Whipping Star

Frank Herbert
1969

A BuSab agent must begin by learning the linguistic modes and action limits (usually self-imposed) of the societies he treats.  The agent seeks data on the functional relationships which derive from our common universe and which arise from interdependencies.  Such interdependencies are the frequent first victims of word-illusions.  Societies based on ignorance of original interdependencies come sooner or later to stalemate.  Too long frozen, such societies die.

-BuSab Manual

Furuneo was his name.  Alichino Furuneo.  He reminded, himself of this as he rode into the city to make the long-distance call.  It was wise to firm up the ego before such a call.  He was sixty-seven years old and could remember many cases where people had lost their identity in the sniggertrance of communication between star systems.  More than the cost and the mind-crawling sensation of dealing with a Taprisiot transmitter, this uncertainty factor tended to keep down the number of calls.  But Furuneo didn't feel he could trust anyone else with this call to Jorj X. McKie, Saboteur Extraordinary.

It was 8:08 A.M. local at Furuneo's position on the planet called Cordiality of the Sfich system.

"This is going to be very difficult, I suspect," he muttered, speaking at (but not to) the two enforcers he had brought along to guard his privacy.

They didn't even nod, realizing no reply was expected.

It was still cool from the night wind which blew across the snow plains of the Billy Mountains down to the sea.  They had driven here into Division City from Furuneo's mountain fortress, riding in an ordinary groundcar, not attempting to hide or disguise their association with the Bureau of Sabotage, but not seeking to attract attention, either.  Many sentients had reason to resent the Bureau.

Furuneo had ordered the car left outside the city's Pedestrian Central, and they had come the rest of the way on foot like ordinary citizens.

Ten minutes ago they had entered the reception room of this building.  It was a Taprisiot breeding center, one of only about twenty known to exist in the universe, quite an honor for a minor planet like Cordiality.

The reception room was no more than fifteen meters wide, perhaps thirty-five long.  It had tan walls with pitted marks in them as though they had been soft once and someone had thrown a small ball at them according to some random whim.  Along the right side across from where Furuneo stood with his enforcers was a high bench.  It occupied three-fourths of the long wall.  Multi-faceted rotating lights above it cast patterned shadows onto the face of the bench and the Taprisiot standing atop it.

Taprisiots came in odd shapes like sawed-off lengths of burned conifers, with stub limbs jutting every which way, needlelike speech appendages fluttering even when they remained silent.  This one's skidfeet beat a nervous rhythm on the surface where it stood.

For the third time since entering, Furuneo asked, "Are you the transmitter?"

No answer.

Taprisiots were like that.  No sense getting angry.  It did no good.  Furuneo allowed himself to be annoyed, though.  Damned Taprisiots!

One of the enforcers behind Furuneo cleared his throat.

Damn this delay! Furuneo thought.

The whole Bureau had been in a state of jitters ever since the max-alert message on the Abnethe case.  This call he was preparing to make might be their first real break.  He sensed the fragile urgency of it.  It could be the most important call he had ever made.  And directly to McKie, at that.

The sun, barely over the Billy Mountains, spread an orange fan of light around him from the windowed doorway through which they had entered.

'"Looks like it's gonna be a long wait for this Tappy," one of his enforcers muttered.

Hellstrom's Hive

Frank Herbert
1972

This work was originally published under the title PROJECT 40 in Galaxy Magazine.

Words of the brood mother, Trova Hellstrom.  I welcome the day when I will go into the vats and become one with all of our people.

(Dated October 26, 1896.)

THE MAN with the binoculars squirmed forward on his stomach through the sun-warmed brown grass.  There were insects in the grass and
he did not like insects, but he ignored them and concentrated on reaching the oak shadows at the hillcrest with minimum disturbance of the growth
that concealed him even while it dropped stickers and crawling things on his exposed skin.

His narrow face, swarthy and deeply seamed, betrayed his age -- fifty-one years -- but the hair, black and oily, that poked from beneath his khaki
sun hat belied these years.  So did his movements, quick and confident.

At the hillcrest, he drew several deep breaths while dusting the binocular lenses with a clean linen handkerchief.  He parted the dry grass then, focused the binoculars, and stared through them at the farm that filled the valley below the hill. 
The haze of the hot autumn afternoon complicated his examination as did the binoculars, a pair of ten-sixties of special manufacture. 
He had trained himself to use them the way he fired a rifle:  hold breath, concentrate on rapid scanning with only eye movements, keeping immobile the expensive instrument of glass and metal that brought distances into such immediate detail.

It was an oddly isolated farm that met his amplified gaze.  The valley was about half a mile long, perhaps five hundred yards wide for most of its length, narrowing at the upper end where a thin trickle of water spilled down a black rock face.  The farm buildings occupied cleared ground on the far side of a narrow stream whose meandering, willow-bordered bed was only a thin reminder of its spring affluence.  Patches of wavering green moss marked the stream's rocks, and there were a few shallow pools where water appeared not to flow at all.

The buildings sat back from the stream -- a cluster of weathered boards and blind glass at rustic variance with the neatness of harvested plantings that ran in parallel rows within cleanly squared fencelines over the rest of the valley.  There was the house, its basic unit in the old saltbox pattern, but with two added wings and a bay window on the wing that pointed toward the creek.  To the right of the house there was a large barn with big doors on the second level and an upjutting cupola arrangement along its ridgeline:  no windows there, but louvered ventilators were spaced along its entire length and at the visible end.  Up on the hill behind the barn there stretched a decaying feed shed; a smaller building on this end that could be an old outhouse; another small wooden structure higher on the hill behind the farmhouse, possibly an old pumphouse; and, down by the higher main fence at the valley's northern end, a squat concrete block about twenty feet on a side and with flat roof:  new pumphouse was the guess, but it looked like a defensive blockhouse.

The watcher, whose name was Carlos Depeaux, made a mental note that the valley fitted the descriptions.  It was full of default messages:  no people stirring about on the land (although a distinctly audible and irritating machinery hum issued from the barn), no road coming up from the north gate to the farm buildings (the nearest road, a one-way track, came up to the valley from the north but ended at the gate beyond the blockhouse).  A footpath with narrow indentations apparently from a wheelbarrow stretched from the gate to the farmhouse and barn.

The valley's sides were steep farther up and in places almost craggy with brown rock outcroppings at the top on the far side.  There was a similar rocky upthrust about a hundred feet to Depeaux's right.  A few animal tracks wound their dusty ribbons through oak and madrona along the valley sides.  The black rock of the tiny waterfall closed off the southern end where a thin cinnamon tracery of water spilled into the stream.  To the north, the land undulated away out of the valley, widening into pasture meadows and occasional clumps of pine intermingled with oak and madrona.  Cattle grazed in the far distance to the north and, although there were no fences immediately outside the farm's barrier, tall grass revealed that the cattle did not venture too near this valley.  That, too, accorded with the reports.

Having satisfied himself that the valley still matched its descriptions, Depeaux wriggled backward behind the crest, found a shaded patch beneath an oak.  There, he turned onto his back and brought his small knapsack into a position where he could explore its interior.  He knew his clothing would blend well with the grass, but he still hesitated to sit up, preferring to wait and listen.  The sack contained his binocular case, a well-thumbed copy of Naming the Birds at a Glance, a good thirty-five-millimeter camera with a long lens, two thin beef sandwiches wrapped in plastic, an orange, and a plastic bottle of warm water.

He brought out a sandwich, lay for a moment staring up through the oak's branches, his pale gray eyes not really focused on anything in particular.  Once, he pulled at the black hairs protruding from his nostrils.  This was an extremely odd situation.  Here it was mid-October and the Agency still had not been able to observe the farmers in that valley through an entire harvest.  The crops had been harvested, however.  That was obvious at a glance.  Depeaux was not a farmer, but he thought he recognized the stubby remains of corn plantings, although the stalks had been removed.

He wondered why they had cleared away the stalks.  Other farms he had seen in the long drive to this valley were still littered with harvest remains.  He wasn't sure, but he thought this was another default message in the valley that interested his Agency so much.  The uncertainty, the gap in his knowledge, bothered him, however, and he made a note to check on this.  Did they burn the stalks?

Presently, sensing no watchers around him, Depeaux sat up with his back against the oak's bole, ate the sandwich, and drank some of the warm water.  It was the first food he had allowed himself since before daylight.  He decided to save the orange and other sandwich for later.  It had been a long, slow approach to this vantage point from the place far back in the pines where he had concealed his bicycle.  The van and the stake-out where he had left Tymiena were another half hour's bicycle ride beyond that.  He had decided not to venture back before nightfall and knew he was going to be very hungry before he got back to the van.  Not the first time on such a job.  The peculiar nature of this case had become increasingly obvious the nearer he came to the farm.  Well -- he'd been warned about that.  Stubborn persistence had kept him pressing forward past the imaginary hunger line he knew he'd have to pass on the return.  The countryside was much more open and empty of concealment than he'd expected from the aerial photos, although Porter's reports had made specific mention of this.  Depeaux had expected to approach from a different direction, however, and find his own cover.  But there had been, finally, only the tall brown grass to conceal his stalking climb across a wide pastureland and up to the hill.

The sandwich finished and half his water gone, Depeaux sealed the bottle, restored it and the rest of the food to his pack.  For a moment, he peered along his back trail to see if anyone had followed.  There was no sign, but he couldn't put down an uneasy feeling that he was watched.  The lowering sun was picking up his trail with a shadow line, too.  No helping that; the crushed grass represented a track, and it could be traced.

He had driven through the town of Fosterville at 3:00 A.M., curious about the sleeping community where, so he was told, they generally refused to answer questions about the farm.  There had been a new motel on the outskirts and Tymiena had suggested they spend a night there before reconnoitering the farm, but Depeaux was playing a hunch on this case.  What if there were watchers in the town to report strangers to the farm?