Road to Dune (46 page)

Below, most of the fires in Arrakeen had been put out, but the damage remained untended. The new Harkonnen rulers had returned to their traditional seat of government in Carthag; they would leave the scarred Atreides city as a blackened wound for a few months … as a reminder to the people.

The feud between House Atreides and House Harkonnen meant nothing to the Fremen—the noble families were all unwelcome interlopers on their sacred desert planet, which the Fremen had claimed as their own thousands of years earlier, after the Wandering. For millennia these people had carried the wisdom of their ancestors, including an ancient Terran saying about each cloud having a silver lining. The Fremen would use the bloodshed of these royal houses to their own advantage: the deathstills back at the sietch would drink deeply from the casualties of war.

Harkonnen patrols swept the area, but the soldiers cared little for the bands of furtive Fremen, pursuing and killing them only out of sport rather than in a focused program of genocide. The Harkonnens paid no heed to the Atreides trapped in the Shield Wall either, thinking none of them could have survived; so they left the bodies trapped in the rubble.

From the Fremen perspective, the Harkonnens did not value their resources.

Working together, using bare callused hands and metal digging tools, the scavengers began their excavation, opening a narrow tunnel between the rocks. Only a few dim glowglobes hovered close to the diggers, providing faint light.

Through soundings and careful observations on the night of the attack, the Fremen knew where the victims would be. They had uncovered a dozen already, as well as a precious cache of supplies, but now they were after something much more valuable, the tomb of an entire detachment of Atreides soldiers. The desert men toiled for hours, sweating into the absorbent layers of their stillsuits, taking only a few sipped drops of recovered moisture. Many water rings would be earned for the moisture recovered from these corpses, making these Fremen scavengers wealthy.

When they broke into the cave enclosure, though, they stepped into a clammy stone coffin filled with the redolence of death. Some of the Fremen cried out or muttered superstitious prayers to Shai-Hulud, but others probed forward, increasing the light from the glowglobes now that they were out of sight of the nighttime patrols.

The Atreides soldiers all lay dead together, as if struck down in a strange suicide ceremony. One man sat in the center of their group, and when the Fremen leader moved him, his body fell to one side and a gush of water spewed out of his mouth. The Fremen tasted it. Salt water.

The scavengers backed away, even more frightened now.

Carefully, two young men inspected the bodies, finding that the uniforms of the Atreides were warm and wet, stinking of mildew and damp rot. Their dead eyes were open wide and staring, but with contentment instead of the expected horror, as if they had shared a religious experience. All of the dead Atreides soldiers had clammy skin … and something even more peculiar, revealed when the Fremen cut them open.

The lungs of these dead men were entirely filled with water.

The Fremen fled, leaving their spoils behind, and resealed the cave. Thereafter, it became a forbidden place of legend, drawing wonder from anyone hearing the story as it was passed on by Fremen from generation to generation.

Somehow, sealed inside a lightless cave in the driest desert, all of the Atreides soldiers had
drowned.
…

HUNTING HARKONNENS

A Tale of the Butlerian Jihad

T
he Harkonnen space yacht left the family-held industries on Hagal and crossed the interstellar gulf toward Salusa Secundus. The streamlined vessel flew silently, in contrast to the fusillade of angry shouts inside the cockpit.

Stern, hard-line Ulf Harkonnen piloted the yacht, concentrating on the hazards of space and the constant threat of thinking machines, though he kept lecturing his twenty-one-year-old son, Piers. Ulf’s wife, Katarina, too gentle a soul to be worthy of the Harkonnen name, asserted that the quarrel had gone on long enough. “Further criticism and shouting will serve no purpose, Ulf.”

Vehemently, the elder Harkonnen disagreed.

Piers sat fuming, unrepentant; he was not cut out for the cutthroat practices his noble family expected, no matter how much his father tried to bully him into them. He knew Ulf would browbeat and humiliate him all the way home. The gruff older man refused to consider that his son’s ideas for more humane methods might actually be more efficient than the inflexible, domineering ways.

Clutching the ship controls with a death grip, Ulf growled at his son, “
Thinking machines
are efficient. Humans, especially riffraff like our slaves on Hagal, are meant to be used. I doubt you’ll ever get that through your skull.” He shook his large, squarish head. “Sometimes, Piers, I think I should clean up the gene pool by eliminating you.”

“Then why don’t you?” Piers snapped, defiant. His father believed in forceful decisions, every question with a black-or-white answer, and that belittling his son would drive him to do better.

“I can’t, because your brother, Xavier, is too young to be the Harkonnen heir, so you’re the only choice I have … for the time being. I keep hoping you’ll understand your responsibility to our family. You’re a noble, meant to command, not to show the workers how soft you can be.”

Katarina pleaded, “Ulf, you may not agree with the changes Piers made on Hagal, but at least he thought it through and was trying a new process. Given time, it might have led to improved productivity.”

“And meanwhile the Harkonnen family goes bankrupt?” Ulf held a thick finger toward his son as if it were a weapon. “Piers, those people took terrible advantage of you, and you’re lucky I arrived in time to stop the damage. When I provide you with detailed instructions on how our family holdings are to be run, I do not expect you to come up with a ‘better’ idea.”

“Is your mind so fossilized that you can’t accept new ideas?” Piers asked.

“Your instincts are faulty, and you have a very naïve view of human nature.” Ulf shook his head, growling in disappointment. “He takes after you, Katarina—that’s his main problem.” Like his mother, Piers had a narrow face, full lips, and a delicate expression … quite different from Ulf’s shaggy gray hair framing a blunt-featured face. “You would have been a better poet than a Harkonnen.”

That was meant to be a grave insult, but Piers secretly agreed. The young man had always enjoyed reading histories of the Old Empire, days of decadence and ennui before the thinking machines had conquered many civilized solar systems. Piers would have fit into those times well as a writer, a storyteller.

“I gave you an opportunity, son, hoping that I could depend on you. But I have my answer.” The elder Harkonnen stood, clenching his large, callused fists. “This whole trip has been a waste.”

Katarina caressed her husband’s broad back, trying to calm him. “Ulf, we’re passing near the Caladan system. You talked about stopping there to investigate the possibility of new holdings … maybe fishing operations?”

Ulf hunched his shoulders. “All right, we’ll divert to Caladan and take a look.” He snapped his head up. “But in the meantime, I want this disgrace of a son sealed in the lifepod chamber. It’s the closest thing to a brig onboard. He needs to learn his lesson, take his responsibilities seriously, or he will never be a true Harkonnen.”

AS HE SULKED inside his improvised cell, with its cream-colored walls and silver instrument panels, Piers stared out the small porthole. He hated arguments with his stubborn father. The rigid old ways of the Harkonnen family were not always best. Instead of imposing tough conditions and harsh punishments, why not try treating workers with respect?

Workers
. He remembered how his father had reacted to the word. “Next you’ll want to call them employees. They are
slaves
!” Ulf had thundered as they stood in the overseer’s office back on Hagal. “They have no rights.”

“But they deserve rights,” Piers responded. “They’re human beings, not machines.”

Ulf had barely contained his violence. “Perhaps I should beat you the way my father beat me, pounding contrition and responsibility into you. This isn’t a game. You’re leaving now, boy. Get on the ship.”

Like a scolded child, Piers had done as he was commanded … .

He wished he could stand toe to toe with his father, just once. Every time he tried, though, Ulf made him feel that he had let the family down, as if he were a shirker who would waste their hard-won fortunes.

His father had trusted him to manage the family holdings on Hagal, grooming him as the next head of the Harkonnen businesses. This assignment had been an important step for Piers, with complete authority over the sheet diamond operations. A chance, a test. The implicit understanding was that he would operate the mines as they had always been run.

Harkonnens held the mining rights to all sheet diamonds on sparsely populated Hagal. The largest mine filled an entire canyon. Piers recalled how sunlight played off the glassy cliffs, dancing on the prismatic surfaces. He had never seen anything so beautiful.

The cliff faces were diamond sheets with blue-green quartz marking the perimeters like irregular picture frames. Human-operated mining machines crawled along the cliffs like fat, silver insects: no artificial intelligence, and therefore considered safe. History had shown that even the most innocuous types of AI could ultimately turn against humans. Entire star systems were now under the control of diabolically smart machines, and in those dark sectors of the universe, human slaves followed the commands of mechanized masters.

At optimal spots on the shimmering cliffs, the mining machines would lock onto the surface with suction devices and separate the diamond material with sound waves at natural points of fissure. Holding diamond sheets in their grasp, the dumb machines would make their way back down the cliff to loading areas.

It was an efficient process, but sometimes the sonic cutting procedure shattered the diamond sheets. Though once Piers gave the slaves a stake in the profits, such mishaps occurred much less frequently, as if they took greater care when they received a vested interest.

Overseeing the Hagal operation, Piers had come up with the idea of letting the captive gangs work without typical Harkonnen regulations and close oversight. While some slaves accepted the incentive program, a number of problems did surface. With reduced supervision, some slaves ran away; others were disorganized or lazy, just waiting for someone to tell them what to do. Initially, productivity dropped, but he was sure the output would eventually meet, and even exceed, previous levels.

Before that could happen, though, his father had made an unannounced visit to Hagal. And Ulf Harkonnen wasn’t interested in creative ideas or humanitarian improvements if profits were down … .

His parents had been forced to leave their younger son, Xavier, on Salusa with a pleasant old-school couple. “I shudder to think how the boy will turn out if
they
raise him. Emil and Lucille Tantor don’t know how to be strict.”

Eavesdropping, Piers knew why his manipulative father had left his little brother with the Tantors. Since the aging couple was childless, wily Ulf was working his way into their good graces. He hoped the Tantors might eventually leave their estate to their dear “godson” Xavier.

Piers hated the way his father used people, whether they were slaves, other nobles, or members of his own family. It was disgusting. But now, trapped inside the cramped lifepod chamber, he could do nothing about it.

PROGRAMMING MADE THE thinking machines relentless and determined, but only the cruelty of a human mind could generate enough ruthless hatred to feed a war of extermination for a thousand years.

Though they were kept in reluctant thrall by the pervasive computer mind Omnius, the cymeks—hybrid machines with human minds—often bided their time by hunting between the stars. They would capture feral humans and bring them back to slavery on the Synchronized Worlds, or just kill them for sport … .

The leader of the cymeks, a general who had taken the imposing name of Agamemnon, had once led the group of tyrants that conquered the decaying Old Empire. As implacable soldiers in the cause, the tyrants had reprogrammed the subservient robots and computers to give them a thirst for conquest. When his mortal human body grew old and weak, Agamemnon had undergone a surgical process that removed his brain and implanted it within a preservation canister that he could install into various mechanical bodies.

Agamemnon and his fellow tyrants had intended to rule for centuries … but then the artificially aggressive computers stepped into power when they saw the chance, exploiting the tyrants’ lack of diligence. The Omnius network then ruled the remnants of the Old Empire, subjugating the cymek tyrants along with the rest of already-downtrodden humanity.

For centuries, Agamemnon and his fellow conquerors had been forced to serve the computer evermind, with no chance of regaining their own rule. Their greatest source of amusement was in tracking down stray humans who had managed to maintain their independence from machine domination. Still, the cymek general found it a most unsatisfactory venting of his frustrations.

His brain canister had been installed inside a fast scout vessel that patrolled areas known to be inhabited by League humans. Six cymeks accompanied the general as their ships skirted the edge of a small solar system. They found little of interest, only one human-compatible world composed of mostly water.

Then Agamemnon’s long-range sensors spotted another vessel. A
human
vessel.

He increased resolution and pointed out the target to his companions. Triangulating with their combined detection abilities, Agamemnon discerned that the lone ship was a small space yacht, its sophisticated configuration and style implying that its passengers were important members of the League, rich merchants … perhaps even smug nobles, the most gratifying victims of all.