The Unborn

By Brian Herbert

A futuristic mystery from the New York Times Bestselling author of over a dozen books in the DUNE series.

In the summer of 2097, Riggio wakes up with amnesia--and his lover dead in their bed. A knife sticks out of the center of her chest, and her blood stains the sheets of the hotel bed. He doesn't know who did it or why; he has only some vague memories of the attack. He recalls her blood curdling screams, her final gasps, and the terror in her eyes. She had recognized the murderer, no doubt, the man in shadows who had stood over their bed. Riggio tries to place the man and the time of the murder, but the events in his memory are sketches at best. Driving an escape car he doesn't remember acquiring and running from a past he fears, Riggio only knows one thing for sure: Someone is chasing him, and they are getting closer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ReAnimus Press
• Release date: Nov 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463779309

Brian Herbert

Brian Herbert, son of Frank Herbert, wrote the definitive biography of his father, Dreamer of Dune, which was a Hugo Award finalist. Brian is president of the company managing the legacy of Frank Herbert and is an executive producer of the motion picture Dune, as well as of the TV series Dune: The Sisterhood. He is the author or coauthor of more than forty-five books, including multiple New York Times bestsellers, has been nominated for the Nebula Award, and is always working on several projects at once. He and his wife, Jan, have traveled to all seven continents, and in 2019, they took a trip to Budapest to observe the filming of Dune.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

No one should have to die that way.

Riggio Demónt recalled the lovemaking vividly, holding the attractive redhead close to him, smelling her perfume, thrilling as their bodies moved in perfect synchronization, as if this had not been the first time they had known one another intimately. Such sweet things she’d said to him, and he’d said to her in return. They’d held each other afterward on the bed, and talked far into the night. He’d cared deeply about her, and they’d fallen asleep in each other’s arms.

At some point—he couldn’t determine exactly when—he’d heard her scream, a horrific, bloodcurdling sound. They were on the bed, and in a haze he saw a hand with a white-handled knife, coming around from behind him and thrusting the blade into the nude woman’s chest.

Who had committed such a horrific act, and who had the unfortunate woman been? Nothing came to him, but he felt immense sadness and outrage over the incident.

Events and their chronology were unclear. A great deal of information was missing from his memory. Riggio recalled standing by the deathbed in a hotel room that was supposed to be their secret place, and looking down on the gruesome spectacle. The killer had made good his escape, without harming Riggio.

After he left, the victim had lain gasping in the last seconds of her life, her eyes filled with terror and recognition. She had seen her attacker, seemed to have known him. In desperation she had reached for the knife that was embedded to its handle in her chest, to pull it out. But her hand went limp and fell away.

When had it all occurred, and where?

Riggio didn’t know, but now he found himself looking in the rear-view screen on the console, in a car he had never seen before, a pale yellow Merkur that reeked of stale cigarette smoke. Cars and trucks receded on the screen as he passed and outdistanced them.

With the auto-driver setting off, he was operating the vehicle by psi-link inside an environmentally sealed, six-lane tubeway. He didn’t like the optional automatic systems, preferred to mentally transmit his driving commands to sensors in the vehicle. It gave him more of a feel of the road. He rested his hands on a padded ledge in front of him.

Traffic sped in both directions, with a divider between. His digital speed indicator hovered just below one hundred thirty miles per hour and he commanded the car to go as fast as it could. It shimmied, rattled and groaned. It was a sunny August day, and outside the clearplaz tubeway he could see farms, with non-polluting solar electric vehicles and farm implements in operation.

Fragments of information surfaced in his mind. For half a century enclosed roadways like this had been in place all over the world, connecting the major cities, entertainment areas, and other places of interest. It was a complex arrangement involving oil companies who wanted to protect their profits, environmentalists, and the governments of Earth. In order to protect air quality, gasoline- and diesel-guzzling internal combustion engines were only permitted to operate inside the sealed highways. All vehicles were hybrids, so they were also capable of operating outside the tubeways on solargy power—using solar electric grid systems, with solar power stations to harness the energy of the sun and transmit it to vehicles within range.

Not only did the sealed roads dramatically reduce hydrofluorocarbons and other pollutants in the air, they also enabled the oil companies to continuing making profits and to enhance them by recycling, since discharges were trapped inside the tubeways and could be recovered through air filtration and air scrubbing mechanisms. A 99.85% percent recovery rate was claimed, as the pollutants went back through the refinery process to become fuel again.

Riggio knew all this and more, but oddly, his memory seemed to be compartmentalized. He had linguistic, social and historical knowledge, a broad range of information. But he possessed only sketchy information about himself. He felt like an observer of a man driving a car, and on his arms he saw deep scratches that he could not explain.

He knew it was the summer of 2097 and someone dangerous was chasing him and catching up, going faster than this old car could go.

Riggio kept looking in the rear-view screen on the console. Nothing visible yet. But soon, he sensed strongly, it would be.

He grimaced at a lance of pain in his left shoulder. Opening his shirt, he saw a scar there, and it appeared to be completely healed on the outside. He touched it and felt a small amount of pain, which diminished quickly. Strangely, he couldn’t remember anything about this, or the scratches.

A large purse lay on the floor on the passenger side, dumped open with a woman’s personal items strewn around. Riggio glanced only briefly in that direction in order to keep his eyes on the road. He was a skillful psi-link driver, and held in memory vague images of having outrun cars before. How many times and why? More than once, he thought, but did those incidents involve murder? He didn’t think so, did not feel like someone who would do anything like that.

Putting the car on automatic for a moment, he leaned over and sifted through items on the floor and in the purse, wondering if they belonged to the murdered woman. There were various feminine items, including a nano-computer device that had customized makeup settings; somehow he knew that the unit was capable of crawling over a woman’s face and fine-tuning the tones and accents, making her look just right.

Lifting the purse Riggio saw a man’s wallet beneath it, and a thick envelope with paper money sticking out. He thumbed through the money—there were thousands of dollars here, in both large and small denominations. Opening the wallet, he saw his picture on a driver’s license from the state of Florida.

Florida? He didn’t remember being there at all.

The name on the driver’s license was slightly different. Same first name, Riggio, but the last name was Tarizy, not Demónt. From the date of birth, he calculated his age as twenty-eight, almost twenty-nine. That sounded about right, but he had no recollection of his own birthday. He also found a social security number in the wallet, but not on a card. It was written on a piece of paper in his own handwriting, with the notation new SS #. What did that mean? New? It was a mystery to him.

The identification papers did not seem conclusive to him, and might even have been fabricated. But by whom? It all gave him an uneasy feeling.

Now he flipped open a compartment in the center console, where he found folded sheets of crystal paper, along with pen-bots, a small box of coins, a big mag-gun, and a compact digi-cam. The gun was loaded, but the camera had no mem-card in it. He also found sealed medical patches and antibiotic ointment. Had he treated his own wound? Had the attacker injured Riggio when he tried to protect his lover?

It was all a blank.

The vehicle registration was inside the compartment, on a sheet of hard crystalloy. He held it near the steering bar to read it. The car was registered to William and Latrice Baldwin, with a Denver, Colorado address.

Denver? Is that where he had been most recently? He couldn’t form an image of anything in that city. Was this the Baldwin’s car, whoever they were? Had it belonged to the dead woman and her husband? Had her name been Latrice?

Perhaps, but none of it rang a bell. He slammed the compartment shut.

On the back seat he also found a small canvas bag, containing what looked like a man’s toiletry bag, with a straight razor, a bottle of after-shave lotion, a sonic toothbrush and a can of generic shaving cream—shaving supplies that could be for a man’s face or a woman’s legs.

He touched his own face, felt a rough stubble of beard. Were these his things?

He looked at the rear-view screen again. No vehicles were behind him; at least not close enough to see. But he sensed strongly that a dangerous enemy was after him, and had found his trail.

Were his feelings irrational? If a murderous fiend planned to harm him, wouldn’t he have finished the job back in the room? Wherever that hotel room was, maybe it had been a setup, with the killer trying to pin the crime on him—meaning cops were after him. Had Riggio touched the handle of the knife? He didn’t think so. Had the killer hit him over the head, and what about the shoulder injury, which appeared to have happened much earlier? With his free hand, Riggio explored the surfaces of his scalp, didn’t feel any unnatural lumps or pain. The fuzziness of the horrific memories bore some resemblance to a partially-recalled dream, but he sensed it wasn’t this at all. No, something really had happened in that room, and he needed to get as far away from it as possible.

Did somebody set me up?

A dark feeling came over Riggio that ultimately he had no one to blame but himself. Married women were dangerous. He knew that. They were someone else’s property—or at least perceived to be—with wedding rings like brands, notifying interlopers to keep their distance and approach only at peril.

He took control of the car again. Slowing on a turn, he came out of it and again demanded acceleration. The Merkur rattled and shimmied and responded slowly, finally gaining speed on a downhill stretch. The vibration caused his shoulder to hurt.

Riggio had no idea where he was, couldn’t recall seeing a Tube Patrol car for whatever state this was. He was speeding in what was probably a stolen vehicle, and he might as well have hung a bright orange sign on it: FUGITIVE.

In which direction was he going? He knew only that he was rocketing into darkness, even though it was a bright, sunny day. The edge of the world could be just ahead, a drop-off at the end of the road.

Got to slow down.

There were more Tube Patrolmen near cities and towns, since cops needed bases of operations. He hadn’t seen any road signs since coming to awareness a few minutes earlier.

He sent a mental command to slow down, and the digital speed indicator dropped, registering a little under the assumed speed limit of one-hundred miles per hour. Seconds later he spotted a green and white police cruiser parked at the side of the enclosed roadway, just ahead. He braked gently, dropping the speed even more, and reached into the compartment for the loaded mag-gun. It was heavy. The weapon was not his, but he knew how to use it.

As he passed the cop he saw the red glow of a rooftop scanner tracking him. The cop didn’t flinch, didn’t give chase, and Riggio breathed a sigh of relief. Too close. He slipped the gun under his seat.

Riggio had reached for the weapon almost instinctively the moment he saw the police car. Would he have shot the cop? It frightened him to think he might have. He envisioned a highway officer approaching his door from the side, black boots crunching on gravel, and the quick motion of hand and gun out of the driver’s-side window. Riggio’s hand and gun. Doing what he had to do, not what he wanted to do. In the vision, a burst of noise and flame issued from the large handgun’s barrel, and the cop fell backward, his face blown away.

But I’m not a violent person, he thought. I could never do that!

The vision ended, and a green and white sign loomed ahead:

I-25 N / US-87 N

He noticed a navigation screen on the dashboard, and mentally activated it. The screen showed that he was heading west in the state of Colorado. The nav-screen had numbers in the lower right corner:

Seattle: 1168 miles

Seattle? He’d programmed that as his destination? He had no recollection of doing so. What was so important that he had to drive all that way?

Riggio knew he’d been to Seattle before, though he wasn’t sure when. The fuel gauge registered more than three-quarters full. Maybe he had stopped at a fuel depot in Denver. Why couldn’t he remember?

CHAPTER 2

Meredith Lamour didn’t like click chambers. She found them uncomfortable and disorienting, but they were the fastest way of getting around the solar system. These days they were relatively safe to use, since the technical bugs had been worked out. Quite a number of lives had been lost in the testing phase of the hyper-fast travel system—thousands, she’d heard—but there were few reports of any recent deaths. Nowadays it was medical emergencies for the most part. A small number of heart attacks, breathing problems, bleeding from the mouth, nose, or ears, and dizziness. But as long as people went through the required physical tests before entering a chamber and didn’t have underlying medical problems, they generally survived without incident.

Meredith was a slender black woman in her late thirties, and though her skin was a beautiful, unblemished shade of ebony, she had Caucasian facial features. She worked out to stay in shape and was constantly being approached by men of all races who tried to strike up conversations with her.

She’d been divorced for almost two years, though she’d kept her married name. Meredith told herself she did this because it was easier than going through the formalities of changing all of her identification documents, and making the notifications that were necessary to everyone that knew her under her married name. She always had a lingering thought, as well, that she still cared about her former husband, despite the terrible break-up in their relationship.

Now, accompanied by a diminutive older man, she entered the clearplaz chamber and took a deep breath, as the doors closed and the craft began to hum. Her companion, Piers Johansen, was her boss, the wealthy man who owned the risk-management company where she worked. Both of them understood risks and how to reduce them, but in the case of a click chamber, its technology was far beyond anything they could even begin to understand.

They were at the Barona City clickport on Jupiter’s rock-and-ice moon Callisto, far across the solar system from Earth. One of their clients had just completed the construction of a domed shopping complex there, and they had performed a careful inspection of the new facility, leaving the client with risk-management recommendations for improving safety and reducing his insurance premiums. He had been grateful. The Johansen firm was among the elite in their field, and Meredith was considered the best of the best, an uber agent who was almost as intuitive and skilled as her boss.

She had worked hard to get her advanced engineering and insurance degrees, and the job paid well, though at times like this she didn’t think it was enough. She didn’t like to bend time and space.

The click chamber became silver-white inside, and then glowed pale orange as the tiny chamber hummed at a higher pitch, searching for the exact frequency that would link it to the great beyond. Click technology was a primal thing, linked to solar storms and flares, and to invisible energy emissions from the sun. She’d heard that scientists thought it was potentially even more significant than that, and that all the suns in the galaxy were linked to the very core of the universe, in such a manner that it might be possible one day to travel at ultra-high speeds to other, far-off star systems.

The humming grew rougher and then connected with something, causing it to smooth out. She heard a series of crisp clicks, louder than usual. Forces pressed against her body, a feeling of compression that she always found uncomfortable. Meredith’s head and ears ached, and she closed her eyes. The pain intensified. In the passage through space now, she picked up a slight odor of sweetness, as she usually did. This was a common experience; others reported a variety of odors, even sensations of taste when they had not eaten anything, and unusual sounds in addition to the customary clicks. The process activated different senses in different people.

Then it was over. The compression eased, the humming stopped, and the doors opened. The walls were white again. Meredith was about to step forward when she noticed that Piers Johansen was not doing well. He leaned against a wall, wasn’t saying anything.

Are you all right? she asked, concerned about him. Piers had always been in good shape, but he was an old man.

To her relief, he straightened and smiled. That was a tough one, he said. I’m going to have to give up traveling that way.

It’s hard on everybody.

But not that much. I think my body’s trying to tell me something. He grinned. Maybe it doesn’t like to be bent.

Silly, we aren’t bent in the process. We just bend space, or the spacecraft does.

Whatever it is, I don’t think I’ll accompany you on these trips anymore.

They stepped out onto an arrival platform at the main Seattle clickport, with Meredith remaining at his side, ready to support him if he started to fall. He looked better now.

The two of them had just ridden inside one of the smaller click chambers, to cross the solar system. All around them in this immense terminal were chambers of varying sizes, including some so large that they were filled with shipping containers, as well as trucks, aircraft, prefabricated buildings, and military equipment and supplies. She saw several soldiers in uniforms stepping out of another click chamber.

Clickports only existed in the United States; it was a proprietary technology of the powerful and influential Polter Industries, and they refused to allow it to be used by other nations. Through the high-level connections they had, Polter executives also managed to keep the technology away from the military and the U.S. government, but allowed them to use it, at high fees.

According to the experts, there was no limit to the maximum size of a click chamber. It didn’t really need walls, which were only for passengers, to make the trips less frightening. When larger cargo was shipped, it was just enclosed in a large click-frame, with illuminated transport forces shooting this way and that. Theoretically, entire moons and planets could be moved, if enveloped in a click-chamber force field. But anyone who tried that would have to be crazy, Meredith thought. God put the cosmos together the way it was for a reason....

I’m sorry to hear you won’t be going on these trips anymore, she said to Piers. I’ve always thought we worked well together, sir.

I know, we’ve always been a team. But don’t worry, I’ll find someone to go with you.

She didn’t like the sound of that, didn’t want to think about it. They had been close for years, a very professional, cordial relationship. In view of his advancing age she’d known it would have to end someday, but this seemed so abrupt. He’d been fine the last time they crossed space. Maybe he would change his mind when he had time to rest and think about it.

CHAPTER 3

Riggio had kept driving toward Seattle, following the program in the navigation system. The male computer voice in the unit was peculiar, a Slavic- or Russian-accented English, it seemed to him. The voice kept telling him what to do, and he found it irritating. But he couldn’t figure out how to turn it off, and when he considered it more he didn’t want to change anything in the system, because there could be an exact destination in the city that he hadn’t figured out yet. A clue. No street address had shown up on the screen yet, just the city, and how many miles remained to go.

He’d made several fuel stops, picking up ready-made sandwiches, slices of pizza, and snacks along the way. He had no credit cards in his wallet, but he did have the money he’d found on the floor of the car, thousands of dollars in a variety of denominations. The more he thought about his identification papers, the more suspicious they seemed to him, and he had no real memory of where he’d been living or what his prior life had been like. He didn’t know where his hometown might be, but maybe it was ahead. He didn’t think it was anywhere in Florida.

It was early morning and he was only a few miles east of Seattle. The fuel gauge was low, so he took an exit, passing through an airlock to leave the tubeway. On the surface streets of a small town, the internal combustion engine switched itself off and connected to the solargy grid system. The engine grew quiet.

At a fuel depot, he stepped outside and waited while an attendant filled his tank. It was an overcast summer day and a little warm, but not uncomfortably so. One of his earlobes itched, and when he scratched it he felt something odd there, a strange lump. He felt on both sides of the lobe—something hard was there. Looking in a mirror on the console he saw it was an earring post, the sort of thing women wore to keep their pierced ears open. He unhooked it, pulled it through, and then did the same on the other ear, which also had a post. It was yet another mystery he could not explain.

As the attendant filled the car with fuel, he watched Riggio, looking curious.

Riggio didn’t say anything, didn’t need to explain himself to anyone. For all the man knew, Riggio was gay, or one of the men who had no trouble with their sexuality, those machismo sorts who wore earrings anyway, defying anyone to say something. Deciding to assume that demeanor, he pocketed the posts and glared at the attendant.

The man’s smile faded, and he looked away.

Across the road, perhaps a quarter mile away, Riggio saw an immense, dark gray structure that was shaped and textured like a beehive, with a pair of yellow cranes looming over it, and construction workers on the roof.

What in the world is that? he asked.

The attendant, a man with a boyish face, said, The salvation of our little town, that’s what. You’re looking at the famous Sam Howe’s newest entertainment facility, the Beehive. You’re looking at the thrill ride part.

Riggio stared at him blankly.

You’ve never heard of Sam Howe? the man asked.

Can’t say I have, and can’t say I haven’t. It was a veiled reference to his own lack of memory.

The attendant nodded, finished the fueling and made change for the cash payment. Sam Howe has facilities all over the place—most of them here on Earth. He’s a real showman, dresses outlandishly. He’s also a wealthy philanthropist.

Sounds like a great man.

Everyone around here thinks so. He visits regularly to check on the progress of construction, making sure everything is exactly the way he wants it. My wife works for a restaurant in town, says he sat at one of her tables the other day. According to her he dresses in costumes and has an air about him, but I can’t blame him for that. He left her a big tip. Other folks in town say similar things about him. He’s making a lot of friends around here—some of whom helped his security force drive protestors away this morning.

Protestors?

Yeah, they’re always hounding Sam, saying he’s harming the environment, that he’s destroying the land. A bunch of crazies, radicals.

~~~

Curious about the unusual facility, Riggio drove toward it, and parked with other cars and small trucks on a wide paved area that had a job shack on it, and construction equipment. The beehive structure was on the other side of the job shack, and additional smaller buildings were under construction, more traditional in shape. Looking up along the face of the large gray building, he saw three orange-helmeted workers on the roof, walking along the sloped surface with special shoes. They stepped into a cage that swung from one of the crane booms, and were lowered slowly to the ground.

Noticing a group of onlookers, Riggio walked over and stood near them. Listening in, he decided that most were curious locals, including a number who looked like farmers. The bizarre building towered over them.

Never seen anything like that, one of the farmers said, a man in tattered coveralls.

Had a little version of it in my backyard last year, another said, with wasps going in and out of it. Can you imagine this thing full of wasps?

Would take a lot of pesticide, the first man said, that’s for damned sure.

They chuckled and made quips and small talk.

Riggio heard a buzzing sound that sounded very much like bees. For a moment, this caused him concern, until he saw a passenger capsule speeding on a track around the outside of the hive, buzzing and spiraling higher and higher. The capsule was yellow and black, and shaped like a bee. A man in a golden jumpsuit was lying inside, looking forward. He was visible through the front and side windows.

Not far away, a tall man in an Uncle Sam costume emerged from a bottom-level doorway in the beehive. He was accompanied by an attractive black woman who caught Riggio’s attention. Wearing a business suit that fit snugly over her full figure, she carried a briefcase. He wondered if the man might be Sam Howe. He was talking and gesturing toward the beehive with his hands, while she listened attentively.

At the base of the beehive, men in golden jumpsuits formed a line and boarded half a dozen bee-capsules, one pilot in each. Another capsule sat on the ground. A mechanic leaned into an open compartment on one side, working on something.

One after the other, the additional capsules started in motion, at first going slowly around the bottom level, then spiraling upward on the outside track and buzzing, going faster and faster, before darting inside the hive at differing levels, disappearing from view.

Now the beehive glowed and became transparent on the outside, showing only an interior framework along with the tracks inside and capsules on them, speeding passenger units going this way and that, barely missing one another where the tracks crossed. Riggio caught his breath at the precision, split-second timing, the near misses when all the capsules were in operation at once. He hoped a disaster did not occur. It looked very dangerous to him.

All the while, the pretty black woman held an electronic device in her hand, pointing it at the beehive, focusing a powerful blue light on the places where the capsules nearly collided with one another. She moved from one spot to another. It seemed to be some sort of a test, or an inspection.

Finally, the beehive returned to its normal gray, opaque color. One by one, the capsules returned safely to the bottom level, and the crews climbed out.

~~~

Too close for comfort, Meredith said, putting the device back in her briefcase. My risk-scanner indicates the capsules are avoiding collisions by only one point four seconds. That will never do. I want you to adjust the timing so that they avoid one another by at least seven seconds.

That would take all the excitement out of the ride, Sam Howe protested. How about three seconds? He was a tall man in his fifties with a white goatee, and often wore the traditional Uncle Sam costume—blue coat with tails, vest with stars, trousers with red-and-white stripes, and a white top hat emblazoned with a star.

She knew he loved America, and everything it represented. This was his way of showing it.

Meredith looked away, thought for a moment. Five seconds, or I can’t get a company to insure you.

I’m rich enough to self-insure this place, without any damned insurance policy.

Not a good idea, Sam, and you know it. Don’t forget, I’ve seen your financial statements, because you were required to submit them to us. And I think you’re spread thin right now, because of the new facilities you keep opening up. This one, as well as the four connected sky towers in Kansas City, and all of the resorts and entertainment centers around the world—including that huge underground resort near Seattle. What are you going to call it?

Sun Under,