Fenring continued to hum, only fractionally quieter now. “The oils must be in precise balance, hm-m-m-m-ah? You would rather have the starscope perfect, than fast.”
Shaddam huffed. “You didn’t ask my preference.”
“I decided for you.” He stood back from the starscope’s calibrated phased optics and bowed with an annoyingly formal gesture. “My Lord Prince, I present to you an image from orbit. See it with your own eyes.”
Shaddam squinted into the eyepiece pickups until a shape became startlingly clear, soaring silently in the distance. The image shifted between brittle resolution and murky ripples caused by atmospheric distortion.
The mammoth Heighliner was the size of an asteroid, hanging over Kaitain and waiting to be met by a flotilla of small ships from the surface. A tiny movement caught his eye, and Shaddam spotted the yellow-white flickers of engines as frigates rose from Kaitain bearing diplomats and emissaries, followed by transports carrying artifacts and cargo from the Imperial capital world. The frigates themselves were immense, flanked by cadres of smaller ships— but the curve of the Heighliner’s hull dwarfed everything.
At the same time, other ships departed from the Heighliner hold and descended toward the capital city. “Delegation parties,” Shaddam said. “They’ve brought tributes to my father.”
“Taxes, actually— not tributes,” Fenring pointed out. “Same thing, in an old-fashioned sense, of course. Elrood is still their Emperor, um-m-m-ah?”
The Crown Prince scowled at him. “But for how much longer? Is your damned chaumurky going to take decades?” Shaddam fought to keep his voice low, although subsonic white-noise generators supposedly distorted their speech to foil any listening devices. “Couldn’t you find a different poison? A faster one? This waiting is maddening! How much time has passed anyway? It seems like a year since I’ve slept well.”
“You mean we should have been more overt about the murder? Not advisable.” Fenring took his station back at the starscope, adjusting the automated trackers to follow the Heighliner along its orbit. “Be patient, my Lord Prince. Until I suggested this plan, you were content to wait for decades. What does a year or two matter compared with the length of your eventual reign, hm-m-m-m?”
Shaddam nudged Fenring away from the eyepieces so he wouldn’t have to look at his fellow conspirator. “Now that we’ve finally set the wheels in motion, I’m impatient for my father to die. Don’t give me time to brood about it and regret my decision. I’ll suffocate until I can ascend the Golden Lion Throne. I was destined to lead, Hasimir, but some have been whispering that I’ll never get the opportunity. It makes me afraid to marry and father any children.”
If he expected Fenring to attempt to convince him otherwise, the other man disappointed him with his silence.
Fenring spoke again after a few moments. “N’kee is slow poison by design. We have worked long and hard to establish our plan, and your impatience can only cause damage and increase risk. A more sudden act would certainly create suspicion in the Landsraad, hmmm? They would seize upon any wedge, any scandal, to weaken your position.”
“But I am the heir to House Corrino!” Shaddam said, lowering his voice to a throaty whisper. “How can they question my right?”
“And you come to the Imperial throne bearing all the associated baggage, all the obligations, past antagonisms, and prejudices. Don’t fool yourself, my friend— the Emperor is merely one sizable force among many that make up the delicate fabric of our Imperium. If all the Houses banded together against us, even your father’s mighty Sardaukar legions might not be able to hold out. No one dares risk it.”
“When I’m on the throne, I intend to strengthen the emperorship, add some real teeth to the title.” Shaddam stood away from the starscope.
Fenring shook his head with exaggerated sadness. “I’d be willing to wager a cargo hold full of the highest-quality whale-fur that most of your predecessors have vowed the same thing to their advisors ever since the Great Revolt.” He drew a deep breath, narrowing his large dark eyes. “Even if the n’kee works as planned, you have at least another year to wait . . . so calm yourself. Take comfort in the increased symptoms of aging we’ve seen in your father. Encourage him to drink more spice beer.”
Miffed, Shaddam turned back to the phased optics and studied the hull patterns along the belly of the Heighliner, the mark of Ixian construction yards, the cartouche of the Spacing Guild. The hold was crowded with fleets of frigates from various Houses, shipments assigned to CHOAM, and precious records earmarked for library archives on Wallach IX.
“By the way, someone of interest is aboard that Heighliner,” Fenring said.
“Oh?”
Fenring crossed his arms over his narrow chest. “A person who appears to be a simple seller of pundi rice and chikarba root on his way to a Tleilaxu way station. He’s bearing your message for the Tleilaxu Masters, your proposal to meet with them and discuss covert Imperial funding of a large-scale project that will produce a substitute for the spice melange.”
“My proposal? I made no such proposal!” Revulsion flickered across Shaddam’s face.
“Um-m-m, you did, my Lord Prince. Ah, the possibility of using unorthodox Tleilaxu means to develop a synthetic spice? What a good idea you had! Show your father how smart you are.”
“Don’t place the blame on me, Hasimir. It was your idea.”
“You don’t want the credit?”
“Not in the least.”
Fenring raised his eyebrows. “You are serious about breaking the Arrakis bottleneck and setting up the Imperial House with a private, unlimited source of melange? Aren’t you?”
Shaddam glowered. “Of course I’m serious.”
“Then we will bring a Tleilaxu Master here in secret to present his proposal to the Emperor. We’ll soon see how far old Elrood is willing to go.”
Blindness can take many forms other than the inability to see. Fanatics are often blinded in their thoughts. Leaders are often blinded in their hearts.
—The Orange Catholic Bible
For months, Leto had stayed in the underground city of Vernii as the honored guest of Ix. By now, he had become comfortable with the strangeness of his new surroundings, with the routine, and with self-confident Ixian security— comfortable enough to grow careless.
Prince Rhombur was a chronic late sleeper, while Leto was the opposite, an early riser like the fishermen on Caladan. The Atreides heir wandered the upper stalactite buildings alone, going to observation windows and peeking in on manufacturing-design procedures or fabrication lines. He learned how to use the transit systems and discovered that his bioscram card from Earl Vernius opened many doors for him.
Leto gleaned more from his wanderings and his voracious curiosity than he did from instructional meetings hosted by various tutors. Remembering his father’s admonishment to learn from everything, he took the self-guiding lift tubes; when none were available, he grew accustomed to using walkways, cargo lifts, or even ladders to go from one level to another.
One morning, after awakening refreshed and restless, Leto went to one of the upper atriums and stepped out onto an observation balcony. Even sealed underground, the caverns of Ix were so vast that they had their own air currents and wind patterns, though it was a far cry from the Castle towers and windy cliffsides of his home. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs to capacity, but the air here always smelled of rock dust. Maybe it was just his imagination.
Stretching his arms, Leto looked out and down toward the broad grotto that had held the Guild Heighliner. Among the scars of construction and support machinery, he could pick out the already-sprouting skeleton of another massive hull, flash-welded together by teams of suboid workers. He watched the low-level inhabitants working with insect efficiency.
A cargo platform drifted by, passing directly below the balcony as it made a gradual descent to the distant work area. Leto leaned over the railing and saw that the platform’s surface was loaded with raw materials min
ed from the crust of the planet.
On impulse, he climbed over the balcony rim, took a deep breath, and dropped two meters to land atop a pile of girders and plating destined for the Heighliner construction site. He assumed he could find a way to get back up to the stalactite buildings using his bioscram card and his understanding of the city workings. A pilot underneath the hovering platform guided the lowering load; he didn’t seem to notice or care about his unexpected passenger.
Cool breezes riffled through Leto’s hair as he descended toward the warmer surface. Thinking of ocean winds, he sucked in another deep breath. Here beneath the immense vault of the ceiling, he felt a freedom that reminded him of the seashore. With the thought came a pang of homesickness for the ocean breezes of Caladan, the noises of the village market, the booming laugh of his father, even the prim concern of his mother.
He and Rhombur spent too much time confined within the buildings of Ix, and Leto often longed for fresh air and a cold wind on his face. Perhaps he would ask Rhombur to accompany him up to the surface again. There, the two of them could wander around the wilderness and look up at an infinite sky, and Leto could stretch his muscles and feel real sunlight on his face instead of the holographic illumination displayed on the cavern ceiling.
While the Ixian Prince was not Leto’s equal as a fighter, neither was he the spoiled son so common among many Great Houses. He had his interests and loved collecting rocks and minerals. Rhombur had an easy, generous way about him, and an unflagging optimism, but that was not to be misinterpreted. Beneath the soft shell was a fierce determination and a desire to excel in every pursuit.
In the gigantic manufacturing grotto, supports and suspensor jacks had been readied for the new Heighliner already taking shape. Equipment and machinery stood waiting near where holo blueprints shimmered in the air. Even with full resources and huge numbers of suboid workers, such a vessel required the better part of a Standard Year to construct. The cost of a Heighliner was equivalent to the economic output of many solar systems; thus, only CHOAM and the Guild could finance such massive projects, while House Vernius— as the manufacturer— reaped incredible profits.
The docile working class on Ix far outnumbered the administrators and the nobles. On the floor of the grotto, low archways and huts built into the solid rock provided entrances to a warren of living quarters. Leto had never visited the suboids himself, but Rhombur had assured him that the lower classes were well taken care of. Leto knew these crews labored around the clock to build each new ship. The suboids certainly worked hard for House Vernius.
The cargo platform levitated downward to the rocky cavern floor, and teams of workers came forward to unload the heavy raw materials. Leto sprang down, landed on his hands and feet, then stood and brushed himself off. The strangely placid suboids had pale skin dusted with freckles. They looked at him with doe eyes and didn’t ask any questions or object to his presence; they simply averted their gazes and went about their tasks.
The way Kailea and Rhombur talked about them, Leto had imagined the suboids to be less than human, muscular troglodytes without minds, who simply labored and sweated. But the people around him could easily have passed for normals; perhaps they weren’t brilliant scientists or diplomats, but the working class didn’t appear to be animals either.
With his gray eyes open wide, Leto walked along the grotto floor, staying out of the way as he observed the Heighliner construction. Leto admired the sheer engineering and management of such an incredible job. In the heavier, dustier air on the ground, he smelled an acrid tang of laser-welding and alloy-fusing materials.
The suboids followed a master plan, using step-by-step instructions like a hive organism. They concluded each increment of the huge task without being overwhelmed by the amount of work still in store for them. The suboids did not chatter, sing, or roughhouse . . . behavior Leto had seen among the fishermen, farmers, and factory workers of Caladan. These pale-skinned laborers remained intent only on their tasks.
He thought he imagined well-hidden resentment, a simmering anger beneath calm, pale faces, but he didn’t feel afraid down here alone. Duke Paulus had always encouraged Leto to play with villager children, to go out on fishing boats, to mix with merchants and weavers in the marketplace. He had even spent a month working in the pundi rice fields. “In order to understand how to rule a people,” the Old Duke had said, “you must first understand the people themselves.”
His mother had frowned upon such activities, of course, insisting that the son of a Duke should not dirty his hands with the mud of rice paddies or foul his clothes with the slime of a sea catch. “What good does it do for our son to know how to skin and gut a fish? He will be the ruler of a Great House.” But Paulus Atreides had his own way of insisting, and he made it clear that his wishes were law.
And Leto had to admit that despite sore muscles, an aching back, and sunburned skin, those times of hard work had satisfied him in a way that grand banquets or receptions hosted in Castle Caladan could not. As a result he thought he understood the common folk, how they felt, how hard they worked. Leto appreciated them for it, rather than scorning them. The Old Duke had been proud of his son for comprehending that fundamental point.
Now as he walked among the suboids, Leto tried to understand them in the same way. Powerful glowglobes hovered over the work site, driving back shadows, maintaining a starkness in the air. The grotto was large enough that the construction sounds did not echo back, but reflected and faded into the distance.
He saw one of the openings into the lower tunnels and since no one had yet questioned his business there, Leto decided this would be a good opportunity to learn more about the suboid culture. Maybe he could discover things even Rhombur didn’t know about his own world.
When a crew of workers emerged from the archway, clad in service overalls, Leto slipped inside. He wandered into the tunnels and spiraled down, passing hollowed-out living compartments, identical and evenly spaced rooms that reminded him of the chambers in an insect hive. Occasionally, though, he spotted homey touches: colorful fabrics or tapestries, a few drawings, images painted on the stone walls. He smelled cooking, heard low conversations but no music and not much laughter.
He thought of his days spent studying and relaxing in the inverted skyscrapers overhead, with their polished floors, ser-chrome and faceted crystalplaz windows, the soft beds and comfortable clothes, the fine foods.
On Caladan, ordinary citizens could petition the Duke whenever they wished. Leto remembered when he and his father would walk in the marketplaces, talking to the merchants and craftsmen, allowing themselves to be seen and known as real people rather than as faceless rulers.
He didn’t think Dominic Vernius even noticed the differences between himself and his comrade Paulus. The hearty, bald Earl gave all of his attention and enthusiasm to his family and the workers in his immediate vicinity, paying attention to overall industrial operations and business politics to keep the Ixian fortunes pouring in. But Dominic viewed the suboids as resources. Yes, he cared for them well enough, just as he maintained his precious machinery. But Leto wondered if Rhombur and his family treated the suboids as people.
He’d already gone down many levels, and felt the uncomfortable tightness of stale air. The tunnels ahead became darker and emptier. The quiet corridors led deeper into open rooms, common areas from which he heard voices, a rustling of bodies. He was about to turn back, knowing he had a full day ahead of him: studies and lectures about mechanical operations and industrial processes. Rhombur probably hadn’t even eaten breakfast yet.
Curious, Leto stopped at the archway to see many suboids gathered in a common room. There were no seats or benches that he could see, and so all the people remained standing. He listened to the droning, curiously impassioned words of one suboid, a short, muscular man at the front of the room. In the man’s voice, and in the fire in his eyes, Leto detected emotions that he found peculiar, in view of what he had heard about the suboids, that they were
placid and undemanding.
“We build the Heighliners,” he said, and his voice grew louder. “We manufacture the technological objects, yet we make none of the decisions. We do as we are commanded, even when we know those plans are wrong!”
The suboids began to mutter and mumble.
“Some of the new technologies go beyond what is forbidden by the Great Revolt. We are creating thinking machines. We don’t need to understand the blueprints and designs, because we know what they will do!”
Hesitating, Leto drew back into the shadows of the archway. He had walked enough among the common people that he usually wasn’t afraid of them. But something strange was going on here. He wanted to run, yet needed to listen. . . .
“Since we are suboids, we have no participation in profits from Ixian technology. We have simple lives and few ambitions— but we do have our religion. We read the Orange Catholic Bible and know in our hearts what is right.” The suboid speaker raised a massive, knuckled fist. “And we know that many of the things we’ve been building here on Ix are not right!”
The audience moved restlessly again, on the verge of being riled. Rhombur had insisted that this group had no ambitions, did not have the capacity for them. Here, though, Leto saw otherwise.
The suboid speaker narrowed his eyes and spoke ominously. “What are we going to do? Should we petition our masters and demand answers? Should we do more?”
He swept his gaze over the gathered listeners— then suddenly, like two sharp fléchettes, his eyes skewered Leto eavesdropping in the archway shadows. “Who are you?”
Leto stumbled backward, raising his hands. “I’m sorry. I got lost. I didn’t mean anything by it.” Normally, he would know how to make himself welcome, but now his confusion raised his senses to a fever pitch.
The worker audience spun about, and their eyes slowly lit with comprehension. They realized the implications of what the speaker had said and what Leto had overheard.
Dune: House Atreides Page 20