Dune: House Atreides
Page 19
If his mother ever found out, she would haul him home from Ix, no matter what his father might say.
“Let’s see just how good this product is,” Leto said, taking up a weapon and turning his back on Kailea. He could feel her eyes on his bare shoulders, the muscles of his neck. Zhaz stood back casually to watch.
Leto shifted his pike from hand to hand and jogged onto the floor. Taking a classic fighting stance, he called out a degree of difficulty to the charcoal oval shape. “Seven point two-four!” Eight notches higher than the time before.
The mek refused to move.
“Too high,” the training master said, thrusting his bearded chin forward. “I disabled the dangerous higher levels.”
Leto scowled. The fight instructor did not want to challenge his students, or risk more than the slightest injury. Thufir Hawat would have laughed out loud.
“Are you trying to show off for the young lady, Master Atreides? Could get you killed.”
Looking at Kailea, he saw her watching him, a bemused, teasing expression on her face. She quickly turned to the ridulian pad and scratched a few more ciphers. He flushed, felt the hotness. Zhaz reached over to grab a soft towel from a rack and tossed it to Leto.
“The session’s over. Distractions of this sort are not good for your training, and can lead to serious injury.” He turned to the Princess. “Lady Kailea, I request that you avoid the training floor whenever Leto Atreides is fighting our meks. Too many hormones in the way.” The guard captain could not cover his amusement. “Your presence could be more dangerous than any enemy.”
We must do a thing on Arrakis never before attempted for an entire planet. We must use man as a constructive ecological force— inserting adapted terraform life: a plant here, an animal there, a man in that place— to transform the water cycle, to build a new kind of landscape.
—Report from Imperial Planetologist PARDOT KYNES,
directed to Padishah EMPEROR ELROOD IX (unsent)
When the blood-spattered Fremen youths asked Pardot Kynes to accompany them, he didn’t know whether he was to be their guest or prisoner. Either way, the prospect intrigued him. Finally, he would have his chance to experience their mysterious culture firsthand.
One of the young men quickly and efficiently carried his injured companion over to Kynes’s small groundcar. The other Fremen reached into the back storage compartments and tossed out Kynes’s painstakingly collected geological samples to make more room. The Planetologist was too astonished to object; besides, he didn’t want to alienate these people— he wanted to learn more about them.
In moments, they had stuffed the bodies of the dead Harkonnen bravos into the bins, no doubt for some Fremen purpose. Perhaps a further ritual desecration of their enemies. He ruled out the unlikely possibility that the youths simply wished to bury the dead. Are they hiding the bodies for fear of reprisals? That, too, seemed wrong somehow, not in keeping with what little he had heard about Fremen. Or will these desert folk render them for resources, reclaiming the water in their tissues?
Then, without asking, without giving thanks or making any comment whatsoever, the first grim Fremen youth took the vehicle, its injured passenger, and the bodies, and drove off rapidly, spewing sand and dust in all directions. Kynes watched it go, along with his desert-survival kit and maps, including many he had prepared himself.
He found himself alone with the third young man— a guard, or a friend? If these Fremen meant to strand him without his supplies, he would be dead before long. Perhaps he could get his bearings and make it back to the village of Windsack on foot, but he had paid little attention to the locations of population centers during his recent wanderings. An inauspicious end for an Imperial Planetologist, he thought.
Or perhaps the young men he’d rescued wanted something else from him. Because of his own newly formed dreams for the future of Arrakis, Kynes desperately wanted to know the Fremen and their unorthodox ways. Clearly, these people were a valuable secret hidden from Imperial eyes. He thought they’d be sure to greet him with enthusiasm once he told them his ideas.
The remaining Fremen youth used a small patch-kit to repair a fabric rip on the leg of his stillsuit, then said, “Come with me.” He turned toward a sheer rock wall a short distance away. “Follow, or you’ll die out here.” He flashed an indigo-eyed glare over his shoulder. His face held a hard humor, an impish smile as he said, “Do you think the Harkonnens will take long to seek vengeance for their dead?”
Kynes hurried to him. “Wait! You haven’t told me your name.”
The young man looked at him strangely; he had the blue-within-blue eyes of long spice addiction, and weathered skin that gave him an appearance of age far beyond his years. “Is it worthwhile to exchange names? The Fremen already know who you are.”
Kynes blinked. “Well, I did just save your life and the lives of your companions. Doesn’t that count for something among your people? It does in most societies.”
The young man seemed startled, then resigned. “You are right. You have forged a water bond between us. I am called Turok. Now we must go.”
Water bond? Kynes suppressed his questions and trailed after his companion.
In his well-worn stillsuit, Turok scrambled over the rocks toward the vertical cliff. Kynes trudged beside fallen boulders, slipping on loose footing. Only as they approached did the Planetologist notice a discontinuity in the strata, a seam that split the old uplifted rock, forming a fissure camouflaged by dust and muted colors.
The Fremen slipped inside, penetrating the shadows with the speed of a desert lizard. Curious and anxious not to become lost, Kynes followed, moving quickly. He hoped he would get a chance to meet more of the Fremen and learn about them. He didn’t waste time considering that Turok might be leading him into a trap. What would be the point? The young man could easily have killed him out in the open.
Turok stopped in the cool shade, giving Kynes a moment to catch up. He pointed toward specific places on the wall near him. “There, there— and there.” Without waiting to see if his charge understood, the youth stepped in each indicated spot, near-invisible handholds and footholds. The young man slithered up the cliff, and Kynes did his best to climb after. Turok seemed to be playing a game with him, testing him somehow.
But the Planetologist surprised him. He was no water-fat bureaucrat, no mere bumbler into places where he didn’t belong. As a wanderer on some of the harshest worlds the Imperium had to offer, he was in good shape.
Kynes kept pace with the youth, climbing up behind him, using the tips of his fingers to haul his body higher. Moments after the Fremen boy stopped and squatted on a narrow ledge, Kynes sat beside him, trying not to pant.
“Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth,” Turok said. “Your filters are more efficient that way.” He nodded in faint admiration. “I think you might make it all the way to the sietch.”
“What’s a sietch?” Kynes asked. He vaguely recognized the ancient Chakobsa language, but had not studied archaeology or phonetics. He had always found it irrelevant to his scientific study.
“A secret place to retreat in safety— it’s where my people live.”
“You mean it’s your home?”
“The desert is our home.”
“I’m eager to talk with your people,” Kynes said, then continued, unable to contain his enthusiasm. “I’ve formed some opinions of this world and have developed a plan that might interest you, that might interest all the inhabitants of Arrakis.”
“Dune,” the Fremen youth said. “Only the Imperials and the Harkonnens call this place Arrakis.”
“All right,” Kynes said. “Dune, then.”
• • •
Deep in the rocks ahead of them waited a grizzled old Fremen with only one eye, his useless left socket covered by a puckered prune of leathered eyelid. Naib of Red Wall Sietch, Heinar had also lost two fingers in a crysknife duel in his younger days. But he had survived, and his opponents had not.
In the infirmary cave, two old women tended foolish Stilgar, the injured youth who had been brought in by groundcar only moments ago. The old women checked the medical dressing that had been applied by the outsider, and augmented it with some of their own medicinals. The crones conferred with each other, then both nodded at the sietch leader.
“Stilgar will live, Heinar,” one old woman said. “This would have been a mortal wound, had it not been tended immediately. The stranger saved him.”
“The stranger saved a careless fool,” the Naib said, looking down at the young man on the cot.
For weeks, troublesome reports of a curious outsider had reached Heinar’s ears. Now the man, Pardot Kynes, was being led to the sietch by a different route, through rock passageways. The stranger’s actions were mind-boggling— an Imperial servant who killed Harkonnens?
Ommun, the Fremen youth who had brought bleeding Stilgar back to the sietch, waited anxiously beside his injured friend in the cave shadows. Heinar turned his monocular gaze to the young man, letting the women continue to tend their patient. “Why is it that Turok brings an outsider to our sietch?”
“What were we to do, Heinar?” Ommun looked surprised. “I needed his vehicle to bring Stilgar here.”
“You could have taken this man’s groundcar and all his possessions and given his water to the tribe,” the Naib said, his voice low.
“We can still do that,” one of the women rasped, “as soon as Turok gets here with him.”
“But the stranger fought and killed Harkonnens! We three would have died, had he not arrived when he did,” Ommun insisted. “Is it not said that the enemy of my enemy is my friend?”
“I do not trust or even understand the loyalties of this one,” Heinar said, crossing his sinewy arms over his chest. “We know who he is, of course. The stranger comes from the Imperium— a Planetologist, they say. He remains on Dune because the Harkonnens are forced to let him do his work, but this man Kynes answers only to the Emperor himself . . . if that. There are unanswered questions about him.”
Wearily, Heinar sat down on a stone bench carved in the side of the wall. A colorful tapestry of spun spice fibers hung across the cave opening, offering a limited sort of privacy. Sietch inhabitants learned early that privacy was in the mind, not in the environment.
“I will speak with this Kynes and learn what he wants of us, why he has defended three stupid and careless youths against an enemy he had no cause to make. Then I will take this matter to the Council of Elders and let them decide. We must make the choice that is best for the sietch.”
Ommun swallowed hard, recalling how valiantly the man Kynes had fought against the ruthless soldiers. But his fingers strayed to the pouch in his pocket, counting the water rings there— metal markers that tallied the accumulated wealth he had in the tribe.
If the elders did decide to kill the Planetologist after all, then he, Turok, and Stilgar would divide the water treasure equally among them, along with the bounty from the six slain Harkonnens.
• • •
When Turok finally led him through the guarded openings, past a doorseal, and into the sietch proper, Kynes saw the place as a cave of infinite wonders. The aromas were dense, rich, and redolent with humanity: smells of life, of a confined population . . . of manufacturing, cooking, carefully concealed wastes, and even chemically exploited death. In a detached way, he confirmed his suspicion that the Fremen youths had not stolen the Harkonnen corpses for some sort of superstitious mutilation, but for the water in their bodies. Otherwise, it would have gone to waste. . . .
Kynes had assumed that when he finally found a hidden Fremen settlement, it would be primitive, almost shameful in its lack of amenities. But here, in this walled-off grotto with side caves and lava tubes and tunnels extending like a warren throughout the mountain, Kynes saw that the desert people lived in an austere yet comfortable style. Quarters rivaled anything Harkonnen functionaries enjoyed in the city of Carthag. And they were much more natural.
As Kynes followed his young guide, he found his attention riveted on one fascinating sight after another. Luxurious woven carpets covered portions of the floor. Side rooms were strewn with cushions and low tables made of metal and polished stone. Articles of precious off-planet wood were few and seemingly ancient: a carved sandworm and a board game that he couldn’t identify, its ornate pieces made of ivory or bone.
Ancient machinery recirculated the sietch air, letting no breath of moisture escape. He smelled the sharp cinnamon sweetness of raw spice everywhere, like incense, barely masking the sour pungency of unwashed bodies packed into close quarters.
He heard women talking, children’s voices, and a baby crying, all with a hushed restraint. The Fremen spoke among themselves, eyeing this stranger with suspicion as he passed, led by Turok. Some of the older ones flashed him wicked smiles that gave the Planetologist some concern. Their skin looked tough and leathery, leached of all excess water; every pair of eyes was a deep blue-within-blue.
Finally Turok raised a hand, palm outward, signaling Kynes to halt inside a large meeting hall, a natural vault within the mountain. The grotto had ample floor space for hundreds and hundreds to stand; additional benches and balconies zigzagged up the sheer reddish walls. How many people live in this sietch? Kynes stared upward in the empty, echoing room to a high balcony, a speaking platform of some sort.
After a moment, a proud old man stepped forward up there to look disdainfully down at the intruder. Kynes noted that the man had only one eye, and that he carried himself with the presence of a leader.
“That is Heinar,” Turok whispered in his ear, “the Naib of Red Wall Sietch.”
Raising a hand in greeting, Kynes called out: “I am pleased to meet the leader of this wondrous Fremen city.”
“What is it you want from us, Imperial man?” Heinar called down in a tone that was ruthless and demanding. His words rang like cold steel against the stone.
Kynes drew a deep breath. He had been waiting for an opportunity such as this for many days. Why waste time? The longer that dreams remained mere dreams, the more difficult it was to mold them into reality.
“My name is Pardot Kynes, Planetologist to the Emperor. I have a vision, sir— a dream for you and your people. One I wish to share with all the Fremen, if only you will listen to me.”
“Better to listen to the wind through a creosote bush than to waste time with the words of a fool,” the sietch leader responded. His words had a ponderous weight, as if this were an old and recognizable saying among his people.
Kynes stared back at the old man and quickly made up his own platitude, hoping to make an impression. “And if one refuses to listen to words of truth and hope, who then is the greater fool?”
Young Turok gasped. From side passages Fremen onlookers stared wide-eyed at Kynes, amazed by this stranger who spoke so boldly to their Naib.
Heinar’s face became dark and stormy. He felt a sullenness permeate him, and he envisioned this upstart Planetologist lying slain on the cave floor. He put his hand on the hilt of a crysknife at his waist. “Do you challenge my leadership?” Making up his mind, the Naib yanked the curve-bladed knife from its sheath and glowered down at Kynes.
Kynes didn’t flinch. “No, sir— I challenge your imagination. Are you brave enough to meet the task, or are you too frightened to listen to what I have to say?” The sietch leader stood tense, holding his strange milky blade high as he stared down at the prisoner. Kynes simply smiled up at him, his expression open. “It’s difficult to talk to you way up there, sir.”
Finally, Heinar chuckled, looked down at the bare blade in his hand. “A crysknife, once drawn, must never be sheathed without tasting blood.” Then he quickly slashed its edge across his forearm, drawing a thin red line that coagu
lated within seconds.
Kynes’s eyes glittered with excitement, reflecting the light cast by the clusters of glowglobes that floated in the large meeting chamber.
“Very well, Planetologist. You may talk until the breath flows out of your lungs. With your fate undecided, you will remain here in the sietch until the Council of Elders deliberates over what must be done with you.”
“But you’ll listen to me first.” Kynes nodded with utter confidence.
Heinar turned, took a step away from the high balcony, and spoke again over his shoulder. “You are a strange man, Pardot Kynes. An Imperial servant and a guest of Harkonnens— by definition, you are our enemy. But you have killed Harkonnens as well. What a quandary you present for us.”
The sietch leader made quick gestures and barked commands, ordering a small but comfortable room to be prepared for the tall and curious Planetologist, who would be their prisoner as well as their guest.
And Heinar thought as he strode away, Any man who would speak words of hope to the Fremen after our many generations of suffering and wandering . . . is either confused, or a very brave man indeed.
My Father had only one real friend, I think. That was Count Hasimir Fenring, the genetic-eunuch and one of the deadliest fighters in the Imperium.
—From “In My Father’s House”
by the Princess Irulan
Even from the highest, darkened chamber of the Imperial observatory, the pastel glow of the opulence-choked capital drowned out the stars over Kaitain. Built centuries earlier by the enlightened Padishah Emperor Hassik Corrino III, the observatory had been used little by his recent heirs . . . at least not for its intended purpose of studying the mysteries of the universe.
Crown Prince Shaddam paced across the cold, burnished-metal floor as Fenring fiddled with the controls of a high-powered starscope. The genetic-eunuch hummed to himself, making unpleasant, insipid sounds.
“Would you please stop those noises?” Shaddam said. “Just focus the damned lenses.”