Dune: The Butlerian Jihad (44 page)

Hearing three blasts of a shrill whistle, Ishmael looked up to see the frog-lipped supervisor standing on his platform mounted above the mudflats, safe and dry. Ishmael knew it was not yet time for the slaves’ brief morning break.

With narrowed eyes, the supervisor scanned the labor gang, as if mentally making selections. He pointed to a handful of the youngest planters, Ishmael among them, and instructed them to slosh their way back to a staging area on dry land. “Get yourselves cleaned up. You’ve been reassigned.”

Ishmael felt a cold hand squeeze his heart. While he hated the smelly mud, these refugees from Harmonthep were his only connection to his home planet and his grandfather.

Some of the “volunteers” wailed. Two of those not selected clutched at their reassigned companions, refusing to let them go. The frog-mouthed supervisor snapped harsh words and made threatening gestures. A pair of armed Dragoon guards came in to enforce the edict, splashing mud on their golden uniforms as they separated the slaves. Though sad and terrified, Ishmael offered no resistance. He could never win if he fought them.

The supervisor stretched his lips in a grin. “You’re lucky, all of you. There’s been an accident in Savant Holtzman’s laboratories, and he needs replacement slaves to do calculations. Clever boys. Easy work, compared to this.”

Clearly skeptical, Ishmael eyed the ragtag group of mud-spattered youths.

Uprooted again, taken from a dreary existence that had just begun to seem normal, Ishmael trudged along, not understanding what he was expected to do. He would find some way to endure, though. His grandfather had taught him that survival was the essence of success, and that violence was the last refuge of a failure. It was the Zensunni way.

SCRUBBED CLEAN AND with his hair shorn close to his head, Ishmael fidgeted in his fresh clothes. He waited in a large room with a dozen recruits taken from work teams around Starda. Dragoon guards remained stationed at the door, their gold-scale armor and ornate helmets making them look like birds of prey.

Ishmael took a place next to a dark-haired boy about his own age who had light brown skin and a narrow face. “My name is Aliid,” the boy said quietly, though the guards had instructed them all to be silent. Aliid had an intensity that spoke of trouble, or perhaps leadership. A visionary or a criminal.

“I’m Ishmael.” He glanced around nervously.

A Dragoon guard turned toward the whispers, and both boys formed their faces into placid expressions. The guard looked away, and Aliid spoke quickly again. “We were captured on IV Anbus. Where did you come from?”

“Harmonthep.”

A well-dressed man entered the room, causing a commotion as he did so. Pale-skinned and with a square-cut mane of iron-gray hair, he looked and acted like a lord. He wore decorative chains around his neck and flowing white robes with loose sleeves. His face and sharp eyes showed little interest in the batch of slaves. He gazed down his nose as he assessed the young workers without much satisfaction, only resignation. “They’ll do— if they’re trained well enough and carefully watched.”

He stood next to a diminutive, blunt-featured young woman who had the body of a child, though her face looked much older. Preoccupied, the white-robed man muttered something to her and left, as if he had more important things to do.

“That was Savant Holtzman,” the woman said. “The great scientist is your master now. Our work will help defeat the thinking machines.” She offered them a hopeful smile, but few of the boys seemed to care what their new slave master’s purposes might be.

Flustered by their reaction, she continued, “I am Norma Cenva, and I also work with Savant Holtzman. You will be trained to perform mathematical calculations. The war against thinking machines affects all of us, and this is how you can do your part.” She seemed to have rehearsed her speech many times.

Aliid frowned, scorning her words. “I’m taller than
she
is!”

As if hearing him, Norma turned to look directly at Aliid. “With a single stroke of your stylus, you can complete a calculation that may gain victory against Omnius. Keep that in mind.”

When she turned away again, Aliid said out of the corner of his mouth, “And even if we win the war for them, will they free us?”

AT NIGHT IN their communal quarters at the blufftop estate, the slaves were left alone. Here, the Buddislamic captives kept their culture alive.

Ishmael was surprised that he had been cast in among members of the Zenshiite sect, a different interpretation of Buddislam that had split them from the Zensunnis many centuries ago, before the great flight from the crumbling Old Empire.

He met their muscular, dark-eyed leader, Bel Moulay, a man who had obtained permission for his people to wear traditional striped cloths over drab work uniforms. The tribal clothing was a symbol of their identity, the white of freedom and the red of blood. Poritrin slave keepers understood none of the symbolism, which was just as well.

Bright-eyed, Aliid sat next to Ishmael. “Listen to Bel Moulay. He will give us hope. He has a plan.”

Ishmael hunkered down. His belly was full with strange, bland food, but it nourished him. As much as he resented his new master, the boy did prefer working here, rather than on the awful mudflats.

Bel Moulay called them all to prayer in a firm, gruff voice, then intoned sacred sutras in a language that Ishmael’s grandfather had employed, an arcane tongue understood only by the most devout. In that way, they could converse without being understood by eavesdropping masters.

“Our people have waited for vengeance,” Moulay said. “We were free, then captured. Some of us are new slaves, while others have served the evil men for generations.” His eyes were fiery, his teeth very white against dark lips and a black beard. “But God has given us our minds and our belief. It is up to us to find the weapons and the necessary resolve.”

The muttering among the Zenshiites made Ishmael uncomfortable.

Bel Moulay seemed to be advocating outright revolt, a violent uprising against the masters. To Ishmael, that did not seem what Buddallah would have preached.

Sitting together, the IV Anbus slaves made whispered threats of retribution. Moulay talked of the disastrous alloy-resonator test that had caused the deaths of seventeen innocent slaves.

“We have suffered countless indignities,” Moulay said. The slaves growled their agreement. “We do everything our masters require of us. They reap the benefits of what we accomplish, but the Zenshiites”— he looked quickly at Ishmael and the other new additions to the group—”as well as our Zensunni brothers, never attain our freedom.” He leaned forward as if dark thoughts were coursing his mind. “The answer is in our grasp.”

Ishmael remembered that his grandfather had taught philosophical and nonviolent methods of solving problems. Even so, old Weyop had been unable to save his villagers. The pacifistic Zensunni ways had failed them all, at a time of utmost crisis.

Bel Moulay raised a callused fist, as if he intended to thrust it into the crackling fire. “We have been told by men who call themselves ‘righteous slavers’ that they have no compunction against pressing
our people
into work. They claim we owe a debt to humanity because we refused to participate in their foolish war against the machine demons— demons that they had created and thought they controlled. But after centuries of oppression, the people of Poritrin owe
us
. And that is a debt which must be paid in blood.”

Aliid cheered, but beside him Ishmael sat uneasily. He did not agree with the approach, but was unable to offer an alternative. Since he was only a boy, he did not speak up or interrupt the meeting.

Instead, like his companions, he listened to Bel Moulay. . . .

F
ar beyond the League Worlds, thousands of uncharted settlements dotted the Unallied Planets, places where forgotten people eked out meager livings. A few raided villages would never be noticed out here.

By long tradition, good Tlulaxa flesh merchants did not frequently harvest the same world, preferring to surprise unsuspecting groups of captives, not giving them a chance to develop defenses. A resourceful slaver found new cradles of life, untapped resources.

Leaving his transport vessel in orbit, Tuk Keedair dispatched a cargo ship and fresh crew to the surface, along with sufficient credits to hire a few greedy locals. Then Keedair went down to the Arrakis City spaceport by himself to scout around before planning a raid on some of the local communities. He had to be careful when investigating new targets for slave raids, especially on this desolate world at the withered end of space.

The costs of getting here— fuel, food, ships, and crew— were extraordinarily high, not to mention the sheer voyage time and the expense of hauling slaves back in stasis pods. Keedair doubted that raiding Arrakis would prove cost-effective. No wonder people left this place alone.

Arrakis City clung like a scab to the ugly skin of the planet. Hovels and prefabricated dwellings had been established here long ago. The sparse population barely survived by servicing lost traders or exploration vessels, and selling supplies to fugitives from the law. Keedair suspected that anyone desperate enough to run
this
far must be in serious trouble indeed.

As he seated himself in the rundown spaceport bar, his triangular gold earring glinted in the dim illumination. His dark braid hung down at the left side of his head. Its length spoke of years spent garnering wealth, which he spent freely though not frivolously.

He surveyed the sullen locals, noted how they contrasted with a few loud and boisterous offworlders in one corner, rugged men who obviously had plenty of credits, but were disgruntled that Arrakis offered little opportunity for them to spend their money.

Keedair rested an arm across the scarred metal counter. The bartender was a lean man whose skin was a nest of wrinkles, as if all the moisture and body fat had been sapped away, leaving him shriveled like a raisin. A bald, liver-spotted scalp covered the top of his head like a torpedo casing.

Keedair hauled out his hard currency, League credits that were legal tender even on the Unallied Planets. “I feel good today. What’s your best drink?”

The bartender gave him a sour smile. “In mind for something exotic, are you? You think Arrakis might have something to quench your thirst, eh?”

Keedair began to lose patience. “Do I have to pay extra for the chat, or can I just have my drink? Your most expensive. What is it?”

The bartender laughed. “That would be water, sir. Water is the most valuable drink on Arrakis.”

The bartender named a price that was higher than Keedair would expect to pay for supercharged spacecraft fuel. “For
water
? I don’t think so.”

He looked around to see if the bartender was having a joke at his expense, but the other customers seemed to accept it. He’d assumed that the clear drinks in small glasses were colorless alcohol, but it really did seem to be water. He noticed an extravagant local merchant whose billowing, colorful clothes and gaudy ornamentation pegged him as a wealthy man. That one even had a few ice cubes floating in his glass.

“Ridiculous,” Keedair said. “I know when I’m being cheated.”

The bartender shook his bald head. “Water’s hard to come by around here, sir. I can sell you alcohol cheaper, because Arrakis natives don’t want anything that’ll dehydrate them further. And a man with too much strong drink in him can make mistakes. You don’t pay attention out in the desert and it’ll cost you your life.”

In the end, Keedair settled on a fermented substance called “spice beer,” potent and pungent with a strong cinnamon bite at the back of his throat. He found the drink exhilarating and ordered a second.

While he remained doubtful about the profitability of exploiting Arrakis for slaves, Keedair still felt like celebrating. The success of his run on Harmonthep four months earlier had given him enough credits to live for a year. After that raid, Keedair had hired a new team, never wanting to keep employees around for so long that they grew comfortable and complacent. That wasn’t the way a good Tlulaxa businessman managed his affairs. Keedair watched over his work, maintained the details himself, and put tidy profits in his own pockets.

He sipped his spice beer again and began to like it even more. “What’s in this stuff?” When none of the customers seemed interested in conversation, he directed his gaze back at the bartender. “Is this beer brewed here, or is it an import?”

“Made on Arrakis, sir.” When the bartender grinned, his wrinkles folded in upon themselves like a weird origami sculpture made of leather. “It’s brought in by the desert people, Zensunni nomads.”

Keedair’s attention perked up at the mention of the Buddislamic sect. “I’d heard there were a few bands living here in the wastelands. How can I find them?”

“
Find
them?” The bartender chuckled. “Nobody wants to look for them. Dirty, violent folk. They kill strangers.”

Keedair could hardly believe the answer. It took him two tries to formulate his question because the effects of the spice beer had caught him unawares, causing him to slur his words. “But Zensunni— I thought they were meek pacifists?”

The bartender emitted a dry cackle. “Some may be, but these aren’t afraid to shed blood to make their point, if you know what I mean.”

“Are they numerous?”

The bartender scoffed. “At most, we see only a dozen or two at a time. I’m surprised they’re not so inbred that every baby comes out a mutant.”

Keedair’s sharp-featured face fell, and he switched his braid to the other shoulder. His plans began to crumble. In addition to the expense of bringing his teams here to Arrakis, his raiders would have to scour the desert just to drag a few sand rats back to market. Keedair sighed and took a long drink of spice beer. Probably not worth the effort. He’d be better off hitting Harmonthep again, even if it made him look bad to other slavers.