Dune: House Harkonnen
Page 25
Chiara pursed her wrinkled lips. “Ah, dear, in ancient times such children were known as ‘human mortar’ to keep a family whole.”
Kailea shook her head. “Instead, Victor has only exposed the problem for all to see. There are times when I think Leto hates me.”
“Something can still be worked out, if you just trust me, my Lady.” Chiara placed a reassuring hand on the young woman’s shoulder. “Start by talking with your brother. Ask Rhombur to see what he can do.” Her voice was sweet and reasonable. “The Duke always listens to him.”
Kailea brightened. “That might work. It couldn’t hurt to try.”
• • •
She spoke with Rhombur in his Castle suite. He puttered around in the kitchen with Tessia, helping her prepare a salad of local vegetables. With a maddening, bemused smile on his face, Rhombur listened attentively while slicing a purple sea cabbage on a cutting board.
He didn’t seem to grasp the seriousness of his sister’s situation. “You have no right to complain about anything, Kailea. Leto has treated us royally— uh, especially you.”
She let out an exasperated snort. “How can you say that? I’ve got more at stake, now that I have Victor.” She was caught between flying into a rage or crumpling into despair.
Tessia blinked her sepia eyes. “Rhombur, the best hope for both of you is to overthrow the Tleilaxu. Once you restore House Vernius, all of your other problems become irrelevant.”
Rhombur leaned over to kiss his concubine on the forehead. “Yes, my love— don’t you think I’m trying? We’ve been secretly sending C’tair money for years, but I still don’t know how well the rebels are doing. Hawat sent in another spy, and the man disappeared. Ix is a tough nut to crack, as we designed it to be.”
Both Tessia and Kailea surprised each other by responding in unison. “You need to try harder.”
The Universe operates on a basic principle of economics: everything has its cost. We pay to create our future, we pay for the mistakes of the past. We pay for every change we make . . . and we pay just as dearly if we refuse to change.
— Guild Bank Annals, Philosophical Register
It was said among the Fremen that Shai-Hulud was to be respected, and feared. But even before the age of sixteen, Liet-Kynes had ridden worms many times.
On their first journey to the southern polar regions, he and his blood-brother Warrick had summoned one worm after another, riding them to exhaustion. Then they would plant a thumper, ready their Maker hooks, and call the next one. All Fremen were counting on them.
For hours without end, the two young men huddled in stillsuits under hooded robes, enduring the heat of day under a dust-blue sky. They listened to the sand roaring beneath them, blazing with friction from the worm’s passage.
Ranging far from the sixty-degree cartographical line of inhabited regions, they crossed the Great Flat and the open ergs, forded trackless seas of sand, reached the equator itself, and continued south toward the forbidden palmaries near the moist antarctic cap. Those plantings had been established and nurtured by Pardot Kynes as part of his great dream for reawakening Dune.
Liet’s gaze scanned the immensity. Winter winds blew the surface of the Great Flat as smooth as a tabletop. This is surely the horizon of eternity. He studied the austere landforms, the subtle gradations, and rock outcroppings. His father had lectured him about the desert for as long as his young mind had understood language. The Planetologist had called it a landscape beyond pity, without pause . . . no hesitation in it at all.
As dusk fell on the sixth day of their journey, their worm exhibited signs of agitation and fatigue, enough that it was willing to dive beneath the abrasive sand, even with its sensitive leading ring segments held open by hooks. Liet signaled to Warrick, pointing toward a low reef of rock and its sheltered crannies. “We can spend the night there.”
Warrick used his goad sticks to turn the worm closer, then they released their hooks and made ready to dismount. Since Liet had summoned this particular behemoth, he gestured for his friend to run down the rough, segmented hide. “First on, last off,” Liet said.
Warrick scrambled down to the sand wake where he could leap off the tail. He disengaged the airpack-assisted cargo cases filled with raw melange essence and guided them beyond the monster’s reach. Warrick leaped off and made his way to a dune top. There, he stood motionless, thinking like the sand, as still as the desert.
Liet let the worm burrow itself into the ground and jumped away at the last moment, slogging through slumping powder sand, as if it were a swamp. His father loved to tell stories about miasmic marshes on Bela Tegeuse and Salusa Secundus, but Liet doubted those other worlds contained a fraction of the charm or vigor of Arrakis. . . .
As the son of the Umma Kynes, Liet benefited from certain advantages and opportunities. While he reveled in this important journey down to the antarctic, he knew his birthright did nothing to increase his chances of success. All young Fremen men were given such responsibilities.
The Spacing Guild required its regular spice bribe.
For a king’s ransom in spice essence, Guild satellites would turn a blind eye toward the secret terraforming activities, would ignore Fremen movements. The Harkonnens could not understand why it was so difficult to get weather projections and detailed cartographic analyses, but the Guild always made excuses . . . because the Fremen never failed to pay their fee.
When Liet and Warrick found a sheltered corner of the lava reef on which to pitch their stilltent, Liet brought out the honeyed spice cakes his mother had made. The two young men sat in the comfort of long companionship, commenting on young Fremen women from the sietches they had visited.
Over the years, the blood-brothers had done many brave things— as well as many foolish things. Some had turned into disasters, some near escapes, but Liet and Warrick had survived them all. Both had taken numerous Harkonnen trophies, receiving scars in the process.
Far into the night they laughed about how they had sabotaged Harkonnen ’thopters, how they had broken into a rich merchant’s warehouse and stolen precious delicacies (which had tasted awful), how they had chased a mirage across the open pan in search of an elusive white salt playa, so they could make a wish.
Content at last, the two went to sleep under the double moonlight, ready to awaken shortly before dawn. They had several days left to journey.
• • •
Past the southern wormline, where moisture in the soil and large rocky inclusions made it impossible for sandworms to travel, Liet-Kynes and Warrick marched forward on foot. Following their instinctive sense of direction, they made their way through canyons and cold plains. In rocky gorges with tall conglomerate walls, they saw ancient, dry riverbeds. Their sensitive Fremen noses could detect an increased dampness in the frigid air.
The two young men spent a night at Ten Tribes Sietch, where solar mirrors melted the permafrost in the ground, adding enough free water for carefully tended plants to grow. Orchards had been planted there, along with dwarf palm trees.
Warrick stood with a broad grin on his face. He removed the stillsuit plugs from his nostrils and sucked in a breath of naked air. “Just smell the plants, Liet! The very air is alive.” He lowered his voice and looked solemnly at his friend. “Your father is a great man.”
The caretakers had a haunted yet ecstatic look on their faces, filled with religious fervor at seeing their efforts bear fruit. To them, Umma Kynes’s dream was not just an abstract concept, but a genuine future to behold.
The Fremen there revered the son of the Planetologist. Some came forward to touch his arm and stillsuit, feeling that this brought them closer to the prophet himself. “And the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose,” one old man cried out, quoting from the Zensunni Wisdom of the Wanderings.
The others began a ritual chant. “What is more precious than the seed?”
“This water with which the seed germinates.”
“What is more precious than the rock?
”
“The fertile soil it covers.”
The people continued in a similar fashion, but their adoration made Liet uncomfortable. He and Warrick decided to depart as soon as the requirements of hospitality had been met, after they had shared coffee with the Naib and slept well in the cold night.
The people of Ten Tribes Sietch gave them warm clothing, which they had not needed until now. Then Liet and Warrick set off again with their valuable burden of concentrated spice.
• • •
When the two young men reached the fabled fortress of the water merchant Rondo Tuek, the structure looked more like a dirty industrial warehouse than a fabulous palace set among glistening mountains of white ice. The building was square, connected by many pipes and trenches. Chewing machinery had eaten through the iron-hard soil to secure sparse frost buried in the dirt, leaving behind ugly mounds of debris.
Any pristine snow had long since been buried in layers of thick dust and blown pebbles, cemented together by frozen water. Extracting moisture was a simple operation— digging massive quantities of soil and cooking out the locked water vapor.
Liet broke off a chunk of the frozen ground and licked it, tasting salt as well as ice mingled with the grit. He knew the water was there, but it seemed as inaccessible to him as if it were on a far-off planet. They moved toward the big facility with their bobbing cases of distilled spice.
The structure was made of pseudocrete blocks fashioned out of debris from the ice-extraction process. The fortresslike walls were blank and undecorated, studded with windows and augmented by mirrors and power collectors that drank in the low-angled sunlight. Frost-extraction ovens emitted brown exhaust plumes, showering the air with cracked dust and grit.
Rondo Tuek owned an opulent mansion in Carthag, but it was said that the water merchant rarely visited his spectacular city dwelling. Tuek had made a tidy profit by mining the water in the south and marketing it to the northern cities and the villages of the sinks and pans.
However, the southern hemisphere’s terrible weather, especially the unpredictable sandstorms, wrecked one shipment in four, and Tuek constantly had to purchase new machinery and hire new crews. Luckily for him, a cargo of antarctic water brought in enough profit to offset the losses. Few entrepreneurs were willing to take such risks, but Tuek had hidden connections with the smugglers, the Guild, and the Fremen. It was widely rumored, in fact, that the water operation was only a front, a legitimate business that concealed his real moneymaking enterprise: acting as an intermediary with smugglers.
Side by side, Warrick and Liet marched past the loud machinery and busy off-worlders to the entrance gates. Mainly, Tuek used mercenary laborers who never ventured north to spend time in the arid reality of Dune. The water merchant preferred it that way, since such men were better able to keep secrets.
Though Liet was smaller in stature than Warrick, he drew himself up and stepped forward to take the lead. A man in work overalls and insulated gloves trudged past them toward the work site, looking sidelong at the two.
Liet stopped him. “We are a delegation from the Fremen, here to see Rondo Tuek. I am Liet-Kynes, son of Pardot Kynes, and this is Warrick—”
The worker brusquely gestured behind him. “He’s inside somewhere. Go find him yourself.” Then he strode toward one of the growling pieces of machinery that gnawed the dirt-encrusted ice-rock.
Rebuffed, Liet looked at his friend. Warrick grinned and clapped him on the back. “We don’t have time for formalities, anyway. Let us go find Tuek.”
They ventured into the cavernous building, trying to look as if they belonged there. The air was chill, though heaterglobes hummed against the walls and corners. Liet obtained vague directions from other workers, who gestured down one hall and then the next— until finally the two were totally lost in a maze of inventory offices, control terminals, and storage rooms.
A short, broad-shouldered man marched out, swinging both of his arms. “It’s not hard to notice two Fremen in here,” he said. “I’m Rondo Tuek. Come with me to my private chamber.” The squat man cast a glance over his shoulder. “And bring your supplies. Don’t leave that cargo lying around.”
Liet had seen the man only briefly, years ago, at the Fenrings’ banquet in the Residency at Arrakeen. Tuek had wide-set gray eyes, flat cheekbones, and almost no chin, making his face a perfect square. His rust-colored hair was thinning on top, but stood out in feathery brushes at his temples. An odd-looking man with an awkward gait, he was the antithesis of the flowing grace common to Fremen.
Tuek scuttled ahead. Liet and Warrick dragged the airpack-assisted containers behind them, hurrying to keep up. Everything in the place seemed drab and plain, a disappointment to Liet. Even in the most squalid sietch, the Fremen laid down colorful rugs and hangings, or carved decorative figures out of sandstone. Ceilings were etched with geometrical patterns, sometimes inlaid with mosaics.
Tuek led them to a broad wall as blank as any of the others. He looked from side to side to make sure his workers had cleared out of the area, then placed his palmprint against a reader. The lock hissed open to reveal a warm chamber filled with more opulence than Liet had ever imagined possible.
Crystal flasks of expensive kirana brandy and Caladan wines stood in alcoves. A jeweled chandelier shone faceted light against crimson curtains that gave the walls a muted softness, as comfortable as a womb.
“Ah, now we see the water merchant’s hidden treasures,” Warrick said.
The chairs were huge and plush. Entertainment holos lay stacked on a polished-slate table. Speckled mirrors on the ceiling reflected light from glowing Corinthian columns made of opalesque Hagal alabaster, lit from within by molecular fires.
“The Guild brings few comforts to Arrakis. Fine items are not appreciated by the Harkonnens, and few others can afford them.” Tuek shrugged his broad shoulders. “And, no one wants to transport them through the hells of the southern hemisphere just to reach my factory.”
He raised his feathery eyebrows. “But because of my agreement with your people”— he pushed a control to seal the doors behind him—“the Guild sends occasional ships into direct polar orbit. Lighters come down with any supplies I request.” He patted the heavy cargo containers that Warrick had brought. “In exchange for your monthly spice . . . payment.”
“We call it a spice bribe,” Liet said.
Tuek did not seem offended. “Semantics, my boy. The pure melange essence your Fremen take from the deep desert is more valuable than any scrapings the Harkonnen teams manage to find in the north. The Guild keeps these shipments for their own use, but who can understand what the Navigators get out of it?” He shrugged his rolling shoulders again.
He tapped his fingers against a pad on the slate table. “I am noting that we’ve received your payment for this month. I have instructed my quartermaster to provide you with sufficient supplies for your return journey before you depart.”
Liet hadn’t expected many pleasantries from Tuek, and he accepted the terse, businesslike manner. He didn’t want to stay there any longer, though city folk or villagers might have lingered to admire the exotic trappings and lavish appointments. Liet had not been born to such fine things.
Like his father, he would rather spend his day out in the desert, where he belonged.
• • •
If they pushed hard, Liet guessed they could make Ten Tribes Sietch by nightfall. He longed for the heat of the sun so he could flex his numb hands.
But it was the cold that impressed Warrick. He stood with his arms spread wide, his desert boots planted on the ground. “Have you ever felt such a thing, Liet?” He rubbed his cheek. “My flesh feels brittle.” He drew in a deep breath, glanced down at his boots. “And you can sense the water. It’s here, but . . . trapped.”
He looked at the brown mountains of dust-encrusted glaciers. Warrick was impulsive and curious, and he called for his friend to wait. “We’ve completed our duty, Liet. Let us not be in such a hurry to return
.”
Liet stopped. “What do you have in mind?”
“We are here, in the legendary ice mountains. We’ve seen the palmaries and the plantings your father began. I want to explore for a day, feel solid ice beneath my feet. Climbing those stairstep glaciers would be equivalent to ascending mountains of gold.”
“You won’t be able to see raw ice. The moisture is all frozen into the dust and dirt.” But seeing the eager expression on his friend’s face, Liet’s impatience melted away. “It is as you say, Warrick. Why should we be in such a hurry?” For the sixteen-year-olds, this could be a grander— and safer— adventure than their razzias against Harkonnen strongholds. “Let us go climb glaciers.”
They hiked off under the perpetual dim daylight of the southern pole. The tundra had an austere beauty, particularly to someone accustomed to the reality of deserts.
As they left Tuek’s industrial excavations behind, the plume of spewed dust and debris cast a brown haze over the horizon. Liet and Warrick climbed higher, chipping away rocks and finding a film of ice. They sucked on broken shards of the frozen ground, tasting bitter alkaline chemicals, spitting out the dirt and sand.
Warrick ran ahead, delighting in the freedom. As Fremen, they had been trained all their lives never to let down their guard— but Harkonnen hunters would not come to the southern pole. Here, they were probably safe. Probably.
Liet continued to scan the ground and the looming malleable cliffs that towered in great jumbles of frozen brown dirt. He bent to examine a scuff mark, a partial indentation. “Warrick, look at this.”
They studied a single footprint pressed into spongy earth that had softened during the height of a warm season. Upon closer inspection, they found subtle marks where other tracks had been carefully and intentionally obliterated.
“Who has been here?”
Warrick looked at him, and added, “And why are they hiding? We’re far from Tuek’s water factory.”