was girding myself for the ordeal, so to speak,' Smeg said. 'We must separate in a few

minutes.' He nodded ahead to where a town was beginning to hump itself out of the horizon.

'I think I should barge right in and start asking about their sheriff,' Rick said.

Smeg drew in a sharp breath, a gesture of surprise that fitted this body. 'Feel out the

situation first,' he said.

More and more, he began to question the wisdom of sending Rick in there. Dangerous,

damnably dangerous. Rick could get himself irrevocably killed, ruined beyond the pupa's powers

to restore. Worse than that, he could be exposed. There was the real danger. Give natives

the knowledge of what they were fighting and they tended to develop extremely effective

methods.

Slorin memory carried a bagful of horror stories to verify this fact.

'The Slorin must remain ready to take any shape, adapt to any situation,' Rick said. 'That

it!'

Rick spoke the axiom well, Smeg thought, but did he really understand it? How could he?

Rick still didn't have full control of the behavior patterns that went with this particular body

shape. Again, Smeg sighed. If only they'd saved the infiltration squad, the expendable

specialists.

Thoughts such as this always brought the more disquieting question: Saved them from

what?

There had been five hundred pupae in the Scattership before the unknown disaster. Now

there were four secondary ancestors and one new offspring created on this planet. They were

shipless castaways on an unregistered world, not knowing even the nature of the disaster

which had sent them scooting across the void in an escape capsule with minimum shielding.

Four of them had emerged from the capsule as basic Slorin poly-morphs to find themselves

in darkness on a steep landscape of rocks and trees. At morning, there'd been four additional

trees there - watching, listening, weighing the newness against memories accumulated across

a timespan in which billions of planets such as this one could have developed and died.

The capsule had chosen an excellent landing site: no nearby sentient constructions. The

Slorin now knew the region's native label - central British Columbia. In that period of

awakening, though, it had been a place of unknown dangers whose chemistry and organization

required the most cautious testing.

In time, four black bears had shambled down out of the mountains. Approaching civilization,

they'd hidden and watched - listening, always listening, never daring to use the mindcloud.

Who knew what mental powers the natives might have? Four roughly fashioned hunters had

been metamorphosed from Slorin pupae in a brush-screened cave. The hunters had been

tested, refined.

Finally - the hunters had scattered.

Slorin always scattered.

'When we left Washington you said something about the possibility of a trap,' Rick said.

'You don't really think -'

'Slorin have been unmasked on some worlds,' Smeg said. 'Natives have developed

situational protective devices. This has some of the characteristics of such a trap.'

'Then why investigate? Why not leave it alone until we're stronger?'

'Rick!' Smeg shuddered at the youth's massive ignorance. 'Other capsules may have

escaped,' he said.

'But if it's a Slorin down here, he's acting like a dangerous fool.'

'More reason to investigate. We could have a damaged pupa here, one who lost part of the

detail memory. Perhaps he doesn't know how to act - except out of instincts.'

'Then why not stay out of the town and probe just a little bit with the mindcloud?'

Rick cannot be trusted with this job, Smeg thought. He's too raw, too full of the youthful

desire to play with the mindcloud.

'Why not?' Rick repeated.

Smeg pulled the car to a stop at the side of the dirt road, opened his window. It was

getting hot - be noon in about an hour. The landscape was a hardscrabble flatness marked by

sparse vegetation and a clump of buildings about two miles ahead. Broken fences lined both

sides of the road. Low cottonwoods off to the right betrayed the presence of the dry

creekbed. Two scrofulous oaks in the middle distance provided shade for several steers. Away

on the rim of the batland, obscured by haze, there was a suggestion of hills.

'You going to try my suggestion?' Rick asked.

'No.'

'Then why're we stopping? This as far as you go?'

'No.' Smeg sighed. 'This is as far as you go. I'm changing plans. You will wait. I will go into

the village.'

'But I'm the younger. I'm - '

'And I'm in command here.'

'The others won't like this. They said -'

'The others will understand my decision.'

'But Slorin law says -'

'Don't quote Slorin law to me!'

'But-'

'Would you teach your grandfather how to shape a pupa?' Smeg shook his head. Rick must

learn how to control the anger which flared in this bodily creation. 'The limit of the law is the

limit of enforcement - the real limit of organized society. We're not an organized society.

We're two Slorin - alone, cut off from our pitiful net. Alone! Two Slorin of widely disparate

ability. You are capable of carrying a message. I do not judge you capable of meeting the

challenge in this village.'

Smeg reached across Rick, opened the door.

'This is a firm decision?' Rick asked.

'It is. You know what to do?'

Rick spoke stiffly: 'I take that kit of yours from the back and I play the part of a soil

engineer from the Department of Agriculture.'

'Not a part, Rick. You are a soil engineer.'

'But-'

'You will make real tests which will go into a real report and be sent to a real office with a

real function. In the event of disaster, you will assume my shape and step into my niche.'

'I see.'

'I truly hope you do. Meanwhile, you will go out across that field. The dry creekbed is out

there. See those cottonwoods?'

'I've identified the characteristics of this landscape.'

'Excellent. Don't deviate. Remember that you're the offspring of Sumctroxelunsmeg. Your

jelly-sire's name took fourteen thousand heartbeats to pronounce. Live with pride.'

'I was supposed to go in there, take the risk of it -'

'There are risks and there are risks. Remember, make real tests for a real report. Never

betray your niche. When you have made the tests, find a place in that creekbed to secrete

yourself. Dig in and wait. Listen on the narrow band at all times. Listen, that is all you do. In

the event of disaster, you must get word to the others. In the kit there's a dog collar with a

tag bearing a promise of reward and the address of our Chicago drop. Do you know the

greyhound shape?'

'I know the plan, Dad.'

Rick slid out of the car. He removed a heavy black case from the rear, closed the doors,

stared in at his parent.

Smeg leaned across the seat, opened the window. It creaked dismally.

'Good luck, Dad,' Rick said.

Smeg swallowed. This body carried a burden of attachment to an offspring much stronger

than any in previous Slorin experience. He wondered how the offspring felt about the parent,

tried to probe his own feelings toward the one who'd created him, trained him, sealed his pupa

into the Scattership. There was no sense of loss. In some ways, he was the parent. As

different experiences changed him, he would become more and more the individual, however.

Syllables would be added to his name. Perhaps, someday, he might feel an urge to be

reunited.

'Don't lose your cool, Dad,' Rick said.

'The God of the Slorin has no shape,' Smeg said. He closed the window, straightened

himself behind the steering wheel.

Rick turned, trudged off across the field toward the cotton-woods. A low cloud of dust

marked his progress. He carried the black case easily in his right hand.

Smeg put the car in motion, concentrated on driving. That last glimpse of Rick, sturdy and

obedient, had pierced him with unexpected emotions. Slorin parted, he told himself. It is

natural for Slorin to part. An offspring is merely an offspring.

A Slorin prayer came into his mind: 'Lord, let me possess this moment without regrets and,

losing it, gain it forever.'

The prayer helped, but Smeg still felt the tug of that parting. He stared at the shabby

buildings of his target town. Someone in this collection of structures Smeg was now entering

had not learned a basic Slorin lesson: There is a reason for living; Slorin must not live in a

way that destroys this reason. Moderation, that was the key.

A man stood in the dusty sunglare toward the center of the town - one lone man beside

the dirt road that ran unchecked toward the distant horizon. For one haunted moment Smeg

had the feeling it was not a man, but a dangerous other-shaped enemy he'd met before. The

feeling passed as Smeg brought the car to a stop nearby.

Here was the American peasant, Smeg realized - tall, lean, dressed in wash-faded blue bib

overalls, a dirty tan shirt and tennis shoes. The shoes were coming apart to reveal bare toes.

A ground green painter's hat with green plastic visor did an ineffective job of covering his

yellow hair. The visor's rim was cracked. It dripped a fringe of ragged binding that swayed

when the man moved his head.

Smeg leaned out his window, smiled: 'Howdy.'

'How do.'

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摘要：

TheFeatherbeddersFrankHerbert,1968'OncetherewasaSlorinwithaone-syllablenamewhoisbelievedtohavesaid:'nicheforeveryoneofusandeveryoneofusinMsniche.''-FolksayingoftheScattershipPeopleTheremustbeastreakofmadnessinaSlorinwho'dbringhisonlyoffspring,anuntrainedanduntriedyouth,onamissionaspotentiallydangero...

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Frank Herbert - The Featherbedders

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