Dune dc-1 Page 10

  “Your son and the Duke are in immediate danger. A bedroom has been designed to attract your son. The H loaded it with death traps to be discovered, leaving one that may escape detection.” Jessica put down the urge to run back to Paul; the full message had to be learned. Her fingers sped over the dots: “I do not know the exact nature of the menace, but it has something to do with a bed. The threat to your Duke involves defection of a trusted companion or lieutenant. The H plan to give you as gift to a minion. To the best of my knowledge, this conservatory is safe. Forgive that I cannot tell more. My sources are few as my Count is not in the pay of the H. In haste, MF.”

  Jessica thrust the leaf aside, whirled to dash back to Paul. In that instant, the airlock door slammed open. Paul jumped through it, holding something in his right hand, slammed the door behind him. He saw his mother, pushed through the leaves to her, glanced at the fountain, thrust his hand and the thing it clutched under the falling water.

  “Paul!” She grabbed his shoulder, staring at the hand. “What is that?”

  He spoke casually, but she caught the effort behind the tone: “Hunter-seeker. Caught it in my room and smashed its nose, but I want to be sure. Water should short it out.”

  “Immerse it!” she commanded.

  He obeyed.

  Presently, she said: “Withdraw your hand. Leave the thing in the water.”

  He brought out his hand, shook water from it, staring at the quiescent metal in the fountain. Jessica broke off a plant stem, prodded the deadly sliver.

  It was dead.

  She dropped the stem into the water, looked at Paul. His eyes studied the room with a searching intensity that she recognized—the B.G. Way.

  “This place could conceal anything,” he said.

  “I’ve reason to believe it’s safe,” she said.

  “My room was supposed to be safe, too. Hawat said—”

  “It was a hunter-seeker,” she reminded him. “That means someone inside the house to operate it. Seeker control beams have a limited range. The thing could’ve been spirited in here after Hawat’s investigation.”

  But she thought of the message of the leaf: “… defection of a trusted companion or lieutenant. ” Not Hawat, surely. Oh, surely not Hawat.

  “Hawat’s men are searching the house right now,” he said. “That seeker almost got the old woman who came to wake me.”

  “The Shadout Mapes,” Jessica said, remembering the encounter at the stairs. “A summons from your father to—”

  “That can wait,” Paul said. “Why do you think this room’s safe?”

  She pointed to the note, explained about it.

  He relaxed slightly.

  But Jessica remained inwardly tense, thinking: A hunter-seeker! Merciful Mother! It took all her training to prevent a fit of hysterical trembling.

  Paul spoke matter of factly: “It’s the Harkonnens, of course. We shall have to destroy them.”

  A rapping sounded at the airlock door—the code knock of one of Hawat’s corps.

  “Come in,” Paul called.

  The door swung wide and a tall man in Atreides uniform with a Hawat insignia on his cap leaned into the room. “There you are, sir,” he said. “The housekeeper said you’d be here.” He glanced around the room. “We found a cairn in the cellar and caught a man in it. He had a seeker console.”

  “I’ll want to take part in the interrogation,” Jessica said.

  “Sorry, my Lady. We messed him up catching him. He died.”

  “Nothing to identify him?” she asked.

  “We’ve found nothing yet, my Lady.”

  “Was he an Arrakeen native?” Paul asked.

  Jessica nodded at the astuteness of the question.

  “He has the native look,” the man said. “Put into that cairn more’n a month ago, by the look, and left there to await our coming. Stone and mortar where he came through into the cellar were untouched when we inspected the place yesterday. I’ll stake my reputation on it.”

  “No one questions your thoroughness,” Jessica said.

  “I question it, my Lady. We should’ve used sonic probes down there.”

  “I presume that’s what you’re doing now,” Paul said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Send word to my father that we’ll be delayed.”

  “At once, sir.” He glanced at Jessica. “It’s Hawat’s order that under such circumstances as these the young master be guarded in a safe place.” Again, his eyes swept the room. “What of this place?”

  “I’ve reason to believe it safe,” she said. “Both Hawat and I have inspected it.”

  “Then I’ll mount guard outside here, m’Lady, until we’ve been over the house once more.” He bowed, touched his cap to Paul, backed out and swung the door closed behind him.

  Paul broke the sudden silence, saying: “Had we better go over the house later ourselves? Your eyes might see things others would miss.”

  “This wing was the only place I hadn’t examined,” she said. “I put if off to last because….”

  “Because Hawat gave it his personal attention,” he said.

  She darted a quick look at his face, questioning.

  “Do you distrust Hawat?” she asked.

  “No, but he’s getting old … he’s overworked. We could take some of the load from him.”

  “That’d only shame him and impair his efficiency,” she said. “A stray insect won’t be able to wander into this wing after he hears about this. He’ll be shamed that….”

  “We must take our own measures,” he said.

  “Hawat has served three generations of Atreides with honor,” she said. “He deserves every respect and trust we can pay him … many times over.”

  Paul said: “When my father is bothered by something you’ve done he says ‘Bene Gesserit!’ like a swear word.”

  “And what is it about me that bothers your father?”

  “When you argue with him.”

  “You are not your father, Paul.”

  And Paul thought: It’ll worry her, but I must tell her what that Mapes woman said about a traitor among us.

  “What’re you holding back?” Jessica asked. “This isn’t like you, Paul.”

  He shrugged, recounted the exchange with Mapes.

  And Jessica thought of the message of the leaf. She came to sudden decision, showed Paul the leaf, told him its message.

  “My father must learn of this at once,” he said. “I’ll radiograph it in code and get if off.”

  “No,” she said. “You will wait until you can see him alone. As few as possible must learn about it.”

  “Do you mean we should trust no one?”

  “There’s another possibility,” she said. “This message may have been meant to get to us. The people who gave it to us may believe it’s true, but it may be that the only purpose was to get this message to us.”

  Paul’s face remained sturdily somber. “To sow distrust and suspicion in our ranks, to weaken us that way,” he said.

  “You must tell your father privately and caution him about this aspect of it,” she said.

  “I understand.”

  She turned to the tall reach of filter glass, stared out to the southwest where the sun of Arrakis was sinking—a yellowed ball above the cliffs.

  Paul turned with her, said: “I don’t think it’s Hawat, either. Is it possible it’s Yueh?”

  “He’s not a lieutenant or companion,” she said. “And I can assure you he hates the Harkonnens as bitterly as we do.”

  Paul directed his attention to the cliffs, thinking: And it couldn’t be Gurney… or Duncan. Could it be one of the sub-lieutenants? Impossible. They’re all from families that’ve been loyal to us for generations—for good reason.

  Jessica rubbed her forehead, sensing her own fatigue. So much peril here! She looked out at the filter-yellowed landscape, studying it. Beyond the ducal grounds stretched a high-fenced storage yard—lines of spice silos in it with stilt-legged watchto
wers standing around it like so many startled spiders. She could see at least twenty storage yards of silos reaching out to the cliffs of the Shield Wall—silos repeated, stuttering across the basin.

  Slowly, the filtered sun buried itself beneath the horizon. Stars leaped out. She saw one bright star so low on the horizon that it twinkled with a clear, precise rhythm—a trembling of light: blink-blink-blink-blink-blink …

  Paul stirred beside her in the dusky room.

  But Jessica concentrated on that single bright star, realizing that it was too low, that it must come from the Shield Wall cliffs.

  Someone signalling!

  She tried to read the message, but it was in no code she had ever learned.

  Other lights had come on down on the plain beneath the cliffs: little yellows spaced out against blue darkness. And one light off to their left grew brighter, began to wink back at the cliff—very fast: blinksquirt, glimmer, blink!

  And it was gone.

  The false star in the cliff winked out immediately.

  Signals … and they filled her with premonition.

  Why were lights used to signal across the basin? she asked herself. Why couldn’t they use the communications network?

  The answer was obvious: the communinet was certain to be tapped now by agents of the Duke Leto. Light signals could only mean that messages were being sent between his enemies—between Harkonnen agents.

  There came a tapping at the door behind them and the voice of Hawat’s man: “All clear, sir .. m‘Lady. Time to be getting the young master to his father.”

  ***

  It is said that the Duke Leto blinded himself to the perils of Arrakis, that he walked heedlessly into the pit. Would it not be more likely to suggest he had lived so long in the presence of extreme danger he misjudged a change in its intensity? Or is it possible he deliberately sacrificed himself that his son might find a better life? All evidence indicates the Duke was a man not easily hoodwinked.

  —from “Muad’Dib: Family Commentaries” by the Princess Irulan

  THE DUKE Leto Atreides leaned against a parapet of the landing control tower outside Arrakeen. The night’s first moon, an oblate silver coin, hung well above the southern horizon. Beneath it, the jagged cliffs of the Shield Wall shone like parched icing through a dust haze. To his left, the lights of Arrakeen glowed in the haze—yellow … white … blue.

  He thought of the notices posted now above his signature all through the populous places of the planet: “Our Sublime Padishah Emperor has charged me to take possession of this planet and end all dispute.”

  The ritualistic formality of it touched him with a feeling of loneliness. Who was fooled by that fatuous legalism? Not the Fremen, certainly. Nor the Houses Minor who controlled the interior trade of Arrakis … and were Harkonnen creatures almost to a man.

  They have tried to take the life of my son!

  The rage was difficult to suppress.

  He saw lights of a moving vehicle coming toward the landing field from Arrakeen. He hoped it was the guard and troop carrier bringing Paul. The delay was galling even though he knew it was prompted by caution on the part of Hawat’s lieutenant.

  They have tried to take the life of my son!

  He shook his head to drive out the angry thoughts, glanced back at the field where five of his own frigates were posted around the rim like monolithic sentries.

  Better a cautious delay than …

  The lieutenant was a good one, he reminded himself. A man marked for advancement, completely loyal.

  “Our Sublime Padishah Emperor…. ”

  If the people of this decadent garrison city could only see the Emperor’s private note to his “Noble Duke”—the disdainful allusions to veiled men and women: “… but what else is one to expect of barbarians whose dearest dream is to live outside the ordered security of the faufreluches?”

  The Duke felt in this moment that his own dearest dream was to end all class distinctions and never again think of deadly order. He looked up and out of the dust at the unwinking stars, thought: Around one of those little lights circles Caladan … but I’ll never again see my home. The longing for Caladan was a sudden pain in his breast. He felt that it did not come from within himself, but that it reached out to him from Caladan. He could not bring himself to call this dry wasteland of Arrakis his home, and he doubted he ever would.

  I must mask my feelings, he thought. For the boy’s sake. If ever he’s to have a home, this must be it. I may think of Arrakis as a hell I’ve reached before death, but he must find here that which will inspire him. There must be something.

  A wave of self-pity, immediately despised and rejected, swept through him, and for some reason he found himself recalling two lines from a poem Gurney Halleck often repeated—

  “My lungs taste the air of Time

  Blown past falling sands….”

  Well, Gurney would find plenty of falling sands here, the Duke thought. The central wastelands beyond those moon-frosted cliffs were desert—barren rock, dunes, and blowing dust, an uncharted dry wilderness with here and there along its rim and perhaps scattered through it, knots of Fremen. If anything could buy a future for the Atreides line, the Fremen just might do it.

  Provided the Harkonnens hadn’t managed to infect even the Fremen with their poisonous schemes.

  They have tried to take the life of my son!

  A scraping metal racket vibrated through the tower, shook the parapet beneath his arms. Blast shutters dropped in front of him, blocking the view.

  Shuttle’s coming in, he thought. Time to go down and get to work. He turned to the stairs behind him, headed down to the big assembly room, trying to remain calm as he descended, to prepare his face for the coming encounter.

  They have tried to take the life of my son!

  The men were already boiling in from the field when he reached the yellow-domed room. They carried their spacebags over their shoulders, shouting and roistering like students returning from vacation.

  “Hey! Feel that under your dogs? That’s gravity, man!” “How many G’s does this place pull? Feels heavy.” “Nine-tenths of a G by the book.”

  The crossfire of thrown words filled the big room.

  “Did you get a good look at this hole on the way down? Where’s all the loot this place’s supposed to have?” “The Harkonnens took it with ’em!” “Me for a hot shower and a soft bed!” “Haven’t you heard, stupid? No showers down here. You scrub your ass with sand!” “Hey! Can it! The Duke!”

  The Duke stepped out of the stair entry into a suddenly silent room. Gurney Halleck strode along at the point of the crowd, bag over one shoulder, the neck of his nine-string baliset clutched in the other hand. They were long-fingered hands with big thumbs, full of tiny movements that drew such delicate music from the baliset.

  The Duke watched Halleck, admiring the ugly lump of a man, noting the glass-splinter eyes with their gleam of savage understanding. Here was a man who lived outside the faufreluches while obeying their every precept. What was it Paul had called him? “Gurney, the valorous. ”

  Halleck’s wispy blond hair trailed across barren spots on his head. His wide mouth was twisted into a pleasant sneer, and the scar of the inkvine whip slashed across his jawline seemed to move with a life of its own. His whole air was of casual, shoulder-set capability. He came up to the Duke, bowed.

  “Gurney,” Leto said.

  “My Lord.” He gestured with the baliset toward the men in the room. “This is the last of them. I’d have preferred coming in with the first wave, but….”

  “There are still some Harkonnens for you,” the Duke said. “Step aside with me, Gurney, where we may talk.”

  “Yours to command, my Lord.”

  They moved into an alcove beside a coil-slot water machine while the men stirred restlessly in the big room. Halleck dropped his bag into a corner, kept his grip on the baliset.

  “How many men can you let Hawat have?” the Duke asked.

&n
bsp; “Is Thufir in trouble, Sire?”

  “He’s lost only two agents, but his advance men gave us an excellent line on the entire Harkonnen setup here. If we move fast we may gain a measure of security, the breathing space we require. He wants as many men as you can spare—men who won’t balk at a little knife work.”

  “I can let him have three hundred of my best,” Halleck said. “Where shall I send them?”

  “To the main gate. Hawat has an agent there waiting to take them.”

  “Shall I get about it at once, Sire?”

  “In a moment. We have another problem. The field commandant will hold the shuttle here until dawn on a pretext. The Guild Heighliner that brought us is going on about its business, and the shuttle’s supposed to make contact with a cargo ship taking up a load of spice.”

  “Our spice, m’Lord?”

  “Our spice. But the shuttle also will carry some of the spice hunters from the old regime. They’ve opted to leave with the change of fief and the Judge of the Change is allowing it. These are valuable workers, Gurney, about eight hundred of them. Before the shuttle leaves, you must persuade some of those men to enlist with us.”

  “How strong a persuasion, Sire?”

  “I want their willing cooperation, Gurney. Those men have experience and skills we need. The fact that they’re leaving suggests they’re not part of the Harkonnen machine. Hawat believes there could be some bad ones planted in the group, but he sees assassins in every shadow.”

  “Thufir has found some very productive shadows in his time, m’Lord.”

  “And there are some he hasn’t found. But I think planting sleepers in this outgoing crowd would show too much imagination for the Harkonnens.”

  “Possibly, Sire. Where are these men?”

  “Down on the lower level, in a waiting room. I suggest you go down and play a tune or two to soften their minds, then turn on the pressure. You may offer positions of authority to those who qualify. Offer twenty per cent higher wages than they received under the Harkonnens.”

  “No more than that, Sire? I know the Harkonnen pay scales. And to men with their termination pay in their pockets and the wanderlust on them … well, Sire, twenty per cent would hardly seem proper inducement to stay.”