"My companions," Teg ventured. "Are they . . ."
"Others have that in hand, Bashar. I cannot say."
"Can word be taken to . . ."
"When it is safe, Bashar."
"Of course."
Teg sank back into the cushions and studied his surroundings. These groundcars had been built with much plaz and almost indestructible plasteel. It was other things that went sour with age -- upholstery, headliners, the electronics, the suspensor installations, the ablative liners of the turbofan ducts. And the adhesives deteriorated no matter what you did to preserve them. The restorers had made this one look as though it had just been cranked out of the factory -- all subdued glowing in the metals, upholstery that molded itself to him with a faint sound of crinkling. And the smell: that indefinable aroma of newness, a mixture of polish and fine fabrics with just a hint of ozone bite underneath from the smoothly working electronics. Nowhere in it, though, was there the smell of food.
"How long to Ysai?" Teg asked.
"Another half hour, Bashar. Is there a problem that requires more speed? I don't want to attract . . ."
"I am very hungry."
The driver glanced left and right. There were no more farmers around them here. The roadway was almost empty except for two heavy transport pods with their tractors holding to the right verge and a large lorry hauling a towering automatic fruit picker.
"It is dangerous to delay for long," the driver said. "But I know a place where I think I can at least get you a quick bowl of soup."
"Anything would be welcome. I have not eaten for two days and there has been much activity."
They came to a crossroads and the driver turned left onto a narrow track through tall, evenly spaced conifers. Presently, he turned onto a one-lane drive through the trees. The low building at the end of this track was built of dark stones and had a blackplaz roof. The windows were narrow and glistened with protective burner nozzles.
The driver said: "Just a minute, sir." 'He got out and Teg had his first look at the man's face: extremely thin with a long nose and tiny mouth. The visible tracery of surgical reconstruction laced his cheeks. The eyes glowed silver, obviously artificial. He turned away and went into the house. When he returned, he opened Teg's door. "Please be quick, sir. The one inside is heating soup for you. I have said you are a banker. No need to pay."
The ground was icy crisp underfoot. Teg had to stoop slightly for the doorway. He entered a dark hallway, wood-paneled and with a well-lighted room at the end. The smell of food there drew him like a magnet. His arms were trembling once more. A small table had been set beside a window with a view of an enclosed and covered garden. Bushes heavy with red flowers almost concealed the stone wall that defined the garden. Yellow hotplaz gleamed over the space, bathing it in a summery artificial light. Teg sank gratefully into the single chair at the table. White linen, he saw, with an embossed edge. A single soup spoon.
A door creaked at his right and a squat figure entered carrying a bowl from which steam arose. The man hesitated when he saw Teg, then brought the bowl to the table and placed it in front of Teg. Alerted by that hesitation, Teg forced himself to ignore the tempting aroma drifting to his nostrils and concentrated instead on his companion.
"It is good soup, sir. I made it myself."
An artificial voice. Teg saw the scars at the sides of the jaw. There was the look of an ancient mechanical about this man -- an almost neckless head attached to thick shoulders, arms that seemed oddly jointed at both shoulders and elbows, legs that appeared to swing only from the hips. He stood motionless now but he had entered here with a slightly jerking sway that said he was mostly replacement artificials. The look of suffering in his eyes could not be avoided.
"I know I'm not pretty, sir," the man rasped. "I was ruined in the Alajory explosion."
Teg had no idea what the Alajory explosion might have been but it obviously was presumed he knew. "Ruined," however, was an interesting accusation against Fate.
"I was wondering if I knew you," Teg said.
"No one here knows anyone else," the man said. "Eat your soup." He pointed upward at the coiled tip of quiescent snooper, the glow of its lights revealing that it read its surroundings and found no poison. "The food is safe here."
Teg looked at the dark brown liquid in his bowl. Lumps of solid meat were visible in it. He reached for the spoon. His trembling hand made two attempts before grasping the spoon and even then he sloshed most of the liquid out of the spoon before he could lift it a millimeter.
A steadying hand gripped Teg's wrist and the artificial voice spoke softly in Teg's ear: "I do not know what they did to you, Bashar, but no one will harm you here without crossing my dead body."
"You know me?"
"Many would die for you, Bashar. My son lives because of you."
Teg allowed himself to be helped. It was all he could do to swallow the first spoonful. The liquid was rich, hot and soothing. His hand steadied presently and he nodded to the man to release the wrist.
"More, sir?"
Teg realized then that he had emptied the bowl. It was tempting to say "yes" but the driver had said to make haste.
"Thank you, but I must go."
"You have not been here," the man said.
When they were once more back on the main road, Teg sat back against the groundcar's cushions and reflected on the curious echoing quality of what the ruined man had said. The same words the farmer had used: "You have not been here." It had the feeling of a common response and it said something about changes in Gammu since Teg had surveyed the place.
They entered the outskirts of Ysai presently and Teg wondered if he should attempt a disguise. The ruined man had recognized him quickly.
"Where do the Honored Matres hunt for me now?" Teg asked.
"Everywhere, Bashar. We cannot guarantee your safety but steps are being taken. I will make it known where I have delivered you."
"Do they say why they hunt me?"
"They never explain, Bashar."
"How long have they been on Gammu?"
"Too long, sir. Since I was a child and I was a baltern at Renditai."
A hundred years at least, Teg thought. Time to gather many forces into their hands . . . if Taraza's fears were to be credited.
Teg credited them.
"Trust no one those whores can influence," Taraza had said.
Teg sensed no threat to him in his present position, though. He could only absorb the secrecy that obviously enclosed him now. He did not press for more details.
They were well into Ysai and he glimpsed the black bulk of the ancient Harkonnen seat of Barony through occasional gaps between the walls that enclosed the great private residences. The car turned onto a street of small commercial establishments: cheap buildings constructed for the most part of salvaged materials that displayed their origins in poor fits and unmatched colors. Gaudy signs advised that the wares inside were the finest, the repair services better than those elsewhere.
It was not that Ysai had deteriorated or even gone to seed, Teg thought. Growth here had been diverted into something worse than ugly. Someone had chosen to make this place repellent. That was the key to most of what he saw in the city.
Time had not stopped here, it had retreated. This was no modern city full of bright transport pods and insulated usiform buildings. This was random jumbles, ancient structures joined to ancient structures, some built to individual tastes and some obviously designed with some long-gone necessity in mind. Everything about Ysai was joined in a proximity whose disarray just managed to avoid chaos. What saved it, Teg knew, was the old pattern of thoroughfares along which this hodgepodge had been assembled. Chaos was held at bay, although what pattern there was in the streets conformed to no master plan. Streets met and crossed at odd angles, seldom squared. Seen from the air, the place was a crazy quilt with only the giant black rectangle of ancient Barony to speak of an organizing plan. The rest of it was architectural rebellion.
Te
g saw suddenly that this place was a lie plastered over with other lies, based on previous lies, and such a mad mixup that they might never dig through to a usable truth. All of Gammu was that way. Where could such insanity have had its beginnings? Was it the Harkonnens' doing?
"We are here, sir."
The driver drew up to the curb in front of a windowless building face, all flat black plasteel and with a single ground-level door. No salvaged material in this construction. Teg recognized the place: the bolt hole he had chosen. Unidentified things flickered in Teg's second vision but he sensed no immediate menace. The driver opened Teg's door and stood to one side.
"Not much activity here at this hour, sir. I would get inside quickly."
Without a backward glance, Teg darted across the narrow walk and into the building -- a small brightly lighted foyer of polished white plaz and only banks of comeyes to greet him. He ducked into a lift tube and punched the remembered coordinates. This tube, he knew, angled upward through the building to the fifty-seventh floor rear where there were some windows. He remembered a private dining room of dark reds and heavy brown furnishings, a hard-eyed female with the obvious signs of Bene Gesserit training, but no Reverend Mother.
The tube disgorged him into the remembered room but there was no one to receive him. Teg glanced around at the solid brown furnishings. Four windows along the far wall were concealed behind thick maroon draperies.
Teg knew he had been seen. He waited patiently, using his newly learned doubling-vision to anticipate trouble. There was no indication of attack. He took up a position to one side of the tube outlet and glanced around him once more.
Teg had a theory about the relationship between rooms and their windows -- the number of windows, their placement, their size, height from the floor, relationship of room size to window size, the elevation of the room, windows curtained or draped, and all of this Mentat-interpreted against knowledge of the uses to which a room was put. Rooms could be fitted to a kind of pecking order defined with extreme sophistication. Emergency uses might throw such distinctions out the window but they otherwise were quite reliable.
Lack of windows in an aboveground room conveyed a particular message. If humans occupied such a room, it did not necessarily mean secrecy was the main goal. He had seen unmistakable signs in scholastic settings that windowless schoolrooms were both a retreat from the exterior world and a strong statement of dislike for children.
This room, however, presented something different: conditional secrecy plus the need to keep occasional watch on that exterior world. Protective secrecy when required. His opinion was reinforced when he crossed the room and twitched one of the draperies aside. The windows were tripled armor-plaz. So! Keeping watch on that world outside might draw attack. That was the opinion of whoever had ordered the room protected this way.
Once more, Teg twitched the drapery aside. He glanced at the corner glazing. Prismatic reflectors there amplified the view along the adjacent wall to both sides and from roof to ground.
Well!
His previous visit had not given him time for this closer examination but now he made a more positive assessment. A very interesting room. Teg dropped the drapery and turned just in time to see a tall man enter from the tube slot.
Teg's doubled vision provided a firm prediction on the stranger. This man brought concealed danger. The newcomer was plainly military -- the way he carried himself, the quick eye for details that only a trained and experienced officer would observe. And there was something else in his manner that made Teg stiffen. This was a betrayer! A mercenary available to the highest bidder.
"Damned nasty the way they treated you," the man greeted Teg. The voice was a deep baritone with an unconscious assumption of personal power in it. The accent was one Teg had never before heard. This was someone from the Scattering! A Bashar or equivalent, Teg estimated.
Still, there was no indication of immediate attack.
When Teg did not answer, the man said: "Oh, sorry: I'm Muzzafar. Jafa Muzzafar, regional commander for the forces of Dur."
Teg had never heard of the forces of Dur.
Questions crowded Teg's mind but he kept them to himself. Anything he said here might betray weakness.
Where were the people who had met him here before? Why did I choose this place? The decision had been made with such inner assurance.
"Please be comfortable," Muzzafar said, indicating a small divan with a low serving table in front of it. "I assure you that none of what has happened to you was of my doing. Tried to put a stop to it when I heard but you'd already . . . left the scene."
Teg heard the other thing in this Muzzafar's voice now: caution bordering on fear. So this man had either heard about or seen the shack and the clearing.
"Damned clever of you," Muzzafar said. "Having your attack force wait until your captors were concentrating on trying to get information out of you. Did they learn anything?"
Teg shook his head silently from side to side. He felt on the edge of being ignited in a blurred response to attack, yet he sensed no immediate violence here. What were these Lost Ones doing? But Muzzafar and his people had made a wrong assessment of what had happened in the room of the T-probe. That was clear.
"Please, be seated," Muzzafar said.
Teg took the proffered seat on the divan.
Muzzafar sat in a deep chair facing Teg at a slight angle on the other side of the serving table. There was a crouching sense of alertness in Muzzafar. He was prepared for violence.
Teg studied the man with interest. Muzzafar had revealed no real rank -- only commander. Tall fellow with a wide, ruddy face and a big nose. The eyes were gray-green and had the trick of focusing just behind Teg's right shoulder when either of them spoke. Teg had known a spy once who did that.
"Well, well," Muzzafar said. "I've read and heard a great deal about you since coming here."
Teg continued to study him silently. Muzzafar's hair had been cropped close and there was a purple scar about three millimeters long across the scalp line above the left eye. He wore an open bush jacket of light green and matching trousers -- not quite a uniform but there was a neatness about him that spoke of customary spit and polish. The shoes attested to this. Teg thought he probably could see his own reflection in their light brown surfaces if he bent close.
"Never expected to meet you personally, of course," Muzzafar said. "Consider it a great honor."
"I know very little about you except that you command a force from the Scattering," Teg said.
"Mmmmmph! Not much to know, really."
Once more, hunger pangs gripped Teg. His gaze went to the button beside the tube slot, which, he remembered, would summon a waiter. This was a place where humans did the work usually assigned to automata, an excuse for keeping a large force assembled at the ready.
Misinterpreting Teg's interest in the tube slot, Muzzafar said: "Please don't think of leaving. Having my own medic come in to take a look at you. Shouldn't be but a moment. Appreciate it if you'd wait quietly until he arrives."
"I was merely thinking of placing an order for some food," Teg said.
"Advise you to wait until the doctor's had his look-see. Stunners leave some nasty aftereffects."
"So you know about that."
"Know about the whole damned fiasco. You and your man Burzmali are a force to be reckoned with."
Before Teg could respond, the tube slot disgorged a tall man in a jacketed red singlesuit, a man so bone-skinny that his clothing gaped and flapped about him. The diamond tattoo of a Suk doctor had been burned into his high forehead but the mark was orange and not the customary black. The doctor's eyes were concealed by a glistening orange cover that hid their true color.
An addict of some kind? Teg wondered. There was no smell of the familiar narcotics around him, not even melange. There was a tart smell, though, almost like some fruit.
"There you are, Solitz!" Muzzafar said. He gestured at Teg. "Give him a good scan. Stunner hit him day before yes
terday."
Solitz produced a recognizable Suk scanner, compact and fitting into one hand. Its probe field produced a low hum.
"So you're a Suk doctor," Teg said, looking pointedly at the orange brand on the forehead.
"Yes, Bashar. My training and conditioning are the finest in our ancient tradition."
"I've never seen the identifying mark in that color," Teg said.
The doctor passed his scanner around Teg's head. "The color of the tattoo makes no difference, Bashar. What is behind it is all that matters." He lowered the scanner to Teg's shoulders, then down across the body.
Teg waited for the humming to stop.
The doctor stood back and addressed Muzzafar: "He is quite fit, Field Marshal. Remarkably fit, considering his age, but he desperately needs sustenance."
Frank Herbert - Dune Book 5 - Heretics of Dune Page 48