Dune: House Harkonnen

by Brian Herbert; Kevin J. Anderson

  “That information is more useful,” Hawat said.

  “Vermilion hells! We’re not getting that bloody thing out of the water,” Rhombur said. “I hope there’s another way to kill it.”

  Hawat barked a quick order, and the two Atreides guards drew their lasrifles, weaponry brought aboard at the warrior Mentat’s insistence. At the time, Leto had wondered how they could possibly need such firepower on a simple fishing trip; now he was glad. Dom and Gianni took one look at the threatening knot of energy and scrambled belowdecks.

  Swain Goire, with a glance behind him to make sure Victor was with Rhombur, raised his own weapon. He was the first to open fire off the stern of the speeding boat, sending out a hot, pulsing blast of light. The energy struck the elecran and dissipated, causing no harm. Thufir Hawat fired, as did the second Atreides guard.

  “No effect!” the Mentat bellowed into the rising buzz. “My Duke— remain in the safety of the cabin.”

  Even inside, Leto could feel the heat in the air, smell the burned salt and crisped seaweed. Bolts of primal power crackled through the elecran’s fluid body, and it loomed closer to the wingboat, a cyclone of raw power. With a single strike, it could shatter the vessel and electrocute every person aboard.

  “There is no safety, Thufir,” Leto shouted back. “I will not let that thing have my son!” He glanced at the boy, who grasped Rhombur around the neck.

  As if to flaunt its power, one crackling tendril bent down and touched the wooden side of the boat like a priest giving a blessing. Part of the craft’s metal trim blasted free as hot sparks danced along every conductive contact. The boat’s engines sputtered and died.

  The captain tried to restart the engines, was rewarded with only rasping, metallic sounds.

  Goire appeared ready to hurl himself bodily into the crackling mass, if it would do anything to help. As the boat stopped running, the men continued to fire their lasguns at the core of the elecran, though with no more effect than a thrown table knife. But Leto realized they were targeting the wrong place. The boat, with no power, was turning, the bow coming around toward the monster.

  Spotting his opportunity, Leto left the deckhouse and ran toward the wingboat’s pointed bow. Hawat cried out to restrain his Duke, but Leto raised a hand to forestall his intervention. Audacity had always been an Atreides hallmark. He had to pray the boat captain’s folk wisdom was not composed entirely of ridiculous stories.

  “Leto! Don’t do it!” Rhombur said, clutching Victor tightly to his chest. The boy screamed and squirmed, trying to pummel his way free of his uncle’s grasp so he could run to his father.

  Leto shouted at the monster and waved his hands, hoping to distract the thing, act as bait. “Here! To me!” He had to save his son as well as his men. The captain was still trying to start the engines, but they wouldn’t switch on. Thufir, Goire, and the two guards hurried to join Leto on the foredeck.

  The Duke watched the elecran swell. As it towered like an oncoming tsunami in the air, the creature maintained only a tenuous contact with the salt water that gave it corporeal existence. A lingering static charge made Leto’s hair rise, as if a million tiny insects were crawling on his skin.

  The timing would have to be precise. “Thufir, Swain— point your lasguns at the water below it. Turn the ocean to steam.” Leto raised both arms, offering himself. He had no weapon, nothing with which to threaten the creature.

  The fearsome elecran glowed brighter, a crackling mass of primal energy that rose high above the water. It had no face, no eyes, no fangs— its entire body was composed of death.

  Hawat barked the order just as Leto dove facefirst to the wooden deck. Two lasguns blasted the water into froth and steam at the base of the crackling ribbon of lightning. Clouds of white mist boiled up all around.

  Leto rolled aside, trying to reach the shelter of a high gunwale. The two Atreides guards also opened fire, vaporizing the waves around the flickering creature.

  The elecran thrashed, as if surprised, trying to draw itself back down to the seawater that boiled away underneath it. It gave an unearthly cry and struck the boat twice more with spasmic lightning bolts. Finally, when its connection had been completely severed, the elecran lost all integrity.

  In a brilliant flashing and sparking explosion, it dissipated into nothing, returning to the realms of myth. A shower of water splattered the deck, tingling and effervescent as if it still contained a shred of the elecran’s presence. Hot droplets pelted Leto. The stench of ozone made breathing difficult.

  The ocean became peaceful again, calm and quiet. . . .

  • • •

  During the wingboat’s subdued return to the docks, Leto felt exhausted, yet content that he had solved the problem and saved his men— and, most of all, his son— without a single casualty. Gianni and Dom were already formulating the stories they would tell on stormy nights.

  Lulled by the drone of the engines, Victor fell asleep on his father’s lap. Leto stared out at the water curling past them. He stroked the boy’s dark hair and smiled at the innocent face. In Victor’s features he could see the Imperial bloodlines that had been passed to Leto through his mother— the narrow chin, the intense, pale gray eyes, the aquiline nose.

  As he studied the dozing boy, he wondered if he loved Victor more than he loved his concubine. At times, he wondered if he still loved Kailea at all— especially during the past difficult year, as their life together had grown sour . . . slowly, inexorably.

  Had his father felt the same about his wife Helena, trapped as he was in a relationship with a woman whose expectations were so different from his own? And how had their marriage degenerated so far, to the lowest possible level? Few people knew that Lady Helena Atreides had fostered the death of the Old Duke, arranging to have him killed by a Salusan bull.

  Caressing his son gently so that he did not wake, Leto vowed never to let Victor be exposed to such great danger again. His heart swelled as if it would burst with love for the boy. Perhaps Kailea had been right. He shouldn’t have taken their child out on this fishing trip.

  Then the Duke narrowed his eyes and rediscovered the steel of leadership. Realizing the cowardice in his thoughts, Leto reversed himself. I cannot be overly protective of him. It would be a serious mistake to coddle this child. Only by facing perils and challenges— as Paulus Atreides had made Leto do— could the young man become strong and intelligent, the leader he needed to be.

  He looked down and smiled at Victor again. After all, Leto thought, this boy may be Duke someday.

  He saw the dim gray coastline emerge from the morning shore mist, then Castle Caladan and its docks. It would feel good to be home.

  Body and mind are two phenomena, observed under different conditions, but of one and the same ultimate reality. Body and mind are aspects of the living being. They operate within a peculiar principle of synchronicity wherein things happen together and behave as if they are the same . . . yet can be conceived of as separate.

  — Staff Medical Manual, Ginaz School

  In the rainy late morning Duncan Idaho waited with his classmates on yet another training ground, yet another island in the sprawling chain of isolated classrooms. Warm droplets poured down on them from the oppressive tropical clouds. It always seemed to be raining here.

  The Swordmaster was sweaty and fat, dressed in voluminous khakis. A red bandanna cinched around his enormous head made his mahogany-red hair spike upward in rain-dampened points. His eyes were hard little darts, a brown so dark the irises were difficult to distinguish from the pupils. He spoke in a high, thin voice that squeaked out of a voicebox buried beneath enormous jowls.

  When he moved, though, Swordmaster Rivvy Dinari did so with the grace and speed of a raptor in the final arc of a killing blow. Duncan saw nothing jovial about the man and knew not to underestimate him. The roly-poly appearance was a carefully cultivated feint. “I am a legend here,” the huge instructor had said, “and you will come to know it.”

  In the
second four years of the Ginaz curriculum, the trainees numbered less than half of those from the first day when Duncan had been forced to wear a heavy suit of ar-

  mor. A handful of students had already died in the merciless training; many more had resigned and departed. “Only the best can be Swordmasters,” the teachers said, as if that explained all the hardships.

  Duncan defeated other students in combat or in the thinking exercises that were so essential to battle and strategy. Before leaving Caladan he had been one of the best young fighters for House Atreides— but had never imagined he knew so little.

  “Fighting men are not molded by coddling,” Swordmaster Mord Cour had droned, one afternoon long ago. “In real combat situations, men are molded through extreme challenges that push them to their limits.”

  Some of the scholarly Swordmasters had spent days lecturing on military tactics, the history of warfare, even philosophy and politics. They engaged in battles of rhetoric rather than blades. Some were engineers and equipment specialists who had trained Duncan how to assemble and disassemble any kind of weapon, how to create his own killing devices out of the most meager supplies. He learned about shield use and repair, the design of large-scale defensive facilities, and battle plans for large- and small-scale conflicts.

  Now, the drumming rain beat its inescapable cadence on the beach, the rocks, the students. Rivvy Dinari didn’t seem to notice a single droplet. “For the next six months you will memorize the samurai warrior code and its integral philosophy of bushido. If you insist on being oil-slick rocks, I will be rushing water. I will wear away your resistance until you learn everything I am able to teach you.” He shifted his piercing gaze like staccato weapons fire so that he seemed to address every student individually. A raindrop hung on the end of his nose, then fell away to be replaced by another one.

  “You must learn honor, or you deserve to learn nothing at all.”

  Unintimidated, the ill-humored lordling Trin Kronos interrupted the rotund man. “Honor will win no battles for you unless every combatant agrees to abide by the same terms. If you bind yourself with nonsensical strictures, Master, you can be beaten by any opponent willing to bend the rules.”

  After hearing that, Duncan Idaho thought he understood some of the brash, provocative actions Viscount Moritani had taken during his conflict with Ecaz. The Grummans didn’t play by the same rules.

  Dinari’s face flushed dark red. “A victory without honor is no victory.”

  Kronos shook his head, flinging rainwater away. “Tell that to the dead soldiers on the losing side.” His friends standing next to him muttered their congratulations at his riposte. Though soaked and bedraggled, somehow they all maintained their haughty pride.

  Dinari’s voice grew more strident. “Would you give up all human civilization? Would you rather become wild animals?” The enormous man stepped closer to Kronos, who hesitated, then backed away into a puddle. “Warriors of the Ginaz School are respected across the Imperium. We produce the finest fighters and the greatest tacticians, better even than the Emperor’s Sardaukar. And yet do we need a military fleet in orbit? Do we need a standing army to drive off invaders? Do we need a stockpile of weapons so that we can sleep well at night? No! Because we follow a code of honor and all the Imperium respects us.”

  Kronos either ignored or failed to notice the murderous edge in the Swordmaster’s eyes. “Then you have a blind spot: your overconfidence.”

  Silence hung for a long moment, broken only by the constant tattoo of pattering rain. Dinari put a ponderous weight into his words. “But we have our honor. Learn to value it.”

  • • •

  It was pouring again, as it had been for months. Rivvy Dinari ambled between the ranks of trainees; despite his bulk, the Swordmaster moved like a breeze across the muddy ground. “If you are eager to fight, you must rid yourself of anxiety. If you are angry at your enemy, you must rid yourself of anger. Animals fight like animals. Humans fight with finesse.” He impaled Duncan with his dart-sharp gaze. “Clear your mind.”

  Duncan did not breathe, did not blink. Every cell in his body had frozen to a standstill, every nerve locked in stasis. A wet breeze caressed his face, but he allowed it to blow past him; the constant downpour drenched his clothes, his skin, his bones— but he imagined that it flowed through him.

  “Stand without any movement— not the blink of an eye, nor any swelling of your chest, nor the tiniest twitch of a single muscle. Be a stone. Remove yourself from the conscious universe.”

  After months of Dinari’s rigorous instruction, Duncan knew how to slow his metabolism to a deathlike state known as funestus. The Swordmaster called it a purification process to prepare their minds and bodies for the introduction of new fighting disciplines. Once achieved, funestus gave him a sensation of peace unlike any previous experience, reminding him of his mother’s arms, of her sweet, whispering voice.

  Wrapped in the trance, Duncan focused his thoughts, his imagination, his drive. An intense brilliance filled his eyes, but he maintained his hold and refused to blink.

  Duncan felt a sharp pain in his neck, the prick of a needle. “Ah! You still bleed,” Dinari exclaimed, as if it were his job to destroy as many candidates as possible. “So, too, will you bleed in battle. You are not in a perfect state of funestus, Duncan Idaho.”

  He struggled to achieve the meditative state in which the mind commanded its chi energy, remaining in a state of rest while totally prepared for battle. He sought the highest level of concentration, without the contamination of unnecessary and confusing thoughts. He felt himself going deeper, heard Rivvy Dinari’s continuing verbal onslaught.

  “You carry one of the finest blades in the Imperium, the sword of Duke Paulus Atreides.” He loomed over the candidate, who struggled to maintain his focus, his serenity. “But you must earn the right to use it in battle. You have acquired fighting skills, yet you have not demonstrated mastery over your own thoughts. Overintellectualizing slows and dulls reactions, dampens a warrior’s instincts. Mind and body are one— and you must fight with both.”

  The corpulent Swordmaster glided around him, slowly circling. Duncan fixed his gaze ahead.

  “I see every tiny crack of which even you are not aware. If a Swordmaster fails, he doesn’t just let himself down— he imperils his comrades, disgraces his House, and brings dishonor upon himself.”

  Duncan felt another needle prick his neck, heard a satisfied grunt. “Better.” Dinari’s voice faded as he moved along to inspect the others in turn. . . .

  As the relentless rain streamed down on him, Duncan maintained funestus. Around him the world grew silent, like the quiet before a storm. Time ceased to hold any meaning for him.

  “Ay-eee . . . Huhh!”

  At Dinari’s call, Duncan’s consciousness began to float, as if he were a boat in a fast-moving river, and the bulky Swordmaster had him in tow. He submerged and continued forward, pushing through metaphorical water toward a destination that lay far beyond his mind. He had been in this mental stream many times . . . the journey of partus as he went to the second step in the sequence of meditation. He washed away all that was old so he could begin anew, like a child. The water was fresh and clean and warm all around him, a womb.

  Duncan accelerated through the liquid, and the boat that was his soul tilted upward. The darkness diminished, and presently he saw a glow above him, becoming brighter. The sparkling light became a watery brilliance, and he saw himself as a tiny mote swimming upward.

  “Ay-eee . . . Huhh!”

  At Dinari’s second cry, Duncan surged out of the metaphorical water back into tropical rain and sweet air. He gasped for breath, and coughed along with the other students— only to find himself entirely dry, his clothes, his skin, his hair. Before he could express his astonishment, the rain began to soak his clothes again.

  With clasped hands, the obese Swordmaster gazed at the gray heavens, letting raindrops pour over his face like a cleansing baptism. Then he tilted his hea
d down and gazed from face to face, showing supreme pleasure. His students had reached novellus— the final stage of organic rebirth required before they could begin a complex new teaching.

  “To conquer a fighting system you must let it conquer you. You must give yourself to it totally.” The loose, wet ends of Swordmaster Dinari’s red bandanna, tied behind his head, drooped down his neck. “Your minds are like soft clay upon which impressions may be made.”

  “We will learn now, Master,” the class intoned.

  The Swordmaster said solemnly, “Bushido. Where does honor begin? Ancient samurai masters hung mirrors in each of their Shinto temples and asked adherents to look deeply into them to see their own hearts, the variegated reflections of their God. It is in the heart where honor is nurtured and flourishes.”

  With a meaningful glance over at Trin Kronos and the other Grumman students, he continued. “Remember this always: Dishonor is like a gash on a tree trunk— instead of disappearing with age, it enlarges.”

  He made the class repeat this three times before he went on. “The code of honor was more valuable to a samurai than any treasure. A samurai’s word— his bushi no ichi-gon— was never doubted, nor is the word of any Swordmaster of Ginaz.”

  Dinari finally smiled at them, showing pride at last. “Young samurai, first you will learn basic moves with empty hands. When you have perfected these techniques, weapons will be added to your routines.” With his black-dart eyes, he looked at them all sharply enough to make them afraid.

  “The weapon is an extension of the hand.”

  • • •

  A week later, the exhausted students retired to cots inside their tents on the rugged north shore. Rain spattered their shelters, and trade winds gusted all night long. Fatigued from the rigorous fighting, Duncan settled down to sleep. Tent fittings rattled, metal eyelets clanked against rope ties in a steady rhythm that made him drowsy. At times, he thought he would never be completely dry again.