Dune (21 page)

“Two Johnnies who came along for the ride, Soor,” said the tall Dune man.

“Why wasn’t something said about them?”

“It was the chance they took, Soor,” the Dune man said.

“My Lord,” said Kynes, “these men know it’s of little use to do anything
about men trapped on the desert in worm country.”

“We’ll send a ship from base for them!” the Duke snapped.

“As you wish, my Lord,” Kynes said. “But likely when the ship gets here
there’ll be no one to rescue.”

“We’ll send a ship, anyway,” the Duke said.

“They were right beside where the worm came up,” Paul said. “How’d they
escape?”

“The sides of the hole cave in and make the distances deceptive,” Kynes
said.

“You waste fuel here, Sire,” Halleck ventured.

“Aye, Gurney.”

The Duke brought his craft around toward the Shield Wall. His escort came
down from circling stations, took up positions above and on both sides.

Paul thought about what the Dune man and Kynes had said. He sensed half-
truths, outright lies. The men on the sand had glided across the surface so
surely, moving in a way obviously calculated to keep from luring the worm back
out of its depths.

Fremen! Paul thought. Who else would be so sure on the sand? Who else might
be left out of your worries as a matter of course–because they are in no
danger? They know how to live here! They know how to outwit the worm!

“What were Fremen doing on that crawler?” Paul asked.

Kynes whirled.

The tall Dune man turned wide eyes on Paul–blue within blue within blue.
“Who be this lad?” he asked.

Halleck moved to place himself between the man and Paul, said: “This is Paul
Atreides, the ducal heir.”

“Why says he there were Fremen on our rumbler?” the man asked.

“They fit the description,” Paul said.

Kynes snorted. “You can’t tell Fremen just by looking at them!” He looked at
the Dune man. “You. Who were those men?”

“Friends of one of the others,” the Dune man said. “Just friends from a
village who wanted to see the spice sands.”

Kynes turned away. “Fremen!”

But he was remembering the words of the legend: “The Lisan al-?Gaib shall see
through all subterfuge.”

“They be dead now, most likely, young Soor,” the Dune man said. “We should
not speak unkindly on them.”

But Paul heard the falsehood in their voices, felt the menace that had
brought Halleck instinctively into guarding position.

Paul spoke dryly: “A terrible place for them to die.”

Without turning, Kynes said; “When God hath ordained a creature to die in a
particular place. He causeth that creature’s wants to direct him to that place.”

Leto turned a hard stare at Kynes.
And Kynes, returning the stare, found himself troubled by a fact he had
observed here: This Duke was concerned more over the men that he was over the
spice. He risked his own life and that of his son to save the men. He passed off
the loss of a spice crawler with a gesture. The threat to men’s lives had him in
a rage. A leader such as that would command fanatic loyalty. He would be
difficult to defeat.

Against his own will and all previous judgments, Kynes admitted to himself:
I like this Duke.

= = = = = =

Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part
upon the myth-?making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences
greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is
projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is
what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that
permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional
greatness will destroy a man.
-from “Collected Sayings of Muad’Dib” by the Princess Irulan

In the dining hall of the Arrakeen great house, suspensor lamps had been
lighted against the early dark. They cast their yellow glows upward onto the
black bull’s head with its bloody horns, and onto the darkly glistening oil
painting of the Old Duke.

Beneath these talismans, white linen shone around the burnished reflections
of the Atreides silver, which had been placed in precise arrangements along the
great table–little archipelagos of service waiting beside crystal glasses, each
setting squared off before a heavy wooden chair. The classic central chandelier
remained unlighted, and its chain twisted upward into shadows where the
mechanism of the poison-?snooper had been concealed.

Pausing in the doorway to inspect the arrangements, the Duke thought about
the poison-?snooper and what it signified in his society.

All of a pattern, he thought. You can plumb us by our language–the precise
and delicate delineations for ways to administer treacherous death. Will someone
try chaumurky tonight–poison in the drink? Or will it be chaumas–poison in the
food?

He shook his head.

Beside each plate on the long table stood a flagon of water. There was
enough water along the table, the Duke estimated, to keep a poor Arrakeen family
for more than a year.

Flanking the doorway in which he stood were broad laving basins of ornate
yellow and green tile. Each basin had its rack of towels. It was the custom, the
housekeeper had explained, for guests as they entered to dip their hands
ceremoniously into a basin, slop several cups of water onto the floor, dry their
hands on a towel and fling the towel into the growing puddle at the door. After
the dinner, beggars gathered outside to get the water squeezings from the
towels.

How typical of a Harkonnen fief, the Duke thought. Every degradation of the
spirit that can be conceived. He took a deep breath, feeling rage tighten his
stomach.

“The custom stops here!” he muttered.

He saw a serving woman–one of the old and gnarled ones the housekeeper had
recommended–hovering at the doorway from the kitchen across from him. The Duke
signaled with upraised hand. She moved out of the shadows, scurried around the
table toward him, and he noted the leathery face, the blue-?within-?blue eyes.

“My Lord wishes?” She kept her head bowed, eyes shielded.

He gestured. “Have these basins and towels removed.”
“But . . . Noble Born . . .” She looked up, mouth gaping.

“I know the custom!” he barked. “Take these basins to the front door. While
we’re eating and until we’ve finished, each beggar who calls may have a full cup
of water. Understood?”

Her leathery face displayed a twisting of emotions: dismay, anger . . .

With sudden insight, Leto realized that she must have planned to sell the
water squeezings from the foot-?trampled towels, wringing a few coppers from the
wretches who came to the door. Perhaps that also was a custom.

His face clouded, and he growled: “I’m posting a guard to see that my orders
are carried out to the letter.”

He whirled, strode back down the passage to the Great Hall. Memories rolled
in his mind like the toothless mutterings of old women. He remembered open water
and waves–days of grass instead of sand–dazed summers that had whipped past
him like windstorm leaves.

All gone.

I’m getting old, he thought. I’ve felt the cold hand of my mortality. And in
what? An old woman’s greed.

In the Great Hall, the Lady Jessica was the center of a mixed group standing
in front of the fireplace. An open blaze crackled there, casting flickers of
orange light onto jewels and laces and costly fabrics. He recognized in the
group a stillsuit manufacturer down from Carthag, an electronics equipment
importer, a water-?shipper whose summer mansion was near his polar-?cap factory, a
representative of the Guild Bank (lean and remote, that one), a dealer in
replacement parts for spice mining equipment, a thin and hard-?faced woman whose
escort service for off-?planet visitors reputedly operated as cover for various
smuggling, spying, and blackmail operations.

Most of the women in the hall seemed cast from a specific type–decorative,
precisely turned out, an odd mingling of untouchable sensuousness.

Even without her position as hostess, Jessica would have dominated the
group, he thought. She wore no jewelry and had chosen warm colors–a long dress
almost the shade of the open blaze, and an earth-?brown band around her bronzed
hair.

He realized she had done this to taunt him subtly, a reproof against his
recent pose of coldness. She was well aware that he liked her best in these
shades–that he saw her as a rustling of warm colors.

Nearby, more an outflanker than a member of the group, stood Duncan Idaho in
glittering dress uniform, flat face unreadable, the curling black hair neatly
combed. He had been summoned back from the Fremen and had his orders from Hawat-
-“Under pretext of guarding her, you will keep the Lady Jessica under constant
surveillance.”

The Duke glanced around the room.

There was Paul in the corner surrounded by a fawning group of the younger
Arrakeen richece, and, aloof among them, three officers of the House Troop. The
Duke took particular note of the young women. What a catch a ducal heir would
make. But Paul was treating all equally with an air of reserved nobility.

He’ll wear the title well, the Duke thought, and realized with a sudden
chill that this was another death thought.

Paul saw his father in the doorway, avoided his eyes. He looked around at
the clusterings of guests, the jeweled hands clutching drinks (and the
unobtrusive inspections with tiny remote-?cast snoopers). Seeing all the
chattering faces, Paul was suddenly repelled by them. They were cheap masks
locked on festering thoughts–voices gabbling to drown out the loud silence in
every breast.

I’m in a sour mood, he thought, and wondered what Gurney would say to that.

He knew his mood’s source. He hadn’t wanted to attend this function, but his
father had been firm. “You have a place–a position to uphold. You’re old enough
to do this. You’re almost a man.”
Paul saw his father emerge from the doorway, inspect the room, then cross to
the group around the Lady Jessica.

As Leto approached Jessica’s group, the water-?shipper was asking: “Is it
true the Duke will put in weather control?”

From behind the man, the Duke said: “We haven’t gone that far in our
thinking, sir.”

The man turned, exposing a bland round face, darkly tanned. “Ah-?h, the
Duke,” he said. “We missed you.”

Leto glanced at Jessica. “A thing needed doing.” He returned his attention
to the water-?shipper, explained what he had ordered for the laving basins,
adding: “As far as I’m concerned, the old custom ends now.”

“Is this a ducal order, m’Lord?” the man asked.

“I leave that to your own . . . ah . . . conscience,” the Duke said. He
turned, noting Kynes come up to the group.

One of the women said: “I think it’s a very generous gesture–giving water
to the–” Someone shushed her.

The Duke looked at Kynes, noting that the planetologist wore an old-?style
dark brown uniform with epaulets of the Imperial Civil Servant and a tiny gold
teardrop of rank at his collar.

The water-?shipper asked in an angry voice: “Does the Duke imply criticism of
our custom?”

“This custom has been changed,” Leto said. He nodded to Kynes, marked the
frown on Jessica’s face, thought: A frown does not become her, but it’ll
increase rumors of friction between us.

“With the Duke’s permission,” the water-?shipper said, “I’d like to inquire
further about customs.”

Leto heard the sudden oily tone in the man’s voice, noted the watchful
silence in this group, the way heads were beginning to turn toward them around
the room.

“Isn’t it almost time for dinner?” Jessica asked.

“But our guest has some questions,” Leto said. And he looked at the water-
shipper, seeing a round-?faced man with large eyes and thick lips, recalling
Hawat’s memorandum: “. . . and this water-?shipper is a man to watch–Lingar
Bewt, remember the name. The Harkonnens used him but never fully controlled
him.”

“Water customs are so interesting,” Bewt said, and there was a smile on his
face. “I’m curious what you intend about the conservatory attached to this
house. Do you intend to continue flaunting it in the people’s faces . . .
m’Lord?”

Leto held anger in check, staring at the man. Thoughts raced through his
mind. It had taken bravery to challenge him in his own ducal castle, especially
since they now had Bewt’s signature over a contract of allegiance. The action
had taken, also, a knowledge of personal power. Water was, indeed, power here.
If water facilities were mined, for instance, ready to be destroyed at a signal
. . . The man looked capable of such a thing. Destruction of water facilities
might well destroy Arrakis. That could well have been the club this Bewt held
over the Harkonnens.

“My Lord, the Duke, and I have other plans for our conservatory,” Jessica
said. She smiled at Leto. “We intend to keep it, certainly, but only to hold it
in trust for the people of Arrakis. It is our dream that someday the climate of
Arrakis may be changed sufficiently to grow such plants anywhere in the open.”

Bless her! Leto thought. Let our water-?shipper chew on that.

“Your interest in water and weather control is obvious,” the Duke said. “I’d
advise you to diversify your holdings. One day, water will not be a precious
commodity on Arrakis.”
And he thought: Hawat must redouble his efforts at infiltrating this Bewt’s
organization. And we must start on stand-?by water facilities at once. No man is
going to hold a club over my head!

Bewt nodded, the smile still on his face. “A commendable dream, my Lord.” He
withdrew a pace.

Leto’s attention was caught by the expression on Kynes’ face. The man was
staring at Jessica. He appeared transfigured–like a man in love . . . or caught
in a religious trance.

Kynes’ thoughts were overwhelmed at last by the words of prophecy: “And they
shall share your most precious dream. ”He spoke directly to Jessica: “Do you
bring the shortening of the way?”