Dune (11 page)

”Malign? I praise him. Death and deceit are our only hopes now. I just do
not fool myself about Thufir’s methods.“

”You should . . . keep busy,“ he said. ”Give yourself no time for such
morbid–“

”Busy! What is it that takes most of my time, Wellington? I am the Duke’s
secretary–so busy that each day I learn new things to fear . . . things even he
doesn’t suspect I know.“ She compressed her lips, spoke thinly: ”Sometimes I
wonder how much my Bene Gesserit business training figured in his choice of me.“

”What do you mean?“ He found himself caught by the cynical tone, the
bitterness that he had never seen her expose.

”Don’t you think, Wellington,“ she asked, ”that a secretary bound to one by
love is so much safer?“

”That is not a worthy thought, Jessica.“

The rebuke came naturally to his lips. There was no doubt how the Duke felt
about his concubine. One had only to watch him as he followed her with his eyes.

She sighed. ”You’re right. It’s not worthy.“

Again, she hugged herself, pressing the sheathed crysknife against her flesh
and thinking of the unfinished business it represented.

”There’ll be much bloodshed soon,“ she said. ”The Harkonnens won’t rest
until they’re dead or my Duke destroyed. The Baron cannot forget that Leto is a
cousin of the royal blood–no matter what the distance–while the Harkonnen
titles came out of the CHOAM pocketbook. But the poison in him, deep in his
mind, is the knowledge that an Atreides had a Harkonnen banished for cowardice
after, the Battle of Corrin.“

”The old feud,“ Yueh muttered. And for a moment he felt an acid touch of
hate. The old feud had trapped him in its web, killed his Wanna or–worse–left
her for Harkonnen tortures until her husband did their bidding. The old feud had
trapped him and these people were part of that poisonous thing. The irony was
that such deadliness should come to flower here on Arrakis, the one source in
the universe of melange, the prolonger of life, the giver of health.

”What are you thinking?“ she asked.

”I am thinking that the spice brings six hundred and twenty thousand Solaris
the decagram on the open market right now. That is wealth to buy many things.“

”Does greed touch even you, Wellington?“

”Not greed.“

”What then?“

He shrugged. ”Futility.“ He glanced at her. ”Can you remember your first
taste of spice?“

”It tasted like cinnamon.“

”But never twice the same,“ he said. ”It’s like life–it presents a
different face each time you take it. Some hold that the spice produces a
learned-?flavor reaction. The body, learning a thing is good for it, interprets
the flavor as pleasurable–slightly euphoric. And, like life, never to be truly
synthesized.“

”I think it would’ve been wiser for us to go renegade, to take ourselves
beyond the Imperial reach,“ she said.

He saw that she hadn’t been listening to him, focused on her words,
wondering: Yes–why didn’t she make him do this? She could make him do virtually
anything.

He spoke quickly because here was truth and a change of subject: ”Would you
think it bold of me . . . Jessica, if I asked a personal question?”
She pressed against the window ledge in an unexplainable pang of disquiet.
“Of course not. You’re . . . my friend.”

“Why haven’t you made the Duke marry you?”

She whirled, head up, glaring. “Made him marry me? But–”

“I should not have asked,” he said.

“No.” She shrugged. “There’s good political reason–as long as my Duke
remains unmarried some of the Great Houses can still hope for alliance. And . .
. ” She sighed. “ . . . motivating people, forcing them to your will, gives you
a cynical attitude toward humanity. It degrades everything it touches. If I made
him do . . . this, then it would not be his doing.”

“It’s a thing my Wanna might have said,” he murmured. And this, too, was
truth. He put a hand to his mouth, swallowing convulsively. He had never been
closer to speaking out, confessing his secret role.

Jessica spoke, shattering the moment. “Besides, Wellington, the Duke is
really two men. One of them I love very much. He’s charming, witty, considerate
. . . tender–everything a woman could desire. But the other man is . . . cold,
callous, demanding, selfish–as harsh and cruel as a winter wind. That’s the man
shaped by the father.” Her face contorted. “If only that old man had died when
my Duke was born!”

In the silence that came between them, a breeze from a ventilator could be
heard fingering the blinds.

Presently, she took a deep breath, said, “Leto’s right–these rooms are
nicer than the ones in the other sections of the house.” She turned, sweeping
the room with her gaze. “If you’ll excuse me, Wellington, I want another look
through this wing before I assign quarters.”

He nodded. “Of course.” And he thought: if only there were some way not to
do this thing that I must do.

Jessica dropped her arms, crossed to the hall door and stood there a moment,
hesitating, then let herself out. All the time we talked he was hiding
something, holding something back, she thought. To save my feelings, no doubt.
He’s a good man. Again, she hesitated, almost turned back to confront Yueh and
drag the hidden thing from him. But that would only shame him, frighten him to
learn he’s so easily read. I should place more trust in my friends.

= = = = = =

Many have marked the speed with which Muad’Dib learned the necessities of
Arrakis. The Bene Gesserit, of course, know the basis of this speed. For the
others, we can say that Muad’Dib learned rapidly because his first training was
in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could
learn. It is shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and
how many more believe learning to be difficult. Muad’Dib knew that every
experience carries its lesson.
-from “The Humanity of Muad’Dib” by the Princess Irulan

Paul lay on the bed feigning sleep. It had been easy to palm Dr. Yueh’s
sleeping tablet, to pretend to swallow it. Paul suppressed a laugh. Even his
mother had believed him asleep. He had wanted to jump up and ask her permission
to go exploring the house, but had realized she wouldn’t approve. Things were
too unsettled yet. No. This way was best.

If I slip out without asking I haven’t disobeyed orders. And I will stay in
the house where it’s safe.

He heard his mother and Yueh talking in the other room. Their words were
indistinct–something about the spice . . . the Harkonnens. The conversation
rose and fell.

Paul’s attention went to the carved headboard of his bed–a false headboard
attached to the wall and concealing the controls for this room’s functions. A
leaping fish had been shaped on the wood with thick brown waves beneath it. He
knew if he pushed the fish’s one visible eye that would turn on the room’s
suspensor lamps. One of the waves, when twisted, controlled ventilation. Another
changed the temperature.

Quietly, Paul sat up in bed. A tall bookcase stood against the wall to his
left. It could be swung aside to reveal a closet with drawers along one side.
The handle on the door into the hall was patterned on an ornithopter thrust bar.

It was as though the room had been designed to entice him.

The room and this planet.

He thought of the filmbook Yueh had shown him–“Arrakis: His Imperial
Majesty’s Desert Botanical Testing Station.” It was an old filmbook from before
discovery of the spice. Names flitted through Paul’s mind, each with its picture
imprinted by the book’s mnemonic pulse: saguaro, burro bush, date palm, sand
verbena, evening primrose, barrel cactus, incense bush, smoke tree, creosote
bush . . . kit fox, desert hawk, kangaroo mouse . . .

Names and pictures, names and pictures from man’s terranic past–and many to
be found now nowhere else in the universe except here on Arrakis.

So many new things to learn about–the spice.

And the sandworms.

A door closed in the other room. Paul heard his mother’s footsteps
retreating down the hall. Dr. Yueh, he knew, would find something to read and
remain in the other room.

Now was the moment to go exploring.

Paul slipped out of the bed, headed for the bookcase door that opened into
the closet. He stopped at a sound behind him, turned. The carved headboard of
the bed was folding down onto the spot where he had been sleeping. Paul froze,
and immobility saved his life.

From behind the headboard slipped a tiny hunter-?seeker no more than five
centimeters long. Paul recognized it at once–a common assassination weapon that
every child of royal blood learned about at an early age. It was a ravening
sliver of metal guided by some near-?by hand and eye. It could burrow into moving
flesh and chew its way up nerve channels to the nearest vital organ.

The seeker lifted, swung sideways across the room and back.

Through Paul’s mind flashed the related knowledge, the hunter-?seeker
limitations: Its compressed suspensor field distorted the vision of its
transmitter eye. With nothing but the dim light of the room to reflect his
target, the operator would be relying on motion–anything that moved. A shield
could slow a hunter, give time to destroy it, but Paul had put aside his shield
on the bed. Lasguns would knock them down, but lasguns were expensive and
notoriously cranky of maintenance–and there was always the peril of explosive
pyrotechnics if the laser beam intersected a hot shield. The Atreides relied on
their body shields and their wits.

Now, Paul held himself in near catatonic immobility, knowing he had only his
wits to meet this threat.

The hunter-?seeker lifted another half meter. It rippled through the slatted
light from the window blinds, back and forth, quartering the room.

I must try to grab it, he thought. The suspensor field will make it slippery
on the bottom. I must grip tightly.

The thing dropped a half meter, quartered to the left, circled back around
the bed. A faint humming could be heard from it.

Who is operating that thing? Paul wondered. It has to be someone near. I
could shout for Yueh, but it would take him the instant the door opened.

The hall door behind Paul creaked. A rap sounded there. The door opened.

The hunter-?seeker arrowed past his head toward the motion.

Paul’s right hand shot out and down, gripping the deadly thing. It hummed
and twisted in his hand, but his muscles were locked on it in desperation. With
a violent turn and thrust, he slammed the thing’s nose against the metal
doorplate. He felt the crunch of it as the nose eye smashed and the seeker went
dead in his hand.

Still, he held it–to be certain.

Paul’s eyes came up, met the open stare of total blue from the Shadout
Mapes.

“Your father has sent for you,” she said. “There are men in the hall to
escort you.”

Paul nodded, his eyes and awareness focusing on this odd woman in a sack-
like dress of bondsman brown. She was looking now at the thing clutched in his
hand.

“I’ve heard of suchlike,” she said. “It would’ve killed me, not so?”

He had to swallow before he could speak. “I . . . was its target.”

“But it was coming for me.”

“Because you were moving.” And he wondered: Who is this creature?

“Then you saved my life,” she said.

“I saved both our lives.”

“Seems like you could’ve let it have me and made your own escape,” she said.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“The Shadout Mapes, housekeeper.”

“How did you know where to find me?”

“Your mother told me. I met her at the stairs to the weirding room down the
hall.” She pointed to her right. “Your father’s men are still waiting.”

Those will be Hawat’s men, he thought. We must find the operator of this
thing.

“Go to my father’s men,” he said. “Tell them I’ve caught a hunter-?seeker in
the house and they’re to spread out and find the operator. Tell them to seal off
the house and its grounds immediately. They’ll know how to go about it. The
operator’s sure to be a stranger among us.”

And he wondered: Could it be this creature? But he knew it wasn’t. The
seeker had been under control when she entered.

“Before I do your bidding, manling,” Mapes said, “I must cleanse the way
between us. You’ve put a water burden on me that I’m not sure I care to support.
But we Fremen pay our debts–be they black debts or white debts. And it’s known
to us that you’ve a traitor in your midst. Who it is, we cannot say, but we’re
certain sure of it. Mayhap there’s the hand guided that flesh-?cutter.”

Paul absorbed this in silence: a traitor. Before he could speak, the odd
woman whirled away and ran back toward the entry.

He thought to call her back, but there was an air about her that told him
she would resent it. She’d told him what she knew and now she was going to do
his bidding. The house would be swarming with Hawat’s men in a minute.

His mind went to other parts of that strange conversation: weirding room. He
looked to his left where she had pointed. We Fremen. So that was a Fremen. He
paused for the mnemonic blink that would store the pattern of her face in his
memory–prune-?wrinkled features darkly browned, blue-?on-?blue eyes without any
white in them. He attached the label: The Shadout Mapes.

Still gripping the shattered seeker, Paul turned back into his room, scooped
up his shield belt from the bed with his left hand, swung it around his waist
and buckled it as he ran back out and down the hall to the left.

She’d said his mother was someplace down here–stairs . . . a weirding room.

= = = = = =

What had the Lady Jessica to sustain her in her time of trial? Think you
carefully on this Bene Gesserit proverb and perhaps you will see: “Any road
followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just a
little bit to test that it’s a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you
cannot see the mountain.”
-from “Muad’Dib: Family Commentaries” by the Princess Irulan