Dune: House Harkonnen

by Brian Herbert; Kevin J. Anderson

  One of the island instructors had been a mere boy with a baby face and a killer’s instincts . . . a ninja warrior who taught stealth methods of assassination and sabotage, the supreme skill of melting into the slightest shadows and striking in absolute silence. “Sometimes the most dramatic statement can be made with an unseen touch,” the ninja had said.

  Synthesizing eight years of training, Duncan drew parallels between the various disciplines, similarities of method— and differences. Some techniques were clearly useful for what he faced at that moment, and his mind raced to sort them out, selecting appropriate methods for each challenge.

  Darting past the last of the deadly meks, his heart pounded against the inside of his chest. Duncan scrambled down the slope to the rugged shore, following course markers, still bounded by the shield-fence. Glowing red suspensors directed him over a frothy blue-white pool of geysers and volcanic hot springs, but waves from the aquamarine sea lapped over the rim of the rocky bowl, cooling the temperature to just below scalding.

  Duncan dove in and stroked down to underwater lava tubes bubbling with mineral water. Already desperate for air, he swam through the heated water until he emerged in another steaming hot spring where fierce-looking meks plunged in to attack him.

  Duncan fought like a wild animal— until he realized that his mission was to get through this Corridor of Death, not to subdue all opponents. He blocked kicks, drove meks back, and broke free to dash along the trail, toward the jungle highlands and the next phase. . . .

  Across a deep chasm hung a narrow rope bridge, a difficult challenge of balance, and Duncan knew it would get worse. In the middle of the span, solido-projected holo-beasts appeared, ready to attack him. He slashed out with his lance, battered them with his rigid hands.

  But Duncan didn’t fall. A student’s worst enemy is his own mind. Panting, he focused his thoughts. The challenge is to control fear. I must never forget that these are not real adversaries, no matter how solid their blows feel.

  He had to use every skill he had learned, assemble the diverse techniques— and survive, just like a real battle. The Ginaz School could teach methods, but no two combat situations were identical. A warrior’s greatest weapons are mental and physical agility, coupled with adaptability.

  Concentrating on the direct route across the chasm, he took one step after another. Using his spear to knock aside the unreal opponents, he reached the opposite end of the rope, sweating and exhausted, ready to drop.

  But he pushed on. Toward the end.

  Through a short, rocky gorge— the perfect place for an ambush— he sprinted along a planked path, pounding a steady rhythm on it with bare feet. He saw pits and trapdoors. Hearing a burst of gunfire, he rolled and tumbled, then sprang back to his feet. A spear flew at him, but Duncan used his lance for leverage and vaulted over the obstacle, spinning his body in a blur.

  As he landed, a glimmer of motion streaked toward his face. With lightning speed he whipped the lance staff in front of his eyes, felt two sudden, sharp impacts in the wood. A pair of tiny flying meks had embedded themselves in the shaft, like self-motivated arrowheads.

  He saw more blood on the deck, and another butchered body lying on the ground. Though he was not supposed to think of fallen comrades, he regretted the loss of even one talented student who had made it through so much training . . . only to fall there, in the last challenge. So close.

  Sometimes he caught glimpses of Ginaz observers beyond the crackling shield-fence, keeping pace with him, other Swordmasters, many of whom he remembered. Duncan didn’t dare permit himself to wonder how his fellow students had fared. He didn’t know if Resser was still alive.

  So far he had used the knives and the lance, but not the Old Duke’s sword, which remained at his side. It was a reassuring presence, as if Paulus Atreides accompanied him in spirit form, whispering advice along the way.

  “Any young man with balls as big as yours is a man I must have as part of my household!” the Old Duke had once told him.

  With the vanquished meks behind him, blocked on both sides by the shield-fence, Duncan faced the final obstacle— a huge sunken cauldron of burning oil, a vat spanning the path, blocked on both sides by the shield-fence. The end of the Corridor of Death.

  He coughed in the acrid smoke, covered his mouth and nose with his shirt fabric, but he still couldn’t see. Blinking away irritated tears, he studied the buried cauldron, which looked like a hungry demon’s mouth. A narrow rim encircled the vat, slippery with splatters of oil, thick with noxious vapors.

  The final obstacle. Duncan would have to pass it somehow.

  Behind him, a high metal gate shot up across his path, preventing him from returning the way he had come. It was barbed with shigawire, unclimbable.

  I never intended to turn back anyway.

  “Never argue with your instincts, boy,” Paulus Atreides had counseled him. Based on a gut feeling, the Old Duke had taken the young refugee into his household, despite knowing that Duncan had come from a Harkonnen world.

  Duncan wondered if he could possibly vault over the cauldron, but he couldn’t see the far side through the shimmering flames and smoke-smeared air. What if the cauldron was not really round, but distorted, to trap a student making assumptions? Tricks within tricks.

  Was the vat only a holoprojection? But he felt the heat, coughed in the smoke. He threw his lance, and it clanked against the metal side.

  Hearing a heavy ratchet and the rumble of metal plates behind him, he turned to see the huge gate sliding toward him. If he didn’t move, the barrier would push him into the cauldron.

  Drawing the Old Duke’s sword, he swished it through the air. The weapon seemed entirely useless. Think!

  Expect the unexpected.

  He studied the shield-fence on his right, the shimmer of the force field. And remembered his shield-training sessions on Caladan with Thufir Hawat. The slow blade penetrates the body shield, but it must move at just the right speed, not too fast and not too slow.

  He stroked the Duke’s sword in the air for practice. Could he breach the flickering fence and tumble through? If a slow blade penetrated the shield, the energy of the barrier could be moved, changed, shifted. The sharp point of the sword could distort the field, puncture an opening. But how long would a shield remain compromised, if penetrated by a sword? Could he push his body through the temporary opening before the shield closed again?

  Behind him, the barbed gate ground closer, nudging him toward the burning cauldron. But he would not go.

  Duncan visualized how he would accomplish what he had in mind. His options were limited. He stepped toward the pulsing barrier and stopped where he could smell the ozone and feel the crackle of energy on his skin. He tried to remember one of the prayers his mother had sung to him, before Rabban had murdered her. But he could recall only fragments that made no sense.

  Gripping the Old Duke’s heavy sword, Duncan leaned into the shield-fence and pierced it as if it were a wall of water, then dragged the blade up, feeling the ripples of the field. It reminded him of gutting a fish.

  Then he pushed himself forward, following the sword point, dropping through the resistance— and fell in a wave of dizziness onto a rough surface of black lava. He rolled and landed on his feet, still gripping the sword, ready to fight the Swordmasters if they challenged him for breaking the rules. Suddenly he was safe from the cauldron and the moving gate.

  “Excellent! We have another survivor.” Frizzy-haired Jamo Reed, released from prison-island duty, rushed up to embrace Duncan in a bearlike hug.

  Swordmaster Mord Cour and Jeh-Wu weren’t far behind, wearing alien expressions of delight on their faces. Duncan had never seen either of them look so pleased.

  “Was that the only way out?” he asked, trying to catch his breath as he looked at Swordmaster Cour.

  The old man gave a boisterous laugh. “You found one of twenty-two ways, Idaho.”

  Another voice intruded. “Do you want to go back and sea
rch for the other possibilities?” It was Resser, grinning from ear to scarred ear. Duncan slipped the Old Duke’s sword into its scabbard and clapped his friend on the back.

  How to define the Kwisatz Haderach? The male who is everywhere simultaneously, the only man who can truly become the greatest human of all of us, mingling masculine and feminine ancestry with inseparable power.

  — Bene Gesserit Azhar Book

  Beneath the Imperial Palace, in a network of perimeter water lanes and connected central pools, two women swam in black sealsuits. The younger of the pair stroked slowly, staying back to help the older whenever she faltered. Their impermeable suits, slick as oil and warm as a womb, offered flexibility while modestly covering the chest, midriff, and upper legs.

  Despite the fact that some Bene Gesserit women wore common clothing, even exquisite gowns for special occasions such as Imperial balls and gala events, they were counseled to keep their bodies covered on an everyday basis. It helped to foster the mystique that kept the Sisters apart.

  “I can’t . . . do what . . . I used to,” Reverend Mother Lobia wheezed, as Anirul helped her into the largest of seven central pools, a steaming water-oasis, scented with salts and herbs. Not so long ago, Truthsayer Lobia had been able to outswim Anirul quite easily, but now, at more than one hundred seventy years old, her health had been declining. Warm condensation dripped from the arched stone ceiling overhead, like a tropical rain.

  “You’re doing fine, Reverend Mother.” Anirul held the ancient woman’s arm and helped her up a stone stairway.

  “Don’t ever lie to a Truthsayer,” Lobia said with a wrinkled smile. Her yellowing eyes danced, but she was gasping for air. “Especially not the Emperor’s Truthsayer.”

  “Surely the Emperor’s wife deserves a bit of leniency?”

  The old woman chuckled.

  Anirul helped her into a flowform chair, handed her a plush karthan-weave towel. Lobia lay back with the towel over her and pressed a button to activate the chair’s skin massage. She sighed as the electric fields pulsed her muscles and nerve endings.

  “Preparations have been made for my replacement,” Lobia said in a sleepy voice, over the hum of the chair. “I’ve seen the names of the candidates. It will be good to go back to the Mother School, though I doubt I will ever see it again. On Kaitain, the climate is so perfect, but I long for the cold and the damp of Wallach IX. Odd, don’t you think?”

  Anirul perched on the edge of her chair, seeing the age on the Truthsayer’s face, heard the ever-present murmur of crowded lives within herself. As the secret Kwisatz Mother, Anirul lived with a clear and strident presence of Other Memory inside her head. All the lives down the long path of her heritage spoke in her, telling her things that even most Bene Gesserit did not know. Lobia, with all her years, didn’t know as much about age as Anirul.

  I am wise beyond my years. This was not hubris; it was more a sensation of the weight of history and events that she bore with her.

  “What will the Emperor do without you around, Reverend Mother? He relies on you to learn who lies and who tells the truth. You’re no ordinary Truthsayer, by any historical measure.”

  Beside her, soothed by the massage cycle, Lobia fell asleep.

  As she relaxed, Anirul pondered layers of secrecy within the Sisterhood, the strict compartmentalization of information. The dozing Truthsayer beside her was one of the most powerful women in the Imperium, but even Lobia didn’t know the true nature of Anirul’s duties— knew very little, in fact, about the Kwisatz Haderach program.

  On the other side of the underground pool chambers, Anirul watched her husband Shaddam emerge from a steam room, dripping and wrapped in a karthan towel. Before the door closed she saw his companions, two naked concubines from the royal harem. The women had all begun to look alike to her, even with her Bene Gesserit powers of observation.

  Shaddam didn’t have much of a sexual appetite for Anirul, though she certainly knew techniques to please him. In accordance with the Mother Superior’s command, she had recently delivered a fourth daughter to him, Josifa. He had grown more furious with each girl-child, and now he turned to concubines and ignored her. Realizing that Shaddam lived under the ponderous weight of Elrood’s long reign, Anirul wondered if her husband dallied with so many concubines because he was trying to compete with his father’s ghost. Was he keeping score?

  As the Emperor walked pompously from the steam room toward one of the cold pools, he turned away from his wife and dove in with a small splash. Surfacing, he stroked efficiently toward the water lanes. He liked to swim the Palace perimeter at least ten times a day.

  She wished Shaddam paid as much attention to running the Imperium as he did to his own diversions. Occasionally Anirul tested him in subtle ways, and found that he knew far less than she did about the interfamilial alliances and manipulations around him. A grave gap in his knowledge. Shaddam had been increasing the ranks of his Sardaukar corps, though not enough, and without any overall plan. He liked to style himself as a soldier and even wore the uniform— but he didn’t have the edge, the military vision, or the talent for moving his toy soldiers around the universe in a productive manner.

  Hearing a high-pitched squeal, Anirul saw a tiny black shape in the stone rafters above the waterways. With a fluttering of wings, a distrans bat swooped toward her with yet another message from Wallach IX. The tiny creature had been transported and set free on Kaitain, where it had homed in on her. Old Lobia didn’t stir, and Anirul knew Shaddam wouldn’t return for at least half an hour. She was alone.

  Adjusting her vocal cords, the Kwisatz Mother matched the cry of the bat. It swooped down and landed on her damp, upturned palms. She stared at its ugly muzzle, the sharp teeth, the eyes like tiny black pearls. Focusing her attention, Anirul emitted another squeak, and the bat responded with a staccato chitter, a burst of compact signals encoded on the nervous system of the rodent messenger.

  Hearing this, Anirul slowed it down in her mind; even Truthsayer Lobia didn’t know the code. The high-pitched tone became a series of clicks and bursts, which she translated and sorted.

  It was a report from Mother Superior Harishka, updating her on the culmination of ninety generations of careful genetic planning. Sister Jessica, the secret daughter of Gaius Helen Mohiam and Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, remained unsuccessful in her sacred mission to bear an Atreides daughter. Was she refusing, delaying intentionally? Mohiam had said the young girl was spirited, loyal but occasionally stubborn.

  Anirul had expected the next daughter in the genetic path to be conceived by now— the penultimate child who would be mother to their secret weapon. Yet for some time, Jessica had been sleeping with Duke Leto Atreides— but still she had not become pregnant. Intentional on her part? The attractive young woman had tested as fertile, and she was an adept seductress; Duke Leto Atreides had already sired one son.

  What is taking her so long?

  Not good news. If the long-awaited Harkonnen/Atreides daughter was not born soon, Mother Superior would summon Jessica back to Wallach IX and find out why.

  Anirul considered letting the bat fly free, but decided not to risk it. With a clench of her fingers, she broke the creature’s fragile neck and disposed of the winged carcass in a matter-recycler behind the pool chamber.

  Leaving Lobia to sleep in her massage chair, Anirul hurried back upstairs, into the Palace.

  You carve wounds upon my flesh and write there in salt!

  — Fremen Lament

  Despite the fact that Liet-Kynes had no medicines other than a simple first-aid pack in his Fremkit, Warrick survived.

  Blinded by grief and guilt, Liet lashed the near-dead man high onto the back of a worm. During the long journey back to the sietch, Liet shared his own water, did his best to repair Warrick’s ravaged stillsuit.

  Within Red Wall Sietch, there was much wailing and weeping. Faroula, who had considerable skill in the uses of healing herbs, never left her husband’s side. She tended him hour after hour
as he lay in a blind stupor, clinging to the threads of life.

  Though his face was bandaged, Warrick’s skin could never regrow. Liet had heard that the genetic wizards of the Bene Tleilax could create new eyes, new limbs, new flesh, but the Fremen would never accept such a healing miracle, not even for one of their own. Already, the sietch elders and fearful children made warding signs near the curtain hangings of Warrick’s chambers, as if to fend off an ugly demon.

  Heinar, the old one-eyed Naib, came to see his disfigured son-in-law. Kneeling beside her husband’s pallet, Faroula looked stricken; her elfin face, once so quick to flash a smile or snap a witty retort, was now drawn; her intense and curious eyes were wide with helplessness. Though Warrick had not died, she wore a yellow nezhoni scarf, the color of mourning.

  Proud and grieving, the Naib called a council of sietch elders, at which Liet-Kynes told the stern men exactly what had happened, giving his testament so that the Fremen could understand and honor the great sacrifice Warrick had made. The young man should have been considered a hero. Poems should have been written and honorific songs sung about him. But Warrick had made one terrible mistake.

  He had not died when he should have.

  Heinar and the council somberly made preparations for a Fremen funeral. It was only a matter of time, they said. The mutilated man could not possibly survive.

  Nonetheless, he did.

  Covered with salves, Warrick’s wounds stopped bleeding. Faroula fed him, often with Liet looking on, desperately wishing he could do something helpful. But even the son of Umma Kynes could not perform the miracle his friend needed. Warrick’s son Liet-chih, too young to understand, remained in the care of his mourning grandparents.

  Though Warrick looked like a half-rotted carcass, there was no smell of infection about him, no yellowish suppuration of wounds, no gangrene. In a most curious manner he was healing, leaving patches of exposed bone. His staring, lidless eyes could never close in a peaceful sleep, though the night of blindness was always with him.