With loose pebbles pattering around him, he circled back until he reached the overhang above his former shelter. Duncan’s instinct was to run blindly, as far as he could go. But he made himself stop. This would be better. He squatted behind the loose, heavy chunks of rock, tested them to be sure of his strength, and dropped back to wait.
Before long, the first hunter came up the slope to the cave hollow. Clad in suspensor-augmented armor, the hunter slung a lasgun in front of him. He glanced down at a handheld device, counterpart to the Richesian tracer.
Duncan held his breath, making no move, disturbing no pebbles or debris. Blood sketched a hot line down his left arm.
The hunter paused in front of the hollow, noting the disturbed snow, the bloodstains, the targeting blip on his tracer. Though Duncan couldn’t see the man’s face, he knew the hunter wore a grin of scornful triumph.
Thrusting the lasgun into the hollow ahead of him, the hunter ducked low, bending stiffly in his protective chest padding. On his belly, he crawled partway into the darkness. “Found you, little boy!”
Using his feet and the strength of his leg muscles, Duncan shoved a lichen-smeared boulder over the edge. Then he moved to the second one and kicked it hard, pushing it to the abrupt dropoff. Both heavy stones fell, tumbling in the air.
He heard the sounds of impact and a crack. A sickening crunch. Then the gasp and gurgle of the man below.
Duncan scrambled to the edge, saw that one of the boulders had struck to one side, bouncing off and rolling down the steep slope, gathering momentum and taking loose scree along with it.
The other boulder had landed on the small of the hunter’s back, crushing his spine even through the padding, pinning him to the ground like a needle through an insect specimen.
Duncan climbed down, gasping, slipping. The hunter was still alive, though paralyzed. His legs twitched, thumping the toes of his boots against the frost-hard ground. Duncan wasn’t afraid of him anymore.
Squeezing past the man’s bulky, armored body into the hollow, Duncan shone his handlight down into the man’s glazed, astonished eyes. This wasn’t a game. He knew what the Harkonnens would do to him, had already seen what Rabban had done to his parents.
Now Duncan would play by their rules.
The dying hunter croaked something unintelligible at him. Duncan did not hesitate. His eyes dark and narrow— no longer the eyes of a child— he bent forward. The knife slipped in under the man’s jawline. The hunter squirmed, raising his chin as if in acceptance rather than defiance— and the dull blade cut through skin and sinew. Jugular blood spurted out with enough force to splash and spatter before forming a dark, sticky pool on the floor of the cave.
Duncan could not spend time thinking about what he had done, could not wait for the hunter’s body to cool. He rummaged through the items on the man’s belt, found a small medpak and a ration bar. Then he tugged the lasgun free from the clenching grip. Using its butt, he smashed the blood-smeared Richesian tracer, grinding it into metal debris. He no longer needed it as a decoy. His pursuers could hunt him with their own wits now.
He figured they might even enjoy the challenge, once they got past their fury.
Duncan crawled out of the hollow. The lasgun, almost as tall as he was, clattered as he dragged it behind him. Below, the hunting party’s trail of glowglobes came closer.
Now better armed and nourished by his improbable success, Duncan ran off into the night.
Many elements of the Imperium believe they hold the ultimate power: the Spacing Guild with their monopoly on interstellar travel, CHOAM with its economic stranglehold, the Bene Gesserit with their secrets, the Mentats with their control of mental processes, House Corrino with their throne, the Great and Minor Houses of the Landsraad with their extensive holdings. Woe to us on the day that one of those factions decides to prove the point.
—COUNT HASIMIR FENRING,
Dispatches from Arrakis
Leto had barely an hour to rest and refresh himself in his new quarters in the Grand Palais. “Uh, sorry to rush you,” said Rhombur as he backed through the sliding door into the crystal-walled corridor, “but this is something you won’t want to miss. It takes months and months to build a Heighliner. Signal me when you’re ready to go to the observation deck.”
Still unsettled but mercifully alone for a few moments, Leto rummaged through his luggage, made a cursory inspection of his room. He looked at the carefully packed belongings, much more than he could ever need, including trinkets, a packet of letters from his mother, and an inscribed Orange Catholic Bible. He had promised her he would read verses to himself every night.
He stared, thinking of how much time he would need just to make himself at home—a whole year away from Caladan— and instead left everything in its place. There would be time enough to do all that later. A year on Ix.
Tired after the long journey, his mind still boggling at the weighty strangeness of this underground metropolis, Leto stripped off his comfortable shirt and sprawled back on the bed. He had barely managed to test out the mattress and fluff up the pillow before Rhombur came pounding on his door. “Come on, Leto! Hurry up! Get dressed and we’ll, uh, catch a transport.”
Still fumbling to get his arm through his left sleeve, Leto met the other young man in the hall.
A bullet tube took them between the upside-down buildings to the outskirts of the underground city, and then a lift capsule dropped them to a secondary level of buildings studded with observation domes. After emerging, Rhombur bustled through the crowds gathered at the balconies and broad windows. He grabbed Leto’s arm as they pushed past Vernius guards and assembled spectators. The Prince’s face was flushed, and he turned quickly to the others there. “What time is it? Has it happened yet?”
“Not yet. Another ten minutes.”
“The Navigator’s on his way. His chamber’s being escorted across the field right now.”
Muttering thanks and pardons, Rhombur led his confused companion to a broad metaglass window in the sloping wall of the observation gallery.
At the far end of the room another door glided open, and the crowd parted for two dark-haired young men— identical twins, from the looks of them. Small in stature, they flanked Rhombur’s sister Kailea as proud escorts. In the brief time since Leto had last seen her, Kailea had somehow managed to change into a different dress, less frilly but no less beautiful. The twins seemed drunk with her presence, and Kailea seemed to enjoy their fawning attention. She smiled at both of them and guided them toward a good spot at the observation window.
Rhombur took Leto to stand beside them, far more interested in the view than in the members of the crowd. Glancing around, Leto assumed that all the people there must be important officials of some sort. He peered down, still at a loss as to what was going on.
An immense enclosure funneled into the distance where the grotto ceiling and the horizon came together. Down below he saw a full-scale Heighliner, an asteroid-sized ship like the one that had carried him from Caladan to Ix.
“This is the largest, uh, manufacturing facility on all of Ix,” Rhombur said. “It’s the only surface hold in the Imperium large enough to accommodate an entire Heighliner. Everyone else uses dry docks in space. Here, in a terrestrial environment, the safety and efficiency for even large-scale construction is very cost-effective.”
The shining new ship crowded the subterranean canyon. A fan of decorative dorsal arrays shone from the nearer side. On the fuselage, a gleaming purple-and-copper Ixian helix interlocked into the larger white analemma of the Spacing Guild, symbolizing infinity inside a rounded convex cartouche.
Constructed in place deep underground, the spaceship rested on a suspensor-jack mechanism, which elevated the craft so that large groundtrucks could drive underneath the hull. Suboid workers in silver-and-white uniforms scanned the fuselage with handheld devices, performing rote duties. As the teams of underclass workers checked the Guild craft, readying it for space, lines of light danced arou
nd the manufacturing center— energy barriers to repel intruders.
Cranes and suspensor supports looked like tiny parasites crawling over the Heighliner’s hull, but most of the machinery was clustered against the sloping walls of the chamber, moved out of the way . . . for a launch? Leto didn’t think it was possible. Thousands of surface-bound workers swarmed like a static pattern across the ground, removing debris and preparing for the departure of the incredible ship.
The buzz of the audience in the observation chamber grew louder, and Leto sensed something was about to happen. He spotted numerous screens and images transmitted by comeyes. Numbed by the spectacle, he asked, “But . . . how do you get it out? A ship this size? There’s a rock ceiling overhead, and all the walls look solid.”
One of the eager-faced twins next to him looked down with a confident smile. “Wait and see.” The two identical young men had widely set eyes on squarish faces, intent expressions, furrowed brows; they were several years older than Leto. Their pale skin was an inevitable consequence of spending their lives underground.
Between them, Kailea cleared her throat and looked at her brother. “Rhombur?” she said, flashing a glance at the twins and at Leto. “You’re forgetting your manners.”
Rhombur suddenly remembered his obligations. “Oh, yes! This is Leto Atreides, heir to House Atreides on Caladan. And these two are C’tair and D’murr Pilru. Their father is Ix’s Ambassador to Kaitain, and their mother is a Guild banker. They live in one of the wings of the Grand Palais, so you might see them around.”
The young men bowed in unison and seemed to draw closer to Kailea. “We’re preparing for Guild examination in the next few months,” one of the twins, C’tair, said. “We hope to pilot a ship like that someday.” His dark head nodded toward the immense vessel below. Kailea watched them both with a worried glint in her green eyes, as if she wasn’t too sure about the idea of their becoming Navigators.
Leto was moved by the sparkle and eagerness he saw in the young man’s deep brown eyes. The other brother was less social and seemed to be interested only in the activity below. “Here comes the Navigator’s chamber,” D’murr said.
Below, a bulky black tank floated ahead on a cleared path, borne on industrial suspensors. Traditionally, Guild Navigators masked their appearance, keeping themselves hidden in thick clouds of spice gas. It was generally believed that the process of becoming a Navigator transformed a person into something other than human, something more evolved. The Guild said nothing to confirm or deny the speculations.
“Can’t see a thing inside,” C’tair said.
“Yes, but that’s a Navigator in there. I can sense him.” D’murr leaned forward so intently it seemed as if he wanted to fly through the metaglass observation window. When the twins both ignored her, intent on the ship below, Kailea turned instead to Leto and met his gaze with sparkling emerald eyes.
Rhombur gestured down at the ship and continued his rapid commentary. “My father is excited about his new enhanced-payload Heighliner models. I don’t know if you’ve studied your history, but Heighliners were originally of, uh, Richesian manufacture. Ix and Richese competed with one another for Guild contracts, but gradually we won by bringing all aspects of our society into the process: uh, subsidies, conscriptions, tax levies, whatever it took. We don’t do things halfway on Ix.”
“I’ve heard you’re also masters of industrial sabotage and patent law,” Leto said, remembering what his mother had claimed.
Rhombur shook his head. “Lies told by jealous Houses. Vermilion hells, we don’t steal ideas or patents— we waged only a technological war against Richese, and won without firing a single shot. But as sure as if we’d used atomics, we struck mortal blows against them. It was either them or us. A generation ago they lost their stewardship of Arrakis at about the same time they lost their lead in technology. Bad family leadership, I guess.”
“My mother is Richesian,” Leto said crisply.
Rhombur flushed with deep embarrassment. “Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot.” He scratched his tousled blond hair just to give his hands something to do.
“That’s okay. We don’t wear blinders,” Leto said. “I know what you’re talking about. Richese still exists, but on a vastly smaller scale. Too much bureaucracy and too little innovation. My mother’s never wanted to take me there, not even to visit her family. Too many painful memories, I suppose, though I think she hoped marrying my father might help restore Richese fortunes.”
Below, the tank bearing the mysterious Navigator entered an orifice at the front end of the Heighliner. The polished black chamber vanished into the vessel’s immensity like a gnat inhaled into the mouth of a large fish.
Though she was younger than her brother, when Kailea spoke, her voice sounded more businesslike. “The new Heighliner program is going to be the most profitable of all time for us. Large sums will be pouring into our accounts from this contract. House Vernius will get twenty-five percent of all the solaris we save the Spacing Guild during the first decade.”
Overwhelmed, Leto thought back to the small-scale activities on Caladan: the pundi rice harvest, the boats unloading cargoes from ships . . . and the dedicated cheers the population had hurled at the Old Duke after the bullfight.
Grating sirens sounded from speakers mounted throughout the huge chamber. Below, like iron filings flowing within magnetic-field lines, the suboid workers evacuated from all sides of the newly constructed Heighliner. Up and down the ceiling city, lights twinkled from other large observation windows in the stalactite towers. Leto could make out tiny forms pressed close to distant panes.
Rhombur stood near Leto as the spectators around them fell into a hush.
“What is it?” Leto asked. “What’s happening now?”
“The Navigator is going to fly the ship out,” the twin C’tair said.
“He’ll take it away from Ix so it can begin its rounds,” D’murr added.
Leto stared at the rock ceiling, the impenetrable barrier of a planetary crust, and knew this was impossible. He heard a faint, barely discernible humming.
“Piloting such a vessel out isn’t difficult— uh, at least, not for one of them.” Rhombur crossed his arms over his chest. “Much easier than guiding a Heighliner back into a confined space like this. Only a top-level Steersman could do that.”
As Leto watched, holding his breath just like all the other spectators, the Heighliner shimmered, became indistinct— then vanished entirely.
The air inside the huge grotto reverberated with a loud boom from the sudden volume displacement. A tremor ran through the observation building, and Leto’s ears popped.
The grotto now stood empty, a vast enclosed space with no trace of the Heighliner, just leftover equipment and a pattern of discolorations on the floor and walls and ceiling.
“Remember how a Navigator operates a ship,” D’murr said, seeing Leto’s confusion.
“He folds space,” C’tair said. “That Heighliner never passed through the crustal rock of Ix at all. The Navigator simply went from here . . . to his destination.”
A few members of the audience applauded. Rhombur seemed immensely pleased as he gestured to the new emptiness below that extended as far as they could see. “Now we have room to start building another one!”
“Simple economics.” Kailea glanced at Leto, then demurely flicked her eyes away. “We don’t waste any time.”
The slave concubines permitted my father under the Bene Gesserit–Guild agreement could not, of course, bear a Royal Successor, but the intrigues were constant and oppressive in their similarity. We became adept, my mother and sisters and I, at avoiding subtle instruments of death.
—From “In My Father’s House”
by the Princess Irulan
Crown Prince Shaddam’s tutoring chambers in the Imperial Palace would have been large enough to house a village on some worlds. With total disinterest, the Corrino heir brooded in front of his teaching machine while Fenring watched him.
“Why?” Fenring laughed. “So the throne can skip a generation and go directly to your son when he reaches his prime, hmmmm?”
Shaddam was thirty-four years old and seemingly a lifetime away from becoming Emperor. Each time the old man took a drink of spice beer, he activated more of the secret poison— but the n’kee had been working for months, and the only result seemed to be increasingly irrational behavior. As if they needed more of that!
That very morning Elrood had scolded Shaddam for not paying closer attention to his studies. “Watch, and learn!”— one of his father’s tedious phrases—“Do as well as Fenring, for once.”
Since childhood, Hasimir Fenring had attended classes with the Crown Prince. Ostensibly, he provided companionship for Shaddam, while he himself gleaned an understanding of Court intrigues and politics. In academics, Fenring always did better than his royal friend: He devoured any bit of data that could help him increase his position.
His mother Chaola, an introspective lady-in-waiting, had settled into a quiet home and lived on her Imperial pension after the death of the Emperor’s fourth wife Habla. In raising the two young boys together while she attended the Empress Habla, Chaola had given Fenring the chance to be so much more— almost as if she had planned it that way.
These days Chaola pretended not to understand what her son did at Court, though she was Bene Gesserit–trained. Fenring was wily enough to know that his mother comprehended far more than her station suggested, and that many plans and breeding schemes had gone on without his knowledge.
Dune: House Atreides Page 15