Part 1 (1/2)

The Heaven Makers.

Frank Herbert.

1968, 1977.

”Every man is as Heaven made him, and sometimes a great deal worse.”

-- Miguel de Cervantes

1.

Full of forebodings and the greatest tensions that an adult Chem had ever experienced, Kelexel the Investigator came down into the storys.h.i.+p where it hid beneath the ocean. He pressed his slender craft through the barrier that stood like lines of insect legs in the green murk and debarked on the long gray landing platform.

All around him flickering yellow discs and globes of working craft arrived and departed. It was early daylight topside and from this s.h.i.+p Fraffin the Director was composing a story.

To be here, Kelexel thought. Actually to be on Fraffin's world.

He felt that he knew this world intimately -- all those hours before the pantovive, watching Fraffin's stories about the place unroll before his eyes. Background study for the investigation it'd been called. But what Chem wouldn't have traded places with him then -- gladly?

To be on Fraffin's world!

That morning topside -- he had seen such mornings many times, caught by Fraffin's shooting crews: the torn sky, cloud-pillars of gilded cus.h.i.+ons. And the creatures! He could almost hear a priestmother murmuring, her voice firmly hesitant before a Chem posing as a G.o.d. Ah, such b.u.t.tersoft women they were, generous with their barbed kisses.

But those times were gone -- except for Fraffin's reels. The creatures of this world had been herded into new avenues of excitement.

In the pangs of remembering Fraffin's stories, Kelexel recognized his own ambivalence.

I must not weaken, he thought.

There was an element of grandiose posturing in the thought (hand on breast) and Kelexel permitted an inward chuckle at himself. Fraffin had done that for him. Fraffin had taught many a Chem a great deal about himself.

In spite of the confusion on the landing platform, the Dispatcher noted Kelexel almost immediately and sent a hovering robot questioner before whose single eye Kelexel bowed and said: ”I am a visitor, Kelexel by name.”

He did not have to say he was a rich visitor. His craft and his clothing said that for him. The clothing was the quiet forest green of neversoil and cut for comfort: leotards, a simple tunic and an all-purpose cape. It gave his squat, bow-legged form a look of rich dignity, setting off the silvery Chem-of-Chem skin, forcing attention onto the big face with its rock like angles and planes, the sunken and penetrating brown eyes.

The craft which he left in a rest slot beneath the traffic lanes for the working crews was a needles.h.i.+p which could st.i.tch its way across any void in the Chem universe. Only the wealthiest entrepreneurs and Servants of the Primacy owned such s.h.i.+ps. Even Fraffin didn't possess one, preferring (so it was said) to plow his wealth back into the world which had brought him such fame.

Kelexel, a visitor -- he felt confidence in the cover. The Bureau of Criminal Repression had prepared his role and trappings with care.

”Welcome, visitor Kelexel,” the Dispatcher said, his voice amplified through the robot to override the story-s.h.i.+p activity. ”Take the flex ramp on your left. Please register with our Greeter at the head of the ramp. May your stay with us relieve boredom.”

”My grat.i.tude,” Kelexel said.

Ritual, everything was ritual, he thought. Even here.

He fitted his bowed legs to the riding clamps. The ramp whisked him across the platform, up through a red hatch, along a blue pa.s.sageway to a glistening ebony orifice. The orifice expanded to reveal a small room and the Greeter's flas.h.i.+ng lights, couch and dangling connections.

Kelexel eyed the robo-couplings, knowing they must be linked to the storys.h.i.+p's Central Directory. Here was the true moment of test for his cover, the heart of s.h.i.+p Security.

The tensions boiling in him filled Kelexel with sudden wonder. He felt no fear for his person; under his skin -- part of his skin -- lay the web armor which immunized all Chem from violence. It was improbable that they could harm him. Something approaching the entire Chem civilization was required to harm an individual. Such decisions came rarely and then only because of a clear and positive threat to all Chem.