In fleeting moments she had noticed him looking at her with guilt in his eyes -- particularly after fights with Kailea.  Whenever Jessica tried to take advantage of those moments, though, he quickly grew cold and pulled away.

 

Living in the Lady Helena's former quarters did not help, either.  Leto was reluctant to go there.  Following the death of Paulus Atreides, the enmity between Leto and his mother had been extreme, and Helena had gone to "rest and meditate" in a remote religious retreat.  To Jessica it smacked of banishment, but she had found no clear reasons in the Atreides records.  Being placed in these rooms could act as an emotional barrier between them.

 

Leto Atreides was certainly dashing and handsome, and Jessica would have no trouble accepting his company.  In fact, she wanted to be with him.  She chided herself whenever such feelings came over her -- as they did too frequently.  She could not allow emotions to sway her; the Bene Gesserit had no use for love.

 

I have a job to do, she reminded herself.  Jessica would bide her time and wait for just the right moment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Infinity attracts us like a floodlight in the night, blinding us to the excesses it can inflict upon the finite.

 

-Meditations from Bifrost Eyrie, Buddislamic Text

 

 

FOUR MONTHS AFTER the avalanche disaster, Abulurd Harkonnen and his wife embarked on a well-publicized visit to the recovering mountain city.  The Bifrost Eyrie tragedy had struck to the heart of Lankiveil and drawn the populace together.

 

Steadfast companions, he and Emmi had shown their combined strength.  For years now Abulurd had preferred to be a behind-the-scenes ruler, not even claiming the specific title that was his due.  He wanted the people of Lankiveil to govern themselves, to help each other according to their hearts.  He saw the various villagers, hunters, and fishermen as a great extended family, all with common interests.

 

Then, speaking with quiet confidence, Emmi convinced her husband that a public pilgrimage as acting planetary governor would draw attention to the plight of the mountain stronghold.  The burgomaster, Onir Rautha-Rabban, would welcome them.

 

Abulurd and Emmi rode in a formal transport flanked by servants and retainers, many of whom had never been far from the whaling villages.  The three ornithopters passed slowly inland over glaciers and snow-covered mountains, toward the line of crags in which the monastery city nestled.

 

With the sun sparkling off snow and ice crystals from protruding mountaintops, the world appeared pristine and peaceful.  Ever an optimist, Abulurd hoped the Bifrost inhabitants could now look forward to an even stronger future.  He had written a speech that imparted basically the same message; though he had little experience addressing large crowds, Abulurd looked forward to delivering this communication.  He'd already practiced twice in front of Emmi.

 

On a plateau in front of the sheer cliffs of Bifrost Eyrie, the governor's procession landed, and Abulurd and his entourage disembarked.  Emmi walked at her husband's side, looking regal in a heavy blue cape.  He took her arm.

 

The construction teams had made amazing progress.  They had sliced away the intruding fan of snow and excavated the buried buildings.  Because most of the wonderful architecture had been destroyed or defaced, the broken buildings were now covered with a webwork of scaffolding.  Skilled stonemasons worked round-the-clock to add block upon block, rebuilding and glorifying the retreat.  Bifrost Eyrie would never be the same . . . but perhaps it could be even better than before, like a phoenix rising from the snowfield.

 

Stocky Onir Rautha-Rabban came out to meet them, dressed in gilded robes lined with sable whale fur.  Emmi's father had shaved off his voluminous gray beard after the disaster; whenever he looked in a reflecting glass, he wanted to be reminded of how much his mountain city had lost.  This time his broad, squarish face seemed content, lit with a fire that had not been present the last time they'd been together.

 

With the arrival of their planetary governor, workers climbed down from scaffoldings and picked their way along packed snowfield paths into the large square.  When completed, the towering buildings would look down upon the square like gods from on high; even incomplete, the soaring stonework remained impressive.

 

The weather had cooperated since the avalanche, but in another month or two, the hard snap of winter would force them to cease their efforts and huddle within the stone buildings for half a year.  Bifrost Eyrie would not be finished this season.  With the magnitude of construction work, perhaps it would never be complete.  But the people would continue to build, enhancing their prayer in stone to the skies of Lankiveil.

 

When the crowds had gathered, Abulurd raised his hands to speak, rehearsing again in his mind.  Then all the words drained from his mind to be replaced with nervousness.  Looking like a queen beside him, Emmi reached out to touch his arm, giving her support.  Then she whispered his opening lines, helping him remember what he needed to say.

 

"My friends," he said loudly, grinning with embarrassment, "Buddislamic teachings encourage charity, hard work, and assistance to those in need.  There can be no better example of heartfelt cooperation than what you volunteers are doing now to rebuild --"

 

The gathered people began to murmur, gesturing toward the sky and whispering among themselves.  Abulurd hesitated again, turning to look over his shoulder.  Just then, Emmi cried out.

 

A formation of black ships appeared in the azure sky, swooping toward the mountains, attack craft that bore the griffin of House Harkonnen.  Abulurd's brows knitted, more in puzzlement than alarm.  He looked over at his wife.  "What does this mean, Emmi?  I did not call for any ships."  But she had no better idea than he did.

 

Seven fighters roared low, engines cracking through the air with sonic booms.  Abulurd felt a flash of annoyance, afraid the thunderous sound would provoke fresh avalanches -- until the ships' gunports opened.  The people of the mountain stronghold began milling back and forth in confusion, shouting.  Some ran, searching for shelter.  Abulurd could not understand what he was seeing.

 

Three of the sleek craft slowed to a hover over the square where the villagers were gathered.  Lasguns extended, targeted.

 

Abulurd waved his hands, trying to get the pilots' attention.  "What are you doing?  There must be some mistake."

 

Emmi pushed him away from the speaking podium, where he was a prime target.  "There's no mistake."

 

The villagers scrambled for cover as the vessels settled down to land in the square.  Abulurd was convinced the pilots would have landed right on top of the crowd if the spectators had not moved fast enough.  "Stay here," he said to Emmi as he strode toward the trio of landed ships to demand answers.

 

The four remaining vessels circled in the air and came back.  With a buzzing crackle of static, hot lasgun beams lanced out to slice scaffolding from the stone buildings like a fisherman gutting his catch.

 

"Stop!"  Abulurd shouted to the skies, clenching his fists -- but none of the military men could hear him.  These were Harkonnen troops, loyal to his own family, but they were attacking his people, the citizens of Lankiveil.  "Stop!" he repeated, reeling backward from the shockwaves.

 

Emmi grabbed him and pulled him aside as one of the ships swooped low, creating a sharp, hot wind with its passage.

 

More lasgun fire lanced out, this time targeting the milling mass of people.  The blasts slew dozens in a single sweep.

 

Chunks of ice toppled from the glaciers, crystalline blue-white blocks that fell in a flash of steam as they were cauterized from the main mass.  Half-completed buildings were crushed under the onslaught as lasgun beams chopped them to bits.

 

The four attack craft came around a third time while the other vessels powered down and stabilized on the ground.  Their doors hissed open, and Harkonnen troops boiled out, wearing dark blue commando assault uniforms, insulated against the cold.

 

"I am Abulurd Harkonnen, and I order you to stop!"  After quick glances in his direction, the soldiers ignored him.

 

Then Glossu Rabban stepped out of the craft.  Weapons bristled from his belt and military insignia covered his shoulders and breast.  An iridescent black helmet made him look like a gladiator in an ancient coliseum.

 

Recognizing his grandson, Onir Rautha-Rabban raced forward, his hands clasped in front of him, beseeching.  His face was splotched with anger and horror.  "Please stop!  Glossu Rabban, why are you doing this?"

 

At the other side of the square, the ground troops withdrew lasrifles and opened fire on screaming villagers, who had no place to go.  Before the old burgomaster could reach Rabban on the boarding ramp, soldiers grabbed him and dragged him away.

 

His face stormy, Abulurd marched toward Rabban.  Harkonnen troops moved to block his way, but he snapped, "Let me pass."

 

Rabban looked over at him with cold metal eyes.  His thick lips were drawn into a satisfied line above his blocky chin.  "Father, your people must learn that there are worse things than natural disasters."  He raised his chin a notch.  "If they find excuses to avoid paying their tithes, they will face an unnatural disaster -- me."

 

"Call them off!"  Abulurd raised his voice even as he felt completely impotent.  "I am governor here, and these are my people."

 

Rabban looked at him in disgust.  "And they need an example to understand the kind of behavior that's expected of them.  It's not a complicated issue, but obviously you don't provide the proper inspiration."

 

Harkonnen soldiers dragged the struggling Onir Rabban toward an abrupt cliff edge.  Emmi saw what they meant to do and screamed.  Abulurd whirled to see that they had brought his father-in-law to the sheer, ice-frosted precipice.  The chasm below ended only in a soup of clouds.

 

"You can't do that!" Abulurd said, aghast.  "That man is the lawful leader of this village.  He's your own grandfather."

 

Smiling, Rabban whispered the words, with no emotion, no sense of command.  "Oh, wait.  Stop."  There was no chance the troops could hear him.  They already had their orders.

 

The Harkonnen guards grabbed the burgomaster by both arms and held him like a loose sack of cargo at the brink.  Emmi's father cried out, his arms and legs flailing.  He looked over at Abulurd, his face filled with disbelief and horror.  Their eyes met.

 

"Oh, dear me, please, no," Rabban whispered again, with a grin curving his lips.

 

Then the soldiers shoved the old man over, and he disappeared into the void.

 

"Too late," Rabban said with a shrug.

 

Emmi fell to her knees, retching.  Abulurd, who couldn't decide whether to comfort her or rush forward to strike his son, remained paralyzed.

 

With a clap of his meaty hands, Rabban called out, "Enough!  Fall in!"

 

Loud signals came from the landed battleships.  With military precision, the Harkonnen troops marched back to their ships in perfect ranks.  They left wailing survivors who scurried over to the bodies, searching for companions, loved ones, anyone who might need medical attention.

 

On the ramp of the flagship, Rabban studied his father.  "Be thankful I was willing to do your dirty work.  You've used too light a touch on these people, and they've grown lazy."

 

The four flying vessels completed one more attack run, which devastated another building, causing it to collapse in a rumble of rock dust.  Then they flew off, regrouping in a formation in the sky.

 

"If you force my hand again, I'll have to show a little more muscle -- all in your name, of course."  Rabban turned about and strode back into his command ship.

 

Appalled and disoriented, Abulurd stared in utter horror at the obliteration, the fires, the awful cauterized bodies.  He heard a mounting scream like a song of mourning -- and realized it came from his own throat.

 

Emmi had staggered over to the cliff edge and stood sobbing as she stared down into the bottomless clouds where her father had disappeared.

 

The last Harkonnen ships lifted into the sky on suspensors, leaving scorch marks on the clearing in front of the now-devastated mountain city.  Abulurd sank to his knees in utter despair.  His mind filled with a roaring hum of disbelief and a bright agony dominated by the smug expression of Glossu Rabban.

 

"How could I have ever sired such a monster?"  He knew he would never find an answer to that question.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Love is the highest achievement to which any human may aspire.  It is an emotion that encompasses the full depth of heart, mind, and soul.

 

-Zensunni Wisdom from the Wandering

 

 

LIET-KYNES AND WARRICK spent an evening together near Splintered Rock in Hagga Basin.  They had raided another one of the old botanical testing stations for usable equipment, taking inventory of a few tools and records the desert had preserved for centuries.

 

For two years following their return from the south polar regions, the young men had accompanied Pardot Kynes from sietch to sietch, checking the progress of old and new plantings.  The Planetologist maintained a secret greenhouse cave at Plaster Basin, a captive Eden to demonstrate what Dune could become.  Water from catchtraps and windstills irrigated the shrubs and flowers.  Many Fremen had received samples grown in the Plaster Basin demonstration project.  They took sweet pieces of the fruit as a holy communion, closing their eyes and breathing deeply, relishing the taste.

 

All of this Pardot Kynes had promised . . . and all of this he had given them.  He was proud that his visions were becoming reality.  He was also proud of his son.  "One day you will be Imperial Planetologist here, Liet," he said, nodding solemnly.

 

Though he spoke with passion about awakening the desert, bringing in grasses and biodiversity for a self-sustaining ecosystem, Kynes could not teach any subject in an orderly or structured fashion.  Warrick hung on every word he said, but the man often began with one topic, then rambled on to other subjects at his whim.

 

"We are all part of a grand tapestry, and we each must follow our own threads," Pardot Kynes said, more pleased with his own words than he should have been.

 

Oftentimes he would recount the stories of his days on Salusa Secundus, how he had studied a wilderness no one else had bothered with.  The Planetologist had spent years on Bela Tegeuse, seeing how the hardy plant life flourished despite the dim sunlight and acidic soil.  There had also been journeys to Harmonthep, III Delta Kaising, Gammont, and Poritrin -- and the dazzling court on Kaitain, where Emperor Elrood IX had given him this assignment on Arrakis.

 

Now, as Liet and Warrick made their way from Splintered Rock, a heavy wind picked up -- a heinali or man-pusher.  Bending into the stinging gusts, Liet pointed to the lee of a rock outcropping.  "Let us set up our shelter there."

 

His dark hair bound in a shoulder-length ponytail, Warrick trudged forward, head lowered, already removing his Fremkit pack.  Working together, they soon had a protected, camouflaged camp and hunkered down to talk far into the night.

 

In two years, the young men had told no one about Dominic Vernius and his smuggler base.  They had given their word to the man, and kept it a secret between themselves. . . .

 

They were both eighteen and expected to marry soon -- but Liet, dizzy with the hormones of his age, could not choose.  He found himself more and more attracted to Faroula, the willowy, large-eyed, but tempestuous daughter of Heinar, the Naib of Red Wall Sietch.  Faroula was trained in the lore of the herbalist, and would, one day, be a well-respected healer.

 

Unfortunately for him, Warrick desired Faroula as well, and Liet knew that his blood-brother was more likely to gather the courage to ask the Naib's daughter before he could make his own clumsy move.

 

The two friends fell asleep listening to the whispering fingernails of sand blown against their tent. . . .

 

The following dawn, when they climbed out, knocking powdery dust from the sphincter opening of the tent, Liet stared across the expanse of Hagga Basin.  Warrick blinked in the bright light. "Kull wahad!"

 

The night windstorm had blown the dirt clear of a broad white playa, the salty remnants of an ancient dried sea.  Scoured clean, the lake bed wavered in the rising heat of the day.  "A gypsum plain.  A rare sight," Liet said, then added in a mutter, "My father would probably run down and do tests."

 

Warrick spoke in a low, awed voice.  "It is said that he who sees Biyan, the White Lands, can make a wish and it is sure to be granted."  He fell silent and moved his lips, expressing his deepest, most private desires.

 

Not to be outdone, Liet uttered his own fervent thoughts in a rush.  He turned to his friend and announced, "I wished that Faroula would be my wife!"

 

Warrick gave him a bemused smile.  "Bad luck, my blood-brother -- I wished for the same thing."  With a laugh, he clapped Liet on the shoulder.  "It seems that not all wishes can come true."

 

 

AT DUSK the two met Pardot Kynes as he arrived at Sine Rock Sietch.  The sietch elders solemnly went through a greeting ceremony, pleased with what they had accomplished.  Kynes accepted their welcome with brusque good grace, offhandedly forgoing many of the formal responses in his eagerness to inspect everything himself.

 

The Planetologist went to inspect their plantings under bright glowglobes that simulated sunlight within crannies of rock.  The sand had been fertilized with chemicals and human feces to create a rich soil.  The people of Sine Rock grew mesquite, sage, rabbitbush, even a few accordion- trunked saguaros, surrounded by scrubby grasses.  Groups of robed women went from plant to plant as if in a religious ceremony, adding cupfuls of water so the plants could thrive.

 

The stone walls of Sine Rock's blocked-off canyon retained a bit of moisture every morning; dew precipitators along the top of the canyon recaptured lost water vapor and returned it to the plants.

 

In the evening, Kynes walked from planting to planting, bending over to study leaves and stems.  He'd already forgotten that his son and Warrick had come to meet him.  His warrior escort, Ommun and Turok, stood guard, willing to give their lives should anything threaten their Umma.  Liet noticed his father's intense concentration and wondered if the man even realized the sheer loyalty he inspired among these people.

 

At the mouth of the narrow canyon, where a few boulders and rocks provided the only barrier against open desert, Fremen children had tethered bright glowglobes that shone onto the sand.  Each child carried a bent metal rod extracted from a Carthag refuse dump.

 

Enjoying the private stillness of the gathering night, Liet and Warrick squatted on a rock to watch the children.  Warrick sniffed and looked behind them toward the artificial sunlight on the bushes and cacti.  "The little Makers are drawn to the moisture like iron filings to a magnet."

 

Liet had seen the activity before, had done it himself as a boy, but was still fascinated to see the young ones poking about to capture sandtrout.  "They have easy pickings."

 

One of the young girls bent to let a small drop of saliva fall onto the end of her metal staff; then she extended the rod over the sands.  The miniature tethered glowglobes cast deep shadows on the uneven ground.  Creatures stirred under the surface, rising out of the dust.

 

The sandtrout were shapeless fleshy creatures, soft and flexible.  Their bodies were pliable when alive, yet they turned hard and leathery when dead.  Many little Makers were found strewn about the site of a spice blow, killed in the explosion; many more burrowed to capture the released water, sealing it away to protect Shai-Hulud.

 

One of the sandtrout extended a pseudopod toward the glistening tip of the rod.  When it touched the girl's saliva, the Fremen child turned the metal stick, as if to capture a self-moving flow of taffy.  She raised her rod, taking the sandtrout out of the ground, and twirled it to keep the amorphous little Maker suspended in the air.  The other children giggled.

 

A second child caught another sandtrout and both hurried back to the rocks, where they played with their prizes.  They could poke and tug the soft flesh, teasing out a few droplets of sweet syrup, a special treat that Liet himself had loved in his youth.

 

Though tempted to try his own hand at the game, Liet reminded himself that he was an adult now, a full member of the tribe.  He was the son of Umma Kynes; the other Fremen would frown to see him engage in frivolous play.

 

Warrick sat on the rock beside him, wrapped in his thoughts, watching the children and thinking of a future family of his own.  He looked up into the purpling sky.  "It is said that storm season is the time for lovemaking."  He wrinkled his brow, then placed his narrow chin in his hands, deep in concentration.  He had begun to grow a thin beard.

 

Liet smiled; he still kept his own face clean-shaven.  "It is time for both of us to choose a mate, Warrick."  They held Faroula in their thoughts, and the Naib's daughter led them on, feigning aloofness while enjoying their attentions.  Liet and Warrick brought her special treasures from the desert whenever they could.

 

"Perhaps we should make our selection the Fremen way."  Warrick withdrew from his belt a pair of polished bone slivers as long as knives.  "Shall we throw tally sticks to see who may court Faroula?"

 

Liet had his own pair of the gambling markers; he and his friend had spent many camp nights challenging each other.  Tally sticks were slender carvings with a scale of random numbers etched along the sides, high numbers mixed with low ones.  The Fremen threw bone tallies into the sand, then read off the number of the depth; whoever achieved the highest score, won.  It required finesse as well as plain luck.

 

"If we played tally sticks, I would beat you, of course," Liet said offhandedly to Warrick.

 

"I doubt that."

 

"In any event, Faroula would never abide by the throw of the bones."  Liet sat back against the cool rock wall.  "Perhaps it is time for the ahal ceremony, where a woman chooses her mate."

 

"Do you think Faroula would choose me?"  Warrick said wistfully.

 

"Of course not."

 

"In most things I trust your judgment, my friend -- but not in this."

 

"Perhaps I shall ask her myself when I return," Liet said.  "She couldn't want a better husband than me."

 

Warrick laughed.  "In most challenges, you are a brave man, Liet-Kynes.  But when facing a beautiful woman, you are a shameful coward."

 

Liet drew a deep, indignant breath.  "I have composed a love poem for her.  I mean to write it down on spice paper and leave it in her chamber."

 

"Oh?" Warrick teased.  "And would you have the nerve to sign it with your own name?  What is this beautiful poem you've written?"

 

Liet closed his eyes and recited:

 

 

Many nights I dream beside open water, hearing the winds pass high;

Many nights I Lie by the snake's den and dream of Faroula in summer heat;

I see her baking spice bread on red-hot sheets of iron;

And braiding water rings into her hair.

 

The amber fragrance of her bosom strikes my innermost senses;

Though she torments and oppresses me, I would have her no other way:

She is Faroula, and she is my love.

 

A storm wind rages through my heart;

Behold the clear water of the qanat, gentle and shimmering.

 

 

Liet opened his eyes, as if emerging from a dream.

 

"I've heard better," Warrick said.  "I've written better.  But you show promise.  You might find a woman to accept you after all.  But never Faroula."

 

Liet feigned offense.  In silence, the two watched the Fremen children continue to capture sandtrout.  Deeper in the canyon, he knew his father rambled on about ways to increase plant growth, how to add supplementary vegetation to improve the turnover and retain nitrates in the soil.  He's probably never played with a sandtrout in his life, Liet thought.

 

He and Warrick thought of other things and stared into the night.  Finally, after a long silence, both spoke at once, their words tumbling over each other.  Then the two laughed and agreed.  "Yes, we will both ask her when we return to Red Wall Sietch."

 

They clasped hands, hoping . . . but secretly relieved that they had taken the decision out of their own hands.

 

 

AMID THE BUSTLE OF HEINAR'S SIETCH, the Fremen greeted the return of Pardot Kynes.

 

Young Faroula pressed her hands against her narrow waist, watching the party file past the moisture-sealed doorways.  Her long dark hair hung in silky loops strung with water rings down to her shoulders; her face was narrow and elfin-looking.  Her large eyes were midnight pools below her striking eyebrows.  A slight flush danced along her tanned cheeks.

 

She regarded Liet first, then Warrick.  Her face held a stern expression with only the faintest upturn of lips to show that she was secretly pleased, rather than offended, by what the two young men had just asked her.

 

"And why should I choose either of you?"  Faroula regarded both suitors for a long moment, making them squirm with the agony of anticipation.  "What makes the two of you so confident?"

 

"But . . ." Warrick struck his chest.  "I have raided many Harkonnen troops.  I have ridden a sandworm down to the south pole. I have --"

 

Liet interrupted him.  "I've done everything Warrick has -- and I am the son of Umma Kynes, his heir and successor as Planetologist.  There may be a day when I leave this planet to visit the Imperial Court on Kaitain.  I am --"

 

Faroula impatiently dismissed their bluster.  "And I am the daughter of Naib Heinar.  I can have any man I choose."

 

Liet groaned deep in his throat, his shoulders sagging.  Warrick looked at his friend, but drew himself up, trying to recapture his bravado.  "Well, then . . . choose!"

 

Faroula laughed, covered her mouth, and restored her tight expression.  "You both have admirable qualities . . . a few of them, at least.  And I suppose if I don't make up my mind soon, you'll end up killing yourselves trying to show off for me, as if I asked for escapades like that."  She tossed her head, and her long hair jingled with the bound water rings.

 

She put a finger to her lips, pondering.  Her eyes glinting with mirth, she said, "Give me two days to decide.  I must think on this."  When they refused to move, her voice became crisper.  "Don't just stand there ogling me!  You must have work to do.  One thing I tell you:  I'll never marry a lazy husband."

 

Both Liet and Warrick nearly tripped as they scrambled to find something important-looking to occupy themselves.

 

 

AFTER WAITING FOR TWO LONG, agonizing days, Liet discovered a wrapped note in his room.  He tore open the spice paper, his heart pounding and sinking at the same time:  If Faroula had chosen him, wouldn't she come to tell him herself?  But as his eyes scanned the words she had written, his breath came fast and cold in his throat.

 

"I wait in the distant Cave of Birds.  I will give myself to whichever man reaches me first."

 

That was all the note said.  Liet stared at it for a few moments, then ran through the sietch passages until he reached Warrick's quarters.  He pulled aside the curtain-hanging and saw his friend frantically packing a satchel and a Fremkit.

 

"She's issued a mihna challenge," Warrick said, over his shoulder.

 

It was a test in which Fremen youths proved themselves worthy of manhood.  The two looked at each other, frozen for a moment, their gazes locking.

 

Then Liet whirled and rushed back to his own quarters.  He understood too well what he had to do.

 

It was a race.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is possible to become intoxicated with rebellion for rebellion's sake.

 

-DOMINIC VERNIUS, Ecaz Memoirs

 

 

EVEN TWO YEARS in a Harkonnen slave pit did not break the spirit of Gurney Halleck.  The guards considered him a difficult prisoner, and he wore that fact like a badge of honor.

 

Though beaten and pummeled regularly, his skin bruised, his bones cracked, his flesh slashed -- Gurney always recovered.  He came to know the inside of the infirmary well, to understand the miraculously fast ways the doctor could patch up injuries so the slaves could work again.

 

Following his capture at the pleasure house, he had been thrown into the obsidian mines and polishing pits, where he had been forced to work harder than his worst days of digging trenches for krall tubers.  Still, Gurney did not miss the easier duty.  At least he would die knowing he had tried to fight back.

 

The Harkonnens did not bother to ask questions about who he was or why he had come here; they saw him as no more than another functioning body to perform tasks.  The guards believed they had subdued him, and nothing else mattered to them. . . .

 

Initially, Gurney had been assigned to the cliffs of Mount Ebony, where he and his crewmates used sonic blasters and laser-heated handpicks to chip away slabs of blue obsidian, a translucent substance that seemed to suck light from the air.  Gurney and his fellow laborers were chained together with cuffs that could extrude shigawire to sever their limbs if they struggled.

 

The work crew climbed up narrow mountain paths in the frosty dawn and worked through long days of battering sun.  At least once a week, some slaves were killed or maimed by falling volcanic glass.  The crew supervisors and guards didn't care.  Periodically, they just made new sweeps around Giedi Prime to harvest additional slaves.

 

After surviving his stint on the cliffs, Gurney was transferred to a work detail in the processing pits, where he waded in emulsifying solutions to prepare small pieces of obsidian for shipment.  Wearing only thick trunks, he worked up to his waist in foul-smelling gelatinous liquid, some sort of lye and abrasive with a mild radioactive component that activated the volcanic glass.  The treatment made the finished product shimmer with a midnight-blue aura.

 

To his bitter amusement, he learned that rare "blue obsidian" was sold only by the gem merchants of Hagal.  Though assumed to be from the crystal-rich mines of Hagal itself, the source of the valuable obsidian was a carefully held secret.  House Harkonnen had been quietly providing the glowing volcanic glass all along, fetching a premium price for their resources.

 

Gurney's body became a patchwork of small cuts and slashes.  His unprotected skin soaked up the foul, burning solution.  No doubt it would kill him within a few years, but his chances of survival in the slave pits were slim anyway.  After Bheth had been taken six years ago, he'd given up on any sort of long-term planning.  Nonetheless, as he slogged through the liquid, churning the knife-edged chunks of obsidian, he kept his face lifted toward the sky and the horizon, while the other slaves stared into the muck.

 

Early one morning, the work supervisor stood on his podium with odor-filters plugged into his nostrils.  He wore a tight-fitting blue tunic that displayed his scrawny chest and the rounded paunch of his belly.

 

"Stop daydreaming down there.  Listen up, all of you."  He raised his voice, and Gurney heard something strange in the timbre of the words.  "A noble guest is coming to inspect our operations.  Glossu Rabban, the Baron's designated heir, will oversee our quotas, and likely demand more work from you lazy worms.  Get ahead of yourselves today, because tomorrow you'll have a vacation while you stand at attention to be inspected."

 

The work supervisor scowled.  "And don't think this isn't an honor.  I'm surprised Rabban's even willing to put up with your stink."

 

Gurney narrowed his eyes.  The ignominious thug Rabban coming here?  He began to hum a song to himself, one of the acidly satirical tunes he had sung in the Dmitri tavern before the initial Harkonnen attack:

 

Rabban, Rabban, the blustering brute,

No brain in his head but rotten fruit.

His muscles, his brawn

Make a thinking man yawn.

Without the Baron, he's destitute!

 

Gurney couldn't help smiling, but kept his face turned away from the work supervisor.  It wouldn't do to let the man notice any amusement in a slave's expression.

 

He couldn't wait to see the lumbering bully face-to-face.

 

 

WHEN RABBAN AND HIS ESCORT ARRIVED, they carried so many weapons Gurney had to restrain a chuckle.  What was he afraid of?  A bunch of work-weakened prisoners who had been battered into submission for years?

 

The guards had activated the cores of the cuffs so that razor-edged shigawire dug into his wrists, reminding him that a sharp jerk could slice all the way to the bone.  The enhanced restraints were meant to keep the prisoners cooperative, perhaps even respectful, in front of Rabban.

 

The ancient man bound to Gurney had such angular joints that he had an insectlike appearance.  His hair had fallen out in patches, and he jittered with a neurological disorder.  He had no comprehension of what was going on around him, and Gurney pitied the fellow, wondering whether this might be his own fate one day . . . if he lived that long.

 

Rabban wore a black-leather uniform, padded to emphasize his muscular physique and broad shoulders.  A blue Harkonnen griffin adorned his left breast.  His black boots were polished to a high gloss, his thick belt studded with ornamental brass.  Rabban's broad face had a ruddy appearance, as if it had been sunburned too often, and he wore a black military helmet that gleamed in the hazy sunlight.  Holstered at his hip was a shining flechette pistol accompanied by packs of spare needle cartridges.

 

A nasty inkvine whip hung at his waist; no doubt Rabban would look for any opportunity to use it.  Blackish-red fluid inside the long-dead stem flowed like still-living blood, causing the spiked strands to twist and curl in reflex.  Its juice -- a poisonous substance that had commercial properties for coloring and dyeing -- could cause a great deal of pain.

 

Rabban gave no droning speeches in front of the slaves.  It wasn't his job to inspire them, merely to terrify the supervisors to squeeze out more productivity.  He had already seen the slave-pit operations, and now he moved up and down the line of prisoners, offering no encouragement.

 

The work manager followed, jabbering in a voice made thinner by the odor-filters jammed into his nostrils.  "We've done everything possible to increase efficiency, Lord Rabban.  We're feeding them a bare minimum of nourishment to keep them functioning at peak performance.  Their clothing is inexpensive but durable.  It lasts for years, and we can reuse it when prisoners die."

 

Rabban's stony face showed no pleasure whatsoever.

 

"We could install machinery," the work supervisor suggested, "to do some of the menial tasks.  That would improve our output --"

 

The beefy man glared.  "Our objective is not merely to improve production.  Destroying these men is every bit as important."  He glared at them all from a position close to Gurney and the jittering, spidery old man.  Rabban's close-set eyes locked on to the pathetic prisoner.

 

In one fluid motion he drew the flechette pistol and fired a round point-blank at the old man.  The prisoner barely had time to raise his arms in a warding gesture; the spray of silvery-needle projectiles chopped through his wrists and plunged through his heart, dropping him dead before he could even squawk.

 

"Frail people are a drain on our resources."  Rabban took a step away.

 

Gurney didn't have time to think or plan, but saw in an impulsive instant what he could do to strike back.  Jamming a wad of the dead prisoner's durable tunic around his own wrists to keep the wire from cutting the skin, Gurney stood up with a roar, yanking with all his might.  The rag-muffled shigawire dug and cut against his padded wrists and sliced the rest of the way through the mangled, nearly severed wrists of the dead man.

 

Using one of the dead prisoner's detached hands like a handle, he lunged toward an astonished Rabban, gripping the shigawire like a razor-fine garrote.  Before Gurney could slice open the burly man's jugular, Rabban moved with surprising speed.  Gurney overbalanced and succeeded only in knocking the flechette pistol out of the other man's hand.

 

The work supervisor shrieked and backed away.  Rabban, seeing his pistol gone, lashed out with his inkvine whip, striking Gurney across the face on his cheek and jaw, barely missing his eye with one of the thorny strands.

 

Gurney had never imagined a whip could hurt so much, but as the blazing cuts registered on his nerves, the inkvine juice seared like potent acid.  His head exploded in a nova of pain that tunneled through his skull and into the core of his mind.  He dropped the old man's still-bleeding hand, letting it dangle from the shigawire bond on one of his own wrists.

 

Gurney toppled backward.  The nearby guards rushed in; his fellow prisoners shrank away in terror, clearing a wide area.  The guards closed in to kill Gurney, but Rabban held up a broad hand for them to stop.

 

Writhing, Gurney felt only the inkvine pain in his cheek and neck while Rabban's face burned into his vision.  He might be slain soon -- but for now, at least, he could hold on to his hatred for this . . . this Harkonnen.

 

"Who is this man?  Why is he here, and why did he attack me?"  Rabban glared at the work supervisor, who cleared his throat.

 

"I . . . I'd have to check our records, my Lord."

 

"Then check the records.  Find out where he came from."  Rabban fashioned a thick-lipped smile.  "And see if he has any family left alive."

 

Gurney summoned to mind the insipid words of his sarcastic song:

 

Rabban, Rabban, the blustering brute . . .

 

But as he looked up into the broad, ugly face of the Baron's nephew, he realized that Glossu Rabban would have the last laugh after all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What is each man but a memory for those who follow?

 

-DUKE LETO ATREIDES

 

 

ONE EVENING, Duke Leto and his concubine had been shouting at one another for more than an hour, and Thufir Hawat was troubled.  He stood in the ducal wing, just down the hall from the closed door of Leto's bedroom.  If either of them emerged, Hawat could slip down one of the side passageways that honeycombed the Castle.  No one knew the back corridors and secret ways better than the Mentat.

 

Something crashed in the bedroom.  Kailea's voice rose over the Duke's deeper, equally furious tones.  Hawat didn't hear everything they said . . . nor did he need to.  As Security Commander, he was responsible for the Duke's personal well-being.  He didn't want to intrude, but in the present atmosphere his primary concern was the potential for violence between Leto and his concubine.

 

The Duke shouted, exasperated, "I don't intend to spend my life arguing with you about what cannot be changed."

 

"Then why don't you just have Victor and me killed?  That would be your best solution.  Or send us away to a place where you don't have to think about us -- like you did to your mother."

 

Hawat couldn't hear Leto's response, but he understood all too well why the young Duke had banished Lady Helena.

 

"You're no longer the man I fell in love with, Leto," Kailea continued.  "It's Jessica, isn't it?  Has the witch seduced you yet?"

 

"Don't be ridiculous.  In the year and a half she's been with us I've never visited her bed once -- though I have every right to do so."

 

Several moments of silence ensued.  The Mentat waited in a state of tension.

 

Kailea finally said with a sarcastic sigh, "Same old refrain.  Keeping Jessica here is just politics.  Refusing to marry me is just politics.  Hiding your involvement with Rhombur and the rebels on Ix is just politics.  I'm sick of your politics.  You're as much a schemer as any in the Imperium."

 

"I'm not a schemer.  It's my enemies who plot against me."

 

"The words of a true paranoid.  Now I understand why you haven't married me and made Victor your rightful heir.  It's a Harkonnen plot."

 

Leto's reasonable tones slipped into open rage.  "I never promised you marriage, Kailea, but for your sake I never even took another concubine."

 

"What does it matter, if I'm never to be your wife?"  Choking laughter punctuated the scorn in Kailea's words.  "Your 'faithfulness' is one more show you put on to appear honorable -- just politics."

 

Leto sucked in a sharp breath, as if the words had been a physical blow.  "Perhaps you're right," he agreed in a voice as icy as a Lankiveil winter.  "Why did I bother?"  The bedroom door slammed open, and Hawat melted into the shadows.  "I am neither your pet, nor a fool, Kailea -- I am the Duke."

 

Leto strode down the hallway, muttering and cursing.  Behind the partially open door, Kailea began sobbing.  Soon she would call Chiara, and the plump old woman would comfort her through the long night.

 

Remaining out of sight, Hawat followed his Duke down one corridor and then another -- until Leto stepped boldly into Jessica's apartment without knocking.

 

 

INSTANTLY ALERT FROM her Bene Gesserit training, Jessica summoned light from a blue glowglobe.  The shadowy cocoon retreated around her.

 

Duke Leto!

 

Sitting up in the four-poster bed that had long ago belonged to Helena Atreides, she made no attempt to cover herself.  She wore a pink nightgown of slick merh-silk, cut low.  A faint scent of lavender hung in the air from a pheromone emitter cleverly concealed at the ceiling joint.  This night, as always, she had prepared carefully . . . in the hope that he would come to her.

 

"My Lord?"  She saw his troubled, angry expression as he stepped into the light.  "Is everything all right?"

 

Leto's gray gaze darted around, and he breathed deeply, trying to control the adrenaline, the uncertainty, the determination that warred within him.  Beads of perspiration covered his brow.  His black Atreides jacket hung askew, as if he had tugged it hurriedly over his shoulders.

 

"I am here for all the wrong reasons," he said.

 

Jessica slid out of bed and draped a green robe over her shoulders.  "Then I must accept those reasons and be grateful for them.  May I get you anything?  How can I help you most?"  Though she had waited so many months for him, she felt little triumph -- only concern at seeing him so distressed.

 

The tall, hawk-featured man removed his jacket and sat on the edge of the bed.  "I'm in no condition to present myself to a Lady."

 

Moving close to him, she massaged his shoulders.  "You are the Duke, and this is your Castle.  You may present yourself in any manner you please."  Jessica touched his dark hair, and ran her fingers sensually along his temples.

 

As if imagining a dream, he closed his eyes, then snapped them open again.  She drew her finger down his cheek and placed it against his lips to silence any words.  Her green eyes danced.  "Your condition is perfectly acceptable to me, my Lord."

 

When she loosened the clasps on his shirt, he sighed and allowed her to nudge him toward the bed.  Mentally and physically exhausted, torn by his own guilt, he lay face-down on the rich coverings that smelled of rose petals and coriander.  He seemed to sink into the soft, pliant sheets, and allowed himself to drift away.

 

Her delicate hands slid across his bare skin, and she worked her fingers into the tight muscles of his back, as if she had done this for him a thousand times before.  To Jessica, it felt as if this moment in eternity had always been meant to be, that Leto was destined to be here, with her.

 

At last, he rolled over to face her.  When their eyes met, Jessica saw fire there again, except it did not smolder with anger this time.  Nor did it fade.  He took her in his arms and pressed his lips to hers in a long, passionate kiss.

 

"I'm glad you are here, my Duke," she said, remembering all the methods of seduction the Sisterhood had taught her, but with the realization that she genuinely cared about him, that she meant what she was saying.

 

"I shouldn't have waited so long, Jessica," he said.

 

 

AS KAILEA WEPT, she felt more anger at her own failure than sorrow at feeling Leto slip through her fingers.  He had disappointed her so much -- Chiara had reminded her again and again of her own worth, her noble birthright, the future she deserved.  Kailea despaired that these hopes were gone forever.

 

House Vernius was not entirely dead, and its survival might very well depend on her.  She was stronger than her brother, whose support of the rebels was little more than a pipe dream.  Deep inside she felt a steely will:  House Vernius would only survive through her efforts, and ultimately through the bloodline of her son Victor.

 

She was determined to gain royal status for him.  All of her love, all of her dreams, rested on the boy's fortunes.

 

Finally, far into the lonely night, she fell into a fitful sleep.

 

 

IN ENSUING WEEKS, Duke Leto sought Jessica more and more often, and he began to consider her his concubine.  Sometimes he came into her room without a word and made love to her with feral intensity.  Then, sated, he would hold her for hours and talk.

 

Using Bene Gesserit skills, Jessica had studied him for sixteen months, educating herself in the concerns of Caladan.  She knew the daily difficulties Leto Atreides faced in running an entire planet, managing the affairs of a Great House, attending to Landsraad matters, keeping pace with the political and diplomatic machinations in the Imperium.

 

Jessica knew exactly what to say, precisely how to advise him without pushing. . . .  Gradually, he came to see her as more than just a lover.

 

She tried not to think of Kailea Vernius as her rival, but the other woman had been wrong to push this proud nobleman too hard, trying to bend him to her will.  Duke Leto Atreides was not a man to be forced into anything.

 

He sometimes spoke of his hardening feelings toward Kailea as he and Jessica went for long walks along the cliffside path.  "You are within your rights, my Lord."  The young woman's tone was soft, like a summer breeze over a Caladan sea.  "But she seems so sad.  I wish something could be done for her.  She and I might have become friends."

 

He looked at her with a perplexed, expression as the wind blew his dark hair.  "You're so much better than she is, Jessica.  Kailea feels only venom toward you."

 

She had seen the Ixian woman's deep pain, the tears she tried to conceal, the dagger glares she hurled at Jessica.  "Your point of view can be distorted by circumstance.  Since the fall of House Vernius, she's had a difficult life."

 

"And I made it better for her.  I risked my own family fortune to keep her and Rhombur safe when their House went renegade.  I've shown her every consideration, but she always wants more."

 

"You once felt affection for her," Jessica said.  "She bore your child."

 

He smiled warmly.  "Victor.. . ah, that boy has made every moment with his mother worthwhile."  For several minutes he gazed out to sea, without saying anything.  "You are wise beyond your years, Jessica.  Maybe I will try one more time."

 

She didn't know what had come over her, and regretted sending him back to Kailea.  Mohiam would have chastised her for that.  But how could she not encourage him to think kindly about the mother of his son, a woman he had loved?  Despite her Bene Gesserit training, which required keeping a tight rein on one's passions, Jessica found herself becoming deeply attached.  Perhaps too deeply.

 

But she had another attachment as well, one going back much longer in her lifetime.  With her Bene Gesserit reproductive skills, she could have manipulated Leto's sperm and her eggs during their very first night together, thus conceiving the daughter her superiors had instructed her to produce.  Why, then, hadn't she done as she'd been commanded?  Why was she delaying?

 

Jessica felt an inner turmoil over this issue, that forces within her were warring for control.  Clearly the Bene Gesserit were on one side, a whispering presence insisting that she fulfill her obligations, her vows.  But what opposed them?  It wasn't Leto himself.  No, it was something much larger and more significant than the love of two people in a vast universe.

 

But she had no idea what it might be.

 

 

THE NEXT DAY, Leto visited Kailea in the tower apartments where she spent most of her time, widening the gulf between them.  As he entered, she turned toward him, ready to flare with anger, but he sank down beside her on a settee.  "I'm sorry we see things so differently, Kailea."  He took her hands firmly in his.  "I cannot change my mind about marriage, but that doesn't mean I don't care for you."

 

She pulled away, instantly suspicious.  "What's the matter?  Did Jessica turn you out of her bed?"

 

"Not at all."  Leto considered telling Kailea what the other woman had said to him, but reconsidered.  If she thought Jessica was behind anything, she wouldn't accept it.  "I have arranged to send a gift to you, Kailea."

 

Despite herself, she brightened; it had been a long time since Leto had brought her expensive baubles.  "What is it?  Jewelry?"  She reached for the pocket of his jacket, where he used to hide rings, brooches, bracelets, and necklaces for her; in earlier days, he had made her search his clothes for new baubles, a game that often turned into foreplay.

 

"Not this time," Leto said with a bittersweet smile.  "You are accustomed to a family home much more elegant than my austere Castle.  Do you remember the ballroom in the Grand Palais on Ix, with its indigo walls?"

 

Kailea looked at him, puzzled.  "Yes, rare blue obsidian -- I haven't seen anything like it in years."  Her voice grew wistful and distant.  "I remember as a child, being dressed in my ball gown and looking into the translucent walls.  The layers within layers made reflections look like ghosts.  Light from chandeliers gleamed like stars in the galaxy."

 

"I have decided to install a veneer of blue obsidian in the ballroom of Castle Caladan," Leto announced, "and also here in your chambers.  Everyone will know I did it just for you."

 

Kailea didn't know what to think.  "Is this to salve your conscience?" she challenged, daring him to contradict her.  "Do you think it's so easy?"

 

He shook his head slowly.  "I have gone beyond anger, Kailea, and feel only affection for you.  Your blue obsidian has already been ordered from a Hagal merchant, though it will take a few months to arrive."

 

He went to the door, paused.  She remained silent, then finally drew in a long breath as if it required a great effort for her to speak.

 

"Thank you," she said, as he left.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A man may fight the greatest enemy, take the longest journey, survive the most grievous wound -- and still be helpless in the hands of the woman he loves.

 

-Zensunni Wisdom from the Wandering

 

 

BREATHLESS WITH ANTICIPATION, Liet-Kynes forced himself to move methodically, to make no errors.  Though excited about racing for Faroula's hand, if he did not prepare properly for the mihna challenge, he could find his death instead of a wife.

 

Heart pounding, he dressed in his stillsuit, fitting it out to retain every drop of moisture, checking all the connections and seals.  He rolled his pack, including extra water and food, and took the time to inventory the items in his Fremkit:  stilltent, paracompass, manual, charts, sandsnorkel, compaction tools, knife, binoculars, repair pack.  Finally, Liet gathered the Maker hooks and thumpers he'd need to summon a worm for the trek across the Great Flat and Habbanya Erg to Habbanya Ridge.

 

The Cave of Birds was an isolated stopping point for Fremen on their travels, for those with no permanent sietch.  Faroula must have departed two days earlier, summoning her own worm as few Fremen women could do.  She would know the cave was empty.  She would be there waiting for Liet, or Warrick -- whoever arrived first.

 

Liet bustled around the room adjacent to his parents' chambers.  His mother heard the frantic movements even at such a late hour and moved the hangings aside.  "Why are you preparing for a journey, my son?"

 

He looked at her.  "Mother, I am off to win myself a wife."

 

Frieth smiled, her thin lips turning up on her tanned and weathered face.  "So Faroula has issued the challenge."

 

"Yes -- and I must hurry."

 

Moving with quick, deft fingers, Frieth rechecked the fastenings on his stillsuit and tied the Fremkit to his back as Liet unfolded charts printed on spice paper so that he could review geography known only to the Fremen.  He studied the topography of the desert, the rock outcroppings, the salty basins.  Weather records showed where wind patterns and storms were likely to strike.

 

Warrick had a head start, he knew, but his impetuous friend would not have taken as many precautions.  Warrick would rush into the challenge and trust his Fremen skills.  But unexpected problems took time and resources to resolve, and Liet invested these few additional minutes to save time later.

 

His mother kissed him briefly on the cheek.  "Remember, the desert is neither your friend nor your enemy . . . simply an obstacle.  Use it to your advantage."

 

"Yes, Mother.  Warrick knows that, too."

 

Pardot Kynes was nowhere to be found . . . but then, he rarely was.  Liet could be gone and return again to Red Wall Sietch before the Planetologist even understood the importance of his son's contest.

 

When he emerged from the moisture-sealed sietch doors to stand on the rugged ridge, Liet took in the vista of sweeping sands lit by the rising moons.  He could hear the throbbing beat of a distant thumper.

 

Warrick was already out there.

 

Liet rushed down the steep path toward the open basin, but paused again.  Sandworms had broad, well-defined territories, which they defended fiercely.  Warrick was already calling a great beast, and it would be a long time before Liet could lure a second worm into the same area.

 

Knowing that, he hiked higher instead, crossed the saddle of the ridge, and descended the other side of the mountains, picking his way toward a shallow basin.  Liet hoped he could summon a good Maker there, a better one than his friend obtained.

 

As he climbed down the rugged slope, using hands and feet, Liet studied the landscape ahead and found a long dune that faced the open desert.  That would be a good place to wait.  He planted a thumper downslope and set it working without a delayed timer.  He'd have several minutes to plow through the loose sand up the backface of the dune.  In the darkness, it would be difficult to see the oncoming ripples of wormsign.

 

Listening to the thump, thump, thump of the device, he removed tools from his kit, stretched out the telescoping whiprods and Maker hooks, then strapped the goads to his back.  Always before, when he'd called worms, there had been spotters and helpers, people to assist him should difficulties arise.  But for this challenge, Liet-Kynes had to do everything himself.  He completed each step according to the familiar ritual.  He fastened cleats to his boots, removed the ropes -- and hunkered down to wait.

 

On the other side of the ridge, Warrick would already be mounted and racing across the Great Flat.  Liet hoped he could make up for lost time.  It would take two, perhaps three, days to reach the Cave of Birds . . . and much could happen in that time.

 

He dug his fingertips into the sand and sat absolutely motionless.  The night had no wind, no sounds other than the thumper, until finally he heard the static hiss of moving sand, the rumble of a leviathan deep beneath the dunes attracted by the steady beat of the thumper.  The worm came closer and closer, with a crest of sand in front of it.

 

"Shai-Hulud has sent a big Maker," Liet said with a long sigh.

 

The worm circled toward the thumper.  Its huge, segmented back rode high, encrusted with debris; the wide ridges were like canyons.

 

Liet froze in awe before scrambling across the slipping sand, holding Maker hooks in both hands.  Even through his stillsuit nose plugs, he smelled sulfur, burned rock, and the potent, acrid esters of melange that oozed from the worm.

 

He raced along as the beast swallowed the thumper.  Before the worm could bury itself again, Liet lashed out with one of the Maker hooks, securing its glistening end into the leading edge of a ring segment.  With all his strength he pulled, spreading the segment to expose pinkish flesh too tender to touch the abrasive sands.  Then he held on.

 

Avoiding irritation to the stinging wound between its segments, the worm rolled upward and carried Liet with it.  He reached out with his other hand, slapping down a second Maker hook and embedding it deeper along the segment.  He pulled again to widen the gap.

 

The worm rose in a reflex action, flinching from this further annoyance.

 

Normally, additional Fremen riders would open more ring segments, but Liet was alone.  Digging his cleats into the hard flesh of Shai-Hulud, he climbed higher, then planted spreaders to keep the segment open.  The worm rose out of the sand, and Liet tapped with his first goad to turn the worm around and head onto the sprawling plain of the Great Flat.

 

Liet held his ropes, finished planting his hooks, and finally stood to look back at the sinuous arc of the worm.  The Maker was huge!  An air of dignity hung about this one, a sense of great antiquity that went to the very roots of the planet itself.  Never before had he seen such a creature.  He could ride this one for a long time, at great speed.

 

He might yet have a chance of overtaking Warrick. . . .

 

His worm raced across the shifting sands as the two moons rose higher.  Liet studied his course, using the stars and constellations, following the tail of the mouse pattern known as Muad'Dib, "the one who points the way," so that he always knew his direction.

 

He crossed the rippling track of what might have been another great Maker plowing across the Great Flat -- likely Warrick's own worm, since Shai-Hulud rarely traveled on the surface unless provoked.  Liet hoped that luck was on his side.

 

After many hours, the race took on a monotonous familiarity, and drowsiness filled him.  He could doze if he lashed himself to the worm, but Liet didn't dare.  He had to remain awake to guide the leviathan.  If Shai-Hulud strayed from the direct course, Liet would lose time -- and he could no longer afford that.

 

He rode the monster all through the night until the lemon color of dawn tinged the indigo skies, washing away the stars.  He kept an alert eye for Harkonnen patrol 'thopters, though he doubted they would come so far below the sixty-degree line.

 

He rode through the morning until, at the hottest point of the day, the enormous worm trembled, thrashed, and fought every attempt to keep it going.  It was ready to drop from exhaustion.  Liet dared not push it any harder.  Worms could be ridden to death, and that would be a bad omen, indeed.

 

He steered the long, slithering beast toward an archipelago of rock.  Releasing the hooks and spreaders, he sprinted along the ring segments and leaped to safety seconds before the lumbering worm wallowed into the sand.  Liet dashed toward the low rocks, which were the only strip of dark coloration in a monotony of whites, tans, and yellows, a barricade that separated one vast basin from another.

 

He huddled under a camouflaged, heat-reflective blanket and set a timer from his Fremkit to allow himself one full hour of sleep.  Though his instincts and external senses remained alert, he slept deeply, regaining energy.

 

When he awoke, he climbed over the barrier of rocks to the edge of the vast Habbanya Erg.  There Liet planted his second thumper and called another worm -- a much smaller one, but still a formidable creature that would take him farther on his journey.  He rode through the afternoon.

 

Toward dusk, Liet's sharp eyes picked up a faint coloration on the shaded sides of the dunes, a pale, gray-green where tendrils of grass wove their roots to stabilize the shifting sands.  Fremen had placed seeds here, nurtured them.  Even if only one out of a thousand sprouted and lived long enough to reproduce, his father was making progress.  Dune would be green again, one day.

 

During the hypnotic thrumming of the worm's passage, hour after hour, he could hear his father lecturing:  "Anchor the sand, and we take away one of the wind's great weapons.  In some of the climatic belts of this planet, the winds don't top a hundred klicks per hour.  These we call 'minimum-risk spots.'  Plantings on the downwind side will build up the dunes, creating larger barriers and increasing the size of these minimum-risk spots.  In that way, we can achieve another tiny step toward our goal here."

 

Half-asleep, Liet shook his head.  Even here, all alone in this vast wasteland, I can't escape the great man's voice . . . his dreams, his lectures.

 

But Liet had hours left to travel.  He had not seen Warrick yet, knew that there were many routes across the wasteland.  He did not relent or decrease his speed.  Finally, he made out a wavering dark smudge on the far horizon:  Habbanya Ridge, where lay the Cave of Birds.

 

 

WARRICK LEFT HIS LAST WORM BEHIND and sprinted with renewed energy up the rocks, using his hands and temag boots to climb an unmarked trail.  The rocks were greenish-black and ocher-red, baked and weathered by the harsh storms of Arrakis.  Blowing sands had scoured the face of the cliff, leaving pockmarks and crannies.  He couldn't see the cave opening from here -- nor should he be able to, since the Fremen could not risk outside eyes spotting it.

 

He had traveled well and called good worms.  He had never rested, feeling the need to reach Faroula first, to claim her hand . . . but also to outperform his friend Liet.  It would make a good story for their grandchildren.  Already, the Fremen sietches would be talking of the great worm race, how Faroula had issued such an unusual challenge for her ahal.

 

Warrick climbed hand over hand, finding footholds and fingerholds, until he reached a ledge.  Near the camouflaged opening, he found a narrow, scuffed footprint from a woman's boot.  Faroula's, for certain.  No Fremen would have left such a mark accidentally; she had intended to leave that trace.  It was her message that she was there, waiting.

 

Warrick hesitated, drew a deep breath.  It had been a long journey, and he hoped Liet was safe.  His blood-brother might be approaching even now, since tall rocks blocked Warrick's view of the surrounding desert.  He didn't want to lose his friend, not even over this woman.  Fervently, he hoped there would not be a fight.

 

But he still wanted to be first.

 

Warrick stepped inside the Cave of Birds, forming a clear silhouette near the edge of the opening.  Inside the rough rock cavern, the shadows blinded him.  Finally, he heard a woman's voice, silken words sliding along the walls of the cave.

 

"It's about time," Faroula said.  "I've been waiting for you."

 

She didn't say his name, and for a moment Warrick remained motionless.  Then Faroula came to him, elfin-faced, her legs and arms long and lean and muscular.  Her overlarge eyes seemed to bore into him.  She smelled of sweet herbs and potent scents other than melange.  "Welcome Warrick . . . my husband."  Taking his hand, she led him deeper into the cave.

 

Nervous, struggling for the right words, Warrick held his head high and removed the stillsuit plugs from his nostrils while Faroula worked at the fastenings of his boots.  "Here I redeem the pledge thou gavest," he said, using the ritual words of the Fremen marriage ceremony.  "I pour sweet water upon thee in this windless place."

 

Faroula picked up the next phrase. "Naught but life shall prevail between us."

 

Warrick leaned closer. "Thou shalt live in a palace, my love."

 

"Thy enemies shall fall to destruction," she promised him.

 

"Surely well do I know thee."

 

"Truly well."

 

Then they spoke together, in unison.  "We travel this path together, which my love has traced for thee."

 

At the end of the blessing and the prayer, they smiled at one another.  Naib Heinar would perform a formal ceremony when they returned to Red Wall Sietch, but in the sight of God and in their own hearts, Warrick and Faroula had become married.  They stared into each other's eyes for a long time, before withdrawing deeper into the cool darkness of the cave.

 

 

LIET ARRIVED PANTING, his boots skittering pebbles along the path as he climbed to the opening of the cave -- only to stop when he heard movement within, voices.  He hoped it was just that Faroula had brought a companion with her, a maidservant perhaps, or a friend . . . until he recognized the second voice as a man's.

 

Warrick.

 

He heard them complete the wedding prayer, and knew that according to tradition, they were married and she was now his friend's wife.  No matter how much Liet longed for Faroula, despite the wish he had made upon seeing the mysterious white Biyan, she was lost to him now.

 

Silently, he turned and left the ledge to sit in the rock shadows sheltered from the sun.  Warrick was his friend, and he accepted defeat gracefully and privately, but with the deepest sadness he could imagine.  It would take time and strength to get over this.

 

Liet-Kynes waited for an hour, staring across the desert.  Then, without venturing inside the cave, he climbed back down to the sand and summoned a worm to take him home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Political leaders often don't recognize the practical uses of imagination and innovative new ideas until such forms are thrust under their noses by bloody hands.

 

-CROWN PRINCE RAPHAEL CORRINO, Discourses on Galactic Leadership

 

 

AT THE HEIGHLINER CONSTRUCTION SITE in the deep caverns of Ix, glowglobes shed garish shadows and searing reflections along girders.  Beams glimmered through a haze of caustic smoke from burned solder and fused alloys.  Work bosses shouted commands; heavy structural plates slammed together with a din that echoed off the rock walls.

 

The downtrodden laborers worked as little as possible, hindering progress and diminishing Tleilaxu profits.  Even months after the beginning of construction, the old-design Heighliner had not progressed beyond a skeletal framework.

 

In disguise, C'tair had joined the construction crew, welding girders and support trusses to reinforce the cavernous cargo bay.  Today, he needed to be out in the open grotto, where he could see the artificial sky overhead.

 

Where he could watch the latest step in his desperate plan. . . .

 

After the major set of explosions he and Miral had set off two years ago, the Masters had become even more repressive, but the Ixians were immune to further hardships.  Instead, the example of these two resistance fighters gave their people the strength to endure.  Enough "rebels," acting alone or in small groups with sufficient determination, constituted a formidable army -- and it was a fighting force that no amount of repression could stop.

 

Cut off and unaware of the situation inside Ix, Prince Rhombur continued to send explosives and other supplies for the resistance, but only one small additional shipment had found its way to C'tair and Miral.  The Masters opened and inspected every container.  The workers at the port-of-entry canyon had changed, and the ship pilots had been replaced.  All of C'tair's surreptitious contacts were now lost, and he was isolated again.

 

Still, he and Miral had been heartened to see random windows broken, internal cargoes disrupted, and work productivity diminished even further from its already-disgraceful pace.  Just a week before, a man who had no connections to politics, who had never called attention to himself, was caught painting garish letters all along a highly traveled corridor:  DEATH TO TLEILAXU SLIGS!

 

Now C'tair did a graceful catwalk along a cross-girder to reach a floating pad, where he picked up a sonic welder.  He ascended via lift platform to the top framework of the Heighliner and looked down the kilometers-long grotto.  Below him, surveillance pods avoided the framework of the Heighliner and studied labor troops under the cavern lights.  The others on C'tair's construction squad continued their tasks, unaware of what was about to happen.  A welder in coveralls moved closer to C'tair, and with a quick peripheral glance he noted that it was Miral, in her own disguise.  They would see this together.

 

Any moment now.

 

The embedded holoprojectors in the artificial sky flickered; clouds from the Tleilaxu homeworld were dotted with skyscraper islands that protruded downward, glittering with light.  Once, those buildings had appeared to be crystal stalactites; now the fairyland structures looked like old, chipped teeth set into the rock of the Ixian crust.

 

With Miral standing nearby, C'tair squatted on the girder, listening to hammering construction sounds that echoed with tinny reverberations.  He looked up like an ancient wolf staring at the moon.  Waiting.

 

Then the illusory picture of the sky shifted, distorted, and changed color, as if the alien clouds were gathering in a false storm.  The holoprojectors flickered and shifted to project a completely different image, one taken from faraway Caladan.  The close-up of a face filled the sky like a titanic god-head.

 

Rhombur had changed greatly during eighteen years of exile.  He looked much more mature, more regal, with a hard edge to his stare and determination in his deep voice.

 

"I am Prince Rhombur Vernius," the projection boomed, and everyone stared upward, gaping in awe.  His mouth was as large as a Guild frigate, his lips opening and closing to dispense words like commandments from on high.  "I am the rightful ruler of Ix, and I will return to lead you from your suffering."

 

Gasps and cheers erupted from all the Ixians.  From their perch, C'tair and Miral saw Sardaukar moving about in confusion, and Commander Garon shouting to his troops to impose order.  On balconies high above, Tleilaxu Masters emerged, gesturing.  Guards raced back into the administrative buildings.

 

C'tair and Miral enjoyed the moment, allowing themselves an exchange of bright smiles.

 

"We did it," she said, words that were heard only by him in the confusion around them.

 

It had taken the pair weeks to study the systems well enough to hijack the projector controls.  No one had thought to prepare for such a clever sabotage, such a manipulative invasion of their daily environment.

 

In the solitary shipment that got through, Rhombur Vernius had smuggled the recorded message, hoping they could secretly disseminate it to loyal Ixians.  The Prince had suggested talking posters or coded message bursts inside the regular communication systems of the underground city.

 

But the enterprising guerrilla couple had chosen to do something far more memorable.  To Miral's credit, this had been her idea, and C'tair had perfected many of the details.

 

Rhombur's face was wide and squarish, his eyes glittering with a passion any other exiled leader would envy.  His blond hair had just the right ragged edge to give him a noble, yet disheveled, appearance.  The Prince had learned a great deal about statecraft during his years with House Atreides.

 

"You must rise up and overthrow these foul slave masters.  They have no legal right to give you orders or manipulate your daily lives.  You must help me return Ix to its former glory.  Remove this disease called the Bene Tleilax.  Band together and use whatever means necessary to --"

 

Rhombur's words cut off, stuttering, as someone worked the override controls in the main administrative complex, but the Prince's voice crackled through again, insistent.  "-- shall return.  I merely await the proper time.  You are not alone.  My mother was murdered.  My father has vanished from the Imperium.  But my sister and I remain, and I watch Ix.  I intend to --"

 

Rhombur's image twisted and finally faded into static.  A darkness blacker than imaginable night settled on the underground grotto.  The Tleilaxu had chosen to shut down the whole sky rather than let Prince Rhombur complete his speech.

 

But C'tair and Miral continued smiling in the inky shadows.  Rhombur had said enough, and his listeners would imagine a grander rallying cry than anything the exiled Prince could have actually said.

 

Within seconds, white-hot glowglobes burst into luminescence, emergency lights that dazzled like harsh suns inside the cavern.  Alarms sounded, but already the downtrodden Ixians chattered among themselves, inspired.  Now they attributed the explosions to the power of Prince Rhombur.  They had seen the continued disruptive activities, and this projected speech was the grandest gesture of all.  It was true, they thought.  Perhaps Prince Rhombur even walked among them in disguise!  House Vernius would return and drive away the evil Tleilaxu.  Rhombur would bring happiness and prosperity back to Ix.

 

Even the suboids were cheering below.  With bitter wryness C'tair remembered that these dull bioengineered workers had been among those responsible for driving out Earl Vernius.  Their foolish unrest and unwise gullibility in believing Tleilaxu promises had led to the overthrow in the first place.

 

C'tair didn't mind, though.  He would accept any ally who was willing to fight.

 

Sardaukar troops swarmed out, weapons evident, shouting for everyone to return to their dwellings.  Booming loudspeakers declared an immediate crackdown and full martial law.  Rations would be cut in half, work shifts would be increased.  The Tleilaxu had done it all many times before.

 

Following Miral and others, C'tair climbed down from the Heighliner girders to the safety of the cavern floor.  The more the invaders squeezed, the more outraged the Ixians would become, until at last they would reach the eruption point.

 

Commander Cando Garon, the leader of Imperial troops on Ix, shouted through a voice-projector in battle-language.  Sardaukar fired blasts into the air to frighten the laborers.  C'tair moved among his companions on the construction squad, meekly allowing himself to be herded into a holding area.  At random, some would be detained and questioned -- but no one could prove his involvement, or Miral's.  Even if both of them were executed for this, their grand gestures had been worth everything.

 

C'tair and Miral, widely separated in the throng, did as they were told, following the angry orders of Sardaukar guards.  When C'tair heard workers whispering to each other, repeating the words of Rhombur Vernius, his joy and confidence reached its peak.

 

Someday . . . someday soon, Ix would be restored to its people.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Enemies strengthen you; allies weaken.

 

-EMPEROR ELROOD IX, Deathbed Insights

 

 

 

 

 

AFTER HE RECOVERED from the inkvine beating, Gurney Halleck worked for two months with a sluggish sense of inner dread, worse than he had ever experienced in the slave pits.  An ugly scar ran along the side of his jaw, thrashing lines that throbbed a beet-red color and continued to hurt.  Though the actual wound had healed, the toxic residue still pulsed with neural fire, as if an intermittent lightning bolt lay buried within his cheek and jaw.

 

But that was only pain.  Gurney could endure that.  Physical injuries meant very little to him anymore; they had become part of his existence.

 

He was more frightened by the fact that he had been punished so minimally after he'd attacked Glossu Rabban.  The burly Harkonnen had whipped him, and the guards had beaten him afterward so that he'd needed three days in the infirmary . . . but he had experienced much worse for only minor infractions.  What did they really have in mind?

 

He remembered the dull gleam of calculated cruelty in Rabban's close-set eyes.  "Check the records.  Find out where he came from.  And if he has any family left alive."  Gurney feared the worst.

 

With the other slaves he wandered through the days mechanically, hunched over with a growing anticipation and horror in the pit of his stomach.  He worked alternately on the cliffs of Mount Ebony and in the obsidian-processing vats.  Cargo ships landed near the garrison and the slave pits, hauling away containers filled with glowing, sharp-edged volcanic glass to be distributed by House Hagal.

 

One day a pair of guards unceremoniously hauled him from the vats.  He dripped with dark suspension fluids.  Half-clad, splattering oily liquid on the uniformed guards, Gurney stumbled out into the open square where Glossu Rabban had inspected the prisoners, where Gurney had attacked him.

 

Now he saw a low platform on the ground, and in front of it, a single chair.  No chains, no shigawire bindings . . . just the chair.  The sight struck terror into his heart.  He had no idea what might be in store for him.

 

Guards shoved him into the chair, then stepped away.  A doctor from the prison infirmary stood at attention nearby, and a group of Harkonnen soldiers marched into the square.  The other slaves continued working in the pits and tanks, so Gurney knew the impending event was personal . . . a spectacle arranged only for him.

 

That made it infinitely worse.

 

The more Gurney showed his agitation, the more pleasure the guards took in refusing to answer him.  So he fell silent, as the thick processing liquid dried into a crackling film on his skin.

 

The familiar doctor stepped up, holding a small yellow vial with a tiny needle at one end.  Gurney had seen those yellow vials in the infirmary, stored in a transparent case, but he'd never had occasion to receive one.  The doctor slapped the pointed end against the prisoner's neck as if he were crushing a wasp.  Gurney jerked up, throat clenched, muscles straining.

 

Warm numbness spread like hot oil through his body.  His arms and legs grew leaden.  He twitched a few times, then couldn't move at all.  He couldn't turn his neck, couldn't grimace, couldn't blink or even move his eyes.

 

The doctor shifted the chair and twisted Gurney's head as if positioning a mannequin, forcing him to stare at the low platform in front of him.  Gurney suddenly realized what it was.

 

A stage.  And he would be compelled to watch something.

 

From one of the outbuildings Glossu Rabban emerged, fully dressed in his finest uniform and accompanied by the work supervisor, who also wore a dark, clean uniform.  The scrawny, potbellied man had eschewed his nostril filters for the occasion.

 

Rabban stepped in front of Gurney, who wanted nothing more than to leap to his feet and throttle the man.  But he couldn't move.  The paralysis drug held him like a vise, so he simply put as much hatred into his eyes as he could manage.

 

"Prisoner," Rabban said, his thick lips wearing an obscene smile.  "Gurney Halleck of the village Dmitri.  After you attacked me, we took the trouble to find your family.  We've heard from Captain Kryubi about the obnoxious little songs you were singing in the tavern.  Even though no one had seen you in the village for years, they never thought to report your disappearance.  A few of them, before they died under torture, said that they assumed we'd taken you away in the night.  The fools."

 

Gurney felt panicked now, with fluttering dark wings in his mind.  He wanted to demand answers about his tired and unambitious parents . . . but he feared Rabban would tell him anyway.  He could barely breathe.  His chest muscles spasmed, fighting the paralysis.  As his blood boiled and his rage grew, he was unable to draw in more breath.  His head began to buzz from lack of oxygen.

 

"Then all the pieces fell into place.  We learned about how your sister had been assigned to the pleasure houses . . . and you just couldn't accept the natural order of things."  Rabban shrugged his broad shoulders; his fingers strayed meaningfully to his inkvine whip, but did not pull it free.  "Everyone else knows his place on Giedi Prime, but you don't seem to know yours.  So we've decided to provide a reminder, just for you."

 

He gave a theatrically heavy sigh that emphasized his disappointment.  "Unfortunately, my troops were a bit too . . . enthusiastic . . . when they asked your parents to join us here.  I'm afraid your mother and father did not survive the encounter.  However . . ."

 

Rabban raised one hand, and the guards hurried to the supply shack.  Out of his field of view, Gurney heard a scuffle and then a woman's wordless cry, but he could not turn to see.  He knew it was Bheth.

 

For a moment his heart skipped a beat just to know she was still alive.  He'd thought the Harkonnens might have killed her after his capture in the pleasure house.  But now he knew in his soul that they'd only been saving her for something much worse.

 

They dragged her, thrashing and struggling, onto the wooden platform.  She wore only a baggy, torn shirt.  Her flaxen hair was long and wild, her eyes wide with fear, and even more so once she caught sight of her brother.  Again, he saw the white scar on her throat.  They had stolen Bheth's ability to sing or to talk . . . and had destroyed her ability to smile.

 

Their gazes locked.  Bheth couldn't speak.  Paralyzed, Gurney could not say anything to her, or even flinch.

 

"Your sister knows her place," Rabban said.  "In fact, she served us rather well.  I checked through the records to come up with an exact number.  This little girl has provided pleasure to 4,620 of our troops."  Rabban patted Bheth on the shoulder.  She tried to bite him.  He clenched his fingers and tore off the shift she wore.

 

The guards forced her naked onto the platform -- and Gurney couldn't move.  He wanted to shut his eyes, but the paralysis prevented him.  Though he understood what she had been forced to do for the past six years, seeing her nakedness again offended and appalled him.  Her body was bruised, her skin a patchwork of dark colors and thin scars.

 

"Not many women at our pleasure houses last as long as she has," Rabban said.  "This one has a strong will to live, but her time is at an end.  If she could speak, she'd tell us how very happy she is to give this one last service to House Harkonnen -- providing a lesson to you."

 

Gurney strained with all of his might, trying to force his muscles to move.  His heart pounded, and heat pulsed through his body.  But he could not so much as wiggle a finger.

 

The work supervisor went first.  He opened his robes, and Gurney had no recourse but to watch as the potbellied man raped Bheth on the stage.  Then came five of the other guards, performing at Rabban's command.  The broad-shouldered brute observed Gurney as much as he observed the spectacle on the stage.  Inside his mind, Gurney flew into a rage, then wished fervently to be allowed to retreat, to call down black sleep upon himself.  But he didn't have that option.

 

Rabban himself went last, taking the greatest pleasure.  He was forceful and brutal, though by then Bheth had been abused nearly into unconsciousness.  As he finished, Rabban locked his hands around Bheth's neck, around the white scar.  She struggled again, but Rabban twisted her head, forcing her to look over at her brother as he squeezed his hands around her throat.  He thrust once more inside her, viciously, and then the muscles in his arms went tense.  He squeezed harder, and Bheth's eyes bulged.

 

Gurney had no choice but to watch as she died in front of him. . . .

 

Doubly satisfied, Rabban stood, stepped back, and redressed himself in his uniform.  He smiled at both of his victims.  "Leave her body here," he said.  "How long will her brother's paralysis last?"

 

The doctor approached quickly, unmoved by what he had just seen.  "Another hour or two at that small dosage.  Any more of the kirar would have put him into a hibernation trance, and you didn't want that."

 

Rabban shook his head.  "Let's leave him here to stare at her until he can move again.  I want him to consider the error of his ways."

 

Laughing, Rabban departed and the guards followed.  Gurney remained alone in the chair, completely unshackled.  He could not cease staring at the motionless form of Bheth sprawled on the platform.  Blood trickled from her mouth.

 

But even the paralysis that gripped Gurney's body could not prevent the tears that spilled from his eyes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.

 

-Meditations from Bifrost Eyrie, Buddislamic Text

 

 

FOR A YEAR AND A HALF, Abulurd Harkonnen remained a broken man.  He hid his face in shame from the horror of what his son had done.  He accepted the blame and the guilt, but he could not bear to meet the haunted eyes of the good people of Lankiveil.As he had feared, after Rabban's slaughter of Bjondax whales in Tula Fjord, the fishing had gone bad; villages were abandoned as the fishermen and fur whale hunters moved on.  Left exposed to the elements, the wooden settlements remained empty, a string of ghost towns in rocky coves.

 

Abulurd had dismissed his servants, and he and Emmi shut down the main lodge, leaving it like a tombstone to memorialize their once-idyllic way of life.  They departed from the grand old building in hopes that one day the good times would return.  For now, he and his wife lived in their small dacha out on an isolated spit of land that extended into the blood-tainted waters of the fjord.

 

Emmi, who had been so hale and hearty with laughing eyes and a commonsense smile, now seemed old and tired, as if the knowledge of their corrupted son sapped her remaining strength.  She had always been firmly anchored in the world, like a bed'rock, but her foundation had been badly eroded.

 

Glossu Rabban was forty-one years old, an adult responsible for his own horrific actions.  Yet Abulurd and Emmi feared they had done something wrong, that they had not instilled in him the proper sense of honor and love for a ruled people. . . .

 

Rabban had personally led the attack that obliterated Bifrost Eyrie.  Abulurd had watched the man stand by as guards hurled his own grandfather off the cliffs.  By slaughtering the whales in Tula Fjord, he had single-handedly destroyed the economy of the entire coast.  From a CHOAM representative, they'd learned how Rabban delighted in torturing and killing innocent victims in the grim slave pits of Giedi Prime.

 

How can this man be any offspring of mine?

 

During the time spent in their lonely dacha, Emmi and Abulurd tried to conceive another son.  It had been a difficult decision, but he and his wife finally realized that Glossu Rabban was no longer their child.  He had cut himself off forever from their love.  Emmi had made up her mind, and Abulurd could not refuse her.

 

While they could not undo the damage Rabban had caused, they could perhaps have another son, one to be raised right.  Though she was strong and healthy, Emmi was past her prime years, and the Harkonnen bloodline had never spawned a large number of children.

 

Victoria -- the first wife of Dmitri Harkonnen -- had given him only one son, Vladimir.  After a bitter divorce, Dmitri had married the young and beautiful Daphne, but their first child, Marotin, had been severely retarded, a terrible embarrassment who died at the age of twenty-eight.  Daphne's second son, Abulurd, was a bright boy who became his father's favorite.  They had laughed and read and played together.  Dmitri had taught Abulurd about statecraft, reading to him from the historical treatises of Crown Prince Raphael Corrino.

 

Dmitri never spent much time with his eldest child, but his bitter ex-wife Victoria taught her son much.  Though they had the same father, Vladimir and Abulurd could not have been more different.  Unfortunately, Rabban took after the Baron more than his own parents. . . .

 

Following months of self-imposed isolation, Abulurd and Emmi took their boat down the gnarled coast to the nearest village, where they intended to buy fresh fish, vegetables, and supplies that the dacha's stores didn't offer.  They wore homespun shawls and thickly padded tunics without the ceremonial jewelry or fine trimmings of their station.

 

When Abulurd and his wife first walked through the market, he hoped they would be treated as mere villagers, unrecognized.  But the people of Lankiveil knew their leader too well.  They welcomed him with painfully wholehearted greetings.

 

Seeing how the villagers looked at him with understanding, Abulurd realized he'd been wrong to isolate himself.  The natives needed to see him as much as he needed the company of his citizens.  What had happened at Bifrost Eyrie was one of the great tragedies of Lankiveil's history, but Abulurd Harkonnen could not give up hope entirely.  In the hearts of these people, a bright flame continued to burn.  Their welcome did much to fill the emptiness within him. . . .

 

Over the next few months, Emmi spoke to women in the villages; they knew of their governor's desire to have another son, someone who would be raised here and not as a . . . Harkonnen.  Emmi refused to give up hope.

 

A strange chance occurred one week while they shopped, filling their baskets with fresh greens and smoked fish wrapped in salted sheets of kelp.  As they moved along the stalls, chatting with fish vendors and shell carvers, Abulurd noticed an old woman standing at the end of the market.  She wore the pale-blue robes of a Buddislamic monk; gold embroidery on the trim and copper bells at her neck signified that this woman had reached her religion's higher orders of enlightenment, one of the few females to do so.  She stood rigid as a statue, no taller than the other villagers . . . yet somehow the woman's presence made her stand out like a monolith.

 

Emmi stared with her dark eyes, transfixed, and finally stepped forward with hope and wonder on her face.  "We've heard of you."  Abulurd looked at his wife, wondering what she meant.

 

The old monk threw back her hood to reveal a freshly shaved scalp, which was pink and mottled, as if unaccustomed to exposure to the cold; when she furrowed her brow, the parchmentlike skin on her long face wrinkled up like crumpling paper.  But she spoke in a voice that had resonant, hypnotic qualities.  "I know what you desire -- and I know that Buddallah sometimes grants wishes to those He deems worthy."

 

The old woman leaned closer as if her words were a secret to be shared only with them.  The copper bells at her neck jingled faintly.  "Your minds are pure, your consciences clear, and your hearts worthy of such a reward.  You have already suffered much pain."  Her eyes became hard like a bird's.  "But you must want a child badly enough."

 

"We do," Abulurd and Emmi said in such perfect unison that it startled them.  They looked at each other and chuckled nervously.  Emmi grasped her husband's hand.

 

"Yes, I see your sincerity.  An important beginning."  The woman murmured a quick blessing over the two.  Then, as if it were a supernatural nod from Buddallah Himself, the soup of gray clouds thinned, allowing a streak of sunlight to shine down on the village.  The others in the market stared at Abulurd and Emmi with curious, hopeful expressions.

 

The monk reached into her sky-blue robes and withdrew several packets.  She held them up, clutching the edges with the barest tips of her fingers.

 

"Extracts of shellfish," she said.  "Mother-of-pearl ground together with diamond dust, dried herbs that grow only during the summer Solstice up in the snowfields.  These are extremely potent.  Use them well."  She extended three packets to Abulurd and the same to Emmi.  "Brew them into tea and drink deeply before your lovemaking.  But have a care that you do not waste yourselves.  Watch the moons, or look at your charts if the clouds are too thick."

 

The old monk carefully explained the most fortuitous phases of the moon, the times in the monthly cycle best suited for conceiving a child.  Emmi nodded, clutching the packets in her fingers as if they were great treasure.

 

Abulurd felt a wave of skepticism.  He'd heard of folk remedies and superstitious treatments, but the look of delight and hope on his wife's face was so great that he dared not voice any doubts.  He promised himself that for her he would do everything this strange old woman suggested.

 

In an even quieter voice, but without the slightest embarrassment, the withered woman told them in explicit detail of certain enhancement rituals they must perform to heighten their sexual pleasure and to increase the possibility of sperm uniting with a fertile egg.  Emmi and Abulurd listened, and each agreed to do as they had been instructed.

 

Before returning to their boat and leaving the village market behind, Abulurd made certain to pick up a current lunar chart from a vendor.

 

 

IN THE BLACK OF NIGHT at their isolated dacha, they lit the rooms with candles and built a roaring fire in the fireplace so that their home was filled with warm, orange light.  Outside, the wind had died away into deep silence like a held breath.  The water in the fjord was a dark mirror reflecting the clouds above.  The brooding mountains rose sheer from the waterline, their peaks lost in the overcast sky.

 

In the distance, around the curve of the cove, they could make out the silhouette of the main lodge, its windows shuttered, its doors barred.  The rooms would be cold and frosty, the furniture covered, the cupboards empty.  The abandoned villages were quiet, silent memories of bustling times before all the fur whales had gone away.

 

Abulurd and Emmi lay on their honeymoon bed made of amber-gold elacca wood carved with beautiful fern designs.  They wrapped themselves in plush furs and slowly made love with more passionate attention than they had experienced in years.  The bitter taste of the old monk's strange tea lingered in their throats and filled them each with a heathen arousal that made them feel young again.

 

Afterward, as they lay contented in each other's arms, Abulurd listened to the night.  In the distance, quiet but echoing over the still waters and sheer rock walls, he thought he heard the calls of lonely Bjondax whales hovering at the entrance to the cove.

 

Abulurd and Emmi took that as a good omen.

 

 

HER MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam discarded her Buddislamic robes, wrapped up the tiny ornamental bells she had worn at her throat, and packed them all away.  Her scalp itched, but her hair would soon grow back.

 

She removed the contact lenses that disguised the color of her eyes, and the makeup that made her look older, then added lotions to the rough skin on her face to help her recover from the harsh winds and cold of Lankiveil.

 

She had been here for more than a month, collecting data, studying Abulurd Harkonnen and his wife.  One time, when they were in the village following their too-predictable weekly routine, she had slipped north and broken into their dacha, collecting hairs, skin scrapings, discarded nail clippings, anything to help her determine the precise biochemistry of these two.  Such things provided her with all the information she needed.

 

Sisterhood experts had analyzed all the probabilities and determined how to improve the odds of Abulurd Harkonnen having another child, a boy child.  The Kwisatz Haderach breeding program needed these genetics, and the actions of Glossu Rabban proved him too unruly -- not to mention too old -- to be a fitting mate for the daughter Jessica had been commanded to bear by Leto Atreides.  The Bene Gesserit needed another male Harkonnen alternative.

 

She went to the Lankiveil spaceport and waited for the next scheduled shuttle.  For once, unlike her experience with the vile Baron, she was not coercing others to conceive a child they did not wish to have.  Abulurd and his wife desired another son more than anything else, and Mohiam was happy to use the Sisterhood's expertise to manipulate their chances.

 

This new child, Glossu Rabban's younger brother, would have an important destiny ahead of him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The work to which we have set ourselves is the liberating of the imagination, and the harnessing of the imagination to man's physical creativity.

 

-FRIEDRE GINAZ, Philosophy of the Swordmaster

 

 

LATE AFTERNOON on yet another Ginaz island, with stretches of sloping green land, fences of black-lava boulders, and grazing cattle.  Thatch-and-frond huts stood in clearings studded with mounds of pampas grass that waved in the wind; canoes lay on smooth beaches.  Out on the water, the white flecks of sails dotted the lagoons.

 

The fishing boats made Duncan Idaho think fondly of Caladan . . . his home.

 

The remaining students had spent a grueling day of martial-arts instruction, practicing the art of balance.  Trainees fought with short knives while standing amidst sharpened bamboo stakes in the ground.  Two of his classmates had been seriously injured when they'd fallen onto the stakes.  Duncan had sliced open his hand, but he ignored the stinging red gash.  It would heal.

 

"Wounds make better lessons than lectures," the Swordmaster had remarked, without sympathy.

 

Now the students took a break for mail call.  Duncan and his comrades stood around a wooden platform in front of their interim barracks, waiting as Jeh-Wu, one of their first training masters, called out names and distributed message cylinders and nullentropy parcels.  The humidity made Jeh-Wu's long black dreadlocks hang like drooping vines around his iguana-like face.

 

It had been two years since the terrible, rainswept night during which Trin Kronos and the other Grumman students were expelled from the Ginaz School.  According to infrequent news reports reaching the trainees, Emperor Shaddam and the Landsraad had never agreed on the penalties to be assessed against Grumman for kidnapping and murdering members of the Ecazi noble family.  Unrestrained, Viscount Moritani continued his considerable saber rattling, while several other allied Houses began subtle machinations to portray him as the injured party in the quarrel.

 

Increasingly the name of Duke Atreides was mentioned with admiration.  Leto had originally tried to be an intermediary in the conflict, but had now grown unflagging in his support for Archduke Ecaz, and had marshaled agreement among the Great Houses to curb Grumman aggression.  Duncan was proud of his Duke, and wished he knew more about what was going on outside in the galaxy.  He wanted to return to Caladan and stand by Leto's side.

 

In his years on Ginaz, Duncan had grown close to Hiih Resser, the only Grumman who'd had the nerve to condemn his planet's aggression.  House Moritani had severed all ties with Resser for what they considered his betrayal.  Resser's tuition was now paid out of an Imperial hardship fund, since his adoptive father had publicly disowned him at the Viscount's court.

 

Now, as Duncan stood beside the redhead at mail call, it was clear that the young man knew he would receive no off-world messages, not then, not ever again.  "You might be surprised, Hiih. Don't you have an old girlfriend who would write to you?"

 

"After six years?  Not likely."

 

After the expulsion of the Moritani loyalists, Duncan and Resser spent even more of their free time together, playing pyramid chess and reverse poker, or hiking, or swimming in the wild surf.  Duncan had even written to Duke Leto, suggesting that the young Grumman trainee might be a candidate for employment with House Atreides.

 

Resser, like Duncan, had been orphaned before the age of ten.  He'd been adopted by Arsten Resser, one of the principal advisors to Viscount Hundro Moritani.  Resser had never gotten along well with his adoptive father, especially during his rebellious teen years.  Following a family tradition for alternate generations, the redhead had been sent away to Ginaz; Arsten Resser had been convinced the renowned academy would break the spirit of his difficult adoptive son.  Instead, Hiih Resser was thriving and had learned much.

 

Hearing his name called, Duncan stepped forward to accept a heavy package.  "Melange cakes from your mommy?" Jeh-Wu teased.

 

Earlier, Duncan would have flown into a rage and attacked the man for his teasing, ripping out one dreadlock after another like stalks of celery.  Now, he used cutting words instead.  "My mother was killed by Glossu Rabban on Giedi Prime."

 

Jeh-Wu looked suddenly uncomfortable.  Resser put a hand on Duncan's shoulder and pulled him back into the line.  "Something from your home?"  He prodded the package. "You're lucky to have anyone who cares about you."

 

Duncan looked at him.  "I've made Caladan my home, after what the Harkonnens did to me."  He remembered what Leto had said to him, on their last morning at breakfast, when the Duke had given him the marvelous sword:  "Never forget compassion."

 

Impulsively, Duncan extended the parcel, noting the red hawk crest on the wrapping.  "You can have whatever it is.  The food, at least-any holophotos or messages are mine."

 

Resser accepted the parcel with a grin while Jeh-Wu continued to distribute letter cylinders.  "Maybe I'll share it with you, and maybe I won't."

 

"Don't challenge me to a duel, because you'll lose."

 

The other young man muttered good-naturedly, "Sure, sure."

 

The pair sat on a stairway of the interim barracks, looking out at fishing boats in the lagoon.  Resser tore open the wrapping with more enthusiasm than Duncan could have summoned.  Removing one of several sealed containers, he gazed through clearplaz at the orange-colored slices inside.  "What's this?"

 

"Paradan melon!"  Duncan grabbed for the container, but Resser snapped it out of his reach and scrutinized it skeptically.  "You haven't heard of paradan?  Sweetest treat in the Imperium.  My favorite.  If I'd known they were sending me that --"  Resser handed the container back to him, and Duncan opened it.  "Haven't seen any in a year.  They had some crop failures, a plankton bloom that caused shortages."

 

He handed a slice of preserved fruit to Resser, who took a small bite and forced himself to swallow.  "Way too sweet for me."

 

Greedily, Duncan tasted another piece, followed by two more before he closed the container.  To cheer Resser, he found some delicious Cala pastries made of brown pundi rice and molasses, wrapped in spice paper.

 

Finally, he removed three messages from the bottom of the package, handwritten on parchment that bore the seal of House Atreides.  Greetings from Rhombur, encouraging him to keep his hopes up . . . a note from Thufir Hawat expressing how much the Mentat looked forward to having Duncan share his work at Castle Caladan . . . a message from Leto promising to consider Hiih Resser for a position in the Atreides House Guard, if the redhead completed his training satisfactorily.

 

Resser had tears in his eyes when his friend let him read the notes.  He looked away, trying to keep Duncan from seeing.

 

With an arm around his companion's shoulders, Duncan said, "No matter what House Moritani does, you'll still find a place.  Who would dare challenge House Atreides, knowing that we have two Swordmasters?"

 

That night Duncan was so homesick he couldn't sleep, so he took the Old Duke's sword outside the barracks and practiced in the starlight, dueling with imaginary opponents.  It had been such a long time since he'd seen the rolling blue seas of Caladan . . . but he still remembered his chosen home, and how much he owed to House Atreides.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nature has moved inexplicably backward and forward to produce this marvelous, subtle Spice.  One is tempted to suggest that only divine intervention could possibly have produced a substance which in one aspect extends human life and in another opens the inner doors of the psyche to the wonders of Time and Creation.

 

-HIDAR FEN AJIDICA, Laboratory Notes on the Nature of Melange

 

 

AT THE UNDERGROUND Xuttuh spaceport, research director Hidar Fen Ajidica watched Fenring's shuttle lift off from the canyon wall, a wide rift in the crust of the planet.  Ostensibly a scenic gorge when viewed from above, the fissure provided access to the secure worlds below.  Fenring's craft dwindled to a speck in the cold, blue sky.

 

Good riddance!  He could always hope that the meddling Imperial observer might die in a spacecraft explosion, but unfortunately, again, he reached orbit safely.

 

Ajidica turned back into the tunnels, taking a lift tube down into the deep levels.  He'd had enough fresh air and open sky for one day.

 

The Spice Minister's unannounced inspection visit had consumed two days . . . wasted time, as far as the Master Researcher was concerned.  He was anxious to get back to his long-term artificial spice experiments, which were nearing their final phase.  How am I to accomplish anything with that man breathing down my neck?

 

To make matters worse, a Tleilaxu representative was scheduled to arrive in a week -- now it seemed as if Ajidica's own people didn't trust him.  They took their reports back to the Masters on the sacred home planet, who discussed it in the central kehl, the highest holy council of his people.  More inspections.  More interference.

 

But I have almost achieved my goal. . . .

 

Pursuant to the Master Researcher's precise instructions, his laboratory assistants had prepared an important modification in the new axlotl tanks, the sacred biological receptacles in which counterfeit spice variations were grown.  With those adjustments, he could proceed to the next stage:  actual testing, and then the production of amal.

 

Inside the sealed research pavilion, Hidar Fen Ajidica and his team had been much more successful than he'd dared reveal to the weasel Fenring or even to his own people.  Within another year, two at the most, he expected to solve the elusive riddle.  And then he would activate the plan he'd already set in motion, stealing the secret of amal and putting it to his own uses.

 

By that time, not even the legions of Sardaukar secretly stationed here could stop him.  Before they realized anything, Ajidica would slip away with his prize, destroying the laboratories in his wake.  And keeping the artificial spice for himself.

 

Of course, there were other things that could interfere with Ajidica's grand scheme -- unknowns.  Spies were in operation on Xuttuh; the Sardaukar and Ajidica's own security force had located and executed more than a dozen from the various Houses Major.  But there had been rumors of a covert Bene Gesserit woman at work here, too.  He wished those witches would mind their own business.

 

On the railcar ride back to his high-security facility, the Master Researcher popped a red lozenge into his mouth and chewed it.  The medication, which treated his phobia of being underground, tasted like rotten slig meat from a fouled tank.  He wondered why pharmacists couldn't formulate drugs that tasted better.  Surely it was only a matter of additives?

 

Ahead, the research pavilion was comprised of fifteen white buildings connected by overpasses, conveyors, and track systems, all surrounded by powerful defense mechanisms and reinforced one-way windows.  Sardaukar troops protected the complex.

 

Ajidica had adapted Tleilaxu genetic science to the advanced manufacturing facilities left behind when House Vernius had been driven away.  The victors had commandeered stockpiles of raw materials and, through intermediaries, obtained additional resources off-world.  In exchange for their lives, a number of Ixian factory managers and scientists had aided in this process.

 

The railcar came to a smooth stop at the pavilion walls.  After working his way through cumbersome security procedures, Ajidica stepped onto a clean white platform.  From there he took a lift tube to the largest, scan-muffled section, where new "candidates" were fitted to modified axlotl tanks.  Every Ixian survivor wanted to know what occurred inside the secret facility, but no one had any evidence.  Only suspicions, and mounting fears.

 

In the research pavilion, Ajidica had the most advanced fabrication facility in the Imperium, including elaborate materials-handling systems for transporting samples.  The experimental nature of Project Amal required a broad spectrum of chemicals and specimens and the disposal of large quantities of toxic waste, all of which he was able to do with unparalleled efficiency.  He'd never had access to anything so advanced on Tleilax itself.

 

Ajidica passed through a biosecurity doorway, entered an immense room where workers were finishing the rough connections in the floor, preparing for the new, still-living axlotl tanks that would be brought in.

 

My tests must continue.  When I have learned the secret, I will control the spice, and I can destroy all of those devils who depend on it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Freedom is an elusive concept.  Some men hold themselves prisoner even when they have the power to do as they please and go where they choose, while others are free in their hearts, even as shackles restrain them.

 

-Zensunni Wisdom from the Wandering

 

 

INTENTIONALLY, Gurney Halleck broke the stirring equipment in the obsidian-processing vat, which caused a rupture in the container.  Polishing liquid gushed all over the already-mucky ground.  He stood back and braced himself for the punishment he knew would come.

 

The first step in his cold, desperate escape plan.

 

Predictably, the guards rushed forward, raising their spark-clubs and gauntleted fists.  In the two months since Bheth's murder, the Harkonnens were sure they'd snuffed out any candle of resistance in this blond-haired man.  Why they didn't simply kill him, Gurney wasn't sure.  Not because they admired his spirit, or because he was so tough.  Instead, they probably got a sadistic pleasure from tormenting him and letting him come back for more.

 

Now he needed to be injured severely enough to require medical attention.  He wanted the guards to hurt him worse than usual, breaking a few ribs perhaps.  Then the medics would treat him in the infirmary and ignore him as he healed.  That was when Gurney would make his move.

 

He fought back when the guards attacked, flailing and clawing at them.  Other prisoners would have surrendered meekly -- but if Gurney hadn't struggled, they would have been suspicious.  So he resisted fiercely and, of course, the guards won.  They punched and kicked him and hammered his skull against the ground.

 

Pain and blackness swam up around him with a nauseating thickness, but the guards, filled with adrenaline now, did not relent.  He felt bones crack.  He coughed blood.

 

As Gurney fell into oblivion, he feared that he'd gone too far, that they might actually kill him this time. . . .

 

 

FOR DAYS, the workers in the slave pits had been loading a shipment of blue obsidian.  The fenced-off cargo hauler lay waiting on the landing field, its hull plates ion-scarred from many trips up to orbit and back.  Guards watched the shipment, but without much attention.  No man came to the heart of a slave pit willingly, and as far as the guards were concerned no treasure in the universe would tempt even the greediest of thieves.

 

This large order had been commissioned through Hagal merchants by Duke Leto Atreides.  Even Gurney knew that the Atreides had been generations-long adversaries of House Harkonnen.  Rabban and the Baron took a smug delight in knowing that they were selling such an expensive shipment to their greatest adversary.

 

Gurney cared only that the cargo was due to leave soon . . . and that he meant to follow it far away from the slave pits.

 

When he finally swam back out of his agony-filled stupor, he found himself in an infirmary bed.  The sheets were stained from previous patients.  The doctors wasted little effort to keep the slaves alive; it simply wasn't cost-effective.  If the injured prisoners could be healed with a minimum of time and attention, then they would be sent back to work.  If they died . . . Harkonnen sweeps would pick up replacements.

 

As full awareness returned, Gurney lay motionless, careful not to moan or call attention to himself.  On an adjacent cot, a man writhed in pain.  Through slitted eyes, Gurney saw that the bandaged stump of the man's right arm was soaked with blood.  He wondered why the doctors had bothered.  As soon as the potbellied work supervisor saw the maimed slave, he would order his termination.

 

The man cried out, either from horrible pain or an awareness of his fate.  Two medical techs held him down and injected him with a hissing spray -- no mere tranquilizer.  Within moments he gurgled and fell silent.  Half an hour later, uniformed men hauled the body away, humming a rhythmic marching tune as if they did this all day long.

 

A doctor loomed over Gurney, checking him, poking; though he made appropriate moans and weak mewling sounds, he did not stir from feigned unconsciousness.  The doctor snorted and shuffled away.  Over the years, the medical techs had already spent far too much time tending Gurney Halleck's repeated injuries, as far as they were concerned.

 

When the lights went out in the slave-pit complex for nighttime shutdown, the infirmary droned into a low stupor.  The doctors indulged in their own chemical addictions, semuta or other drugs from the pharmacy stores.  They made a final perfunctory check of the still-comatose patient.  Gurney groaned, pretending to be trapped in nightmare-wracked sleep.  One doctor hovered over him for a moment with a needle, perhaps a painkiller but more likely a sedative, then shook his head and went away.  Maybe he wanted Gurney to sweat if he woke up in the night. . . .

 

As soon as the medical techs left, Gurney opened his eyes and touched his bandages, assessing his injuries.  He wore only a tattered beige hospital smock, patched and frayed-like his own body.

 

He had numerous bruises and clumsily stitched gashes and cuts. His head ached: a cracked skull or at least a severe concussion.  But even as he'd fought back, Gurney had been careful to protect his limbs.  He could still move.

 

He swung his bare feet off the edge of the bed onto the cold, gritty infirmary floor.  Nausea rose within him, but passed.  When he inhaled deeply, his ribs ached like a fire of broken glass.  But he could live with that.

 

He took several staggering steps across the room.  The techs kept dim glowglobes burning in case of an emergency.  All around, patients snored or whimpered in the night, but no one noticed him.  The inkvine scar along the side of his face throbbed, threatening an encore of terrible pain, but Gurney ignored it.  Not now.

 

Standing in front of the sealed medicine cabinet, he saw a rack containing needle-tipped ampoules of kirar, the drug Rabban had used to make him sit paralyzed and helpless during the prolonged rape and murder of Bheth.  Gurney jiggled the cabinet door, then snapped the latch, trying to minimize the damage so that the doctors wouldn't immediately see what he had done.

 

Not knowing the proper dosage, he grabbed a handful of the yellow ampoules.  Each container was like a wasp made of smooth polymers.  He turned away, paused.  If anyone spotted the broken cabinet and the missing ampoules, they might guess what he had in mind -- so Gurney took handfuls of other potent drugs as well, painkillers and hallucinogens, which he tossed into the medical incinerator, keeping only a few painkillers for himself, just in case he needed them.  The Harkonnens would assume someone had stolen a variety of drugs, not just the kirar.

 

He searched for clothes, found a bloodstained surgical uniform and decided it was better than his hospital gown.  Wincing from the pain of moving his unhealed body, he dressed, then found some energy capsules but no solid food.  He swallowed the oval tablets, not knowing how long he might need them to sustain him.  Crouching low, he jimmied open the infirmary door and slipped out into the darkness, a shadow among shadows.

 

Gurney bypassed the crackling, electricity-laced fences that surrounded the compound, a system designed more for intimidation than for security.  The barriers were easy enough to break through.  Bright glowglobes spread garish pools of light across the pitted landing area, but the globes were tuned and positioned badly, leaving large islands of murky gloom.

 

Flitting from one dark patch to another, Gurney approached the bulky containers that sat unguarded, filled with obsidian.  He worked open a metal hatch that squeaked.  He hesitated, but any delay would only invite more attention, so he thrust himself into the chute.  As quietly as he could, he let the hatch fall back shut.

 

He slid down a rough metal ramp that caught and tore his stolen garment, until he landed on the mounds of chemically treated blue obsidian.  The sides were rough-edged glass, but Gurney didn't care about a few extra cuts and scratches.  Not after all he'd been through.  He took care not to sustain any deep cuts.

 

He wallowed deeper.  Each chunk of obsidian was the size of his fist or larger, but they were ragged and mismatched.  Many pieces came in wide, glossy slabs. This bin was nearly full, and the crews would top it off in the morning with a final load before launching the cargo hauler.  Gurney tried to cover himself enough to avoid being seen.

 

The weight of the volcanic glass pressed down as he shoveled it over the top of his head.  Already, he could barely breathe.  The cuts burned his skin, but he slowly worked his way deeper, pressed into a corner so that at least two sides were solid metal.  He tried to push support pieces around him that would hold some of the load above.  The oppressive weight would only get worse when additional obsidian was poured on top of him, but he would survive somehow . . . and even if he didn't, he could accept his fate.  Dying in an attempt to escape from the Harkonnens was better than living under their boot.

 

When he had managed to slough loose obsidian chunks over the large flat piece above his head, he stopped.  He couldn't see anything, not even the faint blue glow from the activated glass.  Already, breathing was nearly impossible.  He shifted his arm just enough to bring out the yellow ampoules of kirar.  He took a deep breath to fill his lungs.

 

One dose of the paralysis drug had not placed him into a sufficiently deep coma, but three would probably kill him.  Holding them in one hand, he jabbed two ampoules into his thigh at the same time.  The others he kept beside him, in case he needed additional doses en route.

 

Paralysis spread with a rush, a flood crashing through his muscle tissue.  The drug would put him into a hibernation coma, reduce his breathing and his bodily needs to the fringes of death itself.  Maybe, if he was lucky, it would even keep him alive. . . .

 

Though Duke Leto Atreides did not know he had a stowaway in his shipment, Gurney Halleck owed his passage off Giedi Prime to the ruler of Caladan, the enemy of the Harkonnens.

 

If he survived long enough to reach the off-world distribution center on Hagal, Gurney hoped to escape while the blue obsidian was being reloaded for cutting, polishing, and transport.  He would get away and find passage off-planet again if necessary.  After lasting on Giedi Prime for all these years, he doubted any place in the Imperium could be worse.

 

Gurney conjured an image of his unwitting benefactor, the Duke of House Atreides, and felt a smile struggling to form on his face before the hibernation crashed around him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Heaven must be the sound of running water.

 

-Fremen Saying

 

 

LIET-KYNES RETURNED to the antarctic smuggler base three years after he and Warrick had stumbled across it.  Now that he'd lost all hope of winning the woman he loved, he had nothing to lose.  At long last, Liet intended to claim his promised payment from Dominic Vernius.  He would ask the smuggler leader to take him away from Dune, to bring him to another world, far from here.

 

Even before a proud, grinning Warrick had returned from the Cave of Birds with his beautiful new wife, Liet had desperately wanted to do his best to congratulate the couple.  When spotters on the ridge above the sietch had signaled the arrival of a worm bearing two riders, Liet withdrew into his own chambers to meditate and pray.  He loved his blood-brother, and Faroula as well, and he would not harbor any hard feelings or ill will.  The Fremen had a saying, "Every faintly evil thought must be put aside immediately before it takes root."

 

At the moisture-sealed entrance to Red Wall Sietch, he had embraced Warrick, not bothered by the dust and potent odor of spice and sweat from so many hours on the back of a worm.  He noted a sweet sparkle of happiness all around his friend.

 

For her part, Faroula looked content; she greeted Liet formally, as befitted a newly married woman.  Liet smiled at them, but his bittersweet greeting became lost in the flood of congratulations from well-wishers, including the raspy voice of Heinar, Faroula's father and the Naib of the sietch.

 

Rarely had Liet-Kynes traded upon his father's fame, but for the nuptial celebration he had obtained a basket of fresh fruits from the greenhouse cave at Plaster Basin:  oranges, dates, and figs, as well as a cluster of tart li berries, native to Bela Tegeuse.  He'd placed the gift in the empty chamber Warrick and Faroula would share, and it was waiting for them when they retired for the evening.

 

Through it all, Liet-Kynes had come out a stronger man.

 

Over the following months, though, he could not pretend there had been no changes.  His best friend now had other commitments.  He had a wife, and soon -- by the grace of Shai-Hulud -- a family.  Warrick could not spend as much time on commando raids.

 

Even after a full year, the heartache did not diminish.  Liet still wanted Faroula more than any other woman, and he doubted he would marry, now that he had lost her.  If he stayed at Red Wall Sietch any longer, his sadness might turn to bitterness -- and he did not want to feel envy toward his friend.

 

Frieth understood her son's feelings.  "Liet, I can see that you need to leave this place for a time."

 

The young man nodded, thinking of the long trek down to the south polar regions.  "It would be best if I devote myself to . . . to other work."  He volunteered to deliver the next spice bribe to Rondo Tuek, an arduous journey that few others undertook willingly.

 

"It is said that echoes are not only heard by the ears," Frieth said.  "Echoes of memory are heard with the heart."  Smiling, his mother placed a lean hand on his shoulder.  "Go where you must.  I will explain everything to your father."

 

Liet said his farewells to the sietch, to Warrick and Faroula.  The other Fremen could sense his disquiet and his restlessness.  "The son of Umma Kynes wishes to go on a hajj," they said, treating his journey as if it were some holy pilgrimage.  And perhaps it was a kind of vision-quest, a search for inner peace and purpose.  Without Faroula, he needed to find another obsession that would drive him.

 

He had lived in the shadow of Pardot Kynes all his life.  The Planetologist had trained Liet to be his successor, but the young man had never scrutinized his heart to determine if that was a path he wanted to take.

 

Young Fremen men often chose the profession of their fathers, but that was not carved in stone.  The dream of reawakening Dune was a powerful one that inspired -- and required -- intense passions.  Even without his nineteen-year-old son, Umma Kynes had his devoted lieutenants Stilgar, Turok, and Ommun, as well as the secondary leaders.  The dream would not die, no matter what Liet decided.

 

He could be in charge of them someday . . . but only if he threw himself wholeheartedly into the problem.  I will go away and try to understand the purpose that burns in the heart of my father.

 

He had decided to go back to Dominic Vernius.

 

 

WITH THE FREMEN ABILITY to retrace footsteps across rugged or featureless ground, Liet-Kynes stared at the antarctic wilderness.  He had already delivered his cargo of distilled spice essence for surreptitious shipment to Guild agents.  But instead of returning to his sietch, instead of going to inspect the palmaries as was expected of him, Liet headed deeper into the polar regions in search of the smugglers.

 

Presently he stood under the dim, slanting light, trying to pick out any unevenness on the towering glacier wall that would indicate the warren of caves.  He was pleased to see that the smugglers had made all the camouflage modifications he and Warrick had suggested.  Behind the tall line of ice-impregnated rock, he would find a deep chasm, at the bottom of which lay Dominic's smuggler ships.

 

He strode toward the base of the cliff.  His hands were numb, and his cheeks burned from the cold.  Since he did not know how to enter the base, he searched for a passage and hoped the refugees would see him and take him inside -- but no one emerged.

 

Liet spent an hour trying to make himself seen, even shouting and waving his arms, until finally a small opening cracked beside him and several glaring men came out, pointing lasguns.

 

Calmly, young Liet-Kynes raised his chin in the air.  "I see you're as vigilant as ever," he said sarcastically.  "It looks like you need my help more than I had anticipated."  As the men continued to hold their weapons on him, Liet frowned and then pointed to one pock-faced man with a missing eyebrow and another old veteran with a shock of bristly gray-white hair.  "Johdam, Asuyo -- do you not recognize me?  I am older and taller, with a bit of a beard, but not so different than I was."

 

"All Fremen look alike," pock-scarred Johdam growled.

 

"Then all smugglers have bad eyesight.  I am here to see Dominic Vernius."  Now they either had to kill him for his knowledge or take him inside.  Liet marched into the tunnels, and the smugglers sealed the entrance behind him.

 

As they passed the observation wall inside the cliff stronghold, he looked down into the chasm that sheltered their landing field.  Groups of men scurried like rock ants, loading supplies into the ships.

 

"You're preparing for an expedition," Liet said.

 

Both veterans gave him stony looks.  Asuyo, with his gray-white hair even bristlier than before, puffed his chest to display a few new cobbled-together medals and rank insignia he had added to his jumpsuit . . . but no one seemed impressed but him.  Johdam continued to look bitter and skeptical, as if he had lost much already and expected to lose the rest soon.

 

They took a powered lift down to the base of the crevasse, and walked out into the gravel-packed basin.  Liet recognized the towering figure of Dominic Vernius, his shaved scalp gleaming in the dim polar light.  The smuggler leader saw the visitor's stillsuit and immediately recognized him.  He waved a broad hand and strode over.

 

"So, lad, are you lost again?  Did you have a harder time finding our place, now that we have hidden ourselves better?"

 

"It was harder to get your men to notice me," Liet said.  "Your sentries must be sleeping."

 

Dominic laughed.  "My sentries are busy loading ships.  We have a Heighliner to catch, docking space already reserved and paid for.  What can I do for you?  We are in somewhat of a hurry at the moment."

 

Liet drew in a deep breath.  "You promised me a favor.  I have come to make my request of you."

 

Though he was taken aback, Dominic's eyes twinkled.  "Very well.  Most people awaiting a payment don't take three years to make up their minds."

 

"I have many skills, and I can be a valuable member of your team," Liet said.  "Take me with you."

 

Dominic looked startled, then grinned.  He clapped Liet on the shoulder with a blow hard enough to fell a herd beast.  "Step aboard my flagship, and we'll talk about it."  He gestured up the ramp of a reentry-scarred frigate.

 

Dominic had strewn rugs and possessions around his private cabin to make the place look like home.  The renegade Earl gestured for Liet to take a seat in one of the suspensor chairs.  The fabric cushion was worn and stained, as if it had seen decades of hard use, but Liet didn't mind.  Off to one side of Dominic's writing desk shimmered a solido holophoto of a beautiful woman.

 

"Make your case, lad."

 

"You said you could use a Fremen to tighten up security at your Salusa Secundus base."

 

Dominic's smooth forehead wrinkled.  "A Fremen would be a welcome addition."  He turned toward the image of the beautiful woman, which shimmered as if smiling at him no matter where he moved.  "What do you think, Shando, my love?  Shall we let the lad take a trip with us?"

 

Dominic stared at the holo as if expecting an answer.  An eerie feeling crept down Liet's spine.  Then the Ixian Earl turned back to him, smiling.  "Of course we will.  I made a bargain, and your request is perfectly reasonable . . . although one might question your sanity."  Dominic scratched a droplet of sweat at his temple.  "Anyone who wants to go to the Emperor's prison planet obviously needs a little more happiness in his life."

 

Liet pressed his lips together, but didn't provide details.  "I have my reasons."  Dominic didn't push the matter.

 

Years ago, his father had been deeply affected by what he saw on Salusa Secundus, by the planetary scars that remained even centuries after the holocaust.  On a quest to understand his own motivations, to set the course for his life, Liet needed to go there, too.  Perhaps if he spent time on Salusa among the rugged rocks and unhealed wounds, he could understand what had sparked his father's lifelong interest in ecology.

 

The big smuggler clasped Liet's hand in a brisk handshake.  "Very well, that's done with.  What was your name again?"

 

"To outsiders, I am known as Weichih."

 

"All right, Weichih, if you are to be a member of our team, you'll have to do your share of the work."  Dominic led him out of the captain's quarters to the ramp, and then outside.

 

Around them, smugglers sweated and grunted, out of breath.  "Before the day is out, we take off for Salusa Secundus."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Look inside yourself and you can see the universe.

 

-Zensunni Aphorism

 

 

ARRAKIS.  Third planet in Canopus system.  A most intriguing place.

 

Guild Navigator D'murr gazed through plaz windows from his chamber, a mere speck inside the huge Heighliner.  Far beneath his vessel, beyond a dirt-brown veil of wind-whipped dust, lay Arrakis, sole source of the melange that enabled him to see along the intricate pathways of the universe.

 

Such pleasure the spice gives me.

 

A tiny shuttle burned upward through the planet's atmosphere from the south pole, broke free, and reached the great ship in orbit.  When the shuttle docked, a surveillance camera showed D'murr a group of passengers disembarking into the Heighliner's atmospheric-controlled community areas.

 

Though many other Spacing Guild workers crewed the vessel, as Navigator, D'murr had to watch all things, at all times.  This was his ship, his home and workplace, his responsibility.

 

Within his sealed chamber, the familiar hiss of orange melange gas was barely audible.  In his grossly deformed body, D'murr could never walk upon the desert planet, could never, in fact, leave the security of his tank.  But just being near Arrakis calmed him in a primal way.  With his higher-order brain he attempted to develop a mathematical analogy for his sensation, but it would not come into clear focus.

 

Before entering Guild service, D'murr Pilru should have done more with his life while he was still human.  But now it was too late.  The Guild had taken him so quickly -- so unexpectedly -- after he'd passed their entrance examination.  There'd been no time for saying proper goodbyes, for wrapping up his human affairs.

 

Human.

 

How wide a definition did the word encompass?  The Bene Gesserit had spent generations grappling with that exact question, with all the nuances, the ranges of intellect and emotion, the exalted achievements, the dismal failures.  D'murr's physical form had altered significantly since he joined the Guild . . . but how much did that matter?  Had he and all other Navigators transcended the human condition, to become something altogether different?

 

I am still human.  I am no longer human.  He listened to his own troubled, vacillating thoughts.

 

Through the surveillance transeye, D'murr watched the new passengers, rugged men in dark clothing, walk into the main passenger lounge.  Suspensor-borne travel bags floated behind them.  One of the men, ruddy-featured, with a voluminous mustache and a clean-shaven head, seemed oddly familiar. . . .

 

I still remember things.

 

Dominic Vernius.  Where had he been all these years?

 

The Navigator uttered a command into the glittering speaker globe by his tiny V-mouth.  The screen showed the names of the passengers, but none was familiar.  The exiled Earl Vernius was traveling under an alias, despite the Guild's absolute assurances of confidentiality.

 

He and his companions were bound for Salusa Secundus.

 

A buzzer sounded inside the navigation chamber.  All shuttles were secured in their berths.  Guild crewmen sealed the entry hatches and monitored the Holtzman engines; an army of experts prepared the Heighliner for departure from polar orbit.  D'murr hardly noticed.

 

Instead, he thought of halcyon days on Ix, of the bucolic time he'd spent with his parents and twin brother in the Grand Palais of Earl Vernius.

 

Useless detritus of the mind.

 

As Navigator, he made higher-order calculations and reveled in dimensional mathematics.  He transported Heighliners filled with passengers and cargo across vast distances. . . .

 

Yet suddenly he found himself blocked, distracted, unable to function.  His intricate brain lost focus in the midst of precious equations.  Why had his mind, the remnant of his lost self, insisted on recognizing that man?  An answer surfaced, like a creature emerging from the depths of a dark sea:  Dominic Vernius represented an important part of D'murr Pilru's past.  His human past . . .

 

I want to fold space.

 

Instead, images of bygone Ix rolled across his mind:  scenes of splendor in the Vernius court with his brother C'tair.  Pretty girls in expensive dresses smiling; even the Earl's lovely young daughter.  Kailea.  His brain, large enough to enfold the universe, was a storehouse of all he had been, and all he would become.

 

I have not finished evolving.

 

The faces of the Ixian girls shifted, becoming the glowering countenances of his instructors in Navigation School on Junction.  Their sealed chambers clustered around his, their tiny dark eyes piercing him for his failure.

 

I must fold space!

 

For D'murr this was the ultimate sensual experience, of his mind and body and the multiple dimensions available to him.  He had given himself to the Guild, much as primitive priests and nuns once gave themselves to their God, abstaining from sexual relations.

 

Finally he left the tiny stall-point of human recollection and expanded to encompass the star systems, stretching to reach them and beyond.  As D'murr guided the Heighliner through foldspace, the galaxy became his woman . . . and he made love to her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unceasing warfare gives rise to its own social conditions, which have been similar throughout the ages.  One such condition is a permanent state of alertness to ward off attack.  Another is the rule of the autocrat.

 

-CAMMAR PILRU, Ixian Ambassador in Exile:  Treatise on the Downfall of Unjust Governments

 

 

FOR C'TAIR, the pleasures of his life with Miral Alechem were short-lived.  Following the holoprojection of Rhombur, they had separated for security purposes, finding different bolt-holes in which to live.  They hoped to maximize the odds of at least one of them surviving and continuing their important work.  By prior arrangement, they met regularly for furtive looks and muffled words in the cafeteria in which she worked.

 

On one occasion, however, when he arrived at the appointed time, a different, dull-eyed woman stood at Miral's position in the food-distribution line.  He took his plate of sliced vegetable matter and sat down at the table they usually shared.

 

C'tair watched the line, but Miral did not appear.  Still staring, he ate in concerned silence.  Finally, when he took his empty dishes back to where workers scrubbed them for the next shift, he asked one of the food workers, "Where is the woman who was here three days ago?"

 

"Gone," came the gruff answer.  The older woman with a squarish face frowned.  "Is that your business?"

 

"I meant no offense."  He bowed, taking one step backward.  A Tleilaxu guard looked over, noticed the discussion.  His rodent eyes narrowed, and C'tair moved with careful steps, focused in his demeanor so that he called no further attention to himself.

 

Something had happened to Miral, but he dared not press the issue.  He could ask no one.

 

When the guard walked over and spoke to the old food server, C'tair increased his pace just enough so that he disappeared into a milling crowd, then ducked to a side shaft, descended into the suboid tunnels, and hurried out of sight.  He could feel impending doom pressing around him.

 

Something had gone terribly wrong.  They had captured Miral, and now C'tair was alone again -- without an organized resistance, without someone to cover for him and help in his private rebellion.  Stripped of outside resources, what chance did he have?  Had he been deluding himself all these years?

 

He'd worked alone before, had sheltered his emotions, but now his heart was filled with longing for her.  At times he wished he'd never gotten involved with Miral, because now he worried about her constantly.  But in the quietest hours, when he lay alone in his bed, he was thankful for the moments of love they had shared.

 

He never saw her alive again.

 

 

LIKE ANGRY WASPS PROTECTING A HIVE, the Tleilaxu instituted a brutal crackdown far more repressive than any they had previously enacted.  They executed thousands of workers on mere suspicion, just to heighten their reign of terror.  It soon became clear that the invaders did not care if they exterminated the entire Ixian population.  They could wipe the slate clean, and bring in their own people:  gholas, Face Dancers, whomever they chose.

 

Soon the rebellious Ixian spirit was crushed all over again.  C'tair had not struck a blow for six months.  In a close call, he had escaped from a Sardaukar trap only by surprising them with a handheld needlegun.  Afraid the Tleilaxu might trace his fingerprints or genetic patterns, he had lived in constant fear of arrest.

 

Nothing ever got better.

 

After he'd projected Prince Rhombur's smuggled message, communication with the outside had been blocked off more vigorously than before.  No observers or messages were allowed.  All independent shipping captains and transportation workers were turned away.  He had no way of sending even the briefest message back to Rhombur in exile on Caladan.  Ix became little more than a black box that produced technology for CHOAM customers.  Under Tleilaxu supervision, much of the work was inferior and there had been cancellations, adversely affecting sales revenues.  This was only small consolation to C'tair.

 

Cut off again, he was unable to find allies, unable to steal the equipment he needed.  In his new bolt-hole, only a few components remained, enough that he could perhaps use his rogo transmitter a final time or two.  He would make a desperate request to his ethereal Navigator brother for assistance.

 

If nothing else, C'tair vowed that someone had to know what was happening here.  Miral Alechem had been his only glimmer of friendship or emotional warmth, and she had vanished from his life.  He feared the worst must have happened to her. . . .

 

He had to transmit his message, had to find a listener.  For all his enthusiasm, Rhombur had not been able to do enough.  Perhaps D'murr, with his skills as a Guild Navigator, could locate the long-lost Earl of Ix, Dominic Vernius. . . .

 

C'tair's dirty clothes smelled of sweat and grease.  His body had been too long without rest or decent food.  Hungry, he huddled in the back of an armored storage container that held sealed crates of rejected Ixian chronometers, timepieces that could be programmed to accommodate any planet in the Imperium.  The instruments had been set aside for recalibration, and had gathered dust for years.  The Tleilaxu had no use for frivolous technological toys.

 

Working under the dim light of a fading palmglobe, C'tair reassembled the stored components of his rogo transmitter.  He felt the ice of fear in his bloodstream, not because he was concerned he might be caught by Tleilaxu snoopers, but because he feared the rogo would not function.  It had been a year since he'd tried to use the communications device, and this was his last set of pristine silicate crystal rods.

 

He wiped a drop of sweat from his shaggy hair and inserted the rods into the receptacle.  The battered transmitter had been repaired many times.  With each use, C'tair strained the jury-rigged systems -- as well as his own brain -- to the limit.

 

As youths, he and his twin had shared a perfect rapport, a brotherly connection that had allowed them to complete each other's sentences, to look across the room and know what the other sibling was thinking.  Sometimes his longing to recapture that empathy was almost too strong to bear.

 

Since D'murr became a Navigator, the brothers had grown farther and farther apart.  C'tair had done his best to maintain that fragile thread, and the rogo transmitter allowed the two minds to find a common ground.  But over the years the rogo had faltered, and finally the machine was on the verge of breaking down completely . . . as was C'tair.

 

He slipped in the last rod, set his jaw with determination, and activated the power source.  He hoped the armored walls of the cargo container would prevent any leakage that Tleilaxu scanners could detect.  After setting off his explosive wafers two years ago, he no longer had his scan-shielded chamber.  As a result, his risks grew greater every day.

 

Commander Garon and his Sardaukar were searching for him, and others like him, narrowing the possibilities, getting closer.

 

C'tair placed receptors against his skull, smeared on a dab of gel to improve the contact.  In his mind, he tried to summon a connection with D'murr, seeking the thought patterns that had once been so identical to his own.  Though they still shared a common origin, D'murr was vastly changed . . . to such a degree that the twins were now almost members of different species.

 

He sensed a tickle in his consciousness, and then a startled but sluggish recognition.

 

"D'murr, you must listen to me.  You must hear what I am saying."

 

He felt a receptiveness in the images, and he saw in his mind the face of his brother, dark-haired, large-eyed, a snub nose, with a pleasant smile.  Exactly as C'tair remembered him from their days in the Grand Palais, when they had attended diplomatic functions and both had flirted with Kailea Vernius.

 

But behind the familiar image, the startled C'tair saw a strange and distorted shape, a gross, startling shadow of his brother with an enlarged cranium and stunted limbs, suspended forever in a tank of rich melange gas.

 

C'tair drove the image back and focused again on the human face of his twin, whether or not it was real.

 

"D'murr, this could be the last time we speak."  He wanted to ask his brother for any news of the outside Imperium.  What of their father, Ambassador Pilru, in his exile on Kaitain?  If alive, the Ambassador was still trying to rally support, C'tair theorized, but after so many years it would be a lost, almost pathetic, cause.

 

C'tair had no time for chatting.  He needed to communicate the urgency and desperation of the Ixian people.  All other forms of communication had been cut off -- but D'murr, through his Guild connections, had another outlet, a tenuous thread across the cosmos.

 

Someone must understand how desperate our situation is!

 

Frantically, C'tair talked at length, describing everything the Tleilaxu had done, listing the horrors inflicted by Sardaukar guards and fanatics upon the captive Ixians.

 

"You must help me, D'murr.  Find someone to take up our cause in the Imperium."  Rhombur Vernius already knew the situation, and though the Prince had done what he could with secret Atreides backing, that had not been enough.  "Find Dominic Vernius -- he could be our only chance.  If you remember me, if you remember your human family and friends . . . your people . . . please help us.  You are the only hope we have left."

 

In front of him, only half-seeing with his eyes because his mind was so far away, stretched across the paths of foldspace to his brother, C'tair saw smoke curling from the rogo transmitter.  The silicate crystal rods began to shiver and crack.  "Please, D'murr!"

 

Seconds later, the rods shattered.  Sparks sizzled from cracks in the transmitter, and C'tair tore the connectors from his temples.

 

He jammed a fist into his mouth to cut off a scream of pain.  Tears filled his eyes, squeezed out by the pressure in his brain.  He touched his nose, then his ears, and felt blood leaking from ruptures inside his sinuses.  He sobbed and bit his knuckles hard, but the agony was a long time subsiding.

 

Finally, after hours of dazed pain, he looked at the blackened crystals in his transmitter and wiped the blood from his face.  Sitting up and waiting for the throbbing to fade, he found himself smiling despite his hurt and the damaged rogo.

 

He was sure he had gotten through this time.  The future of Ix depended on what D'murr could do with the information.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beneath a world -- in its rocks, its dirt and sedimentary overlays -- there you find the planet's memory, the complete analog of its existence, its ecological memory.

 

-PARROT KYNES, An Arrakis Primer

 

 

IN TIGHT FORMATION, armored Imperial prison ships dropped out of the Heighliner hold and fell toward the festering planet like an airborne funeral procession.

 

Even from space, Salusa Secundus looked gangrenous, with dark scabs and a filmy cloud layer like a torn shroud.  According to official press releases, new convicts sent to Salusa had a sixty-percent mortality rate in the first Standard Year.

 

After the new cargo of prisoners and supplies had been shuttled down to guarded unloading points, Spacing Guild crewmen held the bay doors open long enough for another battered frigate and two unmarked fast lighters to emerge.  Leaving no record of their passage, Dominic Vernius and his men proceeded to the planet through a gap in the satellite surveillance net.

 

Liet-Kynes sat in a passenger seat of the frigate, fingers pressed to the cool pane of the viewplaz.  His eyes were as wide as those of a Fremen child on his first worm ride.  Salusa Secundus!

 

The sky was a sickly orange, streaked by pallid clouds even in the noon brightness.  Ball lightning bounced across the heavens, as if invisible titans were playing electrical ninepins.

 

Avoiding Imperial detection beacons, Dominic's frigate skimmed across the puckered and cracked wastelands as it headed for its landing area.  They crossed expanses of vitrified rock that sparkled like lakes, but were actually puddles of granite-glass.  Even after so many centuries, only sparse brown grass pried upward through the blasted fields, like the clawed fingers of men buried alive.

 

Between one heartbeat and the next, Liet understood how his father had been so profoundly moved by the unhealed wounds of this forsaken place.  He made a low sound in his throat.  When Dominic turned toward him with a curious expression, Liet explained, "In ancient times the Zensunni people -- the Fremen -- were slaves here for nine generations."  Staring at the blistered landscape, he added in a quiet voice, "Some say you can still see their blood staining the soil and hear their cries carried on the wind."

 

Dominic's broad shoulders sagged.  "Weichih, Salusa has endured more than its share of pain and misery."

 

They approached the outskirts of a once-sprawling city that now looked like an architectural scar.  Stumps of buildings and blackened milk-marble columns lay as detritus of the splendor that once held dominion here.  Off in the scabrous hills, a new wall zigzagged around a portion of reasonably intact structures, the remains of an abandoned city that had survived the holocaust.

 

"That wall was meant to enclose the prison population," Dominic said, "but after it broke down and the prisoners escaped, the functionaries and administrators sealed up the barrier again and lived inside it, where they felt protected."  He coughed out a snorting laugh.  "Once the prisoners realized they were better off in a place where they were at least fed and clothed, they tried to break back in."

 

He shook his shaved head.  "Now, the toughest ones have learned to make their own lives out here.  The others just die.  The Corrinos imported dangerous beasts -- Laza tigers, Salusan bulls, and the like -- to keep the survivors in check.  Convicted criminals are just . . . abandoned here.  No one expects to leave."

 

Liet studied the landscape with a Planetologist's eye, trying to remember everything his father had taught him.  He could smell a sour dampness in the air, even in this desolate place.  "Seems to be enough potential, enough moisture.  There could be ground cover, crops, livestock.  Someone could change this place."

 

"The damned Corrinos won't allow it."  Dominic's face darkened.  "They like it this way, as a suitable punishment for anyone who dares to defy the Imperium.  Once prisoners get here, a cruel game begins.  The Emperor likes to see who toughens up the best, who survives the longest.  In his Palace, members of the Royal Court place bets on renowned prisoners, as to who will survive and who won't."

 

"My father didn't tell me that," Liet said.  "He lived here for years when he was younger."

 

Dominic gave a wan smile, but his eyes remained dark and troubled.  "Whoever your father is, lad, he must not know everything."  The weary exile guided the frigate above the rubble of the outer city, to a broken hangar where the roof had sagged into a spiderweb of rusted girders.  "As the Earl of Ix, I prefer to be underground.  No need to worry about aurora storms down there."

 

"My father also told me about aurora storms."

 

The frigate descended into the dark hole in the hangar -- and kept going down into cavernous warehouse spaces.  "This used to be an Imperial repository, reinforced for long-term storage."  Dominic switched on the ship's running lights, splashing yellow beams into the air.  A settling dust cloud looked like gray rain.

 

The two mismatched lighters swooped in beside the frigate and landed first.  Other smugglers emerged from within the hidden base to lock down the craft.  They unloaded cargo, tools, and supplies.  The pilots of the small ships hurried over to stand by the frigate ramp, waiting for Dominic to emerge.

 

As he followed the bald leader down, Liet sniffed, still feeling naked without stillsuit or nose plugs.  The air smelled dry and burned, tinged with solvents and ozone.  Liet longed for the rough warmth of natural rock, like a comfortable sietch; too many of the walls around him were covered with artificial sheets of metal or plastone, concealing chambers beyond.

 

On a ramp that circled the landing zone, a well-muscled man appeared.  He bounded down a stairway to the ground with a smooth and feral grace, though his body was lumpy and unwieldy-looking.  A startling, beet-red inkvine scar marred his squarish face, and his stringy blond hair hung at an odd angle over his left eye.  He looked like a man who had been broken and then reassembled without instructions.

 

"Gurney Halleck!"  Dominic's voice echoed in the landing chamber.  "Come and meet our new comrade, born and raised among the Fremen."

 

The man grinned wolfishly and came over with startling swiftness.  He extended a broad palm and tried to crush Liet's hand with his grip.  He quoted a passage that Liet recognized from the Orange Catholic Bible, "Greet all those whom you would have as friends, and welcome them with your heart as well as your hand."

 

Liet returned the gesture, speaking a traditional Fremen response in the ancient language of Chakobsa.

 

"Gurney comes to us from Giedi Prime," Dominic said.  "He stowed away on a shipment bound for my old friend Duke Leto Atreides, then switched ships on Hagal, moving through commercial hubs and spaceports, until he fell in with the right comrades."

 

Gurney gave an awkward shrug.  He was sweaty, his clothes disheveled from rigorous sword practice.  "By the hells, I continued to dig myself deeper, hiding in more and more miserable places for half a year before I finally found these thugs . . . at the very bottom."

 

Liet narrowed his eyes suspiciously, ignoring the good-natured banter.  "You come from Giedi Prime?  The Harkonnen world?"  His fingers strayed toward his belt, where he kept his crysknife sheathed.  "I have killed a hundred Harkonnen devils."

 

Gurney detected the movement, but locked gazes with the bearded young Fremen.  "Then you and I will be great friends."

 

 

LATER, WHEN LIET SAT with the smuggler band in the drinking hall of the underground base, he listened to the discussions, the laughter, the gruffly exchanged stories, the boastings and outright lies.

 

They opened expensive bottles of a rare vintage and passed around snifters of the potent amber liquid.  "Imperial brandy, lad," Gurney said, handing a glass to Liet, who had trouble swallowing the thick liqueur.  "Shaddam's private stock, worth ten times its weight in melange."  The scarred man gave him a conspiratorial wink.  "We swapped a shipment from Kirana, took the Emperor's personal goods for ourselves, and replaced them with bottles of skunk-vinegar.  I expect we'll hear about it soon."

 

Dominic Vernius entered the hall, and all the smugglers greeted him.  He had changed into a sleeveless jerkin made of maroon merhsilk lined with black whale fur.  Floating like ghosts near him were several holo-images of his beloved wife, so that he could see her no matter which way he turned.

 

It was warm and comfortable inside the stronghold, but Liet hoped to spend time outside, exploring the Salusan landscape as his father had done.  First, though, Liet had promised to use his Fremen skills to study the hidden base, to help disguise it and protect it from observers -- though he agreed with Dominic that few people would bother to look for a hideout here.

 

No one willingly came to Salusa Secundus.

 

On the wall of his hideout mess hall, Dominic kept a centuries-old map, depicting the way this world had been in its glory days as the magnificent capital of an interstellar empire.  Lines were drawn in gold metal, palaces and cities marked with jewels, ice caps made of tiger's-breath opal, and inlaid seas of petrified Elaccan bluewood.

 

Dominic claimed (from his own imagination rather than any documentary evidence) that the map had belonged to Crown Prince Raphael Corrino, the legendary statesman and philosopher from thousands of years ago.  Dominic expressed relief that Raphael -- "the only good Corrino of the bunch," as far as he was concerned -- had never lived to see what had happened to his beloved capital.  All of that fairy-tale magnificence, all the dreams and visions and good deeds, had been wiped away by nuclear fire.

 

Gurney Halleck strummed his new baliset and sang a mournful song.  Liet listened to the words, finding them sensitive and haunting, evoking images of bygone people and places.

 

 

O for the days of times long past,

Touch sweet nectar to my lips once more.

Fond memories to taste and feel . . .

The smiles and kisses of delight

And innocence and hope.

 

But all I see are veils and tears

And the murky, drowning depths

Of pain and toil and hopelessness.

It's wiser, my friend, to took another way,

Into the light, and not the dark.

 

 

Each man took his own meaning from the song, and Liet noticed tears at the edges of Dominic's eyes, while his gaze was directed at the holo-portraits of Shando.  Liet flinched at the naked emotion that was so rare among the Fremen.

 

Dominic's distant gaze was only partly focused on the bejeweled map on the wall.  "Somewhere in Imperial records, undoubtedly covered with dust, is the name of the renegade family that used forbidden atomics to devastate a continent here."

 

Liet shuddered.  "What were they thinking?  Why would even a renegade do such a terrible thing?"

 

"They did what they had to do, Weichih," Johdam snapped, rubbing the scar on his eyebrow.  "We cannot know the price of their desperation."

 

Dominic sagged deeper into his chair.  "Some Corrinos -- damn them and their descendants -- were left alive.  The surviving Emperor, Hassik III, moved his capital to Kaitain . . . and the Imperium goes on.  The Corrinos go on.  And they took an ironic pleasure in turning the hellhole of Salusa Secundus into their private prison world.  Every member of that renegade family was hunted down and brought here to suffer horrible deaths."

 

The bristly-haired veteran Asuyo nodded gravely.  "It's said that their ghosts still haunt this place, eh?"

 

Startled, Liet recognized that the exiled Earl Vernius saw reminders of himself in that desperate, long-forgotten family.  Though Dominic seemed good-natured, Liet had learned the depths of pain this man had endured:  his wife murdered, his subjects crushed under a Tleilaxu yoke, his son and daughter forced to live in exile on Caladan.

 

"Those renegades long ago . . ." Dominic said with a strange light in his eyes, "they weren't as thorough as I'd have been with the killing."