Dune (22 page)

Halleck grinned, said: “Not a bit of it, Sire.”

The Duke banked his craft in a long easy curve—climbing over the crawler.

Paul, crushed into a corner beside a window, stared down at the silent machine on the sand. The wormsign had broken off about four hundred meters from the crawler. And now, there appeared to be turbulence in the sand around the factory.

“The worm is now beneath the crawler,” Kynes said. “You are about to witness a thing few have seen.”

Flecks of dust shadowed the sand around the crawler now. The big machine began to tip down to the right. A gigantic sand whirlpool began forming there to the right of the crawler. It moved faster and faster. Sand and dust filled the air now for hundreds of meters around.

Then they saw it!

A wide hole emerged from the sand. Sunlight flashed from glistening white spokes within it. The hole's diameter was at least twice the length of the crawler, Paul estimated. He watched as the machine slid into that opening in a billow of dust and sand. The hole pulled back.

“Gods, what a monster!” muttered a man beside Paul.

“Got all our floggin' spice!” growled another.

“Someone is going to pay for this,” the Duke said. “I promise you that.”

By the very flatness of his father's voice, Paul sensed the deep anger. He found that he shared it. This was criminal waste!

In the silence that followed, they heard Kynes.

“Bless the Maker and His water,” Kynes murmured. “Bless the coming and going of Him. May His passage cleanse the world. May He keep the world for His people.”

“What's that you're saying?” the Duke asked.

But Kynes remained silent.

Paul glanced at the men crowded around him. They were staring fearfully at the back of Kynes' head. One of them whispered: “Liet.”

Kynes turned, scowling. The man sank back, abashed.

Another of the rescued men began coughing—dry and rasping. Presently, he gasped: “Curse this hell hole!”

The tall Dune man who had come last out of the crawler said: “Be you still, Coss. You but worsen your cough.” He stirred among the men until he could look through them at the back of the Duke's head. “You be the Duke Leto, I warrant,” he said. “It's to you we give thanks for our lives. We were ready to end it there until you came along.”

“Quiet, man, and let the Duke fly his ship,” Halleck muttered.

Paul glanced at Halleck. He, too, had seen the tension wrinkles at the corner of his father's jaw. One walked softly when the Duke was in a rage.

Leto began easing his 'thopter out of its great banking circle, stopped at a new sign of movement on the sand. The worm had withdrawn into the depths and now, near where the crawler had been, two figures could be seen moving north away from the sand depression. They appeared to glide over the surface with hardly a lifting of dust to mark their passage.

“Who's that down there?” the Duke barked.

“Two Johnnies who came along for the ride, Scor,” 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:
“TheLisan 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 than 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.

 

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.

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 watershipper 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.”