Frank Herbert - Destination Void 3 The Lazarus Effect

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1. Destination Void

2. The Jesus Incident

-> 3. The Lazarus Effect

4. The Ascension Factor

The Lazarus Effect

Frank Herbert

Bill Ransom

1983

For Brian, Bruce and Penny. For all the years they tiptoed while their father

was writing.

Frank Herbert

For all those healers who ease our suffering; for people who feed people, then

ask them for virtue; for our friends -- gratitude and affection.

Bill Ransom

The Histories assert that a binary system cannot support life. But we found

life here on Pandora. Except for the kelp, it was antagonistic and deadly, but

still it was life. Ship's judgment is upon us now because we wiped out the kelp

and unbalanced this world. We few survivors are subject to the endless sea and

the terrible vagaries of the two suns. That we survive at all on our fragile

Clone-rafts is as much a curse as a victory. This is the time of madness.

-- Hali Ekel, the Journals

Duque smelled burning flesh and scorched hair. He sniffed, sniffed again, and

whined. His one good eye watered and pained him when he tried to knuckle it

open. His mother was out. Out was a word he could say, like hot and Ma. He

could not precisely identify the location and shape of out. He knew vaguely

that his quarters were on a Clone-raft anchored off a black stone pinnacle, all

that remained of Pandora's land surface.

The burning smells were stronger now. They frightened him. Duque wondered if

he should say something. Mostly, he did not talk; his nose got in the way. He

could whistle through his nose, though, and his mother understood. She would

whistle back. Between them, they understood more than a hundred whistle-words.

Duque wriggled his forehead. This uncurled his thick, knobby nose and he

whistled -- tentative at first to see whether she was near.

"Ma? Where are you, Ma?"

He listened for the unmistakable scuff-slap, scuff-slap of her bare feet on the

soft slick deck of the raft.

Burning smells filled his nose and made him sneeze. He heard the slaps of many

feet out in the corridor, more feet than he had ever before heard out there, but

nothing he could identify as Ma. There was shouting now, words Duque did not

know. He sucked in a deep breath and let go the loudest whistle he could

muster. His thin ribs ached with it and the vibration made him dizzy.

No one responded. The hatch beside him remained closed. No one plucked him out

of his twisted covers and held him close.

Despite the pain of the smoke, Duque peeled back his right eyelid with the two

nubs on his right hand and saw that the room was dark except for a glow against

the thin organics of the corridor wall. Dull orange light cast a frightening

illumination over the deck. Acrid smoke hung like a cloud above him, tendrils

of its oily blackness reaching downward toward his face. And now there were

other sounds outside added to the shouting and the slap-slap of many feet. He

heard big things dragging and bumping along his glowing wall. Terror held him

curled into a silent lump under the covers of his bunk.

The burning smells contained a steamy, bitter flavor -- not quite the sticky-

sweet of the time when the stove scorched their wall. He remembered the charred

melt of organics opening a new passage between their room and the next one along

the corridor. He had poked his head through the burned opening and whistled at

their neighbors. The smells now were not the same, though, and the glowing wall

did not melt away.

A rumbling was added to the outside sounds. Like a pot boiling over on the

stove, but his mother was not cooking. Besides, it was too loud for cooking,

louder even than the other corridor noises. Now, there were screams nearby.

Duque kicked off his covers and gasped when his bare feet touched the deck.

Hot!

Abruptly, the deck pitched, first backward and then forward. The motion lurched

him face-first through the bulkhead. The hot organics of the wall stretched and

parted for him like a cooked noodle. He knew he was on the outer deck but

stumbling feet kept him too busy covering his head and body with his arms. He

could not spare a hand to open his good eye. The hot deck burned his knees and

elbows. Duque caught his breath in the sudden onslaught of pain and wrenched

out another shrill whistle. Somebody stumbled against him. Hands reached under

his armpits and lifted him clear of the scorched bubbly that had been the deck.

Some of it came loose with him and stuck to his bare skin. Duque knew who held

him by the jasmine smell of her hair -- Ellie, the neighbor woman with the

short, stubby legs and beautiful voice.

"Duque," she said, "let's go find your ma."

He heard something wrong in her voice. It rasped low in a dry throat and

cracked when she spoke.

"Ma," he said. He knuckled his eye open and saw a nightmare of movement and

firelight.

Ellie shouldered them through the crowd, saw that he was looking around and

slapped his hand away. "Look later," she said. "Right now you hang on to my

neck. Hold tight."

After that one brief glimpse, there was no need to repeat the order. He

clutched both arms around Ellie's neck. A small whimper escaped his throat.

Ellie continued to push them through a crowd of people -- voices all around

saying words Duque did not understand. Movement against the others peeled away

chunks of bubbly from his skin. It hurt.

That one look at out remained indelibly in Duque's memory. Fire had been coming

out of the dark water! It coiled up out of the water accompanied by that thick,

boiling sound and the air was so full of steam that people were shadow clumps

against the hot red glow of flames. Screams and shouts still sounded all

around, causing Duque to hold even tighter to Ellie's neck. Chunks of the fire

had rocketed into the sky high above their island. Duque did not understand

this but he heard the fire crash and sizzle through the body of the island into

the sea beneath.

Why water burn? He knew the whistle-words but Ellie would not understand.

The raft tipped sharply under Ellie and sent her sprawling beneath the trampling

feet with Duque atop her shielded from the burning deck. Ellie cursed and

gasped. More people fell around them. Duque felt Ellie sinking into the

melting organics of the deck. She struggled at first, thrashing like a fresh-

caught muree that his mother had put into his hands once before she cooked it.

Ellie's twisting slowed and she began moaning low in her throat. Duque, still

clutching Ellie's neck, felt hot bubbly against his hands and jerked them away.

Ellie screamed. Duque tried to push himself away from her but the press of

bodies all around prevented his escape. He felt the hair at the nape of his

neck standing up. A questing whistle broke from his nose but there was no

response.

The deck tilted again and bodies rolled onto Duque. He felt hot flesh, some of

it warm-wet. Ellie gasped once, very deep. The air changed. The people

screaming, "Oh, no! Oh, no!" stopped screaming. Many people began coughing all

around Duque. He coughed, too, choking on hot, thick dust. Someone nearby

gasped: "I've got Vata. Help me. We must save her."

Duque sensed a stillness in Ellie. She wasn't moaning anymore. He could not

feel the rise and fall of her breathing. Duque opened his mouth and spoke the

two words he knew best:

"Ma. Hot, Ma. Ma."

Someone right beside him said: "Who's that?"

"Hot, Ma," Duque said.

Hands touched him and hauled him away from Ellie. A voice next to his ear said:

"It's a child. He's alive."

"Bring him!" someone called between coughs. "We've got Vata."

Duque felt himself passed from hand to hand through an opening into a dimly

lighted place. His one good eye saw through a thinner dust haze the glitter of

tiny lights, shiny surfaces and handles. He wondered if this could be the out

where Ma went but there was no sign of Ma, only many people crowded into a small

space. Someone directly in front of him held a large naked infant. He knew

about infants because Ma sometimes brought them from out and cared for them,

cooing over them and letting Duque touch them and pet them. Infants were soft

and nice. This infant looked larger than any Duque had ever seen but he knew

she was only an infant -- those fat features, that still face.

The air pressure changed, popping in Duque's ears. Something began to hum.

Just when Duque was deciding to come out of his fears and join in this warm

closeness of flesh, three gigantic explosions shook all of them, sending their

enclosed space tumbling.

"Boom! Boom! Boom!" the explosions came one on top of the other.

People began extricating themselves from the tumble of flesh. A foot touched

Duque's face and was withdrawn.

"Careful of the little ones," someone said.

Strong hands lifted Duque and helped him open his eye. A pale masculine face

peered at him -- a wide face with deeply set brown eyes. The man spoke. "I've

got the other one. He's no beauty but he's alive."

"Here, give him to me," a woman said.

Duque found himself pressed close to the infant. A woman's arms held them both,

flesh to flesh, warmth to warmth. A sense of reassurance swept through Duque

but it was cut off immediately when the woman spoke. He understood her words!

He did not know how he understood but the meanings were there unfolding as her

voice rumbled against his cheek pressed to her breast.

"The whole island exploded," the woman said. "I saw it through the port."

"We're well below the surface now," a man said. "But we can't stay long with

this many people breathing our air."

"We will pray to Rock," the woman said.

"And to Ship," a man said.

"To Rock and to Ship," they all agreed.

Duque heard all of this from a distance as more understanding flooded his

awareness. It was happening because his flesh touched the flesh of the infant!

He knew the infant's name now.

"Vata."

A beautiful name. The name brought with it a blossoming mindful of information,

as though the knowledge had always been there, needing only Vata's name and her

touch to spread it through his memory. Now, he was aware of out, all of it as

known through human senses and kelp memories . . . because Vata carried kelp

genes in her human flesh. He remembered the place of the kelp deep under the

sea, the tendrils clinging to precious rock. He remembered the minuscule

islands that no longer existed because the kelp was gone and the sea fury had

been unleashed. Kelp memories and human memories revealed wondrous things

happening to Pandora now that waves could roam freely around this planet, which

was really a distorted ball of solid matter submerged in an endless skin of

water.

Duque knew where he was, too: in a small submersible, which should have had a

Lighter-Than-Air carrier attached to it.

Out was a place of marvels.

And all of this wondrous information had come to him directly from the mind of

Vata because she had kelp genes, as did he. As did many of Pandora's surviving

humans. Genes . . . he knew about those marvels, too, because Vata's mind was a

magic storehouse of such things, telling him about history and the Clone Wars

and the death of all the kelp. He sensed a direct link between Vata and

himself, which endured even when he pulled away from physical contact with her.

Duque experienced a great thankfulness for this and tried to express his

gratitude but Vata refused to respond. He understood then that Vata wanted the

deep sea-quiet of her kelp memories. She wanted only the waiting. She did not

want to deal with the things she had dumped onto him. She had dumped them, he

realized, shedding these things like a painful skin. Duque felt a momentary

pique at this realization but happiness returned immediately. He was the

repository of such wonders!

Consciousness.

That's my department, he thought. I must be aware for both of us. I am the

storage system, the Ox Gate, which only Vata can open.

There were giants in the earth in those days.

-- Genesis, The Christian Book of the Dead

22 Bunratti, 468.

Why do I keep this journal? This is a strange hobby for the Chief Justice and

Chairman of the Committee on Vital Forms. Do I hope that a historian will

someday weave rich elaborations out of my poor scribblings? I can just see

someone like Iz Bushka stumbling onto my journal many years from now, his mind

crammed full of the preconceptions that block acceptance of the truly new.

Would Bushka destroy my journal because it conflicted with his own theories? I

think this may have happened with other historians in our past. Why else would

Ship have forced us to start over? I'm convinced that this is what Ship has

done.

Oh, I believe in Ship. Let it be recorded here and now that Ward Keel believes

in Ship. Ship is God and Ship brought us here to Pandora. This is our ultimate

trial -- sink or swim, in the most literal sense. Well . . . almost. We

Islanders mostly float. It's the Mermen who swim.

What a perfect testing ground for humankind is this Pandora, and how aptly

named. Not a shard of land left above its sea, which the kelp once subdued.

Once a noble creature, intelligent, known to all creatures of this world as

Avata, it is now simply kelp -- thick, green and silent. Our ancestors

destroyed Avata and we inherited a planetary sea.

Have we humans ever done that before? Have we killed off the thing that subdues

the deadliness in our lives? Somehow, I suspect we have. Else, why would Ship

leave those hybernation tanks to tantalize us in orbit just beyond our reach?

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1.DestinationVoid2.TheJesusIncident->3.TheLazarusEffect4.TheAscensionFactorTheLazarusEffectFrankHerbertBillRansom1983ForBrian,BruceandPenny.Foralltheyearstheytiptoedwhiletheirfatherwaswriting.FrankHerbertForallthosehealerswhoeaseoursuffering;forpeoplewhofeedpeople,thenaskthemforvirtue;forourfriends-...

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