Dune (28 page)

The note read: “A column of smoke by day, a pillar of fire by night.”

There was no signature.

What does it mean?
he wondered.

The messenger had gone without waiting for an answer and before he could be questioned. He had slipped into the night like some smoky shadow.

Leto pushed the paper into a tunic pocket, thinking to show it to Hawat later. He brushed a lock of hair from his forehead, took a sighing breath. The antifatigue pills were beginning to wear thin. It had been a long two days since the dinner party and longer than that since he had slept.

On top of all the military problems, there'd been the disquieting session with Hawat, the report on his meeting with Jessica.

Should I waken Jessica?
he wondered.
There's no reason to play the secrecy game with her any longer. Or is there?

He shook his head.
No, not Duncan. I was wrong not to take Jessica into my confidence from the first. I must do it now, before more damage is done.

The decision made him feel better, and he hurried from the foyer through the Great Hall and down the passages toward the family wing.

At the turn where the passages split to the service area, he paused. A strange mewling came from somewhere down the service passage. Leto put his left hand to the switch on his shield belt, slipped his kindjal into his right hand. The knife conveyed a sense of reassurance. That strange sound had sent a chill through him.

Softly, the Duke moved down the service passage, cursing the inadequate illumination. The smallest of suspensors had been spaced about eight meters apart along here and tuned to their dimmest level. The dark stone walls swallowed the light.

A dull blob stretching across the floor appeared out of the gloom ahead.

Leto hesitated, almost activated his shield, but refrained because that would limit his movements, his hearing... and because the captured shipment of lasguns had left him filled with doubts.

Silently, he moved toward the grey blob, saw that it was a human figure, a man face down on the stone. Leto turned him over with a foot, knife poised, bent close in the dim light to see the face. It was the smuggler, Tuek, a wet stain down his chest. The dead eyes stared with empty darkness. Leto touched the stain—warm.

The mewling sound was louder here. It came from ahead and down the side passage to the central room where they had installed the main shield generator for the house.

Hand on belt switch, kindjal poised, the Duke skirted the body, slipped down the passage and peered around the corner toward the shield generator room.

Another grey blob lay stretched on the floor a few paces away, and he saw at once this was the source of the noise. The shape crawled toward him with painful slowness, gasping, mumbling.

Leto stilled his sudden constriction of fear, darted down the passage, crouched beside the crawling figure. It was Mapes, the Fremen housekeeper, her hair tumbled around her face, clothing disarrayed. A dull shininess of dark stain spread from her back along her side. He touched her shoulder and she lifted herself on her elbows, head tipped up to peer at him, the eyes black-shadowed emptiness.

“S'you,” she gasped. “Killed . . . guard . . . sent . . . get . . . Tuek . . . escape . . . m'Lady . . . you . . . you . . . here . . . no. . . .” She flopped forward, her head thumping against the stone.

Leto felt for pulse at the temples. There was none. He looked at the stain: she'd been stabbed in the back. Who? His mind raced. Did she mean someone had killed a guard? And Tuek—had Jessica sent for him? Why?

He started to stand up. A sixth sense warned him. He flashed a hand toward the shield switch—too late. A numbing shock slammed his arm aside. He felt pain there, saw a dart protruding from the sleeve, sensed paralysis spreading from it up his arm. It took an agonizing effort to lift his head and look down the passage.

Yueh stood in the open door of the generator room. His face reflected yellow from the light of a single, brighter suspensor above the door. There was stillness from the room behind him—no sound of generators.

Yueh!
Leto thought.
He's sabotaged the house generators! We're wide open!

Yueh began walking toward him, pocketing a dartgun.

Leto found he could still speak, gasped: “Yueh! How?” Then the paralysis reached his legs and he slid to the floor with his back propped against the stone wall.

Yueh's face carried a look of sadness as he bent over, touched Leto's forehead. The Duke found he could feel the touch, but it was remote . . . dull.

“The drug on the dart is selective,” Yueh said. “You can speak, but I'd advise against it.” He glanced down the hall, and again bent over Leto, pulled out the dart, tossed it aside. The sound of the dart clattering on the stones was faint and distant to the Duke's ears.

It can't be Yueh,
Leto thought.
He's conditioned.

“How?” Leto whispered.

“I'm sorry, my dear Duke, but there
are
things which will make greater demands than this.” He touched the diamond tattoo on his forehead. “I find it very strange, myself—an override on my pyretic conscience—but I wish to kill a man. Yes, I actually wish it. I will stop at nothing to do it.”

He looked down at the Duke. “Oh, not you, my dear Duke. The Baron Harkonnen. I wish to kill the Baron.”

“Bar . . . on Har. . . .”

“Be quiet, please, my poor Duke. You haven't much time. That peg tooth I put in your mouth after the tumble at Narcal—that tooth must be replaced. In a moment, I'll render you unconscious and replace that tooth.” He opened his hand, stared at something in it. “An exact duplicate, its core shaped most exquisitely like a nerve. It'll escape the usual detectors, even a fast scanning. But if you bite down hard on it, the cover crushes. Then, when you expel your breath sharply, you fill the air around you with a poison gas—most deadly.”

Leto stared up at Yueh, seeing madness in the man's eyes, the perspiration along brow and chin.

“You were dead anyway, my poor Duke,” Yueh said. “But you will get close to the Baron before you die. He'll believe you're stupefied by drugs beyond any dying effort to attack him. And you will be drugged—and tied. But attack can take strange forms. And
you
will remember the tooth. The
tooth,
Duke Leto Atreides. You will remember the tooth.”

The old doctor leaned closer and closer until his face and drooping mustache dominated Leto's narrowing vision.

“The tooth,” Yueh muttered.

“Why?” Leto whispered.

Yueh lowered himself to one knee beside the Duke. “I made a shaitan's bargain with the Baron. And I must be certain he has fulfilled his half of it. When I see him, I'll know. When I look at the Baron, then I
will
know. But I'll never enter his presence without the price. You're the price, my poor Duke. And I'll know when I see him. My poor Wanna taught me many things, and one is to see certainty of truth when the stress is great. I cannot do it always, but when I see the Baron—then, I
will
know.”

Leto tried to look down at the tooth in Yueh's hand. He felt this was happening in a nightmare—it could not be.

Yueh's purple lips turned up in a grimace. “I'll not get close enough to the Baron, or I'd do this myself. No. I'll be detained at a safe distance. But you . . . ah, now! You, my lovely weapon! He'll want you close to him—to gloat over you, to boast a little.”

Leto found himself almost hypnotized by a muscle on the left side of Yueh's jaw. The muscle twisted when the man spoke.

Yueh leaned closer. “And you, my good Duke, my precious Duke, you must remember this tooth.” He held it up between thumb and forefinger. “It will be all that remains to you.”

Leto's mouth moved without sound, then: “Refuse.”

“Ah-h, no! You mustn't refuse. Because, in return for this small service, I'm doing a thing for you. I will save your son and your woman. No other can do it. They can be removed to a place where no Harkonnen can reach them.”

“How . . . save . . . them?” Leto whispered.

“By making it appear they're dead, by secreting them among people who draw knife at hearing the Harkonnen name, who hate the Harkonnens so much they'll burn a chair in which a Harkonnen has sat, salt the ground over which a Harkonnen has walked.” He touched Leto's jaw. “Can you feel anything in your jaw?”

The Duke found that he could not answer. He sensed distant tugging, saw Yueh's hand come up with the ducal signet ring.

“For Paul,” Yueh said. “You'll be unconscious presently. Good-by, my poor Duke. When next we meet we'll have no time for conversation.”

Cool remoteness spread upward from Leto's jaw, across his cheeks. The shadowy hall narrowed to a pinpoint with Yueh's purple lips centered in it.

“Remember the tooth!” Yueh hissed. “The tooth!”

 

JESSICA AWOKE in the dark, feeling premonition in the stillness around her. She could not understand why her mind and body felt so sluggish. Skin raspings of fear ran along her nerves. She thought of sitting up and turning on a light, but something stayed the decision. Her mouth felt . . . strange.

It was a dull sound, directionless in the dark. Somewhere.

The waiting moment was packed with time, with rustling needlestick movements.

She began to feel her body, grew aware of bindings on wrists and ankles, a gag in her mouth. She was on her side, hands tied behind her. She tested the bindings, realized they were krimskell fiber, would only claw tighter as she pulled.

And now, she remembered.

There had been movement in the darkness of her bedroom, something wet and pungent slapped against her face, filling her mouth, hands grasping for her. She had gasped—one indrawn breath—sensing the narcotic in the wetness. Consciousness had receded, sinking her into a black bin of terror.

It has come,
she thought.
How simple it was to subdue the Bene Gesserit. All it took was treachery. Hawat was right.

She forced herself not to pull on her bindings.

Slowly, she marshaled the inner calmness.

She grew aware of the smell of her own stale sweat with its chemical infusion of fear.

Where is Paul?
she asked herself.
My son—what have they done to him?

She forced herself to it, using the ancient routines.

But terror remained so near.

She sensed a diminishing in the dark. It began with shadows. Dimensions separated, became new thorns of awareness. White. A line under a door.

People walking. She sensed it through the floor.

Jessica squeezed back the memory of terror.
I must remain calm, alert, and prepared. I may get only one chance.
Again, she forced the inner calmness.

The ungainly thumping of her heartbeats evened, shaping out time. She counted back.
I was unconscious about an hour.
She closed her eyes, focused her awareness onto the approaching footsteps.

She counted the differences in their steps.

I must pretend I'm still unconscious.
She relaxed against the cold floor, testing her body's readiness, heard a door open, sensed increased light through her eyelids.

Feet approached: someone standing over her.

“You are awake,” rumbled a basso voice. “Do not pretend.”

She opened her eyes.

The Baron Vladimir Harkonnen stood over her. Around them, she recognized the cellar room where Paul had slept, saw his cot at one side—empty. Suspensor lamps were brought in by guards, distributed near the open door. There was a glare of light in the hallway beyond that hurt her eyes.

She looked up at the Baron. He wore a yellow cape that bulged over his portable suspensors. The fat cheeks were two cherubic mounds beneath spider-black eyes.

“The drug was timed,” he rumbled. “We knew to the minute when you'd be coming out of it.”

How could that be?
she wondered.
They'd have to know my exact weight, my metabolism, my. . . . Yueh!

“Such a pity you must remain gagged,” the Baron said. “We could have such an interesting conversation.”

Yueh's the only one it could be,
she thought.
How?

The Baron glanced behind him at the door. “Come in, Piter.”

She had never before seen the man who entered to stand beside the Baron, but the face was known—and the man:
Piter de Vries, the Mentat-Assassin.
She studied him—hawk features, blue-ink eyes that suggested he was a native of Arrakis, but subtleties of movement and stance told her he was not. And his flesh was too well firmed with water. He was tall, though slender, and something about him suggested effeminacy.

“Such a pity we cannot have our conversation, my dear Lady Jessica,” the Baron said. “However, I'm aware of your abilities.” He glanced at the Mentat. “Isn't that true, Piter?”

“As you say, Baron,” the man said.

The voice was tenor. It touched her spine with a wash of coldness. She had never heard such a chill voice. To one with the Bene Gesserit training, the voice screamed:
Killer!