Sisterhood of Dune (42 page)

After determining the precise amount he was willing to invest, he paid for drinks and asked for information or suggestions on how he might find a particular person, whom Griffin did not always name. Some men tried to make him pay them before they would even look at the image of Vorian, or asked for payment after just looking at the image, even when they had no information. Over the course of two hours, Griffin grew frustrated with the bantering, after expending only minimal amounts of his cash. He moved to a corner table and sipped a single glass of potent spice beer, but the bitter-cinnamon drug rushed directly to his head, and he ordered a glass of water instead, which cost twice as much as the thick beer did.

By the time he gave up and left the bar, the men were laughing at him. “Come back tomorrow. We’ll think about it, see if we have more information,” said a gruff leader who had a persistent cough.

Begrudging the waste of money from the evening, Griffin unsealed the door of the drinking establishment and returned to the night streets. He didn’t like this place at all. In the cooler night air he tried to get his bearings, turned in the direction where he thought he’d find his lodgings, and headed down a narrow side street.

On this vile planet, Griffin was actually beginning to miss Lankiveil, and couldn’t wait until he saw his parents again, along with his little brother and sister. One day, even Valya would return there from Rossak. The frigid, dark oceans of Lankiveil, the fishing fleets, and the winter ice storms were all rugged and unpleasant, but it had become a sort of home. Grudgingly, he admitted to himself that Lankiveil had toughened the Harkonnens, making them better able to meet challenges, but even the necessities for surviving there seemed like nothing in comparison with the crucible of this desert planet.

Hearing the scuffle of footsteps behind him, he turned to see a shadowy figure approaching. Griffin tensed, placed his left hand on the shield belt controls and his right palm on the hilt of his fighting knife. Thanks to Valya, he had plenty of experience in hand-to-hand combat.

Realizing he’d been spotted, the stranger paused, then flashed a handlight in Griffin’s face, blinding him.

“Who are you? What do you want?” Griffin demanded, trying not to sound intimidated.

The person came closer, dimmed the handlight, and Griffin recognized one of the reticent patrons of the drinking establishment, a ruddy man with a thick crop of silver hair. “You have money to pay for information.” The man stepped closer. “In exchange for all of it, I’ll give you something you don’t expect.”

“And what’s that?” Seeing a sharp glint in the man’s eyes, Griffin subtly activated his shield. In the shadows of the side street, the hum was loud, and he saw a slight distortion in the air.

He watched his adversary for tiny movements, alert for any trick or feint. He wished Valya were there with him. The man didn’t comment on the shield, and it occurred to Griffin that he might not know what it was. Shields were standard-issue throughout the Landsraad League, but he realized that he hadn’t noticed anyone wearing them on the desert planet.

The man came closer and drew his long knife. “I’ll show you how it feels to die.” He laughed and thrust the blade forward like a stinging scorpion, obviously expecting an easy, soft target. Griffin turned, and the shimmering Holtzman field deflected the blow. His pulse raced and adrenaline flowed, readying him for an intense flurry of combat … but this man did not seem up to Griffin’s fighting abilities.

His attacker tried to recover from his surprise, and clumsily drove the dagger in again, but he was unaccustomed to fighting against a shielded man. Griffin used his dagger to slice the back of the man’s hand. Thick, dark blood spurted from the veins as he recoiled with a yelp. Griffin swung his knife sideways around the partial shield and stabbed the man in the lower left side. The blade went in deep, and the attacker grunted and coughed. He nearly pulled Griffin down to the ground with him as he collapsed to his knees.

In sick astonishment, he cried, “You’ve murdered me! You’ve murdered me!”

But Griffin had been careful. Though he and Valya had never actually harmed each other in their many sparring matches, they knew vulnerabilities very well. “It’s not a lethal blow.” He knelt beside the groaning man. “But I can change that.” He held the bloody tip close to the man’s face. “Who sent you to kill me?”

“No one! I just wanted your money.”

“Well, that was poorly planned. Is everyone here so clumsy?”

The man yowled in pain. “I’m bleeding to death!”

Griffin looked from side to side, sure the commotion would draw someone within seconds. He pressed the dagger against the man’s throat. “I’ll end the pain quickly enough if you don’t answer my question.”

“All right! I wanted more than your money!” the man wailed. “I also meant to take your water!”

“Take my water? I don’t have much water.”

“Your body’s water! The desert people can distill it … sell it.” The man sneered at him. “Are you satisfied now?”

Griffin pressed the dagger tip harder against the thug’s throat. “And where should I look for Vorian Atreides? Do you have information on that, too?”

The man groaned and clutched the knife wound in his side. “How should I know where he is? Most people who come here from offworld go to work on spice crews. Check with the Combined Mercantiles offices, see who they hired.”

Shadowy figures emerged from doorways and flitted down the side street. The man squirmed and screamed again. Deciding he would get no further information out of him, Griffin stood. “We need medical attention here,” he called out. The people crowded around the groaning thug, who looked up at them. He flailed his hands and tried to squirm away.

Griffin was astonished to see a knife flash in a woman’s hand. She jerked quickly, drove the blade under the man’s chin and up into his brain. The victim spasmed, then fell dead, spilling very little additional blood. “He was a thief,” she said, leaning over to wipe the blade on his clothing. “Now we’ll take his water.” She looked up at Griffin’s astonished expression, as if expecting him to challenge her. “Unless you claim it?”

Griffin stammered, “No … no.” He turned and fled down the side street toward his lodgings, just wanting to get out of there but alert and ready with his knife in case someone else attacked him.

Behind him, the silent, dusty people wrapped the thug’s body and carried it quickly down another alley. Griffin heard a door seal, but when he glanced back, all signs of them were gone.

What a barbaric place! And Vorian Atreides had
chosen
to come to Arrakis?

We should not be too proud of our triumphs. A perceived victory may only be the feint of your enemy.

—
MANFORD TORONDO
,
The Only Path

He had nothing left. And nothing to lose.

The open wound in his memories forced Ptolemy to leave his home and never look again at the smoldering ruins that stood as a monument to the ignorance, intolerance, and violence of the Butlerians. After much contemplation, he decided to let his family believe that he, too, had been murdered by the savages.

He really was dead, in a way. His belief in the rational nature of human society had been ripped out and stomped into bloody remnants. He could surrender and return quietly to simple research, or he could
do something.
The problem had been defined for him with a painful clarity.

In the past, he had watched the antitechnology antics with a detached but sad disappointment, even a bit of amusement. How could anyone believe such nonsense? Ptolemy had been dismissive, making the mistake of not taking them seriously. They were uneducated mobs easily swayed by a fiery speaker, good at creating scapegoats and not skilled at understanding. He had been convinced that knowledge was stronger than superstition, and rationality stronger than paranoia. It had been a naïve assumption.

Now he knew that simple logic could not win an argument against savages. The mob had burned his lab facility, destroyed his records and equipment, and murdered his close friend and partner.

He didn’t have animalistic fervor, superstitious terror, or a penchant for mindless destruction. He had something stronger—his mind. And Ptolemy would no longer use it in such a cool, analytical way. In response to their zealous violence, he was fueled with a passion and drive unlike anything he had ever felt before. This was not just a thought exercise or a problem in a workbook; this was a battle for civilization itself, rather than barbarism. Instead of applying his knowledge to theoretical pursuits, to well-mannered research and the dissemination of ideas, Ptolemy vowed vengeance; he vowed to destroy the Butlerians.

Using the last of the money he had scraped together from his lab accounts, and then borrowing—some might say stealing—the balance of his allocated research funds from the Zenith Council, Ptolemy booked passage to a place where he was sure his skills would be well received. There he would be protected, and he could offer his services to a like-minded man.

Kolhar. The headquarters of Venport Holdings.

*   *   *

AFTER WHAT HAD
happened on Zenith, he was reluctant—and terrified—to reveal his identity, but if anywhere in the Imperium would be free of antitechnology influence, it was this planet. He remembered how Directeur Venport had challenged Manford at the Landsraad meeting. The business tycoon would understand.

After arriving, however, it took Ptolemy five days to get a personal meeting with the VenHold administrator. The spacing fleet was a whirlwind of activity. Ships were being gathered and supplied, held back from their regular routes for departure on some undocumented mission. Ptolemy knew better than to ask questions, but he was persistent, with steel in his spine. He would not give up.

In the lobby of the administrative building, he showed his credentials to a succession of underlings and finally spoke directly with Cioba Venport, the most important barrier to an audience with the Directeur himself. His past experience, and perhaps the fiery, haunted look in his eyes, convinced her. She ushered him directly into her husband’s office.

Though he wanted to be brave, Ptolemy’s voice quavered and tears burned his eyes as he recounted his hopeful meeting with Manford Torondo on Lampadas, how he had offered him prosthetic legs, a miracle to restore his ability to walk. Emotions were raw as he described what had happened to his lab and his partner. He wanted to speak as a dedicated, rational man, overcoming his terror and grief, but found himself unable to do so. Even so, Directeur Venport did not appear to think less of him.

“I tried to present an olive branch to the Butlerians, and their reply was to murder my partner and destroy my life.” Ptolemy drew a deep breath as he fought back the flames in his memory, the terrible, haunting screams.

Ptolemy looked at the gleam of interest in Venport’s eyes, and insisted, “I am not defeated, sir. I will not remain quiet while those animals continue their rampage. I am here to offer my services in any capacity that will defend human civilization. One day Manford Torondo will understand that when he attacked me, he planted the seeds of his own downfall.”

Venport glanced at his wife in a silent consultation, and she gave the faintest nod. The Directeur’s smile was so broad that his bushy mustache curled upward. “VenHold is delighted to have you, Dr. Ptolemy. It just so happens that we have access to a secret research facility on an uncharted planet, where other scientists like yourself are free to work on innovative projects, without fear of Butlerian influence.”

Ptolemy caught his breath. “That sounds wonderful, impossibly wonderful.”

The other man tapped his fingers on his desktop. “It’s a place where you can let your energy and imagination run free, with virtually unlimited resources and funds, to develop technological advances that will strengthen us against the darkness of ignorance. I intend to crush those mindless fanatics under my heel.”

Ptolemy’s relief was so great he had to sit down. His eyes sparkled, and finally tears spilled down his cheeks. “Then that is where I belong, sir.”

Most accomplishments are no more than initial or intermediate steps. Failure to press ahead is a common mistake.

—
MANFORD TORONDO
, address on Salusa Secundus

Manford was both unsettled and giddy after his successful purge of the research facility on the planet Zenith. The misguided sins of Ptolemy and his Tlulaxa companion were so obvious, and their delusions so deep-seated! Only a few decades had passed since the defeat of Omnius, and if humanity’s greatest scientific minds had already strayed far from the true path, then Manford wept for the future.

The glib prophecy that Erasmus wrote in his journal continued to haunt him, and drive him on:
Given enough time, they will forget … and will create us all over again.

He had to prove the prophecy wrong! This was not the moment to celebrate or bask in an assumed victory. This was not a time for hubris, for easing up. After his followers left the smoldering ruins of the research facility, Manford did not return to peaceful Lampadas, much as he wanted a quiet respite with Anari at his side. Instead, he ordered his followers to head for Salusa Secundus. It was time to face Emperor Salvador Corrino and make the man see clearly.

When his task force of ships landed at the Zimia Spaceport, he did not request clearance. His followers disembarked en masse and made an impromptu march toward the city center and the Imperial Palace, while Salusan officials tried to decide how to react. The unexpected arrival of so many demonstrators stunned the capital city’s security forces, blocked traffic, and threw daily business into turmoil. Manford was glad to draw such attention; it ensured that he would be taken seriously. He found it uplifting.

Since he was making a formal public appearance, rather than going into battle, he rode on a palanquin carried by two of his followers. Anari Idaho walked alongside, ready to slay anyone who gave them a hint of trouble.