* * *
“WHAT IS HAPPENING to my son?” Leto stood ready to fight any foe to protect Paul, but there was nothing he could do. “Give me answers, Yueh!”
The Suk doctor held down the convulsing young man, who had vomited several more times until his stomach was empty. Yueh had already injected him with stabilizers from his medkit, strapped on a fluid pack. With instruments in hand, he worked with whipsaw movements, like a battlefield surgeon. “I am running tests, my Lord. I can treat the symptoms, but I cannot cure him until I know what’s wrong. I am confident this will help in the meantime.”
“Seven hells, he’s been poisoned somehow,” Gurney said. He had drawn his kindjal. Leto felt confident in Gurney’s ability to protect them all against an overt attack, but this was not an enemy that any sword could defeat.
“How could he have been poisoned?” Leto demanded. “How is that possible? We caught our own fish, have not touched the pack food.”
Gurney turned slowly as if expecting assassins to sweep in out of the wooded darkness. “I am not an imaginative man, Sire, but even I can think of ways—something slipped into our equipment perhaps, contact poison sprayed on his bedding.”
Leto resisted the urge to deny each possibility, but saw Paul shaking and pale, his eyes red. He had wanted to get away from countless retainers and guards, for this time of bonding with Paul on their customary retreat. And now … “This has to be part of some plot. He looks like Wellan when he died from the ailar. Save him!”
Yueh continued to work at a measured but frantic pace. “There are some similarities in the symptoms, my Lord, but there are many possibilities.”
The young man’s back arched as if he were trying to throw off a crushing weight.
“Paul—” Leto gasped. He meant it as a shout, but the word came out as a desperate whisper.
Gurney said, “I’m activating the emergency comm to summon rescue ships. They can be here in…” His voice trailed off.
Leto looked at him in stark silence. It would probably take much too long for help to arrive. “Yueh, will he be all right?”
The Suk doctor continued to work. “I do not know, Sire, but we’ll know in the next few minutes if my treatment has any effect. If not…” He peeled Paul’s eyelids back, took his pulse. He’d taken blood samples, and the chemical analyzers were already offering a first approximation. “I see no traces of ailar in his bloodstream. He has not been drugged, that I can tell.”
“Some other poison, then!”
“How can you give him an antidote if you don’t know what the toxin is?” Gurney asked.
“I have already done the obvious—fluids, electrolytes, saline,” Yueh said. “In the past few minutes, his pulse has already slowed, grown more stable. That is a good sign. His body reacted violently to some substance, but he is driving it off.” He glanced at where Paul had vomited on the ground. “Because we all had the same food for dinner, I have to assume it’s not anything he ate.”
Leto struggled to understand. “But how could someone have slipped poison in—” He looked at Yueh and Gurney. Could either of these men have done something so treacherous? And why out here? Both of them had had ample opportunity to poison Paul for years if they were going to do so. Such suspicions were insane.
“We did not all eat the same thing,” Gurney pointed out. “We caught moonfish, but we each ate our own. And Paul’s was different…”
Yueh looked up, blinking. “The spawning female! A moonfish in the reproductive stage could well exude unusual hormones or toxins.” He rummaged in his medkit, found another autoinjector, and slapped it against Paul’s neck. “Food poisoning can cause such a violent reaction. Perhaps we were looking too hard for an insidious answer.”
Leto knelt and rested his hand on Paul’s shoulder, stroked his son’s dark hair away from his forehead. Beads of sweat glistened there, but Paul had calmed, was resting more easily. His breathing was even.
Yueh took another set of readings. “Temperature returning to normal.” He breathed a long, slow sigh of relief. “We may be past the crisis. Let the boy rest, and we’ll watch him closely.”
Leto stared down. Every planetary leader, every head of a House Major or House Minor was always on guard for his or her life. Poison snoopers and shields, self-defense, and spies were a way of life in the Imperium.
Could it truly be possible that Paul’s sickness had nothing to do with treachery or an assassination attempt? Just tainted fish?
Yueh looked up at him. Gurney stood guarded, alarmed, and watchful, but he had allowed himself to relax his imminent killing stance. The Suk doctor double-checked his readings. “I cannot say with absolutely certainty, Sire, but sometimes a fever is just a fever, and food poisoning is just an accident.”
“Thank you, Yueh.” Leto let out a shuddering sigh. “I will leave Paul’s life in your hands.”
Unfortunately, the most evil personalities often possess extraordinary intellectual skills that enable them to advance their dark agendas.
—PRINCESS IRULAN, In My Father’s House
Two men stepped away from the Harkonnen ornithopter onto loose, sparkling sand. Heat devils wavered over the desert, but Rabban was most interested in the rusty red stain of melange on the landscape.
He and Piter de Vries stared at a battered spice harvester, a dangerous and groaning wreck that should have been removed from service long ago. It lumbered its way across the open dune field, scooping and sifting sand to separate out melange. The harvester would work here until its vibrations summoned a worm, and then it was supposed to be lifted out of danger in the nick of time. The giant machine had done this many times before.
The crew, however, did not know that this particular unit had been removed from all Harkonnen equipment records five runs earlier. Any spice it produced now would not appear on production manifests or tax records, because this particular factory no longer existed on any inventory.
It was a ghost. A profitable one.
Rabban saw spotter aircraft circling over a wide range of the sky, pilots ready to call out wormsign. This harvester had been dropped down onto the spice sands by a carryall only minutes before his own ’thopter landed.
The noises of closer aircraft thrummed in the sky as a squadron of secret mercenary craft hovered directly overhead, awaiting a signal from Rabban. Operated by men secretly transported here from Giedi Prime—outside of the Baron’s normal staff and military—these were pirate vessels, ready to snatch a load of spice and whisk it to safety.
It was a special operation that the crew of the doomed harvester knew nothing about. For several weeks, ever since the old wreck had been officially decommissioned, the crew had not been allowed back into Carthag, but rather were billeted at isolated Harkonnen outposts or the revived Orgiz processing facility, which also appeared on no maps.
The factory crew complained about terrible conditions aboard the barely functional spice factory, and had begun to disbelieve promises of higher and higher bonuses. Rabban knew the crew was played out and needed to be disposed of. He also judged that the factory would not last beyond today. Time to scuttle the whole operation—for real this time. Six full, undocumented loads of spice made a worthwhile profit.
Burly Rabban, a personification of brute force, looked to his Mentat companion, a far thinner, jittery man. Piter de Vries was a weapon of calculated plans, proud of his acuity and insight. Rabban found him annoying, though, with his wild hair, effeminate face, and acidic insults. His uncle tolerated the twisted Mentat only so long as he proved himself useful—as with this particular operation. Sooner or later, though—just like this lumbering factory—de Vries’s usefulness would end.
Rabban glanced at his nemesis. If my uncle decides to kill Piter, I hope he lets me do it.
He activated a headset, heard static and the chatter of voices over the line, the harvester crew, the supervisor urging his workers to keep the factory lumbering along for just a little longer. Rabban changed channels, heard h
is pirates talking, preparing for their part of the operation.
The twisted Mentat watched with clear distaste as the crippled, creaking factory wheezed forward. “Even my most generous projections did not envision the equipment lasting this long. The manufacturer is to be commended.”
“That harvester is even older than you are,” Rabban quipped. He chuckled at his joke.
The Mentat grimaced. “Perhaps it will last longer than you, unless you show me proper respect and recognize my worth.” His voice had a melodic, threatening quality, which managed to make Rabban feel inadequate.
Rabban flushed, inhaling deeply of the hot, dry air. “Your worth, in comparison to me? I am the Count of Lankiveil, recently named the Baron’s governor-designate of Arrakis.”
“And I am a very expensive Mentat, specially indoctrinated by the Tleilaxu per Harkonnen specifications.” He paused, sniffed. “The Baron has not told me about you being appointed governor here, official or unofficial.”
One day, Rabban would lose his temper and break Piter de Vries. “My uncle named me in his place when he went back to Giedi Prime on business, but even when he returns here to Arrakis, I will still be your superior.”
“Oh, my superior?” A cruel smile worked around the edges of his sapho-stained mouth. “A moment, while I try to visualize that.”
Rabban dismissed the insect. He had more important things to do, with the pirate operation here reaching its peak. He had to be more subtle, more patient.
“As I’ve told you before, life is a chess game,” the Baron had counseled. “You must think several moves ahead.”
Good advice, although not so easily heeded in the heat of the moment. This time, Rabban decided to ignore the Mentat’s provocation. Instead, he stared at the noisy, shaking harvester. “I prove my superiority each time our pirates slip away with another load of undocumented spice.” Continued successes like today would guarantee Rabban’s designation as the Baron’s heir. In that position, he would have plenty of time to dispose of the annoying twisted Mentat as he saw fit.
De Vries wisely held his tongue, for now, and the two watched from a distance while the machine crawled ahead to a better vein of spice, where it resumed harvesting. Rabban smelled the burning odor of dusty cinnamon, as well as smoke and sour exhaust from the laboring engines. At one time, this harvester had been considered lucky. Now it shook and clattered so noisily that Rabban’s ears ached, even from a safe distance.
One of the unmarked mercenary craft landed on the rocky flat adjacent to their ’thopter. A tall, grizzled man disembarked with the aircraft engines still thrumming. Though he wore no uniform, he saluted. “This is a good vantage from which to observe our operations, Count Rabban.”
This was the chief of the mercenaries the Baron had sent from Giedi Prime, pirates who would steal the spice from this ghost factory and sell it off the books to CHOAM. Not only were these rugged men separate from the harvester crew, they were not connected with any smuggler bands on Arrakis, unknown even to Count Fenring.
Rabban smiled to hear the man use his formal title, especially after de Vries’s insult. The pirate chief brought out a handheld screen tied to the doomed factory’s interior sensors. The image showed the level of spice in the harvester’s hold. “We are currently at satisfactory levels. I don’t expect that wreck will be able to gather much more.”
“It has reached the end of its service lifetime,” Rabban said.
“Wait another three minutes,” de Vries said. “That would be the optimal time to swoop in.”
Rabban ground his teeth together, but recognized the Mentat’s abilities, and looked at the mercenary. “No approaching worm yet?”
The pirate chief shook his head. “Not yet, which is a surprise, considering all the noise and vibrations.”
“Three minutes,” Rabban grudgingly agreed with the twisted Mentat. “Then take the haul.”
The pirate chief ran back to his craft and lifted off. Shortly afterward, the squadron of mercenary ’thopters dropped down like bloodsucking insects, in armored cargo vessels that attached themselves to the factory hull and ripped open the melange compartments. Wide-mouthed vacuum hoses dropped into the open bins of fresh spice, roaring like old-style spaceship engines as they siphoned off the reddish powder.
The spice crew, astonished by what was happening, pulled in their groundcars. Dust-covered men waved and shouted at the raiders, who continued to move about efficiently, ignoring the irrelevant workers.
On the channel in his headset, Rabban heard the factory supervisor howling for assistance, but the escort ships, even spotters, had been sent away. No one else needed to see this culminating event, the final gasp of the old factory’s long years of rough service.
Within minutes, the wormsign alert sounded, triggering what would normally have been a breakneck wrap-up and evacuation. But this operation was different in every way, the last haul from the old harvester. The handpicked pirate commandos engaged in their own mission.
Members of the doomed spice crew scrambled out of the big machine, trying to defend their positions. Hatches opened, and burly workers boiled out, brandishing any tools they could turn into makeshift weapons. With cold-blooded efficiency, though, the pirates stabbed them with long blades and dumped the bodies over the hull of the lurching machine and down into the churned sand.
“Worm inbound!” one of the pirate spotters reported over their private channel. The chief acknowledged, and the team went about their tasks with a greater urgency. “Four minutes.”
The mercenaries took three minutes to transfer the rest of the spice cargo and leave the harvester broken and exhausted on the dunes. By then, the great worm rushed closer with a visible ridge of sand rolling ahead as a precursor.
The desert monster came fast, while Rabban ran for his observation ’thopter with the Mentat scrambling behind him. The rocky terrain of their vantage should have kept them safe enough, but neither man wanted to take the chance. Once they were aboard the craft, the articulated wings flapped and lifted them into the air, carrying them high enough to circle the site.
Rabban watched as the worm crashed blindly into the harvester, engulfing it. Sprays of sand erupted into the dust-laden air. Even from a distance, he could hear the roar and groan of the enormous metal hulk being ripped apart. The sandworm seemed to take malicious glee in helping Rabban destroy all remaining evidence.
“Well, that operation went smoothly,” de Vries said. “My compliments to our mercenaries. We were perfectly justified in decommissioning that dangerous hulk, and yet it still produced five more loads of melange.” He smiled with his stained lips. “Now it is well and truly scuttled.”
On the desert below, the worm thrashed about, burying the remains of the harvester.
“Yes, my uncle devised a clever plan,” Rabban said, knowing the barb would sting the Mentat.
“Indeed he did,” de Vries replied, not challenging him. Rabban realized that both of them were learning to pick their battles, and battlefields.
There is joy in discovery, an intellectual euphoria that comes from grasping a complex concept or uncovering a thing previously unknown. But some discoveries bring with them a burden and a curse. Be careful what you seek.
—The Mentat’s Handbook
When Paul awoke in the camp, it was still dark. His stomach roiled, and his mouth tasted worse than the insides of old military boots. His muscles ached as if he had undergone two days of combat training with both Gurney and Duncan.
Dr. Yueh was already there, checking him. Leto came to his side, steadying the young man as he tried to sit up. “You gave us quite a scare, son. We’ve already called the retrieval crew, but they are still more than an hour out. With the tree cover and the rugged terrain, we have to wait for daylight.”
“What happened?” Paul tried to remember where he was, vaguely surprised to find himself on Caladan rather than surrounded by empty sand, as in his dream.
“You reacted badly to tainted moonfish,
” Yueh said. “I ran a chemical screen with some of the scraps, and I found evidence of a potent toxin.”
The words were a jumble in his ears. “Someone poisoned me?”
The Suk doctor stroked his long mustaches. “I believe it is a natural hormone produced by the female moonfish during the breeding cycle, and your body rebelled against it.” Yueh rapidly explained palliative treatments he had pumped into Paul’s bloodstream, the medications and hydration. “The substance should all be purged now.”
Leto shook his head, disgusted. “Why didn’t anyone at the fisheries warn us that a spawning moonfish is poisonous?”
“We know they were covering up things,” Gurney added. “After all, they hid their involvement in the barra fern smuggling.”
Yueh was more clinical. He had made notes during the night, documenting Paul’s symptoms. “I told you that we have many gaps in our understanding of Caladan. The fishery workers could not have guessed we would catch and eat one in the wild. The fisheries likely do not harvest females full of fertilized eggs. It would not make commercial sense. The workers might have known about the toxin and considered it common knowledge. Why would they go out of their way to tell us?”
“And we did not exactly ask them for such details,” Leto admitted. “Thufir Hawat was a bit more preoccupied with shutting down the ailar operations.”
Paul sat back, feeling weak, but strengthened by the drugs Yueh had used. At the back of his mind, like a jumble of shadows, he thought of the powerful vision he had experienced. “I saw a desert, warriors … a monster. It was real, or it will be.”
Leto frowned in concern. “Was it one of those dreams of yours that interest your mother so much?”
“I … I don’t know.” Paul’s head was still fuzzy. He could just see the gray light of dawn leaking into the sky.
Dune: The Duke of Caladan Page 23
