Dune (17 page)

“The Harkonnens mean to destroy you, my Lord. Their intent is not just to
kill. There’s a range of fine distinctions in kanly. This could be a work of art
among vendettas.”

The Duke’s shoulders slumped. He closed his eyes, looking old and tired. It
cannot be, he thought. The woman has opened her heart to me.

“What better way to destroy me than to sow suspicion of the woman I love?”
he asked.

“An interpretation I’ve considered,” Hawat said. “Still . . . ”

The Duke opened his eyes, stared at Hawat, thinking: Let him be suspicious.
Suspicion is his trade, not mine. Perhaps if I appear to believe this, that will
make another man careless.

“What do you suggest?” the Duke whispered.

“For now, constant surveillance, my Lord. She should be watched at all
times. I will see it’s done unobtrusively. Idaho would be the ideal choice for
the job. Perhaps in a week or so we can bring him back. There’s a young man
we’ve been training in Idaho’s troop who might be ideal to send to the Fremen as
a replacement. He’s gifted in diplomacy.“

”Don’t jeopardize our foothold with the Fremen.“

”Of course not, Sire.“

”And what about Paul?“

”Perhaps we could alert Dr. Yueh.“

Leto turned his back on Hawat. ”I leave it in your hands.“

”I shall use discretion, my Lord.“

At least I can count on that, Leto thought. And he said: ”I will take a
walk. If you need me, I’ll be within the perimeter. The guard can–“

”My Lord, before you go, I’ve a filmclip you should read. It’s a first-
approximation analysis on the Fremen religion. You’ll recall you asked me to
report on it.“

The Duke paused, spoke without turning. ”Will it not wait?“

”Of course, my Lord. You asked what they were shouting, though. It was
‘Mahdi!’ They directed the term at the young master. When they–“

”At Paul?“

”Yes, my Lord. They’ve a legend here, a prophecy, that a leader will come to
them, child of a Bene Gesserit, to lead them to true freedom. It follows the
familiar messiah pattern.“

”They think Paul is this . . . this . . . “

”They only hope, my Lord.“ Hawat extended a filmclip capsule.

The Duke accepted it, thrust it into a pocket. ”I’ll look at it later.“

”Certainly, my Lord.“

”Right now, I need time to . . . think.“

”Yes, my Lord.“

The Duke took a deep sighing breath, strode out the door. He turned to his
right down the hall, began walking, hands behind his back, paying little
attention to where he was. There were corridors and stairs and balconies and
halls . . . people who saluted and stood aside for him.

In time he came back to the conference room, found it dark and Paul asleep
on the table with a guard’s robe thrown over him and a ditty pack for a pillow.
The Duke walked softly down the length of the room and onto the balcony
overlooking the landing field. A guard at the corner of the balcony, recognizing
the Duke by the dim reflection of lights from the field, snapped to attention.

”At ease,” the Duke murmured. He leaned against the cold metal of the
balcony rail.

A predawn hush had come over the desert basin. He looked up. Straight
overhead, the stars were a sequin shawl flung over blue-?black. Low on the
southern horizon, the night’s second moon peered through a thin dust haze–an
unbelieving moon that looked at him with a cynical light.

As the Duke watched, the moon dipped beneath the Shield Wall cliffs,
frosting them, and in the sudden intensity of darkness, he experienced a chill.
He shivered.

Anger shot through him.

The Harkonnens have hindered and hounded and hunted me for the last time, he
thought. They are dung heaps with village provost minds! Here I make my stand!
And he thought with a touch of sadness: I must rule with eye and claw–as the
hawk among lesser birds. Unconsciously, his hand brushed the hawk emblem on his
tunic.

To the east, the night grew a faggot of luminous gray, then seashell
opalescence that dimmed the stars. There came the long, bell-?tolling movement of
dawn striking across a broken horizon.

It was a scene of such beauty it caught all his attention.

Some things beggar likeness, he thought.

He had never imagined anything here could be as beautiful as that shattered
red horizon and the purple and ochre cliffs. Beyond the landing field where the
night’s faint dew had touched life into the hurried seeds of Arrakis, he saw
great puddles of red blooms and, running through them, an articulate tread of
violet . . . like giant footsteps.

“It’s a beautiful morning. Sire,” the guard said.

“Yes, it is.”

The Duke nodded, thinking: Perhaps this planet could grow on one. Perhaps it
could become a good home for my son.

Then he saw the human figures moving into the flower fields, sweeping them
with strange scythe-?like devices–dew gatherers. Water so precious, here that
even the dew must be collected.

And it could be a hideous place, the Duke thought.

= = = = = =

“There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in
which you discover your father is a man–with human flesh.”
-from “Collected Sayings of Muad’Dib” by the Princess Irulan

The Duke said: “Paul, I’m doing a hateful thing, but I must.” He stood
beside the portable poison snooper that had been brought into the conference
room for their breakfast. The thing’s sensor arms hung limply over the table,
reminding Paul of some weird insect newly dead.

The Duke’s attention was directed out the windows at the landing field and
its roiling of dust against the morning sky.

Paul had a viewer in front of him containing a short filmclip on Fremen
religious practices. The clip had been compiled by one of Hawat’s experts and
Paul found himself disturbed by the references to himself.

“Mahdi!”

“Lisan al-?Gaib!”

He could close his eyes and recall the shouts of the crowds. So that is what
they hope, he thought. And he remembered what the old Reverend Mother had said:
Kwisatz Haderach. The memories touched his feelings of terrible purpose, shading
this strange world with sensations of familiarity that he could not understand.

“A hateful thing,” the Duke said.

“What do you mean, sir?”

Leto turned, looked down at his son. “Because the Harkonnens think to trick
me by making me distrust your mother. They don’t know that I’d sooner distrust
myself.”

“I don’t understand, sir.”

Again, Leto looked out the windows. The white sun was well up into its
morning quadrant. Milky light picked out a boiling of dust clouds that spilled
over into the blind canyons interfingering the Shield Wall.

Slowly, speaking in a slow voice to contain his anger, the Duke explained to
Paul about the mysterious note.

“You might just as well mistrust me,” Paul said.

“They have to think they’ve succeeded,” the Duke said. “They must think me
this much of a fool. It must look real. Even your mother may not know the sham.”

“But, sir! Why?”

“Your mother’s response must not be an act. Oh, she’s capable of a supreme
act . . . but too much rides on this. I hope to smoke out a traitor. It must
seem that I’ve been completely cozened. She must be hurt this way that she does
not suffer greater hurt.”

“Why do you tell me, Father? Maybe I’ll give it away.”

“They’ll not watch you in this thing,” the Duke said. “You’ll keep the
secret. You must.” He walked to the windows, spoke without turning. “This way,
if anything should happen to me, you can tell her the truth–that I never
doubted her, not for the smallest instant. I should want her to know this.”
Paul recognized the death thoughts in his father’s words, spoke quickly:
“Nothing’s going to happen to you, sir. The–”

“Be silent, Son.”

Paul stared at his father’s back, seeing the fatigue in the angle of the
neck, in the line of the shoulders, in the slow movements.

“You’re just tired, Father.”

“I am tired,” the Duke agreed. “I’m morally tired. The melancholy
degeneration of the Great Houses has afflicted me at last, perhaps. And we were
such strong people once.”

Paul spoke in quick anger: “Our House hasn’t degenerated!”

“Hasn’t it?”

The Duke turned, faced his son, revealing dark circles beneath hard eyes, a
cynical twist of mouth. “I should wed your mother, make her my Duchess. Yet . .
. my unwedded state gives some Houses hope they may yet ally with me through
their marriageable daughters.” He shrugged. “So, I . . . ”

“Mother has explained this to me.”

“Nothing wins more loyalty for a leader than an air of bravura,” the Duke
said. “I, therefore, cultivate an air of bravura.”

“You lead well,” Paul protested. “You govern well. Men follow you willingly
and love you.”

“My propaganda corps is one of the finest,” the Duke said. Again, he turned
to stare out at the basin. “There’s greater possibility for us here on Arrakis
than the Imperium could ever suspect. Yet sometimes I think it’d have been
better if we’d run for it, gone renegade. Sometimes I wish we could sink back
into anonymity among the people, become less exposed to . . . ”

“Father!”

“Yes, I am tired,” the Duke said. “Did you know we’re using spice residue as
raw material and already have our own factory to manufacture filmbase?”

“Sir?”

“We mustn’t run short of filmbase,” the Duke said. “Else, how could we flood
village and city with our information? The people must learn how well I govern
them. How would they know if we didn’t tell them?”

“You should get some rest,” Paul said.

Again, the Duke faced his son. “Arrakis has another advantage I almost
forgot to mention. Spice is in everything here. You breathe it and eat it in
almost everything. And I find that this imparts a certain natural immunity to
some of the most common poisons of the Assassins’ Handbook. And the need to
watch every drop of water puts all food production–yeast culture, hydroponics,
chemavit, everything–under the strictest surveillance. We cannot kill off large
segments of our population with poison–and we cannot be attacked this way,
either. Arrakis makes us moral and ethical.”

Paul started to speak, but the Duke cut him off, saying: “I have to have
someone I can say these things to, Son.” He sighed, glanced back at the dry
landscape where even the flowers were gone now–trampled by the dew gatherers,
wilted under the early sun.

“On Caladan, we ruled with sea and air power,” the Duke said. “Here, we must
scrabble for desert power. This is your inheritance, Paul. What is to become of
you if anything happens to me? You’ll not be a renegade House, but a guerrilla
House–running, hunted.”

Paul groped for words, could find nothing to say. He had never seen his
father this despondent.

“To hold Arrakis,” the Duke said, “one is faced with decisions that may cost
one his self-?respect.” He pointed out the window to the Atreides green and black
banner hanging limply from a staff at the edge of the landing field. “That
honorable banner could come to mean many evil things.”

Paul swallowed in a dry throat. His father’s words carried futility, a sense
of fatalism that left the boy with an empty feeling in his chest.
The Duke took an antifatigue tablet from a pocket, gulped it dry. “Power and
fear,” he said. “The tools of statecraft. I must order new emphasis on guerrilla
training for you. That filmclip there–they call you ‘Mahdi’–'Lisan al-?Gaib’–
as a last resort, you might capitalize on that.”

Paul stared at his father, watching the shoulders straighten as the tablet
did its work, but remembering the words of fear and doubt.

“What’s keeping that ecologist?” the Duke muttered. “I told Thufir to have
him here early.”

= = = = = =

My father, the Padishah Emperor, took me by the hand one day and I sensed in the
ways my mother had taught me that he was disturbed. He led me down the Hall of
Portraits to the ego-?likeness of the Duke Leto Atreides. I marked the strong
resemblance between them–my father and this man in the portrait–both with
thin, elegant faces and sharp features dominated by cold eyes. “Princess-
daughter,” my father said, “I would that you’d been older when it came time for
this man to choose a woman.” My father was 71 at the time and looking no older
than the man in the portrait, and I was but 14, yet I remember deducing in that
instant that my father secretly wished the Duke had been his son, and disliked
the political necessities that made them enemies.
-“In My Father’s House” by the Princess Irulan

His first encounter with the people he had been ordered to betray left Dr.
Kynes shaken. He prided himself on being a scientist to whom legends were merely
interesting clues, pointing toward cultural roots. Yet the boy fitted the
ancient prophecy so precisely. He had “the questing eyes,” and the air of
“reserved candor.”

Of course, the prophecy left certain latitude as to whether the Mother
Goddess would bring the Messiah with her or produce Him on the scene. Still,
there was this odd correspondence between prediction and persons.

They met in midmorning outside the Arrakeen landing field’s administration
building. An unmarked ornithopter squatted nearby, humming softly on standby
like a somnolent insect. An Atreides guard stood beside it with bared sword and
the faint air-?distortion of a shield around him.

Kynes sneered at the shield pattern, thinking: Arrakis has a surprise for
them there!

The planetologist raised a hand, signaled for his Fremen guard to fall back.
He strode on ahead toward the building’s entrance–the dark hole in plastic-
coated rock. So exposed, that monolithic building, he thought. So much less
suitable than a cave.

Movement within the entrance caught his attention. He stopped, taking the
moment to adjust his robe and the set of his stillsuit at the left shoulder.