Somewhere behind him, as he increased the distance, he heard muffled growls and snarls, and shouts from the hunters. A pack of the wild gaze hounds had converged on them, seeking wounded prey. Duncan hid a smile and continued toward the intermittently blinking light. He saw it now, up ahead near the edge of the forest preserve.
He finally approached, treading lightly toward a shallow clearing. He came upon a silent flitter ’thopter, a high-speed aircraft that could take several passengers. The flashing beacon signaled from the top of the craft— but Duncan saw no one.
He waited in silence for a few moments, then cautiously left the shadows of the trees and moved forward. Was the craft abandoned? Left there for him? Some kind of trap the Harkonnens had laid? But why would they do that? They were already hunting him.
Or did he have a mysterious rescuer?
Duncan Idaho had accomplished much this evening and was already exhausted, stunned at how much had changed in his life. But he was only eight years old and could never pilot this flitter, even if it was his only way to escape. Still, he might find supplies inside, more food, another weapon. . . .
He leaned against the hull, surveying the area, making no sound. The hatch stood open like an invitation, but the mysterious flitter was dark inside. Wishing he still had his handlight, he moved forward cautiously and probed the shadows ahead of him with the barrel of the lasgun.
Then hands snatched out from the shadows of the craft to yank the gun from his grip before he could even flinch. Fingers stinging, flesh torn, Duncan staggered backward, biting back an outcry.
The person inside the flitter tossed the lasgun with a clatter onto the deckplates and lunged out to grab hold of the boy’s arms. Rough hands squeezed the wound in his shoulder and made him gasp in pain.
Duncan kicked and struggled, then looked up to see a wiry, bitter-faced woman with chocolate-colored hair and dusky skin. He recognized her instantly: Janess Milam, who had stood next to him during the yard games . . . just before Harkonnen troops had captured his parents and sent his entire family to the prison city of Barony.
This woman had betrayed him to the Harkonnens.
Janess pressed a hand over his mouth before he could cry out and clamped his head in a firm arm lock. He couldn’t escape.
“Got you,” she said, her voice a harsh whisper.
She had betrayed him again.
We consider the various worlds as gene pools, sources of teachings and teachers, sources of the possible.
—Bene Gesserit Analysis,
Wallach IX Archives
Baron Vladimir Harkonnen was no stranger to despicable acts. Still, being coerced into this encounter disturbed him more than any vile situation he had ever been in. It threw him completely off-balance.
And throughout it all, why did this damned Reverend Mother have to be so calm, so smug?
Embarrassed, he sent away his guards and officials, purging all possible eavesdroppers from the brooding Harkonnen citadel. Where is Rabban when I need him? Off on a hunt! He sulked back to his private chambers, as ready as he would ever be. His stomach churned.
Nervous sweat glistened on his forehead as he stepped through the ornate arched doorway, then flicked on the privacy curtains. Perhaps if he extinguished the glowglobes and pretended he was doing something else. . . .
When he entered, the Baron was relieved to see that the witch had not taken off her clothes, had not reclined seductively on the mussed bedcoverings in anticipation of his return. Instead, she sat fully robed, a prim Bene Gesserit Sister, just waiting for him. But a maddeningly superior smile curved her lips.
The Baron wanted to slash that smile away with a sharp instrument. He took a deep breath, appalled that this witch could make him feel so helpless.
“The best I can offer you is a vial of my sperm,” he said, trying to be gruff and in control. “Impregnate yourself. That should be sufficient for your purposes.” He lifted his firm chin. “You Bene Gesserit will just have to accept that.”
“But it’s not acceptable, Baron,” the Reverend Mother said, sitting up straighter on the divan. “You know the strictures. We’re not Tleilaxu growing offspring in tanks. We Bene Gesserit must have birth through natural processes, with no artificial meddling, for reasons you’re incapable of understanding.”
“I’m capable of understanding plenty,” the Baron growled.
“Not this you aren’t.”
He hadn’t expected the gambit to work anyway. “You need Harkonnen blood— what about my nephew Glossu Rabban? Or better yet, his father, Abulurd. Go to Lankiveil and you could have as many children as you want through him. You won’t have to work so hard.”
“Unacceptable,” Mohiam said. She fixed him with a cold, narrow-lidded glare. Her face looked plain, pasty, and implacable. “I am not here to negotiate, Baron. I have my orders. I must return to Wallach IX carrying your child.”
“But . . . what if—”
The witch held up her hand. “I’ve made it perfectly clear what will happen if you refuse. Make your decision. We’ll have you either way.”
His private chamber had suddenly become an alien and threatening place to him. He squared his shoulders, flexed his biceps. Though a muscular man, lean of body, with fast reflexes, his only escape seemed to involve pummeling this woman into submission. But he also knew about Bene Gesserit fighting abilities, especially their arcane weirding ways . . . and felt a twinge of doubt as to whether he would be the victor in such a struggle.
She got up and glided across the room with silent steps, then sat rigidly on the edge of the Baron’s stained and unmade bed. “If it’s any consolation, I take no more pleasure in this act than you do.”
She looked at the Baron’s well-made body, his broad shoulders, his firm pectorals and flat abdomen. His face had a haughty look, clearly noble-born. In other circumstances Vladimir Harkonnen might even have been an acceptable lover, like the male trainers with whom the Bene Gesserit had matched Mohiam throughout her childbearing years.
She had already delivered eight daughters to the Bene Gesserit school, all of them raised apart from her on Wallach IX or on other training planets. Mohiam had never tried to follow their progress. That was not the Sisterhood’s way. Her daughter by Baron Harkonnen would be no different.
Like many well-trained Sisters, Mohiam had the ability to manipulate her most minute bodily functions. In order to become a Reverend Mother, she had been required to alter her own biochemistry by taking an awareness-spectrum poison. In transmuting the deadly drug within herself, she had passed inward through the long echoing bloodlines, enabling conversation with all of her female ancestors, the clamorous inner lives of Other Memory.
She could prepare her womb, ovulate at will, even choose the sex of her child from the moment the sperm and egg united. The Bene Gesserit wanted a daughter from her, a Harkonnen daughter, and Mohiam would deliver, as instructed.
With only limited details of the numerous breeding programs, Mohiam did not understand why the Bene Gesserit needed this particular combination of genes, why she had been selected to bear the child and why no other Harkonnen could produce a viable offspring for Bene Gesserit plans. She was just doing her duty. To her the Baron was a tool, a sperm donor who had to play his part.
Mohiam lifted her dark skirt and lay back on the bed, propping her head up to look at him. “Come, Baron, let us waste no more time. After all, it’s such a small thing.” She let her gaze drop down to his crotch.
As he flushed with rage, she continued in a soft voice, “I have the ability to increase your pleasure, or to deaden it. Either way, the results will be the same to us.” She smiled with her thin lips. “Just think of the hidden melange stockpiles you’ll be able to keep without the Emperor’s knowledge.” Her voice grew harder. “On the other hand, just try to imagine what old Elrood will do to House Harkonnen if he finds out you’ve been cheating him all along.”
Scowling, the Baron fumbled with his robe and lurched toward the bed. Mo
hiam closed her eyes and muttered a Bene Gesserit benediction, a prayer to calm herself and to focus her bodily actions and her inner metabolism.
The Baron was more nauseated than aroused. He couldn’t bear to look at Mohiam’s naked form. Fortunately she kept most of her clothes on, as did he. She worked with her fingers until he stiffened, and he kept his eyes closed during the entire mechanical act. Behind his eyes, he had no choice but to fantasize about earlier conquests, the pain, the power . . . anything to take his mind from the revolting and messy act of male-female intercourse.
It wasn’t lovemaking by any means, just a tired ritual between two bodies in order to exchange genetic material. For both of them it was barely even sex.
But Mohiam got what she wanted.
• • •
At his one-way private observation window, Piter de Vries moved silently, surreptitiously. As a Mentat he had learned how to glide like a shadow, how to see without being seen. An ancient law of physics claimed that the mere act of observation changed parameters. But any good Mentat knew how to observe broader issues while remaining invisible, unknown to the subjects of his scrutiny.
De Vries had often watched the Baron’s sexual escapades through this peephole. Sometimes the acts disgusted him, occasionally they fascinated . . . and rarer still, they gave the Mentat ideas of his own.
Now, he silently kept his eyes to the tiny observation holes, drinking in details as the Baron was forced to copulate with the Bene Gesserit witch. He watched his master with great amusement, enjoying the man’s utter discomfiture. He had never seen the Baron so nonplussed. Oh, how he wished he had found time to set up the recording apparatus so he could enjoy this again and again.
The moment she’d made her demands, de Vries had known the unavoidable outcome. The Baron had been a perfect pawn, utterly ensnared, with no choice in the matter.
But why?
Even with his great Mentat prowess, de Vries could not understand what the Sisterhood wanted with House Harkonnen or its offspring. Surely, the genetics weren’t that spectacular.
For now, though, Piter de Vries just enjoyed the show.
Many inventions have selectively improved particular skills or abilities, emphasizing one aspect or another. But no achievement has ever scratched the complexity or adaptability of the human mind.
—Ikbhan’s Treatise on the Mind, Volume II
On one side of the faux-stone practice floor in the Ixian Grand Palais, Leto stood beside Guard Captain Zhaz, panting. The fight instructor was an angular man with bristly brown hair, thick eyebrows, and a square-cut beard. Like his students, Zhaz wore no shirt, only beige fighting shorts. The smell of sweat and hot metal hung in the air despite the best efforts of an air-exchange apparatus. As on most mornings, though, the training master spent more time watching than fighting. He let the battle-machines do all the work.
After his regular studies, Leto loved the change of pace, the physical exercise, the challenge. By now he had settled into a routine on Ix, undergoing hours of high-tech physical and mental training, with added time for tours of technological facilities and instruction in business philosophy. He had warmed to Rhombur’s enthusiasm, though often he had to help explain difficult concepts to the Ixian Prince. Rhombur wasn’t slow-witted, just . . . distant from many practical matters.
Every third morning, the young men left their classrooms behind and worked out on the automated training floor. Leto loved the exercise and the rush of adrenaline, while both Rhombur and the fight instructor seemed to find this an antiquated requirement added to the curriculum only because of Earl Vernius’s memories of warfare.
Leto and the bristly-haired captain watched stocky Prince Rhombur wield a golden pike against a sleek and responsive fighting mek. Zhaz didn’t train personally against his students. He felt that if he and his security troops did their jobs, no member of House Vernius need ever stoop to barbaric hand-to-hand combat. He did, however, help program the self-learning combat drones.
In its resting position, the man-sized mek was a featureless charcoal ovoid— no arms, legs, or face. Once the fight began, however, the Ixian unit morphed a set of crude protrusions and took on varying shapes based upon feedback from its scanner, telling it how best to defeat an adversary. Steel fists, knives, flexsteel cables, and other surprises could be thrust from any point on its body. Its mechanical face could disappear entirely or change expression— from a dullness designed to lull an opponent to a ferocious red-eyed glare, or even fiendish glee. The mek interpreted and reacted, learning with each step.
“Remember, no regular patterns,” Zhaz shouted to Rhombur. His beard protruded like a shovel from his chin. “Don’t let it read you.”
The Prince ducked as two blunted darts sped past his head. A surprise knife thrust from the mek drew a trickle of blood on the young man’s shoulder. Even with the injury, Rhombur feinted and attacked, and Leto was proud of his royal peer for not crying out.
On several occasions Rhombur had asked Leto for advice, even critiques on sparring style. Answering honestly, Leto kept in mind that he himself was not a skilled professional instructor— nor did he want to reveal too much of Atreides techniques. Rhombur could learn those from Thufir Hawat, the Old Duke’s swordmaster himself.
The tip of the Prince’s blade found a soft spot on the mek’s charcoal body, and it fell over “dead.”
“Good, Rhombur!” Leto called.
Zhaz nodded. “Much better.”
Leto had fought the mek twice that day, defeating it each time on higher difficulty settings than Prince Rhombur was using. When Zhaz asked how Leto had acquired such skills, the young Atreides hadn’t said much, not wishing to brag. But now he had firsthand proof that the Atreides method of training was superior, despite the mek’s chilling near intelligence. Leto’s background involved rapiers, knives, slow-pellet stunners, and body-shields— and Thufir Hawat was a more dangerous and unpredictable instructor than any automated device could ever hope to be.
Just as Leto took up his own weapon and prepared for the next round, the lift doors opened and Kailea entered, sparkling with jewels and a comfortable metal-fiber outfit whose design seemed calculated to look gorgeous but casual. She bore a stylus and ridulian recorder pad. Her eyebrows arched in feigned surprise at finding them there. “Oh! Excuse me. I came to look at the mek design.”
The Vernius daughter usually contented herself with intellectual and cultural pursuits, studying business and art. Leto couldn’t keep himself from watching her. At times her eyes almost seemed to flirt with him, but more often she ignored him with such intensity he suspected she shared the same attraction he felt.
During his time in the Grand Palais, Leto had crossed her path in the dining hall, on the open observation balconies, in library facilities. He had responded to her with snatches of awkward conversation. Aside from the inviting sparkle in her beautiful green eyes, Kailea had given him no special encouragement, but he couldn’t stop thinking about her.
She’s only a stripling, Leto reminded himself, playing at being a Lady. Somehow, though, he couldn’t convince his imagination of that. Kailea had complete confidence that she was destined for a greater future than living underground on Ix. Her father was a war hero, the head of one of the wealthiest Great Houses, and her mother had been beautiful enough to be an Imperial concubine, and the girl herself had an excellent head for business. Kailea Vernius obviously had a wealth of possibilities.
She focused her complete attention on the motionless gray ovoid. “I’ve gotten Father to consider marketing our new-phase fighting meks commercially.” She studied the motionless training machine, but glanced at Leto out of the corner of her eye, noted his strong profile and regal, high-bridged nose. “Ours are better than any other combat device— adaptable, versatile, and self-learning. The closest thing to a human adversary developed since the Jihad.”
He felt a chill, thinking back to all the warnings his mother had given him. Right now she would be pointing an accusi
ng finger and nodding in satisfaction. Leto looked over at the charcoal-colored ovoid. “Are you saying that thing has a brain?”
“By all the saints and sinners, you mean in violation of the strictures after the Great Revolt?” Captain Zhaz replied in stern surprise. “ ‘Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of the human mind.’ ”
“We’re, uh, very careful about that, Leto,” Rhombur said, using a purple towel to wipe sweat from the back of his neck. “Nothing to worry about.”
Leto didn’t back down. “Well, if the mek scans people, if it reads them as you said, how does it process the information? If not through a computer brain, then how? This isn’t just a reactive device. It learns and tailors its attack.”
Kailea jotted notes down on her crystal pad and adjusted one of the gold combs in her copper-dark hair. “There are many gray areas, Leto, and if we tread very carefully House Vernius stands to make a tremendous profit.” She ran a fingertip along her curved lips. “Still, it might be best to test the waters by offering some unmarked models on the black market first.”
“Don’t trouble yourself, Leto,” Rhombur said, avoiding the uncomfortable subject. His tousled blond hair still dripped with sweat, and his skin showed a flush from his exertion. “House Vernius has teams of Mentats and legal advisors scrutinizing the letter of the law.” He looked over at his sister for reassurance. She nodded absently.
In some of his instruction sessions in the Grand Palais, Leto had learned of interplanetary patent disputes, minor technicalities, subtle loopholes. Had the Ixians come up with a substantially different way of using mechanical units to process data, one that did not raise the spectre of thinking machines like those that had enslaved mankind for so many centuries? He didn’t see how House Vernius could have created a self-learning, reactive, adaptable fighting mek without somehow going over the line into Jihad violation.
Dune: House Atreides Page 18