Cover

Halftitle

WHIPPING STAR

TOR BOOKS BY FRANK HERBERT

The Dragon in the Sea

Hellstrom’s Hive

The White Plague

FRANK

HERBERT

WHIPPING
STAR

Dedication

To Lurton Blassingame,

who helped buy the time for this book,

dedicated with affection and admiration

WHIPPING STAR

Whipping Star

A BuSab agent must begin by learning the linguistic modes and action limits (usually self-imposed) of the societies he treats. The agent seeks data on the functional relationships which derive from our common universe and which arise from interdependencies. Such interdependencies are the frequent first victims of word-illusions. Societies based on ignorance of original interdependencies come sooner or later to stalemate. Too long frozen, such societies die.

—BuSab Manual

Furuneo was his name. Alichino Furuneo. He reminded himself of this as he rode into the city to make the long-distance call. It was wise to firm up the ego before such a call. He was sixty-seven years old and could remember many cases where people had lost their identity in the sniggertrance of communication between star systems. More than the cost and the mind-crawling sensation of dealing with a Taprisiot transmitter, this uncertainty factor tended to keep down the number of calls. But Furuneo didn’t feel he could trust anyone else with this call to Jorj X. McKie, Saboteur Extraordinary.

It was 8:08 A.M. local at Furuneo’s position on the planet called Cordiality of the Sfich system.

“This is going to be very difficult, I suspect,” he muttered, speaking at (but not to) the two enforcers he had brought along to guard his privacy.

They didn’t even nod, realizing no reply was expected.

It was still cool from the night wind which blew across the snow plains of the Billy Mountains down to the sea. They had driven here into Division City from Furuneo’s mountain fortress, riding in an ordinary groundcar, not attempting to hide or disguise their association with the Bureau of Sabotage, but not seeking to attract attention, either. Many sentients had reason to resent the Bureau.

Furuneo had ordered the car left outside the city’s Pedestrian Central, and they had come the rest of the way on foot like ordinary citizens.

Ten minutes ago they had entered the reception room of this building. It was a Taprisiot breeding center, one of only about twenty known to exist in the universe, quite an honor for a minor planet like Cordiality.

The reception room was no more than fifteen meters wide, perhaps thirty-five long. It had tan walls with pitted marks in them as though they had been soft once and someone had thrown a small ball at them according to some random whim. Along the right side across from where Furuneo stood with his enforcers was a high bench. It occupied three-fourths of the long wall. Multifaceted rotating lights above it cast patterned shadows onto the face of the bench and the Taprisiot standing atop it.