Dune: House Harkonnen
Page 12
“Please don’t disturb me further, Mentat,” he said in an abrupt voice, preempting conversation. He didn’t even ask how de Vries had found his way back to the restricted Korona moon. The diamond tattoo of Imperial Conditioning glistened on his forehead, buried under a smear of dark lubricant from a careless wipe of his hand. “I am very busy.”
“Still, Doctor, I must speak with you. My Baron commands it.”
Yueh narrowed his eyes, as if imagining how some of his prototype cyborg parts might fit on the Mentat. “I am not interested in your Baron’s medical condition. It is not my area of expertise.” He looked at the laboratory racks and tables filled with experimental prosthetics, as if the answer should be obvious. Yueh remained maddeningly aloof, as if he couldn’t be touched or corrupted by anything.
De Vries approached to within garroting distance of the shorter man, talking all the while. No doubt he would face serious punishment if he was forced to kill this annoying doctor. “My Baron used to be healthy, trim, proud of his physique. Through no change in diet or exercise, he has nearly doubled his body weight in ten years. He suffers from a gradual deterioration of muscular functions and bloating.”
Yueh frowned, but his gaze turned back to the Mentat’s. De Vries caught the flicker of expression and lowered his voice, ready to pounce. “Do those symptoms sound familiar to you, Doctor? Something you’ve seen elsewhere?”
Now Yueh became calculating. He shifted so that racks of test apparatus separated him from the twisted Mentat. A long glass tube continued to bubble and stink on the far side of the chamber. “No Suk doctor gives free advice, Mentat. My expenses here are exorbitant, my research vital.”
De Vries chuckled as his enhanced mind spun through possibilities. “And are you so engrossed in your tinkering, Doctor, that you’ve failed to notice that your patron, House Richese, is nearly bankrupt? Baron Harkonnen’s payment could guarantee your funding for many years.”
The twisted Mentat reached abruptly into his jacket pocket, causing Yueh to flinch, fearing a silent weapon. Instead de Vries brought out a flat black panel with touch pads. The holoprojection of an old-style sea chest appeared, made entirely of gold with precious-gem studs inlaid on its top and sides in the patterns of blue Harkonnen griffins. “After you diagnose my Baron, you could continue your research however you see fit.”
Intrigued, Yueh reached out, so that his hand and forearm passed through the image. With a synthetic squeal, the lid of the holo-image opened to reveal an empty interior. “We will fill this with whatever you please. Melange, soostones, blue obsidian, opafire jewels, Hagal quartz . . . blackmail images. Everyone knows that a Suk doctor can be bought.”
“Then go buy yourself one. Make it a matter of public record.”
“We prefer a more, ah, confidential arrangement, as Premier Calimar promised.”
The sallow old doctor pursed his dark lips again, deep in thought. Yueh’s entire world seemed focused on a small bubble around him, as if no one else existed, no one else mattered. “I cannot provide long-term care, but I could perhaps diagnose the disease.”
De Vries shrugged his bony shoulders. “The Baron doesn’t want you any longer than necessary.”
Staring at the sheer amount of wealth the Mentat was promising him, Yueh imagined how much more productive his work would be here on Korona, given adequate funding. Still, he hesitated. “I have other responsibilities. I have been assigned here by the Suk College for this specific purpose. Cyborg prostheses will be a valuable market for Richese, and us, once proven.”
With a sigh of resignation, de Vries pressed a key on the pad, and the treasure chest became noticeably larger.
Yueh stroked his mustaches. “It might be possible for me to travel between Richese and Giedi Prime— under an assumed identity, of course. I could study your Baron, then return here to continue my work.”
“An interesting idea,” the Mentat said. “So you accept our terms?”
“I agree to examine the patient. And I shall consider what to put in the treasure chest you offer.” Yueh pointed toward a nearby counter. “Now hand me that measuring scope. Since you interrupted, you can help me with constructing a prototype body core.”
• • •
Two days later on Giedi Prime, adjusting to the industrial air and the heavier gravity, Yueh examined the Baron in the infirmary of Harkonnen Keep. All doors closed, all windows covered, all servants sent away. Piter de Vries watched through his peephole, grinning.
Yueh discarded the medical files the Baron’s doctors had compiled over the years, documenting the progress of the disease. “Foolish amateurs. I am not interested in them, or their test results.” Opening his diagnostic kit, the doctor withdrew his own set of scanners, complex mechanisms that only a highly trained Suk could decipher. “Remove your clothing, please.”
“Do you want to play?” The Baron tried to retain his dignity, his command of the situation.
“No.”
The Baron distracted himself from the uncomfortable probings and proddings as he considered ways to kill this pompous Suk if he, too, failed to discover the cause of the disease. He drummed his fingertips on the examining table. “None of my physicians could suggest any effective course of treatment. Given the choice of a clean mind or a clean body, I had to take my pick.”
Ignoring the basso voice, Yueh donned a pair of goggles with green lenses. “Suggesting that you strive for both is too much to ask?” He initialized the power pack and scanning routines, then peered at the gross, naked form of his patient. The Baron lay on his belly on the examination couch. He muttered constantly, complaining about pains and discomforts.
Yueh spent several minutes examining the Baron’s skin, his internal organs, his orifices, until a string of subtle clues began to fit together in his mind. Finally, the delicate Suk scanner detected a vector path.
“Your condition appears to be sexually generated. Are you able to use this penis?” Yueh said without the slightest trace of humor. He might have been giving a stock quote.
“Use it?” The Baron gave a rude snort. “Hells and damnations, it’s still the best part of me.”
“Ironic.” Yueh used a scalpel to scrape a sample from the foreskin, and the Baron yelped in surprise. “I need to run an analysis.” The doctor didn’t give the slightest hint of an apology.
With the slender blade Yueh smeared the fragment of skin onto a thin slide and inserted it into a slot in the front underside of his goggles. Using finger controls, he rotated the specimen in front of his eyes, under varying illuminations. The goggle plaz changed color from green to scarlet to lavender. Then he sent the sample through a multistage chemical analysis.
“Was that necessary?” the Baron growled.
“It is only the beginning.” Yueh then removed more instruments— many of them sharp— from his kit. The Baron would have been intrigued, if he’d been able to use the tools on someone else. “I must perform many tests.”
• • •
After slipping into a robe, Baron Harkonnen sat back, gray-skinned and sweaty, sore in a thousand places that had not hurt before. Several times he’d wanted to kill this arrogant Suk doctor— but he didn’t dare interfere with the protracted diagnosis. The other physicians had been helpless and stupid; now he would endure whatever was necessary in order to obtain his answer. The Baron hoped the treatment and eventual cure would be less aggressive, less painful than Yueh’s original analysis. He poured from a decanter of kirana brandy and gulped down a mouthful.
“I have reduced the spectrum of possibilities, Baron,” Yueh said, pursing his lips. “Your ailment belongs to a category of rare diseases, narrowly defined, specifically targeted. I can collect another full set of samples, if you would like me to triple-verify the diagnosis?”
“That will not be necessary.” The Baron sat up, gripping his walking stick in case he needed to hit someone with it. “What have you found?”
Yueh droned on, “The transmission vector is obvious, via heterosexual interc
ourse. You were infected by one of your female lovers.”
The Baron’s momentary elation at finally finding an answer washed away in confusion. “I have no female lovers. Women disgust me.”
“Yes, I see.” Yueh had heard many patients deny the obvious. “The symptoms are so subtly general that I am not surprised less-competent doctors missed it. Even Suk teaching did not initially include a mention of it, and I learned of such intriguing diseases through my wife Wanna. She is a Bene Gesserit, and the Sisterhood occasionally makes use of these disease organisms—”
The Baron lunged into a sitting position on the edge of the examination couch. A firestorm crossed his jowly face. “Those damnable witches!”
“Ah, so now you remember,” Yueh said with smug satisfaction. “When did the contacts occur?”
Hesitation, then: “More than a dozen years ago.”
Yueh stroked his long mustaches. “My Wanna tells me that a Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother is capable of altering her internal chemistry to hold diseases latent in her own body.”
“The bitch!” the Baron roared. “She infected me.”
The doctor did not seem interested in the injustice or the indignity. “More than just passively infected— such a pathogen is released by force of will. This was not an accident, Baron.”
In his mind’s eye the Baron envisioned horse-faced Mohiam, the sneering, disrespectful manner with which she had looked at him during the Fenrings’ banquet. She had known, known all along— had been watching his body transform itself into this loathsome, corpulent lump.
And she had been the cause of it all.
Yueh closed up his goggles and slipped them back into his diagnostic kit. “Our bargain is concluded, and I will take my leave now. I have much research to complete on Richese.”
“You agreed to treat me.” The Baron lost his balance as he tried to surge to his feet. He collapsed back onto the groaning examination couch.
“I agreed to examine you, and no more, Baron. No Suk can do anything for your condition. There is no known treatment, no cure, though I am sure we’ll eventually study it at the Suk College.”
The Baron clenched his walking stick, finally standing. Seething, he thought about the venom-drenched darts hidden in its tip.
But he also understood the political consequences of killing a Suk doctor, if word ever got out. The Suk School had powerful contacts in the Imperium; it might not be worth the pleasure. Besides, he had murdered enough doctors already . . . at least he finally had an answer.
And a legitimate target for his revenge. He knew who had done this to him.
“I’m afraid you must ask the Bene Gesserit, Baron.”
Without another word, Dr. Wellington Yueh hurried out of Harkonnen Keep and fled from Giedi Prime aboard the next Heighliner, glad that he would never have to deal with the Baron again.
Some lies are easier to believe than the truth.
— Orange Catholic Bible
Even surrounded by other villagers, Gurney Halleck felt completely alone. He stared into the watery beer. The brew was weak and sour, though if he drank enough of it, the pain in his body and in his heart grew numb. But in the end he was left with only a throbbing hangover and no hope of finding his sister.
In the five months since Captain Kryubi and the Harkonnen patrol had taken her, Gurney’s cracked ribs, bruises, and cuts had healed. “Flexible bones,” he told himself, a bitter joke.
The day after Bheth’s abduction, he’d been back in the fields, slowly and painfully digging trenches and planting the despised krall tubers. The other villagers, looking sidelong at him, had continued to work, pretending nothing had happened. They knew that if productivity declined, the Harkonnens would come back and punish them even more. Gurney learned that other daughters had been taken as well, but the parents involved never spoke of it outside their families.
Back at the tavern, Gurney rarely sang anymore. Though he carried his old baliset with him, the strings remained silent, and music refused to issue from his lips. He drank his bitter ale and sat sullenly, listening to the tired conversations of his mates. The men repeated complaints about work, about the weather, about uninteresting spouses. Gurney turned a deaf ear on all of it.
Though sickened to imagine what Bheth might be enduring, he hoped she was still alive. . . . She was probably locked inside a Harkonnen pleasure house, trained to perform unspeakable acts. And if she resisted or failed to meet expectations, she would be killed. As the patrol sweep had proved, Harkonnens could always find other candidates for their stinking brothels.
At home, his parents had blocked their own daughter from memory; without Gurney’s painstaking attention, they would have let Bheth’s garden die. His parents had even performed a mock funeral and recited verses from the battered Orange Catholic Bible. For a while, Gurney’s mother lit a candle and stared at the flickering flame, her lips moving in a silent prayer. They cut calla lilies and daisies— Bheth’s favorite flowers— and laid out a bouquet to honor her memory.
Then all of it ceased, and they moved on with their dreary lives without mention of her, as if she had never existed.
But Gurney never gave up.
“Don’t you care?” he bellowed one night into his father’s seamed face. “How can you let them do this to Bheth?”
“I didn’t let them do anything.” The older man seemed to stare right through his son, as if he were made of dirty glass. “There’s nothing any of us can do— and if you keep trying to fight against the Harkonnens, they will pay you back in blood.”
Gurney stormed out to sulk in the tavern, but the villagers there offered no more help. Night after night, he grew disgusted with them. The months passed in a blur.
Sloshing his ale, Gurney suddenly sat up at his table and realized what he was becoming. He saw his blunt face in the mirror each morning with a gradual awareness that he had stopped being himself. He, Gurney Halleck— good-natured, full of music and bluster— had tried to reawaken the life in these people. But instead he’d been transformed into one of them. Though barely in his twenties, he already looked like his aging father.
The drone of humorless conversation continued, and Gurney looked at the smooth prefab walls, the streaked window plates. This monotonous routine had not varied for generations. His hand clenched around the flagon, and he took stock of his own talents and abilities. He couldn’t fight the Harkonnens with brute strength or weapons, but he had another idea. He could strike back at the Baron and his followers in a more insidious way.
Feeling renewed energy, he grinned. “I’ve got a tune for you, mates— the likes of which you’ve never heard before.”
The men smiled uneasily. Gurney held the baliset, strummed its strings as brusquely as if he were peeling coarse vegetables, and sang out in a loud, blustery voice:
We
work in the fields, we work in the towns,
and
this is our lot in life.
For
the rivers are wide, and the valleys are low,
and
the Baron—he is fat.
We
live with no joy, we die without grief,
and
this is our lot in life.
For
the mountains are high, and the oceans are deep,
and
the Baron— he is fat.
Our
sisters are stolen, our sons are crushed,
our
parents forget, and our neighbors pretend—
and
this is our lot in life!
For
our labor is hard, and our rest is short,
while
the Baron grows fat from us.
As the stanzas continued the listeners’ eyes widened in horror. “Stop this, Halleck!” one man said, rising from his seat.
“Why, Perd?” Gurney said with a sneer. “Do you love the Baron so much? I hear he enjoys bringing strong young men like you into his pleasure chambers.”
Bravely, Gurney sang another insulting song, and another, until finally he felt liberated. These tunes gave him a freedom he’d never before imagined. The onlookers were disturbed and uneasy. Many got up to leave as he continued to sing, but Gurney would not be swayed. He stayed until long after midnight.
When finally he walked home that night, Gurney Halleck had a spring in his step. He had struck back at his tormentors, though they would never know it.
He wouldn’t get enough sleep going to bed at this hour, and work would begin early in the morning. But that didn’t bother him— he felt recharged. Gurney returned to the darkened house where his parents had long since retired. He set the baliset in his personal wardrobe, lay back on his pallet, and dozed off with a smile on his lips.
• • •
Less than two weeks later, a silent Harkonnen patrol entered the village of Dmitri. It was three hours before dawn.
Armed guards battered in the door of the prefab dwelling, though the Hallecks never kept it locked. The uniformed men lit blazing glowglobes as they marched in, knocking furniture aside, smashing crockery. They uprooted all the flowers Bheth had planted in old pots outside the front door. They tore down the curtains that covered the small windows.
Gurney’s mother screamed and huddled far back on the bed. His father lurched up, went to the door of their chamber, and saw the troopers. Instead of defending his home, he backed away and slammed the bedroom door, as if that could protect him.
But the guards were only interested in Gurney. They dragged the young man from his bed, and he came out flailing wildly with his fists. The men found his resistance amusing, and flung him facedown on the fireplace hearth; Gurney chipped a tooth and scraped his chin. He tried to get back to his hands and knees, but two Harkonnens kicked him in the ribs.
After ransacking a small closet, one blond soldier came out with the nicked and patched baliset. He tossed it on the floor, and Kryubi made sure Gurney’s face was turned toward the instrument. As the Harkonnens pressed their victim’s cheek against the hearth bricks, the guard captain stomped on the baliset with a booted foot, breaking its spine. The strings twanged in a discordant jangle.