Herbert, Frank – Dune 6 – Children of the Mind

Herbert, Frank – Dune 6 – Children of the Mind

Herbert, Frank – Dune 6 – Children of the Mind

To Barbara Bova,

whose toughness, wisdom, and empathy

make her a great agent

and an even better friend

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

1. “I’m Not Myself”

2. “You Don’t Believe in God”

3. “There Are Too Many of Us”

4. “I Am a Man of Perfect Simplicity”

5. “Nobody Is Rational”

6. “Life Is a Suicide Mission”

7. “I Offer Her This Poor Old Vessel”

8. “What Matters Is Which Fiction You Believe”

9. “It Smells Like Life to Me”

10. “This Has Always Been Your Body”

11. “You Called Me Back from Darkness”

12. “Am I Betraying Ender?”

13. “Till Death Ends All Surprises”

14. “How They Communicate with Animals”

15. “We’re Giving You a Second Chance”

16. “How Do You Know They Aren’t Quivering in Terror”

17. “The Road Goes On without Him Now”

Afterword

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

[Image]

My heartfelt thanks to:

Glenn Makitka, for the title, which seems so obvious now, but which never crossed my mind until he suggested it in a discussion in Hatrack River on America Online;

Van Gessel, for introducing me to Hikari and Kenzaburo Oe, and for his masterful translation of Shusaku Endo’s Deep River;

Helpful readers in Hatrack River, like Stephen Boulet and Sandi Golden, who caught typographical errors and inconsistencies in the manuscript;

Tom Doherty and Beth Meacham at Tor, who allowed me to split Xenocide in half in order to have a chance to develop and write the second half of the story properly;

My friend and fellow weeder in the vineyards of literature, Kathryn H. Kidd, for her chapter-by-chapter encouragement;

Kathleen Bellamy and Scott J. Alien for Sisyphean service;

Kristine and Geoff for careful reading that helped me resolve contradictions and unclarities; and

My wife, Kristine, and my children, Geoffrey, Emily, Charlie Ben, and Zina, for patience with my strange schedule and self-absorption during the writing process, and for teaching me all that is worth telling stories about.

This novel was begun at home in Greensboro, North Carolina, and finished on the road at Xanadu II in Myrtle Beach, in the Hotel Panama in San Rafael, and in Los Angeles in the home of my dear cousins Mark and Margaret Park, whom I thank for their friendship and their hospitality. Chapters were uploaded in manuscript form into the Hatrack River Town Meeting on America Online, where several dozen fellow citizens of that virtual community downloaded it, read it, and commented on it to the book’s and my great benefit.

CHAPTER 1

“I’M NOT MYSELF”

[Image]

“Mother. Father. Did I do it right?”

The last words of Han Qing-jao, from

The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao

Si Wang-mu stepped forward. The young man named Peter took her hand and led her into the starship. The door closed behind them.

Wang-mu sat down on one of the swiveling chairs inside the small metal-walled room. She looked around, expecting to see something strange and new. Except for the metal walls, it could have been any office on the world of Path. Clean, but not fastidiously so. Furnished, in a utilitarian way. She had seen holos of ships in flight: the smoothly streamlined fighters and shuttles that dipped into and out of the atmosphere; the vast rounded structures of the starships that accelerated as near to the speed of light as matter could get. On the one hand, the sharp power of a needle; on the other, the massive power of a sledgehammer. But here in this room, no power at all. Just a room.

Where was the pilot? There must be a pilot, for the young man who sat across the room from her, murmuring to his computer, could hardly be controlling a starship capable of the feat of traveling faster than light.

And yet that must have been precisely what he was doing, for there were no other doors that might lead to other rooms. The starship had looked small from the outside; this room obviously used all the space that it contained. There in the corner were the batteries that stored energy from the solar collectors on the top of the ship. In that chest, which seemed to be insulated like a refrigerator, there might be food and drink. So much for life support. Where was the romance in starflight now, if this was all it took? A mere room.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *