Dune: House Corrino

by Brian Herbert; Kevin J. Anderson

  Chagrined, the Fremen righted the cargo-litter on the sand. They smoothed their robes and tightened the fittings of their stillsuits. Even at this hour of the morning, the desert was like a furnace.

  Perhaps the Guild had painted the sandworm with specific intent, knowing that the Fremen revered the sandworms. But Liet knew something about the Guild himself, which enabled him to overcome his fear. Information is power, especially knowledge of an enemy.

  He watched the jet-powered ‘thopter as it circled, its wings tucked tightly against its hull. Gunholes had been cut into the fuselage beneath the ports. The engines made an ear-piercing whine as the craft set down on a dune ridge a hundred meters away, kicking up sand. From silhouettes against the plaz windows, he counted four men inside. But one of them was not quite a man.

  The craft’s front folded open, and an open-topped vehicle rolled down a ramp, bearing a bald man who foolishly wore no stillsuit in the desert air. Sweat glistened on his pale, water-fat face. A square black box had been fitted to the front of his throat.

  From the waist down, his body was an unclothed mass of amorphous, waxy flesh, as if it had been melted and hideously regrown. Fleshy webs joined his fingers. His yellow, protruberant eyes seemed alien, as if transplanted from an exotic, dangerous creature.

  Some of the superstitious Fremen muttered and made warding signs, but Liet silenced them with a sharp glance. He wondered why this off-worlder made a point of revealing his repulsive body. To put us off guard, perhaps. He judged the representative to be a game player, seeking to elicit reactions, hoping to frighten and intimidate in order to improve his bargaining position.

  The representative stared at Liet and ignored the other Fremen. His metallic voice came from the synthesizer at his throat. “You show no fear of us, not even of the sandworm on our aircraft.”

  “Even children know that Shai-Hulud does not fly,” Liet said. “And anyone can make a painting.”

  The deformed man gave a narrow smile. “And my body? You do not find it repulsive?”

  “My eyes have been trained to look for other things. A beautiful person may still be repugnant inside, and a malformed body may contain a perfect heart.” He leaned closer to the open vehicle. “Which sort of creature are you?”

  The Guildsman laughed, a tinny reverberation from his throat. “I am Ailric. You are the troublesome Liet-Kynes, son of the Imperial Planetologist?”

  “I am Imperial Planetologist now.”

  “So you are.” Ailric’s alien yellow eyes scanned the litter. Liet noticed that his pupils were almost rectangular. “Explain to me, half-Fremen, why does an Imperial servant seek to prevent satellite surveillance of the deep desert? Why is it so important to you?”

  Sidestepping the intended insult, Liet replied, “Our arrangement with the Guild has been in force for centuries, and I see no reason to discontinue it.” He waved an arm, and his men uncovered the litter, revealing brown pouches of concentrated melange essence, piled high. “However, the Fremen would prefer to deal without intermediaries. We have found such men to be… unreliable.”

  Ailric lifted his chin, narrowing his nostrils. “In that case, Rondo Tuek is now in a potentially threatening position to you, able to reveal your bribe to the authorities. No doubt he has already made plans to betray you. Are you not concerned?”

  Liet could not keep the pride from his voice. “That problem has already been dealt with. Tuek is of no concern.”

  Ailric considered him for a long moment, trying to read nuances in Liet’s tanned face. “Very well. I defer to your judgment.”

  As the Guild representative studied the spice payment laid out in front of him, Liet could see him mentally counting bags, calculating value. This was an enormous sum, but the Fremen had no choice but to keep the Guild satisfied. It was especially important to maintain their secret now, since they were replanting so many regions of Dune, to follow the ecological dream of Pardot Kynes. The Harkonnens must never know.

  “I will accept this as a down payment for our continued cooperation,” Ailric said. He watched Liet closely. “But our price has doubled.”

  “Unacceptable.” Liet raised his bearded chin. “You have no middleman to pay now.”

  The Guildsman narrowed his yellow eyes, as if to conceal a lie. “It costs more for me to meet with you directly. And Harkonnen pressure has increased. They complain about their existing satellites, and demand better surveillance from the Guild. We must fabricate more and more elaborate excuses. It costs money to keep the Harkonnen griffins at bay.”

  Liet looked at him dispassionately. “Twice is too much.”

  “One and a half times, then. You have ten days to pay the additional sum, or services will be cut off.”

  Liet’s companions grumbled, but he just stared at the strange man, considering the predicament. He kept his emotions in check, not permitting his anger or alarm to show. He should have known the Guild was no more trustworthy, no more honorable than any other outsider.

  “We will find the spice.”

  No other people have mastered the genetic language as well as the Bene Tleilax. We are right to call it “the language of God,” for God Himself has given us this great power.

  — Tleilaxu Apocrypha

  Hasimir Fenring had grown up on Kaitain, inside the Imperial Palace and cyclopean government structures. He had seen the cavern cities of Ix and the monstrous sandstorms of Arrakis. But never had he experienced anything as majestic as the Guild Heighliner maintenance yards on Junction.

  Carrying a tool kit and wearing grease-stained overalls, Fenring looked like a mere maintenance worker not worth a second glance. If he played his part well enough, no one would ever notice him.

  The Spacing Guild employed billions of people. Some of them conducted the monumental operations of the Guild Bank, whose influence spread across all planets of the Imperium. Vast industrial complexes such as this Heighliner yard required hundreds of thousands of support workers.

  Fenring’s overlarge eyes drank in countless details as he and the Face Dancer hurried along the main concourse in the midst of hordes of workers, with crowded walkways overhead and lifts going up and down. Zoal had chosen to wear nondescript features, giving him the bland appearance of an unremarkable man with a sagging face and rugged eyebrows.

  Few non-Guild people ever saw the inner workings of Junction. Docking cranes towered skyscraper-high, studded with emerald and amber lights, like stars in an inky night sky. The grid-blocks of the city stretched out in geometric patterns, a stitchery of civilization across an uninteresting landscape. Concave receiving dishes, clinging like creeper plants to the exteriors of structures, absorbed electromagnetic signals from space. Metallic wharves reached toward the sky, outstretched claw girders ready to clamp on to arriving shuttlecraft.

  The two infiltrators approached a towering archway that marked one of the work zones. They entered the complex, mingled with labor crews. Ahead hung the immense shape of one of the largest Heighliners ever built, a vessel constructed during the last days of Vernius rule on Ix. This and one other craft— also currently undergoing maintenance in orbit— were the only two remaining Dominic Class vessels, a controversial design that boasted increased cargo capacity, which proportionately decreased Imperial tax revenues.

  But after the Tleilaxu takeover on the machine planet, construction of new Heighliners had dropped dramatically because of production and quality-control problems. As a consequence, the Guild had to maintain their existing fleet with greater care.

  Fenring and his Face Dancer companion rode sequential lift platforms along the curved hull of the metropolis-sized spaceship. Swarms of workers crawled like parasites over the plates, sealing, scouring, inspecting the metal. Micrometeorites and radiation storms produced tiny fractures in a hull’s lattice structure; once every five years, each Heighliner went into drydock in the Junction maintenance yards, for an overhaul.

  The two men passed through an access tunnel to the inner hull of the gr
eat ship, and finally into the cavernous hold. No one paid attention to them. Inside the vessel’s shell, armies of workers inspected and revamped the docking clamps used by family frigates, cargo haulers, and passenger shuttles. Others scurried in and out of the decks nestled within the Heighliner’s inner skin.

  Rising like a spider on a thread, a lift took Fenring and Zoal to the upper restricted zone where the Navigators’ tanks were located. Soon they would encounter heightened Guild security— and the real challenge would begin.

  The Face Dancer looked at Fenring, his expression unreadable. “I can assume the mask of any victim you choose, but remember you must do the killing.”

  Fenring carried several knives tucked into his coveralls, and he certainly knew how to use them. “A simple division of responsibilities, hmmm?”

  Zoal set a brisk pace, with Fenring hurrying to keep up. The shape-shifter confidently made his way along dim, low-ceilinged corridors. “The blueprints show that the Navigator’s chamber is this way. Follow me, and we will be done before long.”

  They had studied Heighliner blueprint holos left behind in the subterranean assembly facilities on Ix, where the ships had originally been built. Since this giant vessel would not be ready to depart for several more weeks, no Navigator occupied the tank, and the spice supply had not yet been replenished. Security would not be at its tightest yet.

  “Around this corner.” Zoal kept his uninflected voice low. He took out a ridulian handboard and fingered through sheets of shimmering crystal, illuminating a rough diagram of the Heighliner’s upper levels.

  As they approached a guard stationed at the far end of the corridor, Zoal put on a deeply puzzled expression and pointed to lines on the handboard. Fenring shook his head, feigning disagreement. They walked toward the guard, who stood stiffly at attention, his stunner at his hip.

  Fenring raised his annoyed voice as they drew closer. “This is not the right level, I tell you. We’re in the wrong section of the Heighliner. Look here.” He jabbed his fingers at the crystal sheets.

  Playing his part like a Jongleur, Zoal flushed. “Listen to me, we followed the directions step by step.” He glanced up, pretending to notice the guard for the first time. “Let’s ask him.” He pushed forward, closing the distance.

  Glowering, the guard jerked a thumb toward Fenring. “You’re both in the wrong section. No unauthorized access.”

  With a sigh of disgust, Zoal held up the Heighliner drawing on his handboard, pushing it toward the guard’s face. “Well then, can you direct us?” Fenring pressed close on the other side.

  The guard peered at the crystalboard. “Here’s your problem. This isn’t—”

  With flawless grace, Fenring slipped his long, slim knife through the man’s ribs and deep into his liver, then twisted the blade and pushed higher into the lungs. He avoided major blood vessels to minimize bleeding, but the wound was sufficiently fatal.

  The guard gasped and twitched. Dropping his handboard, Zoal grabbed the victim in a brutally strong grip. Fenring withdrew his slender knife and stabbed again, this time under the sternum and up into the heart.

  Zoal stared into the guard’s face as he eased the slumping body to the deck. Then the Face Dancer twitched. His features became liquid, as if made of soft clay, and shifted into a new mask. His appearance was now identical to the guard’s. Zoal drew a deep breath, twitched his head to one side, then stared at the dead man’s face. “I am finished.”

  They dragged the corpse into an unoccupied closet and sealed the door. Fenring waited while the Face Dancer changed clothes with the murdered guard, applying enzyme sponges to dissolve the worst of the bloodstains. Afterward, they used the ridulian handboard to consult an accurate schematic of the upper Heighliner levels and located a disposal chute that dropped into the heated reactor chamber. The guard’s ionized ashes would never be found.

  Together, they proceeded into the security area. The Count carried his tool kit and this time feigned a look of aggrieved distress, as if he had been given an impossible work assignment. The impostor marched him along, gruffly acknowledging other guards on the higher levels. They succeeded in finding an unoccupied operations chamber behind the Navigator’s tank.

  The spice compartment was, as expected, empty. Quickly, Fenring removed the canisters of super-compressed amal pellets, dense tablets of synthetic spice shaped exactly like their melange counterparts. In such a potent form, the spice would be vaporized to create a rich gas, thick enough that a Navigator could feel its full effects and envision safe paths through foldspace.

  Fenring sealed the container into the spice-supply compartment, then applied a counterfeit approval label. It might cause some confusion when the spice-stockers found the chamber already loaded, but they would not think too hard upon finding an excess of melange. With luck, no one would complain.

  The conspirators slipped back out. Within an hour, they had departed from the Heighliner yards and moved to the next stage of their plan.

  “I hope the vessel in orbit will be just as easy to break into, hmmm?” Fenring said. “We need two test ships, to be absolutely sure.”

  The Face Dancer looked at him. Zoal’s ability to mimic the guard’s features was eerie. “It may take a bit more finesse, but we’ll get in.”

  * * *

  Afterward, weary but exhilarated from completing the second half of their mission, they stood under the cloudy skies and twinkling lights of the Junction spaceport. They hid among piled dump boxes at the edge of the loading zone; Fenring wanted to avoid conversation with Guild workers who might ask too many questions.

  He could easily have hired a mercenary or a professional commando to complete this covert mission, but Fenring liked to perform dirty work himself, when it interested him. This kept his abilities honed and provided him with pleasure.

  During a moment of guarded peace, the Count soothed himself with thoughts of his lovely wife, Margot. He was anxious to return to the Imperial Palace, where he would see and learn what she’d been up to. She should have arrived on Kaitain several days ago.

  Zoal interrupted his reverie. “Count Fenring, I must compliment you on your skills. You have done your part well.”

  “A compliment from a Face Dancer, hmmm?” Pretending to relax, Fenring leaned against a corroded metal dump box that would soon be hauled up to a Heighliner. “Thank you.”

  Seeing a blur, he instinctively jerked to one side just as a flash came toward him, a knife thrown with deadly accuracy. Even before the point of his first weapon missed its target and clanged against the metal cubicle, the Face Dancer snatched another blade hidden in his uniform.

  But Count Hasimir Fenring was more than equal to the challenge. His senses and reactions tuned to an extremely high level, he drew his own knives and dropped into a fighting stance, his expression feral. “Ahhh, I thought you were supposed to be untrained in bladework?”

  The Face Dancer wore a hard, predatory expression. “I have also been trained to lie, but apparently not well enough.”

  Fenring held his knife. He had more experience in assassin’s work than this shape-shifter could ever imagine. The Tleilaxu have underestimated me. Another mistake.

  In the dim light of the spaceport, Zoal’s features flickered and shifted once more. His shoulders became broader, his face narrow, his eyes overlarge, until Fenring was looking into a nightmarish reflection of himself, but in the Face Dancer’s clothing. “Soon I will play a new role as Imperial Spice Minister and boyhood friend of Shaddam IV.”

  The entire plot fell into place for Fenring, how this Tleilaxu creature would mimic him, passing himself off as a confidant of the Emperor’s. Although Fenring doubted Zoal could fool Shaddam for long, the shape-shifter needed only to get close to the Emperor for a few moments in private— where he could kill him and then take over the Golden Lion Throne, as ordered by Ajidica.

  Fenring admired the audacity. Considering the botched decisions Shaddam had made of late, perhaps this simulacrum might no
t be an altogether unwelcome alternative.

  “You’d never fool my Bene Gesserit wife. Margot notices the subtlest details.”

  Zoal smiled, an uncharacteristic usage of Fenring’s ferretlike facial features. “I believe I am up to the challenge, now that I have observed you closely.”

  The Face Dancer lunged, and Fenring parried with one of his own knives. Their daggers clashed again, and the combatants used their bodies as weapons, slamming each other against the dump boxes.

  His back against the wall, Fenring kicked out, trying to break Zoal’s shin, but the changeling dodged and brought his blade point up in a flash. Fenring swung his right forearm, deflected the knife from his eye, then rolled away from the dump boxes.

  Sweat poured from both fighters. Zoal had a nick under his chin, which dripped scarlet. The Count’s coveralls had been slashed in several places, yet the shape-shifter had not succeeded in injuring him. Not even a scratch.

  Still, Fenring very nearly underestimated the Face Dancer, who elevated his abilities and fought with renewed frenzy. His knife attacks became a blur. This was a danger Fenring had not contemplated: The shape-shifter was mimicking the Count’s formidable fighting skills, learning from him, stealing tricks.

  The Count considered what to do and when to do it, never letting his guard down. He needed to come up with a new move, one this laboratory-bred creature would never expect. He thought of trying to capture the shape-shifter alive in order to interrogate him, but that would be too risky. He couldn’t let their mission here be exposed.

  He heard the whine of a shuttle in the background, but didn’t dare look. The smallest lapse would be fatal. Fenring let himself stumble and fall backward, pulling the shape-shifter down with him. The Count self-consciously grunted as if in pain and dropped his own knife; it clanged and skittered out of reach under one of the dump boxes.