Dune (41 page)

“I'm removing them,” the Baron said.

“But you—”

“You won't need such toys. They were a special innovation and are now useless. We need the metal. They cannot go against a shield, Rabban. They were merely the unexpected. It was predictable that the Duke's men would retreat into cliff caves on this abominable planet. Our cannon merely sealed them in.”

“The Fremen don't use shields.”

“You may keep some lasguns if you wish.”

“Yes, m'Lord. And I have a free hand.”

“As long as you squeeze.”

Rabban's smile was gloating. “I understand perfectly, m'Lord.”

“You understand nothing perfectly,” the Baron growled. “Let us have that clear at the outset. What you do understand is how to carry out my orders. Has it occurred to you, nephew, that there are at least five million persons on this planet?”

“Does m‘Lord forget that I was his regent-siridar here before? And if m'Lord will forgive me, his estimate may be low. It's difficult to count a population scattered among sinks and pans the way they are here. And when you consider the Fremen of—”

“The Fremen aren't worth considering!”

“Forgive me, m'Lord, but the Sardaukar believe otherwise.”

The Baron hesitated, staring at his nephew. “You know something?”

“M'Lord had retired when I arrived last night. I ...ah, took the liberty of contacting some of my lieutenants from... ah, before. They've been acting as guides to the Sardaukar. They report that a Fremen band ambushed a Sardaukar force somewhere southeast of here and wiped it out.”

“Wiped out a Sardaukar force?”

“Yes, m'Lord.”

“Impossible!”

Rabban shrugged.

“Fremen defeating Sardaukar,” the Baron sneered.

“I repeat only what was reported to me,” Rabban said. “It is said this Fremen force already had captured the Duke's redoubtable Thufir Hawat.”

“Ah-h-h-h-h-h.”

The Baron nodded, smiling.

“I believe the report,” Rabban said. “You've no idea what a problem the Fremen were.”

“Perhaps, but these weren't Fremen your lieutenants saw. They must've been Atreides men trained by Hawat and disguised as Fremen. It's the only possible answer.”

Again, Rabban shrugged. “Well, the Sardaukar think they were Fremen. The Sardaukar already have launched a program to wipe out all Fremen.”

“Good!”

“But—”

“It'll keep the Sardaukar occupied. And we'll soon have Hawat. I know it! I can feel it! Ah, this has been a day! The Sardaukar off hunting a few useless desert bands while we get the real prize!”

“M'Lord. . . .” Rabban hesitated, frowning. “I've always felt that we underestimated the Fremen, both in numbers and in—”

“Ignore them, boy! They're rabble. It's the populous towns, cities, and villages that concern us. A great many people there, eh?”

“A great many, m'Lord.”

“They worry me, Rabban.”

“Worry you?”

“Oh . . . ninety per cent of them are of no concern. But there are always a few . . . Houses Minor and so on, people of ambition who might try a dangerous thing. If one of them should get off Arrakis with an unpleasant story about what happened here, I'd be most displeased. Have you any idea how displeased I'd be?”

Rabban swallowed.

“You must take immediate measures to hold a hostage from each House Minor,” the Baron said. “As far as anyone off Arrakis must learn, this was straightforward House-to-House battle. The Sardaukar had no part in it, you understand? The Duke was offered the usual quarter and exile, but he died in an unfortunate accident before he could accept. He was about to accept, though. That is the story. And any rumor that there were Sardaukar here, it must be laughed at.”

“As the Emperor wishes it,” Rabban said.

“As the Emperor wishes it.”

“What about the smugglers?”

“No one believes smugglers, Rabban. They are tolerated, but not believed. At any rate, you'll be spreading some bribes in that quarter . . . and taking other measures which I'm sure you can think of.”

“Yes, m'Lord.”

“Two things from Arrakis, then, Rabban: income and a merciless fist. You must show no mercy here. Think of these clods as what they are—slaves envious of their masters and waiting only the opportunity to rebel. Not the slightest vestige of pity or mercy must you show them.”

“Can one exterminate an entire planet?” Rabban asked.

“Exterminate?” Surprise showed in the swift turning of the Baron's head. “Who said anything about exterminating?”

“Well, I presumed you were going to bring in new stock and—”

“I said
squeeze,
Nephew, not exterminate. Don't waste the population, merely drive them into utter submission. You must be the carnivore, my boy.” He smiled, a baby's expression in the dimple-fat face. “A carnivore never stops. Show no mercy. Never stop. Mercy is a chimera. It can be defeated by the stomach rumbling its hunger, by the throat crying its thirst. You must be always hungry and thirsty.” The Baron caressed his bulges beneath the suspensors. “Like me.”

“I see, m'Lord.”

Rabban swung his gaze left and right.

“It's all clear then, Nephew?”

“Except for one thing, Uncle: the planetologist, Kynes.”

“Ah, yes, Kynes.”

“He's the Emperor's man, m'Lord. He can come and go as he pleases. And he's very close to the Fremen . . . married one.”

“Kynes will be dead by tomorrow's nightfall.”

“That's dangerous work, Uncle, killing an Imperial servant.”

“How do you think I've come this far this quickly?” the Baron demanded. His voice was low, charged with unspeakable adjectives. “Besides, you need never have feared Kynes would leave Arrakis. You're forgetting that he's addicted to the spice.”

“Of course!”

“Those who know will do nothing to endanger their supply,” the Baron said. “Kynes certainly must know.”

“I forgot,” Rabban said.

They stared at each other in silence.

Presently, the Baron said: “Incidentally, you will make my own supply one of your first concerns. I've quite a stockpile of private stuff, but that suicide raid by the Duke's men got most of what we'd stored for sale.”

Rabban nodded. “Yes, m'Lord.”

The Baron brightened. “Now, tomorrow morning, you will assemble what remains of organization here and you'll say to them: ‘Our Sublime Padishah Emperor has charged me to take possession of this planet and end all dispute.' ”

“I understand, m'Lord.”

“This time, I'm sure you do. We will discuss it in more detail tomorrow. Now, leave me to finish my sleep.”

The Baron deactivated his doorfield, watched his nephew out of sight.

A tank-brain,
the Baron thought.
Muscle-minded tank-brain. They will be bloody pulp here when he's through with them. Then, when I send in Feyd-Rautha to take the load off them, they'll cheer their rescuer. Beloved Feyd-Rautha. Benign Feyd-Rautha, the compassionate one who saves them from a beast. Feyd-Rautha, a man to follow and die for. The boy will know by that time how to oppress with impunity. I'm sure he's the one we need. He'll learn. And such a lovely body. Really a lovely boy.

 

As PAUL fought the ‘thopter's controls, he grew aware that he was sorting out the interwoven storm forces, his more than Mentat awareness computing on the basis of fractional minutiae. He felt dust fronts, billowings, mixings of turbulence, an occasional vortex.

The cabin interior was an angry box lighted by the green radiance of instrument dials. The tan flow of dust outside appeared featureless, but his inner sense began to see through the curtain.

I must find the right vortex,
he thought.

For a long time now he had sensed the storm's power diminishing, but still it shook them. He waited out another turbulence.

The vortex began as an abrupt billowing that rattled the entire ship. Paul defied all fear to bank the 'thopter left.

Jessica saw the maneuver on the attitude globe.

“Paul!” she screamed.

The vortex turned them, twisting, tipping. It lifted the 'thopter like a chip on a geyser, spewed them up and out—a winged speck within a core of winding dust lighted by the second moon.

Paul looked down, saw the dust-defined pillar of hot wind that had disgorged them, saw the dying storm trailing away like a dry river into the desert-moon-gray motion growing smaller and smaller below as they rode the updraft.

“We're out of it,” Jessica whispered.

Paul turned their craft away from the dust in swooping rhythm while he scanned the night sky.

“We've given them the slip,” he said.

Jessica felt her heart pounding. She forced herself to calmness, looked at the diminishing storm. Her time sense said they had ridden within that compounding of elemental forces almost four hours, but part of her mind computed the passage as a lifetime. She felt reborn.

It was like the litany,
she thought.
We faced it and did not resist. The storm passed through us and around us. It's gone, but we remain.

“I don't like the sound of our wing motion,” Paul said. “We suffered some damage in there.”

He felt the grating, injured flight through his hands on the controls. They were out of the storm, but still not out into the full view of his prescient vision. Yet, they had escaped, and Paul sensed himself trembling on the verge of a revelation.

He shivered.

The sensation was magnetic and terrifying, and he found himself caught on the question of what caused this trembling awareness. Part of it, he felt, was the spice-saturated diet of Arrakis. But he thought part of it could be the litany, as though the words had a power of their own.

Cause and effect: he was alive despite malignant forces, and he felt himself poised on a brink of self-awareness that could not have been without the litany's magic.

Words from the Orange Catholic Bible rang through his memory:
“What senses do we lack that we cannot see or hear another world all around us?”

“There's rock all around,” Jessica said.

Paul focused on the 'thopter's launching, shook his head to clear it. He looked where his mother pointed, saw uplifting rock shapes black on the sand ahead and to the right. He felt wind around his ankles, a stirring of dust in the cabin. There was a hole somewhere, more of the storm's doing.

“Better set us down on sand,” Jessica said. “The wings might not take full brake.”

He nodded toward a place ahead where sandblasted ridges lifted into moonlight above the dunes. “I'll set us down near those rocks. Check your safety harness.”

She obeyed, thinking:
We've water and stillsuits. If we can find food, we can survive a long time on this desert. Fremen live here. What they can do we can do.

“Run for those rocks the instant we're stopped,” Paul said. “I'll take the pack.”

“Run for. . . .” She fell silent, nodded. “Worms.”

“Our friends, the worms,” he corrected her. “They'll get this'thopter. There'll be no evidence of where we landed.”

How direct his thinking,
she thought.

They glided lower . . . lower . . .

There came a rushing sense of motion to their passage—blurred shadows of dunes, rocks lifting like islands. The 'thopter touched a dune top with a soft lurch, skipped a sand valley, touched another dune.

He's killing our speed against the sand,
Jessica thought, and permitted herself to admire his competence.

“Brace yourself!” Paul warned.

He pulled back on the wing brakes, gently at first, then harder and harder. He felt them cup the air, their aspect ratio dropping faster and faster. Wind screamed through the lapped coverts and primaries of the wings' leaves.

Abruptly, with only the faintest lurch of warning, the left wing, weakened by the storm, twisted upward and in, slamming across the side of the 'thopter. The craft skidded across a dune top, twisting to the left. It tumbled down the opposite face to bury its nose in the next dune amid a cascade of sand. They lay stopped on the broken wing side, the right wing pointing toward the stars.

Paul jerked off his safety harness, hurled himself upward across his mother, wrenching the door open. Sand poured around them into the cabin, bringing a dry smell of burned flint. He grabbed the pack from the rear, saw that his mother was free of her harness. She stepped up onto the side of the right-hand seat and out onto the 'thopter's metal skin. Paul followed, dragging the pack by its straps.

“Run!” he ordered.

He pointed up the dune face and beyond it where they could see a rock tower undercut by sandblast winds.

Jessica leaped off the 'thopter and ran, scrambling and sliding up the dune. She heard Paul's panting progress behind. They came out onto a sand ridge that curved away toward the rocks.

“Follow the ridge,” Paul ordered. “It'll be faster.”

They slogged toward the rocks, sand gripping their feet.

A new sound began to impress itself on them: a muted whisper, a hissing, an abrasive slithering.

“Worm,” Paul said.