Dune: House Corrino

by Brian Herbert; Kevin J. Anderson

  Preoccupied, Anirul looked up at the imposing building, then turned her round eyes toward Jessica. “When you become a Reverend Mother, you will experience the wonders of Other Memory. In my collective past”— she raised a slender hand, devoid of rings or other jewelry, and made a graceful, all-encompassing gesture— “I remember when this was built. The first performance here was an ancient and rather amusing play: Don Quixote.”

  Jessica raised her eyebrows. In class, Mohiam had drilled her for years, teaching her culture and literature, politics and psychology. “Don Quixote seems an odd choice, my Lady, especially after the tragedy on Salusa Secundus.”

  Anirul looked at her husband’s profile as he gazed out the coach window; Shaddam was engrossed in the brassy fanfare and the crowds waving pennants in his honor. “Back then, Emperors permitted themselves to have a sense of humor,” she said.

  The Imperial party stepped from their coaches and passed through the arched entryway, followed by a train of attendants who carried a long whale-fur cape for the Emperor. Ladies-in-waiting draped a similar, though less impressive, fur-lined shawl around Anirul’s shoulders. The retinue entered the Center for the Performing Arts with slow precision, so that the spectators and news imagers could capture every detail.

  Shaddam marched up a cascade of polished stairs to the spacious Imperial box, close enough to the stage that he would be able to see the pores on the actors’ faces, if he bothered to pay attention. He seated himself in a cushioned wingseat that had been sculpted to smaller proportions in order to make the Emperor look large and dominating.

  Without a word to her husband, Anirul sat on his left, and continued her conversation with Jessica. “Have you ever seen a performance by a registered company of Jongleurs?”

  Jessica shook her head. “Is it true that Master Jongleurs have supernatural powers, enabling them to wring raw emotions from even the hardest heart?”

  “The Jongleur talent appears to be a resonance-hypnosis technique similar to what the Sisterhood uses, except these players use it merely to enhance their performances.”

  With a toss of her bronze hair, Jessica said, “Then I look forward to experiencing the enhanced play.” Tonight they would see My Father’s Shadow, one of the finest post-Butlerian pieces of literature, a work that had done much to secure Crown Prince Raphael Corrino’s place in history as a revered hero and respected scholar.

  Escorted by Sardaukar guards, valets entered the Imperial box and offered goblets of sparkling wine to the Emperor, then to his wife and her guest. Anirul handed one of the fluted glasses to Jessica. “A fine Caladan vintage, part of the shipment your Duke sent as a gift, to thank us for watching over you.” She reached over to touch Jessica’s slightly rounded belly. “Though I dare say, he didn’t seem pleased to have you come here, based upon what Mohiam told me.”

  Jessica flushed. “I’m sure Duke Atreides has enough business to distract him from wistful thoughts about a mere concubine.” She maintained a placid expression, so as not to show the pain of missing him. “I’m sure he has some grand ambition planned.”

  The valets vanished with their wine just as the orchestra struck up the overture and the play began. Shimmering floodlights bathed the stage, tuned yellow to imply sunrise. The set had no markings, props, or curtains. The acting troupe marched out in a phalanx and found their marks. Jessica studied the lush costumes, the fabric embellished with splendid mythological designs.

  Shaddam sat in his chair, not quite bored, but Jessica guessed that would come soon enough. Following tradition, the performers waited until the Emperor nodded for them to proceed.

  Behind the stage, a technician activated a bank of solido hologenerators, and suddenly the props and sets shimmered into visibility— a towering castle wall, a throne, a thick stand of trees in the distance.

  “Ah, Imperium, glorious Imperium!” exclaimed the lead actor playing Raphael. Carrying a long scepter topped by a faceted glowglobe, he had thick, dark hair that flowed to the center of his back. His stocky, muscular body gave him a commanding presence. The face had a porcelain beauty that stirred Jessica. “My eyes are not strong enough and my brain not spacious enough to see and learn about all the wonders that my father rules.”

  The actor lowered his head. “Would that I could devote my life to study, so that I might die with even a glimmer of understanding. In that way I could best honor God and my forefathers, who have made the Imperium great, who have stamped out the scourge of thinking machines.” He raised his head, and with a piercing gaze looked squarely at Shaddam. “To be born a Corrino is more blessing than any man deserves.”

  Jessica felt a chill on her skin. The actor’s delivery was rich and sonorous, yet he had altered the traditional words slightly. From her studies, she was certain that she remembered every line of the classic play. If Lady Anirul noticed the modified soliloquy, though, she said nothing of it.

  The female lead character, a beautiful woman named Herade, rushed onstage to interrupt the Crown Prince’s reverie and inform him of an assassination attempt upon his father, the Padishah Emperor Idriss I. Shocked, young Raphael sank to his knees and began to weep, but Herade clutched his hand. “No, no, my Prince. He is not yet dead. Your father survives, though he has suffered a grievous head wound.”

  “Idriss is the light that makes the Golden Lion Throne shine across the universe. I must see him. I must rekindle that ember and keep him alive.”

  Herade said, “Then let us make haste. The Suk doctor is with him already.” Solemnly, they left the stage together. Within moments, the holo-scenery shifted to an interior room.

  As he watched from his box, Shaddam leaned back with a heavy sigh.

  In the play, Emperor Idriss failed to recover from his injury or awaken from his coma, yet life-support systems kept him alive. Idriss remained in the Imperial bed, tended round the clock. Raphael Corrino, de facto ruler and rightful heir to the throne, grieved for his father but never formally took his place. Raphael never sat in the Imperial throne, but always seated himself on a smaller chair. Though he commanded the Imperium for years, he never called himself anything other than Crown Prince.

  “I shall not usurp my father’s throne, and woe to any parasite who considers it.” The actor stepped closer to the Imperial box. The faceted glowglobe atop his staff was a shimmering jewel like a cold geological torch.

  Jessica blinked, trying to assess precisely which lines the actor had altered, and why. She saw something strange in his movements, a certain tension. Was he only nervous? Perhaps he had forgotten his lines. But a Jongleur would never forget his lines….

  “House Corrino is more powerful than the ambition of any individual. No one man can claim to own that heritage for himself.” The actor rapped his staff on the stage. “Such hubris would be folly, indeed.”

  Now Anirul began to notice the mistakes herself and flashed a glance at Jessica. Shaddam just looked sleepy.

  The actor portraying the enlightened Raphael took a second step forward, just below the Emperor’s box, while the other Jongleurs faded back, giving him center stage. “We all have parts to play in the grand performance of the Imperium.”

  He then digressed completely from the script and recited from a Shakespeare play, words even more ancient than My Father’s Shadow. “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.”

  Raphael reached to his breast and yanked off a ruby brooch. The gem had been ground down so that it looked like a lens. “And Shaddam, I am much more than an actor,” he said, startling the Emperor into awareness. He slammed the faceted ruby into a socket on the staff, and Jessica realized it was a power source.

  “An Emperor should love his people, serve them, and work to protect them. Instead, you chose to become the Butcher of Zanovar.” The glowglobe atop his staff blazed intensely bright. “If you wanted to kill me, Shaddam, I would gladly have given my life for all the people
of Zanovar.”

  Sardaukar stepped forward to the edge of the stage, not certain what to do.

  “I am your half brother Tyros Reffa, son of Elrood IX by Lady Shando Balut. I am the man you tried to murder when you destroyed a planet, slaying millions of innocents— and I challenge your right to House Corrino!”

  The staff blazed, like a sun.

  “That’s a weapon!” Shaddam bellowed, standing up. “Stop him, but take him alive!”

  The Sardaukar rushed forward, clubs and blades drawn. Reffa looked startled, waving his jeweled staff. “No, this isn’t how I meant for it to happen!” The Sardaukar were almost upon him, and Reffa seemed to reach a sudden decision. He adjusted the gem. “I only wanted to make my case.”

  A beam shot out from the prop, and Jessica lurched to one side. Lady Anirul toppled her own chair, throwing herself to the floor. The focused glowglobe had emitted a deadly laser blast. A nearby Sardaukar guard crashed into the Emperor’s chair, knocking Shaddam aside while the fiery blow shattered the guard’s chest into cinders.

  The audience screamed. The Jongleur acting company fled to the rear of the stage, looking at Reffa in astonishment.

  Ducking behind props to avoid a volley of Sardaukar fire, Tyros Reffa swung his faceted glowglobe, slicing with the laser as if it were a long, hot knife. Abruptly, the burst of blinding light sputtered out, the power source in the ruby brooch drained.

  Sardaukar guards poured across the stage and surrounded the man who claimed to be Elrood’s son. Attendants dragged the shaken but uninjured Emperor to safety behind the ruined Imperial box. A young theater usher assisted Anirul, her daughters, and Jessica. Emergency response teams rushed in to extinguish the smoldering fires.

  In the corridor outside the Imperial box, a Sardaukar officer strode forward, his face grim. “We have captured him, Sire.”

  Shaddam looked stunned and ruffled. A pair of valets brushed off his Imperial cape, while another smoothed his pomaded hair. The Emperor’s green eyes turned cold, more angry than frightened by his brush with death. “Good.”

  Plucking at his chest, Shaddam rearranged the glittering medals he had awarded himself for past accomplishments. “See that you arrest every person involved here. Somebody made a huge blunder with these Jongleurs.”

  “It will be done, Sire.”

  The Emperor finally looked over at his wife and Jessica, who stood nearby with his daughters, all unharmed. He showed no relief, just processed the information.

  “Well… in a sense, perhaps I should reward the man,” the Emperor mused, trying to lighten the tension. “At least we don’t have to watch any more of that dull play.”

  In a technological culture, progress may be viewed as the attempt to move more quickly into the future, rushing to make known the unknown.

  — MOTHER SUPERIOR HARISHKA

  The mysterious Bene Gesserit Mother School had been a peculiar experience for the three Richesian inventors, but Haloa Rund could not say exactly why. For some reason, the trip to Wallach IX seemed unreal.

  The return shuttle approached the laboratory satellite of Korona. Rund sat meekly in a passenger seat, wondering if the Bene Gesserit would actually commission their large-scale project from his uncle, Count Ilban Richese. The Sisterhood could certainly afford to pay for technical assistance with their power systems; the work would be a boon for the Richesian economy.

  Oddly, though, Rund couldn’t remember exactly what he and his companions had actually done on Wallach IX. It had been an exhausting trip, with many meetings. They had worked up detailed plans and suggestions for the Sisters… hadn’t they? Director Kinnis and bookish Talis Balt must still have the plans in their crystalboards. A stickler for schedules, Kinnis tracked the activities of all his lab employees to the nanosecond, using dictation cards that he always kept in his pocket. Whatever the bureaucrat didn’t have on his crystalboards, Talis Balt would surely remember.

  But something inside Rund’s mind seemed slippery. Every time he tried to remember any specific conversation or particular design proposal he had made, his grasp of the subject slid sideways. He had never been so distractible before. In fact, he had always been obsessively focused, thanks in part to his minimal Mentat background.

  Now, as their ship docked against the orbiting satellite, he had a vague memory of looking over facilities on Wallach IX. He and his colleagues had been inside the famed School, and he must have been paying attention. He did remember a sumptuous banquet the Sisters had thrown for them, the best meal he’d ever eaten. But he couldn’t recall any of the items on the menu.

  Neither Balt nor Kinnis seemed perturbed, already discussing completely different work. The men didn’t mention the Bene Gesserit at all, focused instead on improving the manufacturing techniques for valuable Richesian mirrors in the orbital laboratory.

  As he and his colleagues disembarked into the Korona research facility, Rund felt as if he were awakening from a bad dream. He turned around, disoriented, realizing that none of them had any luggage or personal articles with them. Not now, anyway. Had they packed any?

  Glad to be back in the satellite lab facility, and eager to plunge into his continuing research and development work, he found himself tempted to forget anything to do with the Sisterhood. He resented the lost time… but wasn’t sure precisely how long he had been gone. He would have to check.

  Walking beside Rund through the metal corridors, Flinto Kinnis and Talis Balt blinked in the harsh light. Struggling to think back to the Bene Gesserit banquet, Rund sensed fragments of thoughts filtering into the edge of his consciousness, like water seeping through a crack in a dike. He tried to use some of the Mentat techniques he had attempted to learn, long ago, but each time it was like grasping a moss-slicked rock. He wanted to know more. If the break became larger, perhaps the troublesome memory block would crumble away.

  A cold feeling of dread weighed on him, and he began to feel dizzy. This wasn’t right. His ears rang. Did the witches do something to us?

  He began to lose his balance on rubbery legs. Before his companions could help him, Rund slumped onto the cool metal deck. His ears kept ringing.

  Leaning over the fallen man, Talis Balt wrinkled his smooth forehead. “What is it, Haloa? You want a medic?”

  Kinnis pursed his lips. “Perhaps a furlough, Rund? I’m sure your uncle would allow it.” He seemed to be reassessing schedules in his mind. “I doubt the Bene Gesserit were serious about contracting our services anyway.”

  Confused and alarmed, Rund seized on the comment. “Our services for what, Director?” The recent days were foggy shadows. How could he have forgotten so much so soon? “Do you remember?”

  The bureaucrat sniffed. “Why, for their… project, of course. What does it matter? A wasted effort, if you ask me.”

  To Rund’s mind, it seemed that his eyes had turned inward, revealing flashes of a Bene Gesserit woman, her lips phrasing harsh questions that echoed in his head. He saw her mouth opening and closing in slow motion, uttering strange words, her long fingers moving hypnotically.

  He used Mentat mnemonics, focusing techniques. Moment by moment, the crack in the mental dike widened. He remembered tan cliffs, a rock quarry… a crashed ship, a specific comment. “You were friends of Chobyn.”

  Abruptly, the mental block crumbled and broke, revealing everything. “Tell us what you know of this invention. How do we re-create it?” Still seated in the corridor, Rund began shouting commands. “Bring me a holorecorder, now. I need to get these details down.”

  “He’s gone crazy,” Director Kinnis lamented. “Something snapped.”

  But Talis Balt snatched one of the dictation cards from the bureaucrat’s pocket and handed it to his colleague. Rund grabbed it. “This is important! No time for questions before I lose contact.”

  Without looking at either of his companions, he activated the voice pickup and spoke into it in a breathless rush. “Tenu Chobyn… his secret projects were of much concern to Premier Calimar. He
disappeared… defected to House Harkonnen. Too many gaps in the records he left behind. Ah, now we know what he was working on! A generator for an invisibility field.”

  Balt knelt next to him, his smooth brow furrowed. Kinnis looked as if he still wanted to call for medics and drugs, and a relief ship to take the inventor down to Richese. Kinnis didn’t like problems that unsettled the workforce, but he had to take a light touch with the Count’s nephew.

  More images flooded into Rund’s mind, and his words came out rapid-fire. “He used his field generator to make a warship invisible… Harkonnens crashed it into the Mother School. That is why we were brought to Wallach IX, to help them understand the incredible technology—”

  Flinto Kinnis had heard enough. “Nonsense, we were summoned to discuss work on a…”

  “I’m sure I have everything in my notes,” Balt added, but then frowned.

  “Do you remember the quarry?” Rund demanded. “The women who interrogated us? They did something to erase our memories.”

  Clutching the plaz dictation card, the impatient inventor chattered everything he could remember. A curious crowd began to gather in the satellite corridor, and as Rund painted images from his restored memory, Kinnis and Balt could not tear themselves away. Detail after detail hammered at their doubts, but still they could not remember.

  Obsessed, Rund demanded more dictation cards and spoke into them for hours, refusing any food or water, until finally he lay on the floor of the corridor, exhausted. His work had only just begun.

  He who laughs alone at night does so in contemplation of his own evil.

  — Fremen Wisdom

  Because water was so precious on Arrakis, Rondo Tuek’s moisture-extraction factories at the antarctic cap had made him a wealthy water merchant. He had the means to purchase everything a man could desire.