Heretics of Dune

by Frank Herbert

  It had seemed a logical question for people trotting along an obvious animal track, even the musty smell of beasts in it.

  "Do not talk!" Tormsa snapped.

  Later, Duncan asked why they could not get a vehicle of some sort and escape in that. Even a groundcar would be preferable to this painful march across country where one route felt much like another.

  Tormsa stopped them in a patch of moonlight and looked at Duncan as though he suspected his charge had suddenly become bereft of sense.

  "Vehicles can follow!"

  "No one can follow us when we're on foot?"

  "Followers also must be on foot. Here, they will be killed. They know."

  What a weird place! What a primitive place.

  In the shelter of the Bene Gesserit Keep, Duncan had not realized the nature of the planet around him. Later, in the no-globe, he had been removed from contact with the outside. He had pre-ghola and ghola memories, but how inadequate those were! When he thought about it now, he realized there had been clues. It was obvious that Gammu possessed rudimentary weather control. And Teg had said that the orbiting monitors that guarded the planet from attack were of the best.

  Everything for protection, damned little for comfort! It was like Arrakis in that respect.

  Rakis, he corrected himself.

  Teg. Did the old man survive? A captive? What did it mean to be captured here in this age? It had meant brutal slavery in the old Harkonnen days. Burzmali and Lucilla... He glanced at Tormsa.

  "Will we find Burzmali and Lucilla in the city?"

  "If they get through."

  Duncan glanced down at his clothing. Was it a sufficient disguise? A Tleilaxu Master and companion? People would think the companion a Face Dancer, of course. Face Dancers were dangerous.

  The baggy trousers were of some material Duncan had never before seen. It felt like wool to the hand, but he sensed that it was artificial. When he spat on it, spittle did not adhere and the smell was not of wool. His fingers detected a uniformity of texture that no natural material could present. The long soft boots and watchcap were of the same fabric. The garments were loose and puffy except at the ankles. Not quilted, though. Insulated by some trick of manufacture that trapped dead air between the layers. The color was a mottled green and gray--excellent camouflage here.

  Tormsa was dressed in similar garments.

  "How long do we wait here?" Duncan asked.

  Tormsa shook his head for silence. The guide was seated now, knees up, arms wrapped around his legs, head cradled against his knees, eyes looking outward over the valley.

  During the night's trip, Duncan had found the clothing remarkably comfortable. Except for that once in the water, his feet stayed warm but not too warm. There was plenty of room in trousers, shirt, and jacket for his body to move easily. Nothing abraded his flesh.

  "Who makes clothing such as this?" Duncan asked.

  "We made it," Tormsa growled. "Be silent."

  This was no different than the pre-awakening days at the Sisterhood's Keep, Duncan thought. Tormsa was saying: "No need for you to know."

  Presently, Tormsa stretched out his legs and straightened. He appeared to relax. He glanced at Duncan. "Friends in the city signal that there are searchers overhead."

  "'Thopters?"

  "Yes."

  "Then what do we do?"

  "You must do what I do and nothing else."

  "You're just sitting there."

  "For now. We will go down into the valley soon."

  "But how--"

  "When you traverse such country as this you become one of the animals that live here. Look at the tracks and see how they walk and how they lie down for a rest."

  "But can't the searchers tell the difference between... "

  "If the animals browse, you make the motions of browsing. If searchers come, you continue to do what it was you were doing, what any animal would do. Searchers will be high in the air. That is lucky for us. They cannot tell animal from human unless they come down."

  "But won't they--"

  "They trust their machines and the motions they see. They are lazy. They fly high. That way, the search goes faster. They trust their own intelligence to read their instruments and tell which is animal and which is human."

  "So they'll just go by us if they think we're wild animals."

  "If they doubt, they will scan us a second time. We must not change the pattern of movements after being scanned."

  It was a long speech for the usually taciturn Tormsa. He studied Duncan carefully now. "You understand?"

  "How will I know when we're being scanned?"

  "Your gut will tingle. You will feel in your stomach the fizz of a drink that no man should swallow."

  Duncan nodded. "Ixian scanners."

  "Let it not alarm you," Tormsa said. "Animals here are accustomed to it. Sometimes, they may pause, but only for an instant and then they go on as if nothing has happened. Which, for them, is true. It is only for us that something evil may happen."

  Presently, Tormsa stood. "We will go down into the valley now. Follow closely. Do exactly what I do and nothing else."

  Duncan fell into step behind his guide. Soon, they were under the covering trees. Sometime during the night's passage, Duncan realized, he had begun to accept his place in the schemes of others. A new patience was taking over his awareness. And there was excitement goaded by curiosity.

  What kind of a universe had come out of the Atreides times? Gammu. What a strange place Giedi Prime had become.

  Slowly but distinctly, things were being revealed and each new thing opened a view to more that could be learned. He could feel patterns taking shape. One day, he thought, there would be a single pattern and then he would know why they had brought him back from the dead.

  Yes, it was a matter of opening doors, he thought. You opened one door and that let you into a place where there were other doors. You chose a door in this new place and examined what that revealed to you. There might be times when you were forced to try all of the doors but the more doors you opened, the more certain you became of which door to open next. Finally, a door would open into a place you recognized. Then you could say: "Ahhhh, this explains everything."

  "Searchers come," Tormsa said. "We are browsing animals now." He reached up to a screening bush and tore down a small limb.

  Duncan did the same.

  "I must rule with eye and claw--as the hawk among lesser birds."

  --Atreides assertion (Ref: BG Archives)

  At daybreak, Teg emerged from the concealing windbreaks beside a main road. The road was a wide, flat thoroughfare--beam-hardened and kept bare of plant life. Ten lanes, Teg estimated, suitable for both vehicle and foot traffic. There was mostly foot traffic on it at this hour.

  He had brushed most of the dust off his clothing and made sure there were no signs of rank on it. His gray hair was not as neat as he usually preferred but he had only his fingers for a comb.

  Traffic on the road was headed toward the city of Ysai many kilometers across the valley. The morning was cloudless with a light breeze in his face moving toward the sea somewhere far behind him.

  During the night he had come to a delicate balance with his new awareness. Things flickered in his second vision: knowledge of things around him before those things occurred, awareness of where he must put his foot in the next step. Behind this lay the reactive trigger that he knew could snap him into the blurring responses that flesh should not be able to accommodate. Reason could not explain the thing. He felt that he walked precariously along the cutting edge of a knife.

  Try as he might, he could not resolve what had happened to him under the T-probe. Was it akin to what a Reverend Mother experienced in the spice agony? But he sensed no accumulation of Other Memories out of his past. He did not think the Sisters could do what he did. The doubled vision that told him what to anticipate from every movement within the range of his senses seemed a new kind of truth.

  Teg's Mentat teach
ers had always assured him there was a form of living-truth not susceptible to proof by the marshaling of ordinary facts. It was carried sometimes in fables and poetry and often went contrary to desires, so he had been told.

  "The most difficult experience for a Mentat to accept," they said.

  Teg had always reserved judgment on this pronouncement but now he was forced to accept it. The T-probe had thrust him over a threshold into a new reality.

  He did not know why he chose this particular moment to emerge from hiding, except that it fitted him into an acceptable flow of human movement.

  Most of that movement on the road was composed of market gardeners towing panniers of vegetables and fruit. The panniers were supported behind them on cheap suspensors. Awareness of that food sent sharp hunger pains through him but he forced himself to ignore them. With experience of more primitive planets in his long service to the Bene Gesserit, he saw this human activity as little different from that of farmers leading loaded animals. The foot traffic struck him as an odd mixture of ancient and modern--farmers afoot, their produce floating behind them on perfectly ordinary technological devices. Except for the suspensors this scene was very like a similar day in humankind's most ancient past. A draft animal was a draft animal, even if it came off an assembly line in an Ixian factory.

  Using his new second vision, Teg chose one of the farmers, a squat, dark-skinned man with heavy features and thickly calloused hands. The man walked with a defiant sense of independence. He towed eight large panniers piled with rough-skinned melons. The smell of them was a mouth-watering agony to Teg as he matched his stride to that of the farmer. Teg strode for a few minutes in silence, then ventured: "Is this the best road to Ysai?"

  "It is a long way," the man said. He had a guttural voice, something cautious in it.

  Teg glanced back at the loaded panniers.

  The farmer looked sidelong at Teg. "We go to a market center. Others take our produce from there to Ysai."

  As they talked, Teg realized the farmer had guided (almost herded) him close to the edge of the road. The man glanced back and jerked his head slightly, nodding forward. Three more farmers came up beside them and closed in around Teg and his companion until tall panniers concealed them from the rest of the traffic.

  Teg tensed. What were they planning? He sensed no menace, though. His doubled vision detected nothing violent in his immediate vicinity.

  A heavy vehicle sped past them and on ahead. Teg knew of its passage only by the smell of burned fuel, the wind that shook the panniers, the thrumming of a powerful engine and sudden tension in his companions. The high panniers completely hid the passing vehicle.

  "We have been looking for you to protect you, Bashar," the farmer beside him said. "There are many who hunt you but none of them with us along here."

  Teg shot a startled glance at the man.

  "We served with you at Renditai," the farmer said.

  Teg swallowed. Renditai? He was a moment recalling it--only a minor skirmish in his long history of conflicts and negotiations.

  "I am sorry but I do not know your name," Teg said.

  "Be glad that you do not know our names. It is better that way."

  "But I'm grateful."

  "This is a small repayment, which we are glad to make, Bashar."

  "I must get to Ysai," Teg said.

  "It is dangerous there."

  "It is dangerous everywhere."

  "We guessed you would go to Ysai. Someone will come soon and you will ride in concealment. Ahhhh, here he comes. We have not seen you here, Bashar. You have not been here."

  One of the other farmers took over the towing of his companion's load, pulling two strings of panniers while the farmer Teg had chosen hustled Teg under a tow rope and into a dark vehicle. Teg glimpsed shiny plasteel and plaz as the vehicle slowed only briefly for the pickup. The door closed sharply behind him and he found himself on a soft upholstered seat, alone in the back of a groundcar. The car picked up speed and soon was beyond the marching farmers. The windows around Teg had been darkened, giving him a dusky view of the passing scene. The driver was a shaded silhouette.

  This first chance to relax in warm comfort since his capture almost lured Teg into sleep. He sensed no threats. His body still ached from the demands he had made on it and from the agonies of the T-probe.

  He told himself, though, that he must stay awake and alert.

  The driver leaned sideways and spoke over his shoulder without turning: "They have been hunting for you for two days, Bashar. Some think you already off-planet."

  Two days?

  The stunner and whatever else they had done to him had left him unconscious for a long time. This only added to his hunger. He tried to make the flesh-embedded chrono play against his vision centers and it only flickered as it had done each time he consulted it since the T-probe. His time sense and all references to it were changed.

  So some thought he had left Gammu.

  Teg did not ask who hunted him. Tleilaxu and people from the Scattering had been in that attack and the subsequent torture.

  Teg glanced around his conveyance. It was one of those beautiful old pre-Scattering groundcars, the marks of the finest Ixian manufacture on it. He had never before ridden in one but he knew about them. Restorers picked them up to renew, rebuild--whatever they did that brought back the ancient sense of quality. Teg had been told that such vehicles often were found abandoned in strange places--in old broken-down buildings, in culverts, locked away in machinery warehouses, in farm fields.

  Again, his driver leaned slightly sideways and spoke over one shoulder: "Do you have an address where you wish to be taken in Ysai, Bashar?"

  Teg called up his memory of the contact points he had identified on his first tour of Gammu and gave one of these to the man. "Do you know that place?"

  "It is mostly a meeting and drinking establishment, Bashar. I hear they serve good food, too, but anyone can enter if he has the price."

  Not knowing why he had made that particular choice, Teg said: "We will chance it." He did not think it necessary to tell the driver that there were private dining rooms at the address.

  The mention of food brought back sharp hunger cramps. Teg's arms began to tremble and he was several minutes restoring calmness. Last night's activities had almost drained him, he realized. He sent a searching gaze around the car's interior, wondering if there might be food or drink concealed here. The car's restoration had been accomplished with loving care but he saw no hidden compartments.

  Such cars were not all that rare in some quarters, he knew, but all of them spoke of wealth. Who owned this one? Not the driver, certainly. That one had all the signs of a hired professional. But if a message had been sent to bring this car then others knew of Teg's location.

  "Will we be stopped and searched?" Teg asked.

  "Not this car, Bashar. The Planetary Bank of Gammu owns it."

  Teg absorbed this silently. That bank had been one of his contact points. He had studied key branches carefully on his inspection tour. This memory drew him back into his responsibilities as guardian of the ghola.

  "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.