Dune: House Harkonnen

by Brian Herbert; Kevin J. Anderson

  The lump of Rhombur’s body didn’t move, and Leto saw only a few spasmodic muscle twitches beneath his skin. The artificial voice from the speaker conveyed no emotions, no inflections.

  “When . . . I . . . am . . . a . . . cyborg . . . we . . . can . . . build . . . a . . . special . . . suit. We’ll . . . go . . . diving . . . again. Wait . . . and . . . see.”

  Somehow, the exiled Prince had accepted the dramatic changes to his body, even the prospect of cyborg replacements. His good heart and infectious optimism had helped Leto through the darkest times after the Old Duke’s death. Now Leto would be there for Rhombur.

  “Remarkable,” the doctor said.

  Rhombur’s eye did not waver from Leto. “I . . . want . . . a . . . Harkonnen . . . beer.”

  Leto laughed. On his left, Tessia clutched his arm. The hideously injured Prince would still go through oceans of pain, both physical and mental.

  Rhombur seemed to sense Leto’s gloom, and his speech improved, a little. “Don’t . . . be . . . sad . . . for me. Be happy. I . . . look . . . forward to . . . my . . . cyborg parts.” Leto leaned closer. “I . . . am Ixian . . . No . . . stranger . . . to machines!”

  It all seemed so unreal to Leto, so impossible. And yet, it was happening. Over the centuries, cyborg attempts had always failed when the body rejected its synthetic parts. Psychologists claimed the human mind refused to accept such a drastic intrusion by mechanicals. The deep-seated fear dated back to the machine-induced horrors of pre-Butlerian days. Supposedly, this Suk doctor Yueh, with his intensive research program on Richese, had solved such problems. Only time would tell.

  But even if the components worked as promised, Rhombur would function little better than the stiff old Ixian meks. The adjustment would not be easy, and delicate control would never be possible. In the face of his injuries and disabilities, would Tessia abandon him and return to the Sisterhood?

  In his youth, Leto had listened with rapt attention as Paulus and his veteran soldiers told of severely injured men performing incredible feats of bravery. The triumph of the human spirit over insurmountable odds. Leto had never seen anything like that firsthand.

  Rhombur Vernius was the bravest man Leto had ever met.

  • • •

  Two weeks later, Dr. Wellington Yueh arrived from Richese, accompanied by his cyborg-development team of twenty-four men and women, and two shuttle loads of medical equipment and supplies.

  Duke Leto Atreides personally supervised as his men helped the party disembark. Fussy about details, the stylus-thin Yueh barely took time to introduce himself before he scurried about the spaceport, attending to the arriving cargo cases of instruments and the prosthetic parts that would ultimately be fitted onto Rhombur’s salvageable flesh and bones.

  Groundtrucks transported personnel and cargo to the infirmary center, where Yueh insisted upon seeing the patient immediately. The Suk doctor looked over at Leto as they entered the hospital. “I will make him whole again, sir, though it will take some time for him to get used to his new body.”

  “Rhombur will do everything you ask.”

  Inside the room, Tessia still had not left Rhombur’s side. Yueh moved smoothly over to the life-support pod, studied connections, diagnostic readings. Then he looked down at the injured Prince, who regarded him with his bizarre single eye, set in grossly wounded flesh.

  “Prepare yourself, Rhombur Vernius,” Yueh said, stroking his long mustaches. “I intend to begin the first surgical procedure tomorrow.”

  Rhombur’s synthetic voice floated across the room, smoother now that he had practiced using it. “I look forward . . . to shaking . . . your hand.”

  Love is an ancient force, one that served its purpose in its day but is no longer essential for the survival of the species.

  — Bene Gesserit Axiom

  Looking down from the sea cliff, Leto saw the House Guard arrayed on the beach where he had ordered them to take up positions. He had given them no reason. Concerned about the Duke’s mental state, Gurney, Thufir, and Duncan had been watching him like Atreides hawks, but Leto knew how to sidetrack them.

  The golden sun rode high overhead in a clear blue sky, yet still a shadow hung over him. The Duke wore a short-sleeved white tunic and blue dungarees, comfortable clothes with no trappings of his office. He drew a deep breath and stared. Maybe he could just be a man for a short while.

  Jessica hurried up behind him, wearing a low-cut aqua singlesuit. “What are you thinking, my Lord?” Her face showed deep concern, as if she feared he might jump to his death, as Kailea had done. Perhaps Hawat had sent her up here to check on him.

  Seeing the grouped men on the beach, Leto gave a wan smile. No doubt they would try to catch him in their own arms if he tumbled off the cliff.

  “I am distracting the men, so I can get away.” He looked at her oval face. With her Bene Gesserit training, Jessica would not be so easily fooled— and he knew better than to

  try. “I’ve had enough talk, advice, and pressure . . . I need to escape to where I can have peace.”

  She touched his arm.

  “If I don’t preoccupy them,” he said, “they will insist upon sending a retinue of guards to accompany me.” Below, Duncan Idaho began to drill the troops in techniques he had learned at the Ginaz School. Leto turned from the view. “Now, perhaps, I can get away.”

  “Oh? Where are we going?” Jessica asked, fully confident. Leto frowned at her, but she cut him off before he could object to her presence. “My Lord, I will not allow you to go alone. Would you rather have the full complement of guards, or just me?”

  He considered her words and, with a sigh, gestured toward the green-roofed ’thopter hangars at the edge of the nearby landing fields. “I suppose you’re less objectionable than an entire army.”

  Jessica followed as he crossed the dry grasses. Grief still radiated from him in waves. That he’d even considered the foul price demanded by the Tleilaxu in exchange for a ghola of Victor showed her how close to the edge of madness he had gone. But in the end, Leto had made the right decision.

  She hoped it was his first step toward healing.

  Inside the hangar building were a number of ornithopters, some with engine covers open; mechanics stood on suspensor platforms, working on them. Leto walked purposefully to an emerald-hulled ’thopter with red Atreides hawks on the undersides of the wings. Built low to the ground, it had a two-seat cockpit in a front-back arrangement instead of the standard face-front or side-by-side configurations.

  A man in gray coveralls had his head inside the engine compartment, but emerged when the Duke approached. “Just a couple of final adjustments, my Lord.” He had a shaved upper lip, and a silver-flecked beard encircled his face, giving him a simian appearance.

  “Thank you, Keno.” Distracted, Leto stroked the side of the sleek vessel. “My father’s racing ’thopter,” he said to Jessica. “He called it Greenhawk. I trained on her, went out with him and did loops, dives, and rolls.” He allowed himself a bittersweet smile. “Used to drive Thufir crazy, seeing the Duke and his only heir taking such risks. I think my father did it just to irritate him.”

  Jessica examined the unusual craft. Its wings were narrow and upswept, with the nose split into two aerodynamic sections. The mechanic finished his adjustments and closed the engine cover. “All ready to go, sir.”

  After helping Jessica into the rear-facing seat, Duke Leto climbed into the front. A safety harness snicked into place over her lap, another over his own. Turbines hissed on, and he taxied the sleek aircraft out of the hangar onto a broad ocher tarmac. Keno waved after them. Warm wind whipped through Jessica’s hair until the plexplaz cockpit cover slid shut.

  Leto touched the controls, working busily, expertly— intent on prepping the ’thopter, ignoring Jessica. The green wings shortened for jet-boost takeoff, their delicate interleavings meshing together. The turbines roared, and the craft launched straight up.

  Extending the wings to beetle stubs, Leto b
anked sharply to the left, then low over the beach, where his soldiers waited in formation. With startled faces they looked up as the Duke flew by, dipping the wings.

  “They’ll see us flying north along the coastline,” Leto shouted back to Jessica, “but after we’re out of sight, we’ll go west. They won’t . . . they won’t be able to follow us.”

  “We’ll be alone.” Jessica hoped the Duke’s mood would improve with this sojourn into the wilderness, but she would stay by him regardless.

  “I always feel alone,” Leto answered.

  The ornithopter turned, crossed over pundi rice lowlands and small farm buildings. The wings extended to full soaring length and began to beat like the appendages of a great bird. Below them were river orchards, the narrow Syubi River, and a modest mountain of the same name— the highest point on the plain.

  They flew west all afternoon without seeing another aircraft. The landscape changed, becoming more rugged and mountainous. After sighting a village by an alpine lake, Leto studied the instruments and changed his heading. Soon the mountains gave way to grassy plains and sheer canyons. Presently, Leto stubbed the wings and banked hard right to descend into a deep river gorge.

  “Agamemnon Canyon,” Leto said. “See the terraces?” He pointed to one side. “They were built by ancient Caladanian primitives, whose descendants still live here. They’re rarely seen by outsiders.” Observing intently, Jessica spotted a brown-skinned man with a narrow, dark face before he ducked out of sight into a rock hollow.

  Leto steered away from the cliff face and continued down, toward a broad river with surging white water. In the waning daylight, they flew low over the rushing current, through the narrow winding gorge. “It’s beautiful,” Jessica said.

  In an offshoot canyon, the river dwindled, leaving creamy sand beaches. Wings fully tucked, the ornithopter set down on a bank of sand with a soft lurch. “My father and I used to come fishing here.” Leto opened a hatch on the side of the ’thopter and brought out a spacious autotent, which set itself up and shot stabilizing stakes into the sand. They set up an airpad and a double sleeping envelope and brought their luggage and foodpaks in.

  For a while they sat together on the riverbank and talked, while the shadows of late afternoon settled over the gorge and the temperature dropped. They snuggled closer, and Jessica leaned her bronze hair into the side of his neck. Large fish jumped while swimming upstream, against the current.

  Leto maintained his somber silence, causing her to pull back and look into his smoky gray eyes. Feeling the muscles in his hand tighten up, she leaned close, gave him a long kiss.

  Against her explicit training in the Sisterhood, all the lectures Mohiam had given her, Jessica found herself breaking one of the primary rules of the Bene Gesserit. Despite her intentions, despite her loyalty to the Sisterhood, Jessica had actually allowed herself to fall in love with this man.

  They held each other, and for a long while Leto gazed out onto the river. “I still have nightmares,” he said. “I see Victor, Rhombur . . . the flames.” He pressed his face into his hands. “I thought I could escape the ghosts by coming way out here.” He looked at her, his expression bleak. “I shouldn’t have allowed you to come with me.”

  Wind gusts began to whip through the narrow canyon, snapping the tent fabric, and knotted clouds crawled overhead. “We’d better get inside before the storm comes.” He hurried over to close the ’thopter hatch, and just as he returned a hard rain began to fall. He barely escaped getting drenched.

  They shared a warm foodpak inside the tent, and later, when Leto lay back on the double sleeping pad, still troubled, Jessica moved close and began kissing his neck. Outside, the storm grew louder, more demanding of their attention. The tent flapped and rattled, but Jessica felt safe and warm.

  As they made love that stormy night, Leto clung to her like a drowning man grasping a life raft, hoping to find some island of safety in a hurricane. Jessica responded to his desperation, afraid of his intensity, hardly able to cope with his outpouring of love. He was like a storm himself, uncontrolled and elemental.

  The Sisterhood had never taught her about anything like this.

  Emotionally torn, but determined, Jessica finally gave Leto the most precious gift she had left to offer. Manipulating her own body chemistry in the Bene Gesserit way, she envisioned his sperm and her egg merging . . . and allowed herself to conceive a child.

  Though she had been given explicit instructions from the Sisterhood to produce only a daughter, Jessica had delayed and reconsidered, spending month after month contemplating this most important of decisions. Through it all she came to the realization that she could no longer bear to watch Leto’s anguish. She had to do this one thing for him.

  Duke Leto Atreides would have another son.

  How will I be remembered by my children? This is the true measure of a man.

  — ABULURD HARKONNEN

  Within sight of the Baron’s square-walled Keep, the industrial floatcraft rose high in the gloomy sky.

  Inside the floatcraft’s large cargo hold, directly over its gaping, open hatch, Glossu Rabban hung spread-eagled. Shackles secured his wrists and ankles, but little else kept him from falling into the open sore of Harko City. His blue uniform was torn, his face bruised and bloodied from the scuffle with Captain Kryubi’s troopers when they’d subdued him, pursuant to the Baron’s orders. It had taken six or seven of the burliest guards to control the “Beast,” and they had not been gentle. Now, on chains, the brutish man thrashed from side to side, looking for something to bite, something to spit at.

  Steadying himself against a rail while the wind whipped up through the yawning hatch, Baron Harkonnen gazed dispassionately down at his nephew. The obese Baron’s spider-black eyes were like deep holes. “Did I give you permission to kill my brother, Rabban?”

  “He was only your half-brother, Uncle. He was a fool! I thought we would be better off—”

  “Don’t try to do any thinking, Glossu. You aren’t good at it. Answer my question. Did I give you permission to kill a member of the Harkonnen family?”

  When the response didn’t come quickly enough, the Baron moved a lever on a control panel. The shackle on Rabban’s left ankle sprang open, leaving the leg to dangle out over open space. Rabban writhed and screamed, unable to do anything. The Baron found the technique a primitive but effective method of increasing fear.

  “No, Uncle, I did not have your permission!”

  “No, what?”

  “No, Uncle . . . I mean no, my Lord!” The blocky man grimaced in pain while he struggled for the correct words, trying to understand what his uncle wanted.

  The Baron spoke into a com-unit to the floatcraft operator. “Take us over my Keep and hover fifty meters above the terrace. I think the cactus garden there could use some fertilizer.”

  Looking up with a pitiful expression, Rabban declared, “I killed my father because he was a weakling. All his life, his actions brought dishonor on House Harkonnen.”

  “Abulurd wasn’t strong, you mean . . . not like you and me?”

  “No, my Lord Baron. He didn’t measure up to our standards.”

  “So now you have decided to call yourself Beast. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, Un— I mean, yes, my Lord.”

  Through the open hatch, Baron Harkonnen could see the Keep’s spires. Directly below them was a garden terrace where he sometimes liked to sit and eat sumptuous meals in privacy, in the midst of the spiny desert growths. “If you look below, Rabban— yes, I believe you have a good view now— you can see a certain modification I made to the garden earlier today.”

  As he spoke, the metal tips of army lances emerged from the dirt beside thorn-saguaro and chocatilla. “See what I planted for you?”

  Dangling from the three remaining shackles, Rabban twisted to look. His face filled with terror.

  “Note the bull’s-eye arrangement of the tips. If I drop you just right, you will be impaled in the exact center. If I
miss by a little, we can still earn points for the hit, since every lance has a scoring number written on it.” He stroked his upper lip. “Hmm, perhaps we can even introduce slave-dropping as an event for our arena crowds. Quite an exciting concept, don’t you think?”

  “My Lord, please don’t do this. You need me!”

  With emotionless eyes, the Baron looked down at him. “Why? I have your little brother Feyd-Rautha. Perhaps I’ll make him my heir-designate. By the time he’s your age, he certainly won’t make as many mistakes as you have.”

  “Uncle, please!”

  “You must learn to pay close attention to what I say, at all times, Beast. I never make idle chatter.”

  Rabban squirmed, and the chains jingled. Cold, smoky air drifted into the floatcraft as he tried desperately to think of what to say. “You want to know if it’s a good game? Yes, uh, my Lord, it’s most ingenious.”

  “So I’m a smart man to devise it? Much smarter than you, correct?”

  “Infinitely smarter.”

  “Then don’t ever try to oppose me. Is that understood? I’ll always be ten steps ahead of you, ready with surprises that you could never imagine.”

  “I understand, my Lord.”

  Relishing the abject terror he saw in his nephew’s face, the Baron said, “Very well. I shall release you now.”

  “Wait, Uncle!”

  The Baron touched a button on the control panel, and both arm shackles opened, so that Rabban dropped upside down into open air, held by only the right ankle band. “Ooops. Do you think I hit the wrong button?”

  Screaming: “No! You’re teaching me a lesson!”

  “And have you learned that lesson?”

  “Yes, Uncle! Let me come back. I will always do what you say.”

  Into the com-unit, the Baron said, “Take us to my private lake.”

  The floatcraft glided over the estate until it was directly over the grimy waters of a man-made pond. Following previous orders, the operator descended to ten meters over the water.