Sisterhood of Dune (63 page)

They spotted the signs of Griffin’s passage quickly enough. Leaving the line of rocks, he had set off across the dunes that filled the large basin. At the western horizon, perhaps twenty kilometers in the distance, Vor discerned another line of mountains; Griffin was running straight toward them, likely hoping to reach the shelter before dawn. He had already gone perhaps three kilometers, slogging a long line of footprints through the soft sand like the track of a centipede.

“Your enemy is stupid, Vorian Atreides,” said Ishanti. “He’s lucky he hasn’t summoned a sandworm with all that stumbling around.”

During Vor’s time among the spice workers, old Calbir had taught him exactly what to look for. In the moonlight across the undulating expanse of sand, he spotted a vibrating ripple on the surface, shadows pulsating forward in a concentrated wave. “He has.” Vor accelerated the skimcraft. “We have to save him.”

“I knew you’d say that.” Ishanti pointed to the west. “He’s on a line of steep, soft dunes now—we can’t land there. See that valley to the east? Drop me on the edge of those dunes.”

“What will you do there?”

“Draw the worm’s attention. Circle low, and I’ll drop out of the skimcraft. Then you can fly back and retrieve that idiot before Shai-Hulud comes.” Ishanti grabbed a pack that was clipped to the inner wall of the cockpit and held on to the door frame.

As he swooped low in the direction she had requested, Vor asked, “You’ll be all right?”

She snorted. “You’ve seen me summon a worm before. I’ll be fine.” She popped open the hatch and flashed a smile at him. “Hurry, you don’t have much time. If we can’t save your friend, we lose all that water and Naib Sharnak will be annoyed.” She laughed at her own cruel joke. Then, as he throttled back, she tumbled out of the aircraft and landed in a crouch on the soft sand. As Vor circled the skimcraft, he saw her dig in her pack to remove the items she needed.

The young Harkonnen had heard the flying craft approach, and now he, too, saw the sandworm plowing a dry wave straight toward him. Half of the enormous head emerged, an open scooping maw that shoveled the dunes.

Vor accelerated, but if he couldn’t land the craft on the steep dunes, he didn’t know how he could possibly save Griffin in time.

Suddenly the worm changed course and charged like a bull toward where Ishanti waited. She must have used one of the Freemen syncopated mechanisms that sent drumbeat vibrations into the sand.

Vor found a place to land in a trough between dunes. After hesitating, Griffin stumbled and slipped down the dune face, hurrying toward the aircraft. He might have been willing to die out in the desert, but the sight of the monstrous sandworm had changed his mind.

The intense Harkonnen yanked open the skimcraft door to scramble aboard, then paused upon seeing Vor. “You! Why did you come after me?”

“To save you. Not many others were willing to do so.”

Griffin hauled himself inside along with a shower of sand and dust, then pulled the hatch closed again. “I should have stolen one of these skimcraft,” he said, looking at the universal controls. “Then I wouldn’t have to deal with you.” He sat in the copilot’s seat.

Vor smiled ruefully.

“You think this means I forgive you?” Griffin asked, brushing sand from his mustache and goatee.

“I haven’t thought that far ahead. Now keep quiet. I need to concentrate so I can rescue my friend. She risked her life to divert the worm from you.”

Fearing that the aircraft’s engine noise would attract the beast, he flew high, then swooped low as soon as he saw Ishanti stumbling along the top of a whaleback dune, gaining distance from where she’d planted the rhythmic pounding device. With an intermittent gait like a start-and-stop ballet, the desert woman ran parallel to a flat basin between the dunes, an area that did not offer her any more cover than the dunes themselves. Vor saw that he could easily retrieve her while the worm was busy with the thumping device.

As he circled for a stable place to set down in the basin, Ishanti ran down the face of the dune at an angle toward him. Suddenly she stumbled into a patch of white sand, a pale blemish on the dunes. The sand began to ripple and pound beneath her, vibrating rhythmically. Vor recalled one of the patient lectures Calbir had given him about hazards on Arrakis, including drumsand. Ishanti should have spotted it, but she’d been running away, watching the aircraft. The section of dune let out a pounding series of booms as the compacted sand grains tumbled and settled into acoustic configurations.

The drumsand noise was much louder than the thumper, and Vor saw the worm coming, fast. Ishanti saw it, too, but she had sunk into the loose sand up to her waist. Powder engulfed her like sucking mud, and Vor didn’t dare set down anywhere close, because the skimcraft might sink into the unstable sand.

The sandworm’s head emerged like a battering ram through the wall of the dune, attracted by the still-quelling vibrations of the drumsand.

Ishanti was shouting. He could see the panic in her face.

Griffin was terrified, his eyes wide. “She’ll never make it!”

Vor guided the skimcraft down. “I think I can get close. Toss me that rope from the kit.” The aircraft flew closer. Griffin uncoiled the line and gave it to Vor. “Now tie it to that stanchion.”

As the aircraft swooped toward the lone woman trapped on the dunes, Vor watched the eyeless beast plunge forward. He saw, but refused to believe, that he couldn’t make it in time. Ishanti tried to dig herself out of the powdery sand that had betrayed her.

“What are you going to do?” Griffin said. “It’s not possible. The worm—”

“Take the damned controls!” he yelled, and as soon as Griffin grabbed the piloting stick, Vor yanked open the hatch and rolled it back in its tracks. The sudden lurching breezes nearly pulled him from the piloting seat, but he held on to the anchored rope. The skimcraft raced over the sands, on a collision course with the charging worm.

Wrapping the rope around his shoulders, Vor leaned out of the hatch, dangling into the open, dry air. The aircraft engines roared, but he shouted even louder. “Ishanti! Grab my hand!”

Griffin dropped closer, and Vor hung down, trusting the rope, stretching out his arm.

The worm lunged high, blasting through the sand. Ishanti reached up, but he watched her expression fall as she saw that Vor could never make it, would never get close enough. The worm would take her and smash the skimcraft as well, but Vor refused to give up.

She took the decision away from him. At the last moment, Ishanti dropped her arm and hurled her body loose from the sand and down the dune face,
away
from the oncoming aircraft.

“No!” Vor cried, but she had done it on purpose, to sacrifice herself.

The sliding sand and Ishanti’s tumbling body diverted the worm by the smallest degree. Struggling to pick herself up from the loose sand, the brave woman turned and faced the monster, ignoring Vor and the skimcraft, accepting her fate. She raised both hands, whether in defiance or prayer, Vor couldn’t tell.

Dangling out of the hatch, unable to stop the monster, Vor shouted to Ishanti, begging her, but the words withered in his throat.

In a thunder of sound, the sandworm rose directly in front of her, and Griffin barely managed to swerve their course away from the dune top. The worm engulfed Ishanti and dove beneath the sands with her, tunneling away and leaving barely a ripple where she had been.

Sick inside, Vor hung there until Griffin dragged on the rope and pulled him back inside. Vor grabbed the cockpit controls and gained altitude; it took him a moment to notice that four other Freemen skimcraft were closing in, surrounding them. So, Naib Sharnak had dispatched others as well, but too late. They had seen everything.

Griffin said nothing. He was ashamed and subdued.

The desert squadron flew near Vor’s skimcraft, and he did not try to escape. He turned the aircraft around to follow them back to the cave settlement. “She gave her life to save us,” he said. “We’re going back to the Freemen.”

Sometimes it doesn’t take many nails to seal a coffin.

—Emperor Jules Corrino

Emperor Salvador Corrino did not like to witness torture, even when it was conducted on his behalf. He understood it was a necessary tool of state, but he preferred that it be done where he couldn’t see or hear the details.
Results.
All he wanted was results. Sometimes, though, he couldn’t avoid his obligations.

Dr. Zhoma lay in agony, strapped on a multifunction rack while one of the hooded “truth technicians” plied his shadowy trade. Ironically, the tall, thin man named Reeg Lemonis had learned his skills and adept understanding of the human body’s pain centers during several years in the Suk School’s specialized training division, Scalpel. At the moment, Salvador was sure the Suk administrator regretted that her school had produced such skilled graduates.

Because the Butlerians frowned on complex technology, Lemonis relied on tried-and-true devices. He had already used an extremities vice to crush two of Zhoma’s fingers. Now the man glanced up to acknowledge Emperor Salvador as he attached another clamp and a shock-pack to the doctor’s head.

Roderick stood beside the Emperor, also noticeably disturbed. Zhoma moaned and made incomprehensible sounds, only some of which were recognizable as words. She had endured a remarkable amount of pain before Lemonis produced any interesting results. Roderick had been sickened and fascinated by the process, but the truth technician had not inflicted genuine physical damage until she confessed her plot. After that, even Roderick had little sympathy for her.

Lemonis finished attaching the head clamp, checked the fitting, and looked up. “It’s shocking information, Sire. The good doctor has revealed some appalling secrets, financial improprieties and major fraud—and she’s confessed to murder.”

Salvador shot a quick glance at Roderick. “Murder? Who was the victim?”

The torturer had recorded the exact words, but he summarized. “She killed her predecessor at the school, Dr. Elo Bando. Injected him with dozens of lethal chemicals in his office, then used her position to cover up her crime and rule the death a suicide.”

Salvador blinked in surprise. “Poor Dr. Bando! She wanted his position badly enough to murder for it?” His stomach knotted, and he made a sound of disgust.

“Not … exactly, Sire. She claims he embezzled large sums of money from you and nearly bankrupted the Suk School. She also insists that he was fabricating many useless treatments for you and charging you outrageous amounts.”

Salvador’s skin felt hot, and his pulse raced. The pounding headache had returned, like something trying to break out from inside his skull. “It’s a lie—you need to use more enthusiastic methods to get to the bottom of this. She’s obviously trying to curry favor now, and she’ll make up any nonsense to stop the pain.”

Roderick’s look was unreadable. “In that case, brother, the rest of this interrogation is fruitless. Lemonis is a very competent Scalpel investigator.”

“Oh, she’s been telling the truth,” the pain technician said; he did not notice the Emperor’s embarrassment. “And she has more to tell us about the plot surrounding you, Sire. It shouldn’t take much longer until we know who put her up to it.”

As Lemonis moved on to his next phase, Roderick looked over at Salvador and said, “She is a Suk doctor, the administrator of the school … the person
I
picked to be your personal physician. I’m very sorry I let you down.”

“It’s not your fault—she’s clever and deceived us all,” Salvador said. “And you were the one who caught her.” Dr. Zhoma screamed. Salvador winced, waited for the interruption to end, and added, “I trust you completely.”

Less than an hour later, the torturer was satisfied that he had acquired all the available information. Dr. Zhoma lay broken but still alive as Lemonis presented his results to the Emperor. “This doctor has a high tolerance for pain. I have left her conscious so she can answer all your additional questions directly.”

Salvador felt queasy, looking down at all the blood and knowing he would never have survived half of what Zhoma had endured. Her eyes were desperate, her face bruised and bloodied. He leaned over her, breathing slowly in and out, and made his voice as deep and terrible as he could. “And what did you plan for me? Are you an assassin?”

“The Sisterhood…” she said. He couldn’t look at her bruised lips and smashed teeth; all the blood made him uncomfortable. “Breeding records … you must not have children. Tainted bloodline … They sent me to sterilize you.”

Salvador fumed. “
Sterilize
me? They want to destroy the Corrino line?”

“No … just yours. Roderick’s line should be the Corrino emperors.”

Prince Roderick’s brow furrowed in deep concern. “The Sisterhood is scheming against the Imperial throne?” He shot a glance at Salvador. “We need to get Anna away from them. We sent her there to keep her safe!”

But Zhoma wasn’t finished. What started out as a laugh turned into a cough. She seemed to feel a surge of defiant energy and she spoke with absolute clarity. “After seeing how the Butlerians have you under their thumb, I decided sterilizing you wasn’t good enough—you should be
killed
instead.” She slumped back onto the table. “You’re going to execute me anyway, so I’ll tell you what everyone is saying behind your back: Roderick would be the better leader, by far.”

*   *   *

WHEN THE TWO
men returned to the Palace, after changing clothes to remove the sweat and bloodstains, they were surprised to encounter a somber, formal delegation from Rossak. Sister Dorotea, two other Sisters—and Anna.

“Well,” Salvador said, looking at his brother as they both stepped up onto the throne dais in the meeting hall, “I suppose that’s fortunate timing, now that we know what they’re really up to.”

Roderick, though, narrowed his eyes and regarded the delegation with concern. Anna looked confused and disoriented, physically unharmed, but …
wrong,
somehow, and very much changed.

Holding the young woman’s hand, Dorotea stepped forward and bowed. Her voice was soft and contrite. “Your Highness, a terrible tragedy has occurred.”