If his descendants were like this young man, Jesse held out hope for the future of House Linkam. With common sense and a strong foundation of moral integrity, Barri would grow up to be far superior to most of the Empire’s spoiled and corrupt noble heirs. But only if the boy survived the next few days … .
Snooping among the rocks, Barri discovered a patch of graygreen lichen. He called his father over. “Something’s alive here.”
As Jesse approached, tiny furtive shapes began moving in the crevices. “They’re … rodents!”
Barri reached in and found a nest, but could not catch the bouncing little forms. From a higher cranny, a little kangaroo rat poked out its narrow head, squeaking accusations and scolding the human intruders.
“How did they get out here? Do you think some of Dr. Haynes’s specimens got loose?”
Jesse could think of no other explanation. “Maybe Dr. Haynes intentionally set them free. He said he wanted to establish an ecosystem on Duneworld.”
Shoulder to shoulder, he and Barri watched the tiny kangaroo rats scurry about their business. Jesse took heart. “If they can survive here, Barri, so can we.”
12
Life is full of frayed ends. It is a terrible thing when you show anger to a loved one, never knowing that it might be the last time you are together.
—DOROTHY MAPES,
A Concubine’s Life
Jesse and Barri had been gone for too long. Much too long. Few things could have survived out in that desert for so many days.
With aching loneliness in her heart, Dorothy wondered if she would ever see her loved ones again. Though she was a sharp business manager and the financial watchdog of the Linkam holdings, she was also a mother, and a wife in everything but the title. Her stomach had wrenched itself into a tight knot.
As each unsuccessful patrol returned, she lost a fine thread of hope, a little bit of the precious connections she’d had with Jesse and Barri. The friction of her last night with the nobleman had left her full of regrets, guilt, and uncertainty. Should she have demanded that he bow to her wishes? Then Jesse and Barri might not be lost out in the infinite desert. Or should she have been more supportive, even if she disagreed with him?
If he ever came home, she knew Jesse would pretend that nothing had happened between them; but he wouldn’t forget, and neither would she. The disagreement would hang like a curtain between them.
Intellectually, she understood why Jesse had wanted their son to understand hardship, to know how ordinary people lived and worked, to be tempered by real experience and difficult decisions instead of softened by pillows and pampering. But how could a mother not try to make her son as safe as possible? Barri had not yet reached his ninth birthday … and now he was lost out in the arid wasteland, probably dead.
When the boy had departed on the transport shuttle with his father, he had looked so dignified, so proud and manlike. She had never seen him look like that before.
God, how she hated this place!
Dorothy paced down the halls, trying to keep busy, looking for something to occupy her thoughts. If Jesse was gone, should she formally withdraw from the challenge on his behalf? He had designated her his legal proxy in business matters. Without Jesse, and Barri, there was no House Linkam, and the Nobles’ Council would no doubt dissolve it, distribute the Linkam holdings, and absorb the administration into another family. She would go back to Catalan as a commoner again, alone except for her memories.
Ahead, she saw Cullington Yueh slowly climbing the main stairway, holding the stone railing. The gray-haired old gentleman reached the top short of breath. “Oh, Dorothy! I’ve been looking for you.”
“Any word?” Her voice cracked with concern, though she tried to cover it with a dry cough. “Gurney should have been back hours ago.”
“Not yet, but General Tuek says communications are fully restored, back online after the storm. He’s quite interested in getting the spice operations going again. Some of the ships have been improved with live-rubber shielding, and they can fly farther and with less risk of malfunction. Oh, and Dr. Haynes has restored a few more satellites. Still, you know how problems can arise.”
“Especially here. I hate those Hoskanners for leaving us with junk.”
“No sign of the new spice harvesters or carryalls that you ordered from Ix, either.” Yueh rubbed his gray mustache. “Aren’t they overdue?”
“Yes, the first order is a week late.” It struck her as odd that the kindly old family physician was interested in spice-harvesting equipment, but she appreciated his concern while Jesse was gone. Gone. Such a final sound to the word. Her heart sank, but she forced her thoughts into line. Jesse was counting on her to make sure House Linkam did not fall apart. “Something about production delays.”
Gurney had attempted to follow up with an Ixian representative, but hadn’t gotten a straight answer, and for the past several days all resources had been devoted to the search for the missing ornijet. She frowned. “You think the Hoskanners might have something to do with that?”
“Accidents happen,” Yueh said. “And some accidents happen on purpose.”
Sensing her misery, the old man massaged her shoulders and neck with his surgeon’s fingers, working pressure points, but she could feel his hands shaking. “This used to make my wife Wanna relax.”
“Your wife? I didn’t know you were married, Cullington!”
“Oh, it was a long time ago. She died … something I couldn’t cure. That’s why I try my best to heal everyone else.” He gave a bleak smile.
Yueh was a self-described “splint and pill man,” earning his early medical experience on Grumman’s World, a distant planet replete with odd swamp maladies and native fruits that oozed contact poisons. He had joined House Linkam years ago as their dedicated physician, claiming he wanted a peaceful, out-of-the way place like Catalan. Here on Duneworld, though, he seemed out of his depth.
Dorothy eased his hands away. “Thank you, Cullington. I feel much better.”
His hazel eyes were filled with concern. “No, you’re still worried. But I appreciate your saying so anyway.” Then he ambled off on one of his many errands. Rarely did she see the doctor take a break.
Dorothy headed for the south wing. Encountering one of the maids, she requested a pot of strong spice tea and a large cup on a tray. Then, carrying the tray herself, Dorothy took a spiral staircase up to the fourth level. The melange would soothe her … and so would the conservatory.
She pressed the hollow stone on the dead-end wall. When the hidden door slid open with a hiss, she stepped inside and was assailed by the heavy odor of dead and decaying plants. Not a soothing place after all.
The secret conservatory had suffered for weeks, since she had shut off the irrigation system and diverted the water to vital uses. The speckled fungi had already collapsed into mush, while the once-verdant ferns had turned a sickly, yellowish brown. Formerly bright and colorful flowers were dried up now, with discolored petals scattered on the caked soil. Only a few plants still clung to life, though they had no hope of surviving.
Scuttling insects darted in and out among the dead plants, feeding off the remains. The decay had turned into a feast for the tiny scavengers, and they’d been reproducing madly. But that niche of life, like the rest of the enclosed ecosystem, would also end soon.
These plants were victims of an untenable situation, trapped in a place where they did not belong. Like House Linkam, she thought, barely surviving on this barren world, hoping our lives will be returned to us.
Feeling gloom wash through her, Dorothy placed the tray on a plaz table and brushed dirt and dead insects off a chair before sitting down. She poured the rich, aromatic tea into her cup, and steam escaped into the air. Lost moisture. As she lifted the cup to her lips, a rush of cinnamon tickled her nostrils.
Only she and Jesse knew this place existed, and only the two of them knew that the plants would soon all be dead. She could be completely alone here, undisturbed wi
th her thoughts, though she doubted she would find any solutions. Dorothy finished the spice tea, and as melange seeped into her body, her mind’s eye projected vivid images of watery, dreamlike Catalan. If only she and her family could be back there again … .
But mere wishes could not transport them home, could not erase the unfortunate events that had brought them here. Where were Jesse and Barri now? What if William English himself had remained secretly loyal to the Hoskanners? Had he dumped their lifeless bodies in the desert to shrivel like the plants around her?
Tears streamed down her cheeks. On this world, they called it “giving water to the dead.”
13
In the desert, hope is as scarce as water. Both are a mirage.
—SANDMINER’S LAMENT
Even after the water ran out, they kept moving. They had to. English took the lead, frequently checking his paracompass, while Jesse and Barri plodded after him. There could be no turning back now. It was a hot afternoon, with the unrelenting sun in the western sky.
They approached a low-hanging, discolored haze, and Jesse realized they had stumbled upon a patch of fumaroles. Though they had little hope of finding water there, they traveled toward the hissing steam vents. If nothing else, the chemical steam would obscure some of the painful sunlight.
When the wind picked up, English looked around in concern. He touched the waxy scar on his cheek and met Jesse’s gaze. “Weather’s changing. I feel it.”
“How soon until the storm gets here?” Jesse asked. Barri searched the horizon for the wall of dust heading their way.
“No telling,” English answered. “They’re capricious things. Could come right at us, no matter where we hide—or the weather front might turn aside and go somewhere else entirely.”
Taking shelter in partial shade among the sulfur-painted rocks near the roar of a fumarole, they sat down to rest. Jesse opened the pack and withdrew his paracompass. “I need to know how far we have left to go.” To his dismay, when he studied the coordinates, their destination seemed farther away than ever. The directional needle pointed at an extreme angle from where they’d been heading. “William, check your compass.”
The spice foreman held his device next to Jesse’s. After comparing, both men were astonished to see that the readings were entirely different. When English pushed the reset button, his needle spun until it landed at a new spot. Jesse did the same, and now the direction on his instrument pointed back the way they had come. The men looked at each other.
“More sabotage?” Jesse asked.
“No, I think it’s magnetite in the dunes,” English said, his voice thick with discouragement. “Static energy from the storm front or maybe from a sandworm. It scrambled the compasses.”
Jesse reset his device again, and now the needle spun in wild circles.
English slumped in hopeless surrender. “We weren’t going in the right direction! We have no way of knowing where the outpost is, and now we can’t even find our way back to the ornijet. Our footprints would have been erased days ago.”
Jesse was not willing to show fear in front of his son. They had been wandering in the desert, possibly going in circles. In the open expanse he could not begin to guess where anything might be—the Imperial outpost, the city of Carthage, the buried ornijet, or the forward base. They were utterly lost, and they had run out of water.
Reaching an edge of desperation, English staggered to the discolored sands near a fumarole. He stood there poised for a long moment, staring down as if in a daze. Jesse wondered if the man intended to plunge headfirst into the exhaling vapors.
“How can anything survive out here?” English finally said. “Every living thing needs water. Maybe we should have drunk the blood of those kangaroo mice.”
“I tried to catch them,” Barri said, his voice dry and raspy.
English bent closer to the crusty sands near the fumarole, as fiercely intent as a hunter. His voice dropped to a whisper. “But immense creatures live in the sands. There has to be water.” The bedraggled spice foreman slowly extended his hands, toward shapes that writhed and squirmed in the warm sands around the steam vent.
He lunged, digging his hands through the powdery crust. Like a dog, he furiously scooped sand aside, burrowing, clawing, until he finally seized something. He struggled, cried out in triumph, and lurched backward, uprooting a shapeless blob that looked like a gigantic cell as long as his forearm. English tossed the thing onto the hard-packed sand, then dropped to his knees and flipped it over, trying to hold it down as it continued to flop.
Barri hurried forward, full of boyish curiosity, despite their ordeal. “What’s that?”
“Sandtrout. Dr. Haynes told me they’re often found near fumaroles.” English looked up at them with reddish eyes. “All I care about is that it’s alive, and there’s some sort of liquid inside—blood, sap, protoplasm. Who knows?” He pressed his fingers into the pliable skin of the squirming thing, then drew a utility knife from his pack.
“Can we survive on it?” Jesse asked.
The spice foreman pulled his face mask aside and shrugged. “I’ve never heard of anyone eating a sandtrout. As far as I know, nobody’s had to.”
“What if it’s poison?” Barri asked.
“Seems to me, young Master, that we’re as good as dead anyway if we don’t get some water soon.” He tried to swallow, but could find no moisture in his dry throat. “I’m going to take a chance. One of us has to.”
Jesse lowered his voice. “Thank you for not giving up, William.”
With his fingers, English jabbed the sandtrout’s leathery membrane, then broke through with the tip of the knife. Thick liquid oozed out like viscous saliva, and a potent aroma wafted up, a tang of harsh alkaline mixed with cinnamon so strong that it stung their eyes. “It smells like spice beer.” English dipped his finger and touched it to his tongue. “Tastes like spice, too … extremely potent stuff. But different.” Surrendering caution, desperately thirsty, he lowered his mouth to the stillsquirming sandtrout. With his eyes closed, he took a long slurp of the slimy fluid.
Jesse had wanted English to take just a small taste, to wait and see if there might be adverse effects … but considering their complete lack of supplies, his warning would have meant nothing.
Barri moved forward, looking thirstily at the sandtrout and the slick fluid oozing from it.
Suddenly English sat ramrod straight and dropped the protoplasmic creature to the packed ground. “It burns! But it sparkles like a thousand tiny explosions in my mouth.” He touched his sternum. “In my chest, moving its way down!” He drew a long, gasping breath and stretched his arms out to both sides, straining as if he meant to pull his own fingers out of their sockets.
“I can feel it all the way to my fingertips! Like land mines exploding energy to every one of my cells.” He lunged to his feet and shuddered, then stared into a sky that was already growing restless from the oncoming storm. “This is the spice, the heart of Duneworld! I can feel the sandworms.”
Jesse reached out to grab the man’s arms. “William, take deep breaths. Control yourself. You’re having an adverse—”
Eyes wild, the spice foreman turned in a slow circle. “I can sense everything beneath us, and all around. The spice, the worms, sand plankton, and … more. Wonders we have never seen or imagined. Ah!”
English struck Jesse, knocking him away, and dropped back to his knees. Like a madman, English grabbed the sandtrout carcass, plunged his face into the viscous moistness, slurped up more of the fluid, and began to laugh. When his eyes settled on Barri, he rushed over to the boy, yelling. “I’m alive! I can see the future and the past. But which is which?”
Jesse pushed him away, standing between the wild man and his son. “Stay away. William—”
“I can sail through the dunes, dive under them, tunnel deeper. Must protect the spice, the spores …”
He grabbed Jesse by the chest and leaned toward him, frantic. Blood leaked from his gums, staining his t
eeth. “Too much spice … but never enough spice. Must protect the spice! The sandworms. I am a sandworm!”
Hemorrhages blossomed in the whites of the scarred man’s eyes. Within seconds, English began weeping blood. Still raving, he touched his eyes, looked at his scarlet-stained fingertips. “The spice! The spice! It has us all trapped. We’ll never break free.”
“Father, what’s happening to him?” Barri cried. “We’ve got to help!”
“There’s no way to do that,” Jesse said. “He’s had too much spice, an overdose.”
English bolted into the steamy field of fumaroles. “Find the spice! Become one with the spice, one with the sandworms!” Screaming, he ran headlong—until the ground dropped from beneath him. The swirling mouth of a sand whirlpool.
“William!” Jesse rushed forward, but stopped himself, realizing the danger of the treacherous ground. “William!”
As the sand spun and sucked him down, English cried out with laughter and howled in delight. He seemed to want to be drawn underground—and the sand whirlpool obliged him.
Barri started toward the foreman, but Jesse held him back. English’s upraised, slime-slick hands vanished, leaving only the faint stirrings of the top powdery layer.
“He’s gone forever,” Barri said.
Jesse sank down next to his son. “Now it’s just the two of us.”
After a long moment, Barri straightened his shoulders and clasped his father’s hand. His voice was very small. “Just the two of us.”
14
He is one with the sand.
—DUNEWORLD FUNERAL LITANY
Road to Dune Page 9