"Mistake? I'm quite pleased with everything our boy's learned. He's going to be a fine Duke someday." Leto heard the thump of a boot tossed into the corner. "Stop your worrying. Don't you feel at all sorry for poor Rhombur and Kailea?"
Unswayed, she said, "In their pride, the people of Ix have broken the Law, and they have paid for it. Should I feel sorry for them? I think not."
Paulus hit a piece of furniture hard with his hand, and Leto heard wood scraping across stone, a chair shoved aside. "And I'm to believe you are familiar enough with the inner workings of Ix to make such a judgment? Or have you already come to a conclusion based on what you want to hear, without being troubled by mere lack of evidence?" He laughed, and his tone turned more gentle." Besides, you seem to be working well with young Kailea. She enjoys your company. How can you say such things about her to me, and then pretend to be kind to her face?"
Helena sounded eminently reasonable. "The children can't help who they are, Paulus -- they didn't ask to be born there, raised there, exposed to anything but proper teachings. Do you think they've ever held the Orange Catholic Bible? It's not their fault. They are what they are, and I can't hate them for it."
"Then what --"
She lashed out at him with such vehemence that Leto took a silent step backward in surprise out in the shadowy hall. "You're the one who has made a choice here, Paulus. And you've made the wrong one. That choice will cost you and our House dearly."
He made a rude noise. "There was no choice, Helena. On my honor and my word -- there was no choice."
"Still it was your own decision, despite my warnings and despite my advice. Your decision alone, Paulus Atreides." Her voice was frighteningly cold. "You must live with the consequences, and be damned by them."
"Oh, calm down and go to sleep, Helena."
Unsettled, Leto crept away, his question forgotten, without waiting to see how soon they extinguished the lights.
THE NEXT DAY, a calm and sunny morning, Leto stood next to Rhombur at an open window, admiring the quays at the base of the promontory. The ocean spread out like a blue-green prairie, curving off to the distant horizon. "A perfect day," Leto said, realizing that his friend was homesick for the lost underground city of Vernii, probably tired of too much weather. "Now it's my turn to show you around Caladan."
The two of them descended the narrow cliffside path and staircase, holding on to rails and vaulting weathered steps, avoiding the slippery moss and the white encrustations of salty spray.
The Duke had several boats tied up at the dock, and Leto chose his favorite coracle, a white motorcraft around fifteen meters in length. With a wide, beamy hull, it featured a spacious cutty cabin in the front and sleeping quarters beneath, reached via a spiral staircase. Aft of the cabin were two decks, at midship and aftship, with cargo holds below: a nice setup for fishing or motor cruising. Additional modules stored on shore could be installed to change the functions of the craft: adding more cabin space or converting one or both cargo holds to additional sleeping or habitation areas.
Servants packed them a lunch while three mariner assistants checked all the onboard systems in preparation for a day-long voyage. Rhombur watched Leto treat these people as friends while they loaded the gear. "Is your wife's leg better, Jerrik? Did you finish the roof on your smoke shed, Dom?"
Finally, as Rhombur looked on with curiosity and trepidation, Leto clapped him on the shoulder. "Remember your rock collection? You and I are going to dive for coral gems."
These precious stones, found in knobby coral reefs, were popular pieces on Caladan, but perilous to handle. Coral gems were said to hold tiny living creatures that caused their inner fires to dance and simmer. Because of the hazards and expense of containment, the gems did not support much of an off-world export market, given the more viable alternative of soostones from Buzzell. But local coral gems were lovely, nonetheless.
Leto thought he wanted to give one to Kailea as a present. With the wealth of House Atreides, he could afford to buy Rhombur's sister many greater treasures if he wished, but the gift might mean more if he procured it himself. She would probably appreciate it either way.
After all preparations were completed, he and Rhombur boarded the wickerwood coracle. An Atreides burgee flew from the stern, snapping in the breeze. As the mariner assistants cast off the lines, one asked, "You can handle this yourself, m'Lord?"
Leto laughed and waved the man away. "Jerrik, you know I've been handling these boats for years now. The seas are calm, and we have a shore-com aboard. But thank you for your concern. Don't worry, we won't go far, just to the reefs."
Rhombur wandered the deck and tried to help, doing whatever Leto told him to do. He'd never been on an open boat before. The engines carried them away from the cliffs, beyond the shielded harbor, and out into open water. Sunlight glittered like sparkflies on the rippled surface of the sea.
The Prince of Ix stood at the bow while Leto worked the controls. Rhombur soaked up the experience of water and wind and sun, smiling. He took a deep breath. "I feel so alone and so free out here."
Looking overboard, Rhombur saw rafts of leathery-leafed seaweed and round gourdlike fruits that held up the plants like air bladders. "Paradan melons," Leto said. "If you want one, just reach over the side and take it. If you've never had paradan fresh from the sea, you're in for a taste treat . . . though the fruit's a bit salty for me."
Far off to starboard a pod of murmons swam like furred logs, large but harmless creatures that drifted with ocean currents, singing to themselves with low, hooting sounds.
Leto sailed the coracle for about an hour, consulting satellite maps and charts, making for a knot of outlying reefs. He handed Rhombur a set of binoculars and indicated a frothy, tumultuous patch on the sea. Isolated black ridges of rock barely poked above the waves like the spine of a sleeping leviathan.
"There's the reef," Leto said. "We'll anchor about half a kilometer away so we don't risk ripping open the hull. Then we can go diving." He opened a compartment and withdrew a sack and a small spatulaknife for each of them. "The coral gems don't grow very deep. We can dive without air tanks." He slapped Rhombur on the back. "It's about time you started to earn your keep around here."
"Just keeping you out of trouble is, uh, effort enough," Rhombur countered.
After the coracle was secured on its anchor cord, Leto pointed a scanner overboard to map out the contours of the reefs below. "Look at this," he said, letting his friend view the screen. "See those crannies and tiny caves? That's where you'll find the coral gems."
Rhombur peered at the scanner, nodding.
"Each one is encrusted with a husk, like an organic scab that grows around them. Doesn't look like much until you crack one open and see the most beautiful pearls in all creation, like molten droplets from a star. You have to keep them wet at all times, because the open air oxidizes them instantly and they become extremely pyrophoric."
"Oh," Rhombur said, unsure what the word meant, though he was too proud to ask. Fumbling, he attached his belt, which held the spatulaknife and a small waterlume for probing the darkest caves.
"I'll show you when we get down there," Leto said. "How long can you hold your breath?"
"As long as you," the Prince of Ix said, "naturally."
Leto stripped off his shirt and pants, while Rhombur hurried to do the same. Simultaneously, both young men dived overboard. Leto stroked downward into the warm water, pulling himself deeper until he felt the pressure around his skull.
The large reef was a convoluted, permanently submerged landscape. Tufts of coralweed waved in the gentle currents, the tiny mouths on their leaves snaring bits of plankton. Jewel-toned fish darted in and out of holes in the layered coral.
Rhombur grabbed his arm and pointed at a long purplish eel that drifted by, streaming a rainbow-hued, feathery tail. The Ixian looked comical with his cheeks swollen, trying to hold in his air.
Grasping the rough coral, Leto pulled himself along and peered into cra
cks and crevices. He shined the beam of his waterlume all around in his search. With his lungs aching, he finally found a discolored knob and signaled for Rhombur, who swam over. But as Leto pulled out his spatula-knife to pry free the coral gem, Rhombur flailed his arms and swam upward as fast as he could, his air exhausted.
Leto remained beneath the water, though his chest pounded. Finally, he pried loose the nodule, which would likely yield a medium-sized coral gem. With it he swam upward, his chest ready to burst, and finally splashed to the surface where Rhombur clung, panting, to the edge of the coracle.
"Found one," Leto said. "Look." Holding the gem underneath the water, he tapped it with the blunt edge of his knife until the outer covering cracked free. Inside, a slightly misshapen ovoid gleamed with self-contained pearly light. Tiny glimmering specks circulated like molten sand trapped within transparent epoxy.
"Exquisite," Rhombur said.
Dripping wet, Leto climbed out of the water and onto the midship deck, by the lifeboat station. He dipped a bucket overboard, filling it with seawater, and dropped the coral gem inside before it could dry out in his hands. "Now you have to find one of your own."
With his blond hair plastered to his head by seawater, the Prince nodded, drew several deep gulps of air, then swam downward again. Leto dived after him.
Within an hour the pair had gathered half a bucket of the beautiful gems. "Nice haul," Leto said, squatting on the deck beside Rhombur, who, fascinated with the treasure, dipped his fingers into the bucket. "You like those?"
Rhombur grunted. His eyes danced with a child's delight.
"I've worked up quite an appetite," Leto said. "I'll go prep the foodpaks."
"I'm starving, too," Rhombur said. "Uh, need any help?"
Leto drew himself up and raised his aquiline nose haughtily in the air. "Sir, I am the resident ducal heir, with a long resume asserting my competence to prepare a simple foodpak." He strutted to the sheltered galley as Rhombur sorted through the wet coral stones, like a kid playing with marbles.
Some were perfectly spherical, others misshapen and pitted. Rhombur wondered why certain ones had a blazing inner brilliance while others were dull by comparison. He set the three largest stones on the midship deck and watched the sunlight glitter on them, a pale shadow to the brilliance trapped within. He noted their differences, wondered what he and Leto could do with the treasure.
He missed his own collection of gems and crystals, agates and geodes from Ix. He had wandered through caves and tunnels and shafts to find them. He had learned so much of geology that way -- and then the Tleilaxu had driven him and his family from their world. He'd been forced to leave everything behind. Although he left it unsaid, Rhombur decided if he ever saw his mother again, he could make a grand gift for her.
Leto leaned out of the galley door. "Lunch is ready. Come and eat before I feed it to the fishes."
Rhombur trotted in to sit at the small table while Leto served up two bowls of steaming Caladanian oyster chowder, seasoned with nouveau wine from House Atreides vineyards. "My grandmother came up with this recipe. It's one of my favorites."
"Well, not bad. Even if you made it." Rhombur slurped from his bowl and licked his lips. "It's a, um, good thing my sister didn't come along," he said, trying to hide the joking tone in his voice. "She probably would have tried to wear fancy clothes, and you know she'd never have gone swimming with us."
"Sure," Leto said, unconvinced. "You're right." It was obvious to anyone how he and Kailea flirted with each other, though Rhombur understood -- politically speaking -- that a romance between them would be unwise at best, and dangerous at worst.
Out on the midship deck just aft of them, the sun beat down, warming the wooden floorboards, drying the splashed water -- and exposing the fragile coral gems to the open, oxidizing air. Simultaneously, the three largest gems burst into incandescent flares, merging into a miniature nova of intense heat, hot enough to burn through a metal starship hull.
Leto leaped to his feet, knocking aside his bowl of chowder. Through the broad plaz windowports he could see blue-orange flames shooting up, setting the deck on fire, including the lifeboat. One of the coral gems shattered, spraying hot fragments in all directions, each of which started secondary fires.
Within seconds, two more gems burned completely through the coracle deck and dropped into the cargo hold below, where they ate through crates. One burned open a spare fuel container, igniting it with an explosive burst, while the second gem seared all the way through the bottom hull until it extinguished itself in the refreshing water again. The wickerwood hull, though treated with a fire-retardant chemical, would not hold up against such heat.
Leto and Rhombur rushed out of the galley, shouting at each other but not knowing what to do. "The fire! We've got to get the fire out!"
"They're coral gems!" Leto looked for something with which to extinguish the blaze. "They burn hot, can't be put out easily." Swelling flames licked the deck, and the coracle rocked with an explosion belowdecks. On its davits the lifeboat was a lost cause, completely enveloped in flames.
"We could sink," Leto said, "and we're too far from land." He grabbed a chemical extinguisher, which he sprayed on the flames.
He and his companion took out the hoses and pumps from a front compartment and doused the boat with seawater, but the cargo hold was already engulfed. Greasy black smoke drifted through cracks in the top deck. A warning beep signified that they were taking on large amounts of water.
"We're going to sink!" Rhombur shouted, reading the instrumentation. He coughed from the acrid smoke.
Leto tossed a flotation vest to his friend as he buckled another one around his waist. "Get on the shore-com. Announce our position and send a distress. You know how to operate it?"
Rhombur yelped an affirmative, while Leto used another chemical extinguisher, but soon exhausted its charge without effect. He and Rhombur would be trapped out here, floating with only the debris of the boat around them. He had to reach land and settle where they could wait.
He remembered his father lecturing him: "When you find yourself in the midst of a seemingly impossible crisis, take care of the solvable parts first. Then, after you've narrowed the possibilities, work on the most difficult aspects."
He heard Rhombur shouting into the shore-com, repeating the distress call. Leto now ignored the fire. The coracle was sinking, and would soon be underwater, leaving them stranded. He looked toward the port side and saw frothing water around the tangle of the reef. He dashed for the cabin.
Before the fire could reach the aft engines, he started the boat, used the emergency cutoff to sever the anchor, and raced toward the reef. The flaming coracle was like a comet on the water.
"What are you doing?" Rhombur cried. "Where are we going?"
"The reef!" he shouted. "I'll try to run aground there so we don't sink. Then you and I can work to put out the fire."
"You're going to crash us into a reef? That's crazy!"
"You'd rather sink out here? This boat is going down, one way or another." As if to emphasize his point another small container of fuel exploded belowdecks, sending a shudder through the floor.
Rhombur grasped the secured galley table to keep his balance. "Whatever you say."
"Did you get an acknowledgment on the shore-com?"
"No. I, uh, hope they heard us." Leto told him to keep trying, which he did, still without receiving a response.
The waves curled around them, low to the deck rail. Black smoke poured into the sky. Fire licked at the engine compartment. The coracle dipped lower, dragging, taking on water rapidly. Leto pushed the engines, still charging toward the rocks. He didn't know if he would win this race. If he could just run them up on the reef, he and Rhombur could stay safely beside the wreckage. He didn't know how long it would take for rescuers to arrive.
As if driven by a demon, whitecaps rose in front of them, threatening to form a barrier. But Leto held course and did not slacken the acceleration. "Hang o
n!"
At the last moment, the engines died as fire engulfed them. The coracle cruised forward on sheer momentum and crashed into the jagged reef. The grinding halt threw both Leto and Rhombur to the deck. Rhombur struck his head and stood up, blinking, dazed. Blood trickled down his forehead, very close to the old injury he had received during the orship escape from Ix.
"Let's go! Overboard!" Leto yelled. He grabbed his friend's arm and pushed him out of the cabin. From the forward compartment, Leto tossed hoses and portable pumps into the frothing water. "Dip this end of the hose into the deepest water you can reach! And try not to cut yourself on the reef."
Rhombur scrambled over the rail, while Leto followed, trying to maintain his balance in the churning tide pools and rough surf. The boat was snagged, so for the moment they needn't worry about drowning -- just discomfort.
Dune - House Atreides Page 40