Dune: The Machine Crusade (50 page)

She saw and recognized him, and her expression unfolded like the petals of a brilliant flower. Ishmael’s heart leaped, and he wanted to rush to her, but armed escorts had accompanied the reassigned slaves. Also, narrow-eyed Keedair watched the newcomers as if taking a silent administrative tally.

Ishmael remembered the vindictiveness of Lord Bludd, who had willingly torn his family apart simply because he had asked for fair compensation. Now he could not risk drawing any attention either to himself or Chamal.

Ishmael gave his daughter a quick signal, shaking his head and averting his eyes. He would talk with her later. That night they would embrace and tell stories in quiet whispers. For now, he dared not show joy, for fear the slavemasters would steal that away as they had taken most everything else….

The rest of the day was agony for him. The new group of slaves went through orientation and training in a different part of the compound. The sun itself seemed to have stopped in the sky for Ishmael, since time passed so slowly.

But after the long work shift was over and the Zensunnis retreated to their communal barracks, with Aliid and his Zenshiites in their separate dwellings, Ishmael hugged his daughter and they both wept. Content just to be together, they explained nothing for a while.

At last Chamal spilled the story of how she had been separated from her mother and her younger sister. As far as she knew, Ozza and little Falina had been taken to the cane fields on the far side of the continent. She had heard nothing from them in a year.

After talking with Ishmael for hours Chamal summoned a young, determined-looking man named Rafel. She took him by the hand and pulled him close to meet her father. He seemed intimidated, as if he had already heard much about Ishmael. She said, “This man is my husband. When I turned sixteen and reached marriageable age, we were given to each other.” She lowered her dark eyes, avoiding Ishmael’s obvious surprise. “I had no one else, Father.”

He felt no displeasure, but in his own mind he could not believe that his little daughter— a girl who had always seemed so young to him— was now an adult, a woman and a wife. Ishmael smiled warmly, welcoming them both. “He looks like a fine young man.”

Bowing his head slightly, Rafel replied, “I will try to be, for the sake of your daughter and our people.”

Chamal stood close to her husband, obviously fond of the young man. “After I married Rafel, their administrators must have lost track of the fact that I was your daughter. They did not know who I was when they transferred me here. Otherwise, Lord Bludd would have kept me away from you.”

Ishmael reached forward to take her hand, squeezing it tightly. “You are my daughter, Chamal.” Then he reached out to grasp her young husband’s hand as well. “And you are now my son, Rafel.”

WEEKS LATER, ISHMAEL discovered by accident what plans Aliid had already put into motion. In the isolated group at the canyon job site, one of the Zensunni women in the crew had taken a Zenshiite as her husband, observed him hiding makeshift weapons and reading secret notes written in a nearly forgotten Buddislamic language that no League noble could read. Seeing Ishmael as their leader, the interpreter of the sutras and the reluctant decision maker, she told him what she had learned and suspected.

Within a month, the twenty-seventh anniversary of Bel Moulay’s uprising would come. The lords of Poritrin again planned raucous celebrations that would remind the slaves of their failure, the fate that always awaited them. In defiance of this, Aliid intended to use it as a springboard for his own violent rebellion. He had already put operatives into position and surreptitious messages had been sent back to Starda, where— invoking the name of Bel Moulay— the plans spread like a virulent disease.

The Zenshiites intended to launch a rain of violence upon the complacent Poritrin masters who believed they had squashed all resistance decades ago. Ishmael was beginning to realize that his own peacemaking overtures to Lord Bludd had done much to cement that impression among the nobles. But the realization did not spell a shift in his beliefs.

Obviously, Aliid knew that Ishmael would not condone violence and would instead quote Koran Sutras forbidding the murder of innocents and warning against wresting the powers of judgment from the hand of God. But Aliid had no further interest in scripture. He did not trust his childhood companion to participate in the plan, and even suspected that Ishmael might work against the intended uprising.

When Ishmael learned of this doubt, of being excluded, he felt as if his friend had stabbed him through the heart. Though they disagreed over tactics, didn’t they both want freedom for their people? Ishmael had never thought his companion would keep such an important secret from him.

Shaken and brooding, he spent several nights awake, trying to decide what to do. Did Aliid truly believe that his plan would remain entirely secret, or did he hope Ishmael would learn of it and read between the lines? Was this supposed to be a test to determine whether the Zensunnis were willing to fight for freedom, or if they were content to remain docile captives?

What if Aliid is right?

Ishmael felt a cold knot in the center of his chest. He was certain Aliid’s actions would cause a bloodbath and the slaves would pay a terrible price, even those who did not fight. If they rose up again, it would prove to their Poritrin masters that Buddislamics could never be trusted. They might be exterminated entirely or forced to live in shackles like penned animals, surrendering even the meager freedoms they still retained.

Ishmael knew he had no choice but to face his friend, before it was too late.

That evening as the wind came up and the sun went down, Ishmael climbed the metal-runged ladder to the hangar’s cantilevered roof that extended beyond the grotto overhang. Aliid and seven Zenshiite coworkers had been sent here in a repair crew to fix overlapping corrugated sheetmetal that had been blown off in a canyon windstorm. The shelter was needed to protect the experimental ship from the cold rains of Poritrin’s approaching winter.

Ishmael climbed to the roof and looked around. After shaving himself clean in order to meet with Lord Bludd, he had let his beard grow again, and now it was bristly and spiky, with a faint frosting of gray.

Aliid turned to face him, his striped Zenshiite shirt tucked into a work uniform. His black beard was a thick forest on the lower half of his face. It seemed he had been expecting his visitor.

Ishmael stopped, halfway to him. “Aliid, do you recall the Koran Sutra that says when friends keep secrets from each other, their enemies have already won?”

Aliid lifted his chin and narrowed his eyes. “The Zenshia variation says, ‘A friend who cannot be relied upon is worse than an enemy.’”

The Zenshiite coworkers watched the two men as they spoke. Impatiently, Aliid gestured to them. “Leave us. My friend Ishmael and I have matters to discuss.”

After reassuring themselves by the confidence on Aliid’s hard face, they crossed to the open stairway and descended into the large grotto. Alone on the upper deck, the two men faced each other. The pause seemed to last an eternity as the wind whistled around Ishmael’s ears.

“We have been through much together, Aliid,” he said, at last. “Since we were captured as boys and brought to Poritrin, we have struggled and grieved at each other’s side. We shared stories of our home worlds, and now both of our wives have been taken from us by the slave masters. I mourned with you for the destruction of the sacred city on IV Anbus. And now I have learned what you intend to do.”

Aliid chewed at his upper lip. “I am tired of waiting for you to act, my friend. I always hoped you would learn your error and see that God wants us to be
men,
not trees. We cannot stand by and let the universe do with us whatever it wishes. But ever since you went to speak with Lord Bludd and then meekly accepted your punishment, I have been convinced that the Zensunni way is comprised of talk, while my Zenshiites prefer action. Is it not time to act, at last?”

His eyes were fiery, as if he still held a hope that Ishmael would join him. “I have sent spies and messengers to slave groups all across Poritrin. They revere the memory of the great Bel Moulay, and are restless for another crack at the oppressors.”

Ishmael shook his head, thinking of his daughter Chamal, then of his lost wife Ozza, and of Falina. They were still alive somewhere, and he dared not risk them. “Bel Moulay was executed, Aliid. Many hundreds of Buddislamic slaves were slaughtered when the Dragoons recaptured Starda Spaceport.”

“He had the
right idea
— you know he did, Ishmael— but he acted precipitously, before he was ready. This time, the uprising will be on an unprecedented scale. I will orchestrate it on my own terms.”

Ishmael pictured Chamal’s new husband Rafel cut to bloody ribbons by guards with Chandler pistols… and Ozza and Falina, clinging to each other while Lord Bludd’s troops mowed them down in burning cane fields. He shook his head. “And the Dragoon guards will retaliate on a scale commensurate with your uprising. Think of the suffering—”

“Only if we fail, Ishmael,” Aliid said, stepping closer. The wind stirred his dark hair like a thunderhead. “It will be vengeance against our captors in the name of the martyr Bel Moulay. We kill the oppressors and take their world for ourselves. Make them serve
us
for a change. We’ll take whatever payment we deem acceptable for all the lost years of our lives.”

Ishmael swallowed hard. “I am terrified of your plan, Aliid.”

“Terrified?” He let out a bitter laugh. “The League Worlds have always said that Buddislamics are cowards, that we flee from any fight, that we turned our backs on their war against the machine demons.” Aliid leaned closer, his eyes blazing like those of Bel Moulay so long ago. “But on this anniversary, we will show them just what sort of
cowards
we are. It will be a bloodbath they’ll never forget.”

“Aliid, I beg you not to go forward with this. Violence in the name of Buddallah is still murder.”

“Blind passivity in the face of all torments is still surrender,” Aliid countered. He reached into his striped shirt and pulled out a long curved knife he had fashioned from a sharpened piece of scrap metal. “Do you intend to give us away, Ishmael? Will you report our plans to your friend Lord Bludd?” He extended the knife, hilt first. “Take it. You may as well kill me yourself then.”

Ishmael raised his hands. “No, Aliid.”

But the other man grabbed Ishmael’s wrist and forced him to grasp the knife. Aliid pressed the point against his own chest. “Do it. Kill me now, for I no longer wish to live as a slave.”

“Nonsense! I would never hurt you.”

“This is your chance,” Aliid growled. “Do it— or never again object to what I mean to do.”

Ishmael yanked his hand free, releasing his grip on the weapon. He cast his gaze downward. “Is this the only way you know, Aliid? I feel sorry for you.”

Sneering as if he wanted to spit in Ishmael’s face, Aliid slipped the knife back into its hiding place. “You are no longer my friend, Ishmael, nor are you my enemy.” He turned his back and uttered a final insult into the wind. “You are nothing to me.”

E
ven sophisticated cooling systems could not keep up with the solar heat pounding on the Arrakis headquarters of VenKee Enterprises. For all the profits that the melange trade had made for Aurelius Venport, it seemed he had to waste a great deal of money on the simplest of things here in the spaceport city. He spent the equivalent of a high-level salary just to fill the closed-system humidifiers to make these office quarters endurable.

Venport would rather have been on Salusa Secundus influencing League officials and defending his commercial rights against the grasp of the Jihad Council. He also wanted to return to the lush jungles of Rossak, where he could oversee his varied pharmaceutical interests. Most of all, though, he realized with a growing warmth in his heart, he longed to be on Poritrin with Norma Cenva. Aside from his personal interest in her he was, of course, curious to see if her space-folding project might bear fruit and make his investment pay off.

In fact, he would have preferred to be anyplace other than Arrakis, but the spice business was a cornerstone of VenKee Enterprises. Despite this planet’s harsh environment, its outrageous distance from any civilized world, and the difficult Zensunni fanatics like Naib Dhartha, the income from melange was substantial. And demand was only growing throughout the League of Nobles.

Now, wiping sweat from his forehead, he studied the documents in front of him, ledgers and accounting bins that traced deliveries and supplies Dhartha’s organized spice scavengers brought to the spaceport. Opening an electronic folio, he then contrasted this information with the ever-increasing losses and damaged equipment.

Any good businessman knew to devote the greatest amount of time and energy to the concerns that offered the greatest potential for profit— and Venport had proven himself an excellent businessman indeed. Thus, he had no choice but to stay here on Arrakis himself, until the problems were resolved.

He had hired a contingent of soldiers and guards, mercenaries and security men to maintain order in Arrakis City. The spaceport was a dirty, hard place, populated by dirty, hard men, but his troops kept the landing field and commercial buildings relatively safe.

The real problems occurred out in the deep desert, where no one could oversee.

Almost since the beginning of the spice trade on this desert hellhole, there had been numerous incidents of sabotage. In the past decade, pirate and bandit attacks had increased steadily, ominous signs that the resistance movement was gaining followers. For some reason these backward desert people scorned the benefits of civilization and the better standards of living.

Venport didn’t need to understand the outlaws’ way of thinking, was not required to sympathize with their point of view— but he did need to solve the problem. It was a task he would have preferred to leave to his partner, but through a maddeningly ironic twist of circumstances Keedair was now on Poritrin overseeing Norma’s work… while Venport was stuck on Arrakis.