POOL
By Frank Herbert and Terabiel
This is an experiment, a work of satire, a mashup of the text of Dune with the cultural references changed and the characters of Ranma 1/2 substituted. I claim no ownership of any of the characters or hybrid characters, who are the property of Takahashi-chan or Herbert-kun respectively. I was inspired in part by 50 Shades of Gray's composition and decided to give it a try.
Book 1 - Pool
1
A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. This every sister of the Bene Rumiko knows. To begin your study of the life of Neko'Ken, then, take care that you first place him in his time: born in the 57th year of the Mikado Emperor, Soun IV. And take the most special care that you locate Neko'Ken in his place: the planet Jusenkyo. Do not be deceived by the fact that he was born on Shonen and lived his first fifteen years there. Jusenkyo, the planet known as Pool, is forever his place.
-from "Manual of Neko'Ken" by the Princess Nabiki
In the week before their departure to Jusenkyo, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, an old crone came to visit the mother of the boy, Ranma.
It was a warm night at Castle Shonen, and the ancient pile of stone that had served the Atreides family as home for twenty-six generations bore that cooled-sweat feeling it acquired before a change in the weather.
The old woman was let in by the side door down the vaulted passage by Ranma's room and she was allowed a moment to peer in at him where he lay in his bed.
By the half-light of a suspensor lamp, dimmed and hanging near the floor, the awakened boy could see a bulky female shape at his door, standing one step ahead of his mother. The old woman was a witch shadow — hair like matted spider webs, hooded 'round darkness of features, eyes like glittering jewels.
"Is he not small for his age, Nodoka?" the old woman asked. Her voice wheezed and twanged like an untuned samisen.
Ranma's mother answered in her soft contralto: "The Atreides are known to start late getting their growth, Your Reverence."
"So I've heard, so I've heard," wheezed the old woman. "Yet he's already fifteen."
"Yes, Your Reverence."
"He's awake and listening to us," said the old woman. "Sly little rascal." She chuckled."But royalty has need of slyness. And if he's really the Kwisatz Nyannichuan... well..."
Within the shadows of his bed, Ranma held his eyes open to mere slits. Two bird-bright ovals - the eyes of the old woman — seemed to expand and glow as they stared into his.
"Sleep well, you sly little rascal," said the old woman. "Tomorrow you'll need all your faculties to meet my baksai tenketsu."
And she was gone, pushing his mother out, closing the door with a solid thump.
Ranma lay awake wondering: What's a baksai tenketsu?
In all the upset during this time of change, the old woman was the strangest thing he had seen.
Your Reverence.
And the way she called his mother Nodoka like a common serving wench instead of what she was - a Bene Rumiko Lady, a duke's concubine and mother of the ducal heir.
Is a baksai tenketsu something of Jusenkyo I must know before we go there? he wondered. He mouthed her strange words: Baksai tenketsu... Kwisatz Nyannichuan.
There had been so many things to learn. Jusenkyo would be a place so different from Shonen that Ranma's mind whirled with the new knowledge. Jusenkyo — Pool — Mountain Planet.
Thufir Happosai, his father's Master of Ninjas, had explained it: their mortal enemies, the Harkonnens, had been on Jusenkyo eighty years, holding the planet in quasi-han under a SHOGAKUKAN Company contract to extract the geriatric juice, melange. Now the Harkonnens were leaving to be replaced by the House of Atreides in han-complete — an apparent victory for the Duke Genma. Yet, Happosai had said, this appearance contained the deadliest peril, for the Duke Genma was popular among the Great Houses of the Kokkai.
"A popular man arouses the jealousy of the powerful," Happosai had said.
Jusenkyo — Pool — Mountain Planet.
Ranma fell asleep to dream of an Jusenkyoeen cavern, silent people all around him moving in the dim light of glowglobes. It was solemn there and like a shrine as he listened to a faint sound — the toc-toc-toc of bamboo. Even while he remained in the dream, Ranma knew he would remember it upon awakening. He always remembered the dreams that were predictions.
The dream faded.
Ranma awoke to feel himself in the warmth of his bed — thinking... thinking. This world of Castle Shonen, without play or companions his own age, perhaps did not deserve sadness in farewell. Dr. Tofu, his teacher, had hinted that the samurai class system was not rigidly guarded on Jusenkyo. The planet sheltered people who lived at the mountain fringe without daimyo or shogun to command them: will-o'-the-mist people called Amazon, marked down on no census of the Imperial Jinshi.
Jusenkyo — Pool — Mountain Planet.
Ranma sensed his own tensions, decided to practice one of the mind-body lessons his mother had taught him. Three quick breaths triggered the responses: he fell into the floating awareness... focusing the consciousness... aortal dilation... avoiding the unfocused mechanism of consciousness... to be conscious by choice... blood enriched and swift-flooding the overload regions... one does not obtain food-safety-freedom by instinct alone... animal consciousness does not extend beyond the given moment nor into the idea that its victims may become extinct... the animal destroys and does not produce... animal pleasures remain close to sensation levels and avoid the perceptual... the human requires a background grid through which to see his universe... focused consciousness by choice, this forms your grid... bodily integrity follows nerve-blood flow according to the deepest awareness of cell needs... all things/cells/beings are impermanent... strive for flow-permanence within...
Over and over and over within Ranma's floating awareness the lesson rolled.
When dawn touched Ranma's window sill with yellow light, he sensed it through closed eyelids, opened them, hearing then the renewed bustle and hurry in the castle, seeing the familiar patterned beams of his bedroom ceiling.
The hall door opened and his mother peered in, hair like obsidian held with a bronze ribbon at the crown, her oval face emotionless and green eyes staring solemnly.
"You're awake," she said. "Did you sleep well?"
"Yes."
He studied the tallness of her, saw the hint of tension in her shoulders as she chose clothing for him from the closet racks. Another might have missed the tension, but she had trained him in the Bene Rumiko Way - in the minutiae of observation. She turned, holding a semiformal jacket for him. It carried the red Atreides panda crest above the breast pocket.
"Hurry and dress," she said. "Reverend Miko is waiting."
"I dreamed of her once," Ranma said. "Who is she?"
"She was my teacher at the Bene Rumiko school. Now, she's the Emperor's Truthsayer. And Ranma..." She hesitated."You must tell her about your dreams."
"I will. Is she the reason we got Jusenkyo?"
"We did not get Jusenkyo." Nodoka flicked dust from a pair of trousers, hung them with the jacket on the dressing stand beside his bed. "Don't keep Reverend Miko waiting."
Ranma sat up, hugged his knees. "What's a baksai tenketsu?"
Again, the training she had given him exposed her almost invisible hesitation, a nervous betrayal he felt as fear.
Nodoka crossed to the window, flung wide the draperies, stared across the river orchards toward Mount Fuji. "You'll learn about... the baksai tenketsu soon enough," she said.
He heard the fear in her voice and wondered at it.
Nodoka spoke without turning. "Reverend Miko is waiting in my morning room. Please hurry."
The Reverend Miko Gaius Helen Azusa sat in a tapestried chair watching mother and son approach. Windows on each side of her overlooked the curving southern bend of the river and the green rice-paddies of the Atreides family holding, but the Reverend Miko ignored the view. She was feeling her age this morning, more than a little petulant. She blamed it on space travel and association with that abominable Touring Guild and its secretive ways. But here was a mission that required personal attention from a Bene Rumiko-with-the-Sight. Even the Mikado Emperor's Truthsayer couldn't evade that responsibility when the duty call came.
Damn that Nodoka! the Reverend Miko thought. If only she'd borne us a girl as she was ordered to do!
Nodoka stopped three paces from the chair, dropped a small curtsy, a gentle flick of left hand along the line of her skirt. Ranma gave the short bow his dancing master had taught — the one used "when in doubt of another's station."
The nuances of Ranma's greeting were not lost on the Reverend Miko. She said: "He's a cautious one, Nodoka."
Nodoka's hand went to Ranma's shoulder, tightened there. For a heartbeat, fear pulsed through her palm. Then she had herself under control. "Thus he has been taught, Your Reverence." What does she fear? Ranma wondered.
The old woman studied Ranma in one gestalten flicker: face oval like Nodoka's, but strong bones... hair: the Duke's black-black but with browline of the maternal grandfather who cannot be named, and that thin, disdainful nose; shape of directly staring green eyes: like the old Duke, the paternal grandfather who is dead.
Now, there was a man who appreciated the power of bravura — even in death, the Reverend Miko thought.
"Teaching is one thing," she said, "the basic ingredient is another. We shall see." The old eyes darted a hard glance at Nodoka. "Leave us. I enjoin you to practice the meditation of peace."
Nodoka took her hand from Ranma's shoulder. "Your Reverence, I—"
"Nodoka, you know it must be done." Ranma looked up at his mother, puzzled.
Nodoka straightened. "Yes... of course."
Ranma looked back at the Reverend Miko. Politeness and his mother's obvious awe of this old woman argued caution. Yet he felt an angry apprehension at the fear he sensed radiating from his mother.
"Ranma..." Nodoka took a deep breath. "... this test you're about to receive... it's important to me."
"Test?" He looked up at her.
"Remember that you're a duke's son," Nodoka said. She whirled and strode from the room in a dry swishing of kimono. The door closed solidly behind her.
Ranma faced the old woman, holding anger in check. "Does one dismiss the Lady Nodoka as though she were a serving wench?"
A smile flicked the corners of the wrinkled old mouth. "The Lady Nodoka was my serving wench, lad, for fourteen years at school." She nodded. "And a good one, too. Now, you come here!"
The command whipped out at him. Ranma found himself obeying before he could think about it. Using the Voice on me, he thought. He stopped at her gesture, standing beside her knees.
"See this?" she asked. From the folds of her robe, she lifted a green jade cube about fifteen centimeters on a side. She turned it and Ranma saw that one side was open — black and oddly frightening. No light penetrated that open blackness.
"Put your right hand in the box," she said.
Fear shot through Ranma. He started to back away, but the old woman said: "Is this how you obey your mother?"
He looked up into bird-bright eyes.
Slowly, feeling the compulsions and unable to inhibit them, Ranma put his hand into the box. He felt first a sense of cold as the blackness closed around his hand, then slick stone against his fingers and a prickling as though his hand were asleep.
A predatory look filled the old woman's features. She lifted her right hand away from the box and poised the hand close to the side of Ranma's neck. He saw a glint of metal there and started to turn toward it.
"Stop!" she snapped.
Using the Voice again! He swung his attention back to her face.
"I hold at your neck the baksai tenketsu, " she said. "The baksai tenketsu, the breaking-point. It's a needle with a drop of poison on its tip. Ah-ah! Don't pull away or you'll feel that poison."
Ranma tried to swallow in a dry throat. He could not take his attention from the seamed old face, the glistening eyes, the pale gums around silvery metal teeth that flashed as she spoke.
"A duke's son must know about poisons," she said. "It's the way of our times, eh? Doky, to be poisoned in your drink. Kubutsu, to be poisoned in your food. The quick ones and the slow ones and the ones in between. Here's a new one for you: the baksai tenketsu. It kills only animals."
Pride overcame Ranma's fear. "You dare suggest a duke's son is an animal?" he demanded.
"Let us say I suggest you may be human," she said. "Steady! I warn you not to try jerking away. I am old, but my hand can drive this needle into your neck before you escape me."
"Who are you?" he whispered. "How did you trick my mother into leaving me alone with you? Are you from the Harkonnens?"
"The Harkonnens? Bless us, no! Now, be silent." A dry finger touched his neck and he stilled the involuntary urge to leap away.
"Good," she said. "You pass the first test. Now, here's the way of the rest of it: If you withdraw your hand from the box you die. This is the only rule. Keep your hand in the box and live. Withdraw it and die."
Ranma took a deep breath to still his trembling. "If I call out there'll be servants on you in seconds and you'll die."
"Servants will not pass your mother who stands guard outside that door. Depend on it. Your mother survived this test. Now it's your turn. Be honored. We seldom administer this to man-children."
Curiosity reduced Ranma's fear to a manageable level. He heard truth in the old woman's voice, no denying it. If his mother stood guard out there... if this were truly a test... And whatever it was, he knew himself caught in it, trapped by that hand at his neck: the baksai tenketsu. He recalled the response from the Litany against Fear as his mother had taught him out of the Bene Rumiko rite.
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
He felt calmness return, said: "Get on with it, old woman."
"Old woman!" she snapped. "You've courage, and that can't be denied. Well, we shall see, sama." She bent close, lowered her voice almost to a whisper. "You will feel pain in this hand within the box. Pain. But! Withdraw the hand and I'll touch your neck with my baksai tenketsu — the death so swift it's like the fall of the headsman's axe. Withdraw your hand and the baksai tenketsu takes you. Understand?"
"What's in the box?"
"Pain."
He felt increased tingling in his hand, pressed his lips tightly together. How could this be a test? he wondered. The tingling became an itch.
The old woman said, "You've heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap? There's an animal kind of trick. A human would remain in the trap, endure the pain, feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove a threat to his kind."
The itch became the faintest burning. "Why are you doing this?" he demanded.
"To determine if you're human. Be silent."
Ranma clenched his left hand into a fist as the burning sensation increased in the other hand. It mounted slowly: heat upon heat upon heat... upon heat. He felt the fingernails of his free hand biting the palm. He tried to flex the fingers of the burning hand, but couldn't move them.
"It burns," he whispered.
"Silence!"
Pain throbbed up his arm. Sweat stood out on his forehead. Every fiber cried out to withdraw the hand from that burning pit... but... the baksai tenketsu. Without turning his head, he tried to move his eyes to see that terrible needle poised beside his neck. He sensed that he was breathing in gasps, tried to slow his breaths and couldn't.
Pain!
His world emptied of everything except that hand immersed in agony, the ancient face inches away staring at him.
His lips were so dry he had difficulty separating them. The burning! The burning!
He thought he could feel skin curling black on that agonized hand, the flesh crisping and dropping away until only charred bones remained. It stopped!
As though a switch had been turned off, the pain stopped.
Ranma felt his right arm trembling, felt sweat bathing his body.
"Enough," the old woman muttered. "Honto ne! No woman child ever withstood that much. I must've wanted you to fail." She leaned back, withdrawing the baksai tenketsu from the side of his neck. "Take your hand from the box, young human, and look at it."
He fought down an aching shiver, stared at the lightless void where his hand seemed to remain of its own volition. Memory of pain inhibited every movement. Reason told him he would withdraw a blackened stump from that box.
"Do it!" she snapped.
He jerked his hand from the box, stared at it astonished. Not a mark. No sign of agony on the flesh. He held up the hand, turned it, flexed the fingers.
"Pain by nerve induction," she said. "Can't go around maiming potential humans. There're those who'd give a pretty for the secret of this box, though." She slipped it into the folds of her robes.
"But the pain—" he said.
"Pain," she sniffed. "A human can override any nerve in the body."
Ranma felt his left hand aching, uncurled the clenched fingers, looked at four bloody marks where fingernails had bitten his palm. He dropped the hand to his side, looked at the old woman. "You did that to my mother once?"
"Ever sift sand through a screen?" she asked.
The tangential slash of her question shocked his mind into a higher awareness: Sand through a screen, he nodded.
"We Bene Rumiko sift people to find the humans."
He lifted his right hand, willing the memory of the pain. "And that's all there is to it — pain?"
"I observed you in pain, lad. Pain's merely the axis of the test. Your mother's told you about our ways of observing. I see the signs of her teaching in you. Our test is crisis and observation."
He heard the confirmation in her voice, said: "It's truth!"
She stared at him. He senses truth! Could he be the one? Could he truly be the one? She extinguished the excitement, reminding herself: "Hope clouds observation."
"You know when people believe what they say," she said.
"I know it."
The harmonics of ability confirmed by repeated test were in his voice. She heard them, said: "Perhaps you are the Kwisatz Nyannichuan. Sit down, little brother, here at my feet."
"I prefer to stand."
"Your mother sat at my feet once."
"I'm not my mother."
"You hate us a little, eh?" She looked toward the door, called out: "Nodoka!" The door flew open and Nodoka stood there staring hard-eyed into the room. Hardness melted from her as she saw Ranma. She managed a faint smile.
"Nodoka, have you ever stopped hating me?" the old woman asked.
"I both love and hate you," Nodoka said. "The hate — that's from pains I must never forget. The love — that's..."
"Just the basic fact," the old woman said, but her voice was gentle. "You may come in now, but remain silent. Close that door and mind it that no one interrupts us."
Nodoka stepped into the room, closed the door and stood with her back to it. "My son lives," she thought. "My son lives and is... human. I knew he was... but... he lives. Now, I can go on living." The door felt hard and real against her back. Everything in the room was immediate and pressing against her senses.
"My son lives."
Ranma looked at his mother. She told the truth. He wanted to get away alone and think this experience through, but knew he could not leave until he was dismissed. The old woman had gained a power over him. They spoke truth. His mother had undergone this test. There must be terrible purpose in it... the pain and fear had been terrible. He understood terrible purposes. They drove against all odds. They were their own necessity. Ranma felt that he had been infected with terrible purpose. He did not know yet what the terrible purpose was.
"Some day, lad," the old woman said, "you, too, may have to stand outside a door like that. It takes a measure of doing."
Ranma looked down at the hand that had known pain, then up to the Reverend Miko. The sound of her voice had contained a difference then from any other voice in his experience. The words were outlined in brilliance. There was an edge to them. He felt that any question he might ask her would bring an answer that could lift him out of his flesh-world into something greater.
"Why do you test for humans?" he asked.
"To set you free."
"Free?"
"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."
" 'Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind,' " Ranma quoted.
"Right out of the Maiden Crusade and the Blue Buddhist Sutra," she said. "But what the B.B. Sutra should've said is: 'Thou shalt not make a machine to counterfeit a human mind.' Have you studied the Mentat in your service?"
"I've studied with Thufir Happosai."
"The Great Revolt took away a crutch," she said. "It forced human minds to develop. Schools were started to train human talents." "Bene Rumiko schools?"
She nodded. "We have two chief survivors of those ancient schools: the Bene Rumiko and the Touring Guild. The Guild, so we think, emphasizes almost pure mathematics. Bene Rumiko performs another function."
"Politics," he said.
"Honto ne!" the old woman said. She sent a hard glance at Nodoka. "I've not told him. Your Reverence," Nodoka said.
The Reverend Miko returned her attention to Ranma. "You did that on remarkably few clues," she said. "Politics indeed. The original Bene Rumiko school was directed by those who saw the need of a thread of continuity in human affairs. They saw there could be no such continuity without separating human stock from animal stock — for breeding purposes."
The old woman's words abruptly lost their special sharpness for Ranma. He felt an offense against what his mother called his instinct for rightness. It wasn't that Reverend Miko lied to him. She obviously believed what she said. It was something deeper, something tied to his terrible purpose.
He said: "But my mother tells me many Bene Rumiko of the schools don't know their ancestry."
"The genetic lines are always in our records," she said. "Your mother knows that either she's of Bene Rumiko descent or her stock was acceptable in itself."
"Then why couldn't she know who her parents are?"
"Some do... Many don't. We might, for example, have wanted to breed her to a close relative to set up a dominant in some genetic trait. We have many reasons."
Again, Ranma felt the offense against rightness. He said: "You take a lot on yourselves."
The Reverend Miko stared at him, wondering: Did I hear criticism in his voice? "We carry a heavy burden," she said.
Ranma felt himself coming more and more out of the shock of the test. He leveled a measuring stare at her, said: "You say maybe I'm the... Kwisatz Nyannichuan. What's that, a human baksai tenketsu?"
"Ranma," Nodoka said. "You mustn't take that tone with —"
"I'll handle this, Nodoka," the old woman said. "Now, lad, do you know about the Truthsayer drug?"
"You take it to improve your ability to detect falsehood," he said. "My mother's told me."
"Have you ever seen truthtrance?"
He shook his head. "No."
"The drug's dangerous," she said, "but it gives insight. When a Truthsayer's gifted by the drug, she can look many places in her memory — in her body's memory. We look down so many avenues of the past... but only feminine avenues." Her voice took on a note of sadness. "Yet, there's a place where no Truthsayer can see. We are repelled by it, terrorized. It is said a man will come one day and find in the gift of the drug his inward eye. He will look where we cannot — into both feminine and masculine pasts."
"Your Kwisatz Nyannichuan?"
"Yes, the one who can be many places at once: the Kwisatz Nyannichuan. Many men have tried the drug... so many, but none has succeeded."
"They tried and failed, all of them?"
"Oh, no." She shook her head. "They tried and died."