Dune (30 page)

Kinet put a hand on the pilot's arm. “Look, Czigo, no need to. . . .”

Jessica twisted her neck, spat out the gag. She pitched her voice in low, intimate tones. “Gentlemen! No need to
fight
over me.” At the same time, she writhed sinuously for Kinet's benefit.

She saw them grow tense, knowing that in this instant they were convinced of the need to fight over her. Their disagreement required no other reason. In their minds, they
were
fighting over her.

She held her face high in the instrument glow to be sure Kinet would read her lips, said: “You mustn't disagree.” They drew farther apart, glanced warily at each other. “Is any woman worth fighting over?” she asked.

By uttering the words, by being there, she made herself infinitely worth their fighting.

Paul clamped his lips tightly closed, forced himself to be silent. There had been the one chance for him to succeed with the Voice. Now—everything depended on his mother whose experience went so far beyond his own.

“Yeah,” Scarface said. “No need to fight over. . . .”

His hand flashed toward the pilot's neck. The blow was met by a splash of metal that caught the arm and in the same motion slammed into Kinet's chest.

Scarface groaned, sagged backward against his door.

“Thought I was some dummy didn't know that trick,” Czigo said. He brought back his hand, revealing the knife. It glittered in reflected moonlight.

“Now for the cub,” he said and leaned toward Paul.

“No need for that,” Jessica murmured.

Czigo hesitated.

“Wouldn't you rather have me cooperative?” Jessica asked. “Give the boy a chance.” Her lip curled in a sneer. “Little enough chance he'd have out there in that sand. Give him that and. . . .” She smiled. “You could find yourself well rewarded.”

Czigo glanced left, right, returned his attention to Jessica. “I've heard me what can happen to a man in this desert,” he said. “Boy might find the knife a kindness.”

“Is it so much I ask?” Jessica pleaded.

“You're trying to trick me,” Czigo muttered.

“I don't want to see my son die,” Jessica said. “Is that a trick?”

Czigo moved back, elbowed the door latch. He grabbed Paul, dragged him across the seat, pushed him half out the door and held the knife posed. “What'll y' do, cub, if I cut y'r bonds?”

“He'll leave here immediately and head for those rocks,” Jessica said.

“Is that what y'll do, cub?” Czigo asked.

Paul's voice was properly surly. “Yes.”

The knife moved down, slashed the bindings of his legs. Paul felt the hand on his back to hurl him down onto the sand, feigned a lurch against the doorframe for purchase, turned as though to catch himself, lashed out with his right foot.

The toe was aimed with a precision that did credit to his long years of training, as though all of that training focused on this instant. Almost every muscle of his body cooperated in the placement of it. The tip struck the soft part of Czigo's abdomen just below the sternum, slammed upward with terrible force over the liver and through the diaphragm to crush the right ventricle of the man's heart.

With one gurgling scream, the guard jerked backward across the seats. Paul, unable to use his hands, continued his tumble onto the sand, landing with a roll that took up the force and brought him back to his feet in one motion. He dove back into the cabin, found the knife and held it in his teeth while his mother sawed her bonds. She took the blade and freed his hands.

“I could've handled him,” she said. “He'd have had to cut my bindings. That was a foolish risk.”

“I saw the opening and used it,” he said.

She heard the harsh control in his voice, said: “Yueh's house sign is scrawled on the ceiling of this cabin.”

He looked up, saw the curling symbol.

“Get out and let us study this craft,” she said. “There's a bundle under the pilot's seat. I felt it when we got in.”

“Bomb?”

“Doubt it. There's something peculiar here.”

Paul leaped out to the sand and Jessica followed. She turned, reached under the seat for the strange bundle, seeing Czigo's feet close to her face, feeling dampness on the bundle as she removed it, realizing the dampness was the pilot's blood.

Waste of moisture,
she thought, knowing that this was Arrakeen thinking.

Paul stared around them, saw the rock scarp lifting out of the desert like a beach rising from the sea, wind-carved palisades beyond. He turned back as his mother lifted the bundle from the 'thopter, saw her stare across the dunes toward the Shield Wall. He looked to see what drew her attention, saw another 'thopter swooping toward them, realized they'd not have time to clear the bodies out of this 'thopter and escape.

“Run, Paul!” Jessica shouted. “It's Harkonnens!”

 

A MAN in Harkonnen uniform skidded to a stop at the end of the hall, stared in at Yueh, taking in at a single glance Mapes' body, the sprawled form of the Duke, Yueh standing there. The man held a lasgun in his right hand. There was a casual air of brutality about him, a sense of toughness and poise that sent a shiver through Yueh.

Sardaukar,
Yueh thought.
A Bashar by the look of him. Probably one of the Emperor's own sent here to keep an eye on things. No matter what the uniform, there's no disguising them.

“You're Yueh,” the man said. He looked speculatively at the Suk School ring on the Doctor's hair, stared once at the diamond tattoo and then met Yueh's eyes.

“I am Yueh,” the Doctor said.

“You can relax, Yueh,” the man said. “When you dropped the house shields we came right in. Everything's under control here. Is this the Duke?”

“This is the Duke.”

“Dead?”

“Merely unconscious. I suggest you tie him.”

“Did you do for these others?” He glanced back down the hall where Mapes' body lay.

“More's the pity,” Yueh muttered.

“Pity!” the Sardaukar sneered. He advanced, looked down at Leto. “So that's the great Red Duke.”

If I had doubts about what this man is, that would end them,
Yueh
thought. Only the Emperor calls the Atreides the Red Dukes.

The Sardaukar reached down, cut the red hawk insignia from Leto's uniform. “Little souvenir,” he said. “Where's the ducal signet ring?”

“He doesn't have it on him,” Yueh said.

“I can see that!” the Sardaukar snapped.

Yueh stiffened, swallowed.
If they press me, bring in a Truthsayer, they'll find out about the ring, about the 'thopter I prepared—all will fail.

“Sometimes the Duke sent the ring with a messenger as surety that an order came directly from him,” Yueh said.

“Must be damned trusted messengers,” the Sardaukar muttered.

“Aren't you going to tie him?” Yueh ventured.

“How long'll he be unconscious?”

“Two hours or so. I wasn't as precise with his dosage as I was for the woman and boy.”

The Sardaukar spurned the Duke with his toe. “This was nothing to fear even when awake. When will the woman and boy awaken?”

“About ten minutes.”

“So soon?”

“I was told the Baron would arrive immediately behind his men.”

“So he will. You'll wait outside, Yueh.” He shot a hard glance at Yueh. “Now!”

Yueh glanced at Leto. “What about. . . .”

“He'll be delivered to the Baron all properly trussed like a roast for the oven.” Again, the Sardaukar looked at the diamond tattoo on Yueh's forehead. “You're known; you'll be safe enough in the halls. We've no more time for chit-chat, traitor. I hear the others coming.”

Traitor,
Yueh thought. He lowered his gaze, pressed past the Sardaukar, knowing this as a foretaste of how history would remember him:
Yueh the traitor.

He passed more bodies on his way to the front entrance and glanced at them, fearful that one might be Paul or Jessica. All were house troopers or wore Harkonnen uniform.

Harkonnen guards came alert, staring at him as he emerged from the front entrance into flame-lighted night. The palms along the road had been fired to illuminate the house. Black smoke from the flammables used to ignite the trees poured upward through orange flames.

“It's the traitor,” someone said.

“The Baron will want to see you soon,” another said.

I must get to the 'thopter,
Yueh thought.
I must put the ducal signet where Paul will find it.
And fear struck him:
If Idaho suspects me or grows impatient-if he doesn't wait and go exactly where I told him—Jessica and Paul will not be saved from the carnage. I'll be denied even the smallest relief from my act.

The Harkonnen guard released his arm, said “Wait over there out of the way.”

Abruptly, Yueh saw himself as cast away in this place of destruction, spared nothing, given not the smallest pity.
Idaho must not fail!

Another guard bumped into him, barked: “Stay out of the way, you!”

Even when they've profited by me they despise me.
Yueh thought. He straightened himself as he was pushed aside, regained some of his dignity.

“Wait for the Baron!” a guard officer snarled.

Yueh nodded, walked with controlled casualness along the front of the house, turned the corner into shadows out of sight of the burning palms. Quickly, every step betraying his anxiety, Yueh made for the rear yard beneath the conservatory where the 'thopter waited—the craft they had placed there to carry away Paul and his mother.

A guard stood at the open rear door of the house, his attention focused on the lighted hall and men banging through there, searching from room to room.

How confident they were!

Yueh hugged the shadows, worked his way around the 'thopter, eased open the door on the side away from the guard. He felt under the front seats for the Fremkit he had hidden there, lifted a flap and slipped in the ducal signet. He felt the crinkling of the spice paper there, the note he had written, pressed the ring into the paper. He removed his hand, resealed the pack.

Softly, Yueh closed the 'thopter door, worked his way back to the corner of the house and around toward the flaming trees.

Now, it is done,
he thought.

Once more, he emerged into the light of the blazing palms. He pulled his cloak around him, stared at the flames.
Soon I will know. Soon I will see the Baron and I will know. And the Baron—he will encounter a small tooth.

 

THE BARON Vladimir Harkonnen stood at a viewport of the grounded lighter he was using as a command post. Out the port he saw the flame-lighted night of Arrakeen. His attention focused on the distant Shield Wall where his secret weapon was doing its work.

Explosive artillery.

The guns nibbled at the caves where the Duke's fighting men had retreated for a last-ditch stand. Slowly measured bites of orange glare, showers of rock and dust in the brief illumination—and the Duke's men were being sealed off to die by starvation, caught like animals in their burrows.

The Baron could feel the distant chomping—a drumbeat carried to him through the ship's metal:
broomp... broomp.
Then:
BROOMP-BROOMP!

Who would think of reviving artillery in this day of shields?
The thought was a chuckle in his mind.
But it was predictable the Duke's men would run for those caves. And the Emperor will appreciate my cleverness in preserving the lives of our mutual force.

He adjusted one of the little suspensors that guarded his fat body against the pull of gravity. A smile creased his mouth, pulled at the lines of his jowls.

A pity to waste such fighting men as the Duke's,
he thought. He smiled more broadly, laughing at himself.
Pity should be cruel!
He nodded. Failure was, by definition, expendable. The whole universe sat there, open to the man who could make the right decisions. The uncertain rabbits had to be exposed, made to run for their burrows. Else how could you control them and breed them? He pictured his fighting men as bees routing the rabbits. And he thought:
The day hums sweetly when you have enough bees working for you.

A door opened behind him. The Baron studied the reflection in the night-blackened viewport before turning.

Piter de Vries advanced into the chamber followed by Umman Kudu, the captain of the Baron's personal guard. There was a motion of men just outside the door, the mutton faces of his guard, their expressions carefully sheeplike in his presence.

The Baron turned.

Piter touched finger to forelock in his mocking salute. “Good news, m'Lord. The Sardaukar have brought in the Duke.”

“Of course they have,” the Baron rumbled.

He studied the somber mask of villainy on Piter's effeminate face. And the eyes: those shaded slits of bluest blue-in-blue.

Soon I must remove him,
the Baron thought.
He has almost outlasted his usefulness, almost reached the point of positive danger to my person. First, though, he must make the people of Arrakis hate him. Then—they will welcome my darling Feyd-Rautha as a savior.