The Heaven Makers by Frank Herbert Read Free Book Online

breath. The intent faces of the cadre focused on the image stage.
    “I will tell you once more,” Fraffin said, and his voice caressed the air. “Our aim is subtlety.”
    Again, Fraffin looked up at Kelexel.
    Now, he has felt terror, Fraffin thought. Fear heightens the sex drive. And he has seen the victim’s daughter, a female of the kind to snare any Chem—exotic, not too gross, graceful, eyes like strange green jewels. Ah, how the Chem love green. She is sufficiently similar to other non-Chem pleasure creatures that he will sense new physical excitements in her. Ah, hah, Kelexel! You will ask to examine a native soon—and we’ll permit it.
    “You are not keeping the viewer sufficiently in mind,” Fraffin said. His voice had turned suddenly cold.
    A shiver of agitation swept up through the empatheater.
    “We must not make our viewer feel too deep a terror,” Fraffin said. “Only let him know terror is present. Don’t force the experience. Let him enjoy it—amusing violence, humorous death. The viewer must not think he is the one being manipulated. There is more here than a pattern of intrigue for our own enjoyment.”
    Kelexel sensed unspoken messages in Fraffin’s words. A definite threat, yes. He felt the play of emotions around him and wondered at them.
    I must get one of these natives to examine intimately and at my leisure, Kelexel thought. Perhaps there’s, a clue that only a native can reveal.
    As though this thought were a key to the locked door of temptation, Kelexel found his mind suddenly filled with thoughts about a female from Fraffin’s story. The name, such an exotic sound—Ruth. Red-haired Ruth. There was something of the Subicreatures about her and the Subi were famous for the erotic pleasures they gave the Chem. Kelexel remembered a Subi he had owned once. She had seemed to fade so rapidly, though. Mortals had a way of doing that when paced by the endless life of a Chem.
    Perhaps I could examine this Ruth, Kelexel thought. It’d be a simple matter for Fraffin’s men to bring her to me here.
    “Subtlety,” Fraffin said. “The audience must be maintained in a detached awareness. Think of our story as a form of dance, not real in the way our lives are real, but an interesting reflection, a Chem fairy story. By now, you all must know the purpose of our story. See that you hew to that purpose with proper subtlety.”
    Fraffin drew his black cloak around him with a feeling of amusement at the showmanship of the gesture. He turned his back on the audience, stalked off the stage.
    It was a good crew, Fraffin reminded himself. They would play their parts with trained exactitude. This amusing little story would accumulate on the reels. It might even be salable as an interlude piece, a demonstration of artistic deftness. But no matter; it would serve its purpose if it did no more than lead Kelexel around—a fear here, a desire there—his every move recorded by the shooting crews. Every move.
    He’s as easy to manipulate as the natives, Fraffin thought.
    He let himself out through the service tube at the rear of the stage, emerged into the blue walls of the drop hall that curved down past the storage bays to his quarters. Fraffin allowed the drop field to catch him and propel him past the seamless projections of hatchways in a gentle blur.
    It’s almost possible to feel sorry for Kelexel, he thought.
    The man had been so obviously repelled at first confrontation with the idea of single violence, but oh, how he’d lost himself in the native conflict when shown it.
    We identify with individual acts of violence so easily, Fraffin thought. One might almost suspect there were real experiences of this kind in our own pasts.
    He felt the reflexive tightening of the armor that was his skin, a sudden turmoil of unfixed memories. Fraffin swallowed, halted the drop at the hatchway outside his salon.
    The endlessness of his own personal story appalled him suddenly. He felt that he stood on the brink of