Elemental

by Steven Savile

  At six Daniel returned to the kitchen, and made himself some dinner. It was bologna and cheese again, which he was heartily sick of, but until Mrs. Johns called by tomorrow morning with more groceries, that was all there was. He might try asking Mrs. Johns if she could bring him something different this time, but she was old and didn’t seem to hear. It was more important that he kept her from realizing that his dad had gone away, leaving them alone. For two weeks he’d kept up the pretense that he’d just popped out for an hour. If people found out, they’d come and take his mother away and he knew she didn’t want that. He finished his food and then warmed a little chicken noodle soup and put it into a cup for his mother.

  His mother didn’t eat again, though, didn’t take even a little. He tried to prop her head up and pour some into her mouth, but it wouldn’t stay open for long enough. The skin stretched thin on her forehead was very hot, her hair matted on her neck. She seemed hotter than she had yesterday, and he wondered again how she could stand the duvet on top of her.

  Daniel turned the bedside light on, thankful for the glow it pooled onto the little table. Of all the watching times, the evenings were the worst. It was very quiet in the house, quiet upstairs, quiet in the kitchen. He could have turned the television on, but somehow that made things even worse. When you went into the kitchen it sounded as if you were outside the house.

  When he’d washed up, Daniel made himself another cup of tea, changed the water in his mother’s glass, checked for the fourth time that the door to the cellar was firmly shut, and settled back down to count.

  He walked up steps, he walked down steps. Dark was reconciled to the fact that he had to tramp up the damn things, but it was galling to find yourself suddenly sent down again, undoing all of the previous hour’s tramping.

  There didn’t seem to be an alternative. The metal staircases hugged the walls, going around the corners of the huge blocks, sometimes up, sometimes down. At one point it dropped for hundreds and hundreds of steps, and Dark got close enough to the water to see its slow lapping against the walls. The water looked very deep and viscous, but he didn’t think anything lived in it.

  The overall trend was now upward, which was both good and bad. It was good because it meant he was closer to wherever the staircase led, and bad because it kept getting hotter and hotter. Several times he had considered jettisoning his robes, but he didn’t know if he’d need them later. He was presumably going to have to face someone at some point, either the Goudy or whoever the hell else ran this place. He’d rather not do that clad only in a grubby loincloth: it was difficult to exude the necessary violent authority while informally clad.

  The higher he got, the lighter it became. Visibility was still no more than fifty yards and still showed nothing but walls, sometimes nearer, sometimes farther, but it seemed to prove he was getting somewhere. It was getting lighter because the moss that covered the walls was getting thicker. Dark didn’t like the moss. He suspected it was alive in some unusual way, and he knew it was where the heat was coming from. As time went on he began to think he could hear a rustling sound, a damp scratching. The moss was twisting, reproducing, dividing, and swelling. Where before it had been patchy, now it was universal, and six inches thick in places. It was taking over the walls, and it didn’t look like it would be very long before it clogged the spaces in between them, choking them. It was like the Goudy themselves had been, insinuating themselves slowly, unnoticeably, and then suddenly striking; blossoming blackly and taking over their hosts.

  Suddenly afraid as well as angry, Dark plunged his hand into the moss and ripped out a lump. It was hot and fleshlike and seemed to pulse in his hand, and he flicked it away with distaste. He was now too high above the water to hear the splash. A sensation was left in his hand, a feeling of disease, and he realized that all this was not Goudy at all. In some way he didn’t understand, it was Gillsans, and it was a weapon.

  Confused, Dark continued to climb, getting hotter and hotter. The steps led always upward now, and the higher he got the odder he felt. It was partly the heat, and partly the moss, which was now over a foot deep and exuding an unpleasant decaying odor as he pushed through it. But it wasn’t just that. His mind was becoming unclear, watery, as if it was boiling with fever. A couple of times he stumbled hard against the railing, and it was only years of dedicated self-preservation that enabled his hands to instinctively grip it in time. He climbed for a while with his eyes shut, but that didn’t make it any better. It felt as if he was pushing upward through the revolting moss, cutting a channel through its black and glistening warmth.

  The opposite wall was getting closer, too. At times it had been as far as a hundred yards away, but now it was only a matter of six or seven feet. The moss was pushing out from there too.

  Dark jerked his neck back as he tried to roll the ache out of his shoulders, and saw that far above, there was a roof. The stairs led up to a door set in the wall where it met its opposite. He stumbled and fell hard onto one knee on the stairs, making them vibrate. Shaking his head made no difference. His mind was running as if stirred with a warm finger. He pulled himself to his feet again and hauled himself up the steps.

  Hand on the phone, Daniel watched his mother. Something was wrong, much more wrong than usual. Her breathing had deepened again and was very uneven. She seemed to be even hotter; from where he stood Daniel believed he could feel the waves of heat coming off her. She gasped suddenly, a wet choking sound, her mouth gaping open.

  Daniel turned. He’d heard something else. His mother was still breathing loudly through the black clogging mass in her lungs, but that wasn’t it. It was the sound he’d heard before. Fifteen minutes ago, when his mother was still quiet, he’d thought he’d heard something from behind the cellar door. It had been very faint, a distant muffled clang, as if something was approaching from below. This sound was similar, but different. It sounded closer.

  Dark picked himself up again, oblivious to the fact that his knee was pouring blood. It wasn’t surprising he’d tripped. It was too hot, too hot to live. The moss was squirming around him like meat full of struggling worms. The brightness was too intense to see by, and all he could do was fall forward step by step. It was only a matter of yards now.

  Daniel’s mother let out a soft sound, a kind of gurgle, but Daniel didn’t even hear it. He was staring in the other direction, toward the door to the cellar. There was something down there. The room was full of heat and there was a smell. Daniel looked back at his mother, and realized it was coming from her.

  Dark fell against the door and it gave way before him. Daniel stared at the cellar door as it creaked slowly open, revealing the darkness of the stairs that led down into the gloom beneath the house. Suddenly his mother’s chest rose up, and her breaths lost all rhythm, stopped being many and became just single spasms, part of no sequence, no longer a necessary condition. Dark felt the heat reach a peak, felt himself lost in it, lost in this room of churning, dying flesh. He felt it contract harder and tighter, and knew that it couldn’t last, that this would have to end.

  Daniel tore his eyes away from the cellar door and knelt by his mother, gripping her hand. He didn’t need the doctor to tell him this was the end, that this was the final minute, that time stopped here. His mother let out a moan that escalated into a rasping gasp, and Dark felt himself spiralling upward faster and faster, losing his sense of himself, propelled upward until there was just a blur.

  Her chest hitched again, and as Daniel glared through his tears at her face, his mother’s eyes suddenly opened. She saw him, he knew, saw him and knew who he was, and then she died.

  For a moment Daniel thought he saw something coming out of her mouth, the faintest of shapes escaping in the air, and then there was just afterward, and tomorrow, and the cooling huddle of his life up till then.

  Sea Child: A Tale of Dune

  BY BRIAN HERBERT AND KEVIN J. ANDERSON

  Bestselling authors Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson have previously c
ollaborated on the Prelude to Dune trilogy (House Atreides, House Harkonnen, and House Corrino), the Legends of Dune trilogy (The Butlerian Jihad, The Machine Crusade, The Battle of Corrin), and The Road to Dune.

  When Frank Herbert wrote his original six Dune novels, the last two—Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse Dune—were the first parts of the grand climax to the epic saga. Frank Herbert died before completing the story, leaving only a detailed outline for “Dune 7.” Using that outline, the Herbert and Anderson team are currently writing Hunters of Dune and Sandworms of Dune, the chronological finale to the story.

  “Sea Child” introduces part of that story arc, with the beleaguered Bene Gesserit Sisterhood facing their destructive dark counterparts, the Honored Matres, who have destroyed the planet Dune. “Sea Child” takes place during the events of Chapterhouse Dune, and should be enjoyed by any fans of the Dune series.

  Brian Herbert lives on an island off the coast of Washington State; Kevin J. Anderson lives in Monument, Colorado, with his wife, author Rebecca Moesta.

  Bene Gesserit punishments must carry an inescapable

  lesson, one which extends far beyond the pain.

  —Mother Superior Taraza, Chapterhouse Archives

  As she had done since the brutal Honored Matres had conquered Buzzell, Sister Corysta struggled to get through the day without attracting undue notice. Most of the Bene Gesserit like herself had already been slaughtered, and passive cooperation was the only way she could survive.

  Even for a disgraced Reverend Mother such as herself, submission to a powerful though morally inferior adversary galled her. But the handful of surviving Sisters here on the isolated ocean world—all of whom had been sent here to face years of penance—could not hope to resist the “whores” that arrived unexpectedly, in such overwhelming force.

  At first, the Honored Matre conquerors had resorted to primal techniques of coercion and manipulation. They killed most of the Reverend Mothers during interrogation, trying unsuccessfully to learn the location of Chapterhouse, the hidden homeworld of the Bene Gesserits. Thus far, Corysta was one of twenty Sisters who had avoided death, but she knew their odds of continued survival were not good.

  Back in the terrible Famine Times after the death of Leto II, the God Emperor of Dune, much of humanity had scattered into the wilderness of star systems and struggled to survive. Left behind in the core of the old Imperium, only a few remnants had clung to the tattered civilization and rebuilt it under Bene Gesserit rule. Now, after fifteen hundred years, many of the Scattered Ones were coming back, bringing destruction with them. At the head of the unruly hordes, Honored Matres swept across planets like a raging spacestorm, returning with stolen technology and grossly altered attitudes. In appearance, the whores bore superficial similarities to the black-robed Bene Gesserits, but in reality they were unimaginably different, with different fighting skills and no apparent moral code—as they had proved many times with their captives on Buzzell.

  As dawn gathered light across the water, Corysta went to the edge of a jagged inlet, her bare feet finding precarious balance on slippery rocks as she made her way down to the ocean’s edge. The Honored Matres kept the bulk of the food supplies for themselves, offering little to the surviving inhabitants of Buzzell. Thus, if Corysta failed to find her own food, she would starve. It would amuse the whores to find out that one of the hated Bene Gesserits could not care for herself; the Sisterhood had always taught the importance of human adaptation for survival in challenging environments.

  The young Sister had a knot in her stomach, pangs of hunger similar to the pains of grief and emptiness. Corysta could never forget the crime that had sent her to Buzzell, a foolish and failed effort to keep her baby secret from the Sisterhood and their interminable breeding program.

  In moments of despair, Corysta felt she had two sets of enemies, her own Sisters and the Honored Matres who sought supremacy over everything in the old Imperium. If the Bene Gesserits did not find a way to fight back—here and on other planets—their days would be numbered. With superior weaponry and vast armies, the Honored Matres would exterminate the Sisterhood. From her own position of disadvantage, Corysta could only hope that her Mother Superior was developing a plan on Chapterhouse that would enable the ancient organization to survive. The Sisterhood faced an immense challenge against an irrational enemy.

  In a fit of violence, the Honored Matres had been provoked into unleashing incredible weapons from the Scattering against Rakis, the desert world better known as Dune. Now, the legendary planet was nothing more than a charred ball, with all sandworms dead and the source of spice obliterated. Only the Bene Gesserits, on faraway Chapterhouse, had any stockpiles left. The whores from the Scattering had destroyed tremendous wealth simply to vent their rage. It made no sense. Or did it?

  Soostones were also a source of wealth in the Known Universe, and were found only on Buzzell. Therefore, Honored Matres had conquered this planet with its handful of punished Bene Gesserit Sisters. And now they meant to exploit it … .

  At the water’s edge, Corysta reached into the lapping surf, withdrawing her hand-woven traps that gathered night-scurrying crustaceans. Lifting her dark skirt, she waded deeper to retrieve the nets. Her special little cove had always provided a bounty for her, vital food that she shared with her few remaining Sisters.

  She found footing on the slick, rounded surface of a submerged rock. The moving currents stirred up silt, making the water murky. The sky was steel gray with clouds, but she hardly noticed them. Since the arrival of the Honored Matres, Corysta spent most of her time with her gaze lowered, seeing only the ground. She’d had enough punishment from the Bene Gesserit. As unfair as it was in the first place, her suffering had been exacerbated by the whores.

  As she pulled in the net, Corysta was pleased to feel its heaviness, an indicator of a good catch. Another day without starvation. With difficulty she pulled the net to the surface and rested it on the rocks, where she discovered that its tangled strands did not hold a clatter of shellfish but, instead, contained a weak and greenish creature. To her surprise, she saw a small humanoid baby with smooth skin, large round eyes, a wide mouth, and gill slits. She immediately recognized the creature as one of the genetically modified “phibian” slaves the whores had brought to Buzzell to harvest soostones. But it was just an infant, floating alone and helpless.

  Catching her breath, Corysta splashed back to the shore rocks behind her. Phibians were cruel and monstrous—no surprise, considering the vicious whores who had created them—and she was afraid she would be beaten for interfering with this abandoned child. Adult phibians would claim the infant had been caught in her nets, that she had killed it. She had to be very careful.

  Then Corysta saw the baby’s eyes flutter open, its gills and mouth gasping for oxygen. A bloody gash marred the infant’s forehead; it looked like an intentional mark drawn by the single claw of a larger phibian. This child was weak and sickly, with a large discoloration on its back and side, a glaring birthmark like ink spilled on a quarter of its small body.

  An outcast.

  She had heard of this before. Among the phibians, the claw wound was a mark of rejection. Some aquatic parent had scarred its own frail child in disgust because of the birthmark, and then cast the baby away to perish in the seas. Stray currents had brought it to Corysta’s nets.

  Gently, she untangled the creature from the strands and washed the small, weak body in the calm waters. It was male. Responding to her ministrations, the sickly little phibian stirred and opened its alien, membranous eyes to look at her. Despite the monstrous appearance, Corysta thought she saw humanity behind the strange eyes, a child from the sea who had done nothing to deserve the punishment inflicted upon it.

  She gathered the baby in her arms, folding him in her black robe to hide him from view. Looking around, Corysta quickly ran home.

  On Buzzell, deep, plankton-rich oceans swallowed all but a few patches of rough land. It was as if the cosmic creator had accid
entally left a water tap running and filled the planet to overflowing.

  On the only patch of dry land suitable for use as a spaceport, Corysta worked with several other beaten Bene Gesserit Sisters. The women carried heavy sealed boxes of the milky gems called soostones. After all their specialized training, including a remarkable ability to control their bodily chemistry, Corysta and these defeated Sisters were nothing more than menial laborers forced to work while the brutal Honored Matres flaunted their dominance.

  Two Bene Gesserit women walked beside Corysta with their eyes cast down, each one carrying a heavy satchel full of the harvested gems. The Honored Matres enjoyed grinding the disgraced Reverent Mothers under their heels. During their exile here, Corysta and her fellow Sisters had all known one another’s crimes and supported one another. But in their current situation, such minor infractions and the irrelevant penance and retribution meant nothing. She and her companions knew the impatient whores were sure to kill them soon, rendering their life histories meaningless. Now that the phibians had arrived as a specialized workforce, the Sisters were no longer necessary for the economic processes of Buzzell.

  On Corysta’s left, five adult phibians rose out of the water, lean and powerful forms with frightening countenances. Their unscaled skins shone with oily iridescence; their heads were bullet-shaped, streamlined for swimming. The Honored Matres had apparently bred the creatures using technology and knowledge brought by Tleilaxu gene masters who had also fled in the Scattering. Experimenting with human raw materials, had those Tleilaxu outcasts cooperated willingly, or had they been forced by the whores? The sleek and glistening phibians had been well designed for their underwater work.

  The humanoids stood dripping on the land, carrying nets full of gleaming soostones. Corysta no longer found the jewels appealing. To her, they had the look and smell of the blood that had been spilled to get them. Thousands of Buzzell inhabitants—exiled Sisters, support personnel, even smugglers and traders—had been slaughtered by the Honored Matres in their takeover.