"Frank Herbert - The Heaven Makers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert Brian & Frank)

THE HEAVEN MAKERS (v2.0)

Frank Herbert, 1968,1977


A somewhat different version of this novel was serialized in the April and June 1967
issues of Amazing Stories




"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 storyship 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 ship 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 cushions. And the creatures! He could
almost hear a priestmother murmuring, her voice firmly hesitant before a Chem posing as a
god. Ah, such buttersoft 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,