Dune: House Harkonnen

by Brian Herbert; Kevin J. Anderson

  Gurney moaned, feeling a greater pain from that than from the blows he had received. All the work he had put into restoring the instrument, all the pleasure it had given him. “Bastards!” he spat, which earned him another pummeling.

  He made a concentrated effort to see their faces, recognized a square-featured, brown-haired ditch-digger he’d known from a nearby village, now resplendent in his new uniform with the low-rank insignia of an Immenbrech. He saw another guard with a bulbous nose and a harelip, a man he was sure had been “recruited” from Dmitri five years before. But their faces showed no recognition, no sympathy. They were the Baron’s men now, and would never do anything to risk being sent back to their former lives.

  Seeing that Gurney recognized them, the guards dragged him outside and beat him with redoubled enthusiasm.

  During the attack, Kryubi stood tall, sad, and appraising. He ran a finger along his shred of mustache. The guard captain watched in grim silence as his men punched and kicked and beat Gurney, drawing energy from their victim’s refusal to cry out as often as they would have liked. They finally stepped back to catch their breath.

  And brought out the sticks . . .

  At last, when Gurney could no longer move because his bones were broken, his muscles battered, and his flesh covered with clotting blood, the Harkonnens withdrew. Under the harsh glare of clustered glowglobes, he lay bleeding and moaning.

  Kryubi held up his hand and signaled the men to return to their craft. They took all the glowglobes but one, which shed a single flickering light upon the mangled man.

  Kryubi stared at him with apparent concern, then knelt close by. He spoke quiet words meant only for Gurney. Even through the pain-fogged clamor in his skull, Gurney found it strange. He had expected the Harkonnen guard captain to crow his triumph so that all the villagers could hear. Instead, Kryubi seemed more disappointed than smug. “Any other man would have given up long ago. Most men would have been more intelligent. You brought this on yourself, Gurney Halleck.”

  The captain shook his head. “Why did you force me to do this? Why did you insist on bringing wrath down upon yourself? I’ve saved your life this time. Barely. But if you defy the Harkonnens again, we may have to kill you.” He shrugged. “Or perhaps just kill your family and maim you instead. One of my men has a certain talent for gouging out eyes with his fingers.”

  Gurney tried to speak several times around broken, blood-thick lips. “Bastards,” he finally managed. “Where’s my sister?”

  “Your sister is not of concern right now. She is gone. Stay here and forget about her. Do your work. We each have our job to do for the Baron, and if you fail in yours”— Kryubi’s nostrils flared—“then I must do mine. If you speak out against the Baron, if you insult him, if you ridicule him to incite discontent, I will have to act. You’re smart enough to know that.”

  With an angry grunt, Gurney shook his head. Only his anger sustained him. Every drop of his blood that spattered the ground he swore to repay with Harkonnen blood. With his dying breath he would discover what had happened to his sister— and if by some miracle Bheth remained alive, he would rescue her.

  Kryubi turned toward the troop transport, where the guards had already seated themselves. “Don’t make me come back.” He looked over his shoulder at Gurney and added a very odd word. “Please.”

  Gurney lay still, wondering how long it would take for his parents to venture out and see whether he lived or not. He watched through blurred vision and pain-smeared eyes as the transport lifted off and left the village. He wondered if any other lights would come on, if any villagers would come out and help him, now that the Harkonnens were gone.

  But the dwellings in Dmitri remained dark. Everyone pretended not to have seen or heard.

  The strictest limits are self-imposed.

  — FRIEDRE GINAZ,

  Philosophy of the Swordmaster

  When Duncan Idaho arrived at Ginaz, he believed he needed nothing more than the Old Duke’s prized sword to become a great warrior. His head full of romantic expectations, he envisioned the swashbuckling life he would lead, the marvelous fighting techniques he would learn. He was only twenty, and looked forward to a golden future.

  Reality was quite different.

  The Ginaz School was an archipelago of habitable islands scattered like bread crumbs across turquoise water. On each island, different Masters taught students their particular techniques that ranged from shield-fighting, military tactics, and combat skills to politics and philosophy. Over the course of his eight-year training ordeal, Duncan would move from one environment to the next and learn from the best fighters in the Imperium.

  If he survived.

  The school’s main island served as the spaceport and administration center, surrounded by reefs that blocked waves from the choppy water. Tall clustered buildings reminded Duncan of the bristles on a spiny rat, like the one he’d kept as a pet inside the Harkonnen prison fortress.

  Revered throughout the Imperium, the Swordmasters of Ginaz had built many of their primary structures as museums and memorials, rather than classrooms. This reflected the supreme confidence they felt in their personal fighting abilities, a self-assurance that bordered on hubris. Politically neutral, they served their art and allowed its practitioners to make their own choices regarding the Imperium. Contributing to the mythology, the academy’s graduates had included the leaders of many Great Houses in the Landsraad. Master Jongleurs were commissioned to compose songs and commentary about the great deeds of the legendary heroes of Ginaz.

  The central skyscraper, where Duncan would endure his final testing years hence, held the tomb of Jool-Noret, founder of the Ginaz School. Noret’s sarcophagus lay in open view— surrounded by clear armor-plaz and a Holtzman-generated shield— yet only the “worthy” were allowed to see it.

  Duncan vowed that he would prove himself worthy. . . .

  He was met at the spaceport by a slender, bald woman wearing a black martial-arts gi. Brisk and businesslike, she introduced herself as Karsty Toper. “I have been assigned to take your possessions.” She extended her hand for his rucksack and the long bundle containing the Old Duke’s sword.

  He clutched the blade protectively. “If you give me your personal guarantee that these items will be safe.”

  Her forehead furrowed, wrinkling her shaved head. “We value honor more than any other House in the Landsraad.” Her hand remained extended, unwavering.

  “Not more than the Atreides,” Duncan said, still refusing to relinquish the blade.

  Karsty Toper frowned as she considered. “Not more, perhaps. But we are comparable.”

  Duncan handed her the packages, and she directed him to a long-distance shuttle ’thopter. “Go there. You will be taken to your first island. Do what you are told without complaining, and learn from everything.” She tucked the sword bundle and his rucksack under her arms. “We will hold these for you until it is time.”

  Without seeing the Ginaz city or the school administration tower, Duncan was flown far across the deep sea to a low, lush island like a lily pad that barely lifted itself out of the water. Jungles were dense and huts were few. The three uniformed crewmen dropped him on the beach and departed without answering any of his questions. Duncan stood all alone, listening to the rush of ocean against the island shore, reminded of Caladan.

  He had to believe this was some sort of test.

  A deeply tanned man with frizzy white hair and thin, sinewy limbs strode out to meet him, parting palm fronds. He wore a sleeveless black tunic belted at the waist. The man’s expression appeared stony as he squinted into the light glaring off the beach.

  “I am Duncan Idaho. Are you my first instructor, sir?”

  “Instructor?” The man scowled. “Yes, rat, and my name is Jamo Reed— but prisoners don’t use names here, because everyone knows his place. Do your work, and don’t cause any trouble. If the others can’t keep you in line, then I will.”

  Prisoners? “I’m sorry, Maste
r Reed, but I’m here for Swordmaster training—”

  Reed laughed. “Swordmaster? That’s rich!”

  Without giving him any time to settle, the man assigned Duncan to a rugged work crew with dark-skinned Ginaz natives. Duncan communicated by rough hand signals, since none of the natives spoke Imperial Galach.

  For several hot and sweaty days, the men dug channels and wells to improve the water system for an inland village. The air was so thick with humidity and biting gnats that Duncan could barely breathe. As evening approached and the gnats dissipated, the jungle swarmed with mosquitoes and black flies, and Duncan’s skin was covered with swollen bites. He had to drink copious amounts of water just to replace what he sweated out.

  As Duncan labored to move heavy stones by hand, the sun warmed the rippling muscles of his bare back. Workmaster Reed watched from the shade of a mango tree, arms folded across his chest, a studded whip gripped in one hand. He never said a word about Swordmaster training. Duncan voiced no complaints, demanded no answers. He had expected Ginaz to be . . . unexpected.

  This has to be some kind of test.

  Before attaining his ninth birthday, he’d suffered cruel tortures at the hands of the Harkonnens. He had watched Glossu Rabban murder his parents. Even as a boy, he had killed hunters in Forest Guard Preserve, and he’d finally escaped to Caladan only to see his mentor, Duke Paulus Atreides, slain in the bullring. Now, after a decade of service to House Atreides, he chose to view each day’s effort as a training exercise, toughening himself for future battles. He would become a Swordmaster of Ginaz. . . .

  A month later, another ’thopter unceremoniously dropped off a red-haired, pale-skinned young man. The newcomer looked out of place on the beach, upset and confused— just as Duncan must have appeared at his own arrival. Before anyone could speak to the redhead, though, Master Reed sent the work crews to hack at the dense undergrowth with dull machetes; the jungle seemed to grow back as fast as they could cut it down. Perhaps that was the point of sending convicts here, a perpetual but pointless errand, like the myth of Sisyphus he’d heard during his studies with the Atreides.

  Duncan didn’t see the redhead again until two nights later, when he tried to fall asleep in his own primitive palm-frond hut. In a shelter on the other side of the shoreline encampment, the newcomer lay moaning with a horrible sunburn. Duncan crept out to help him under the starlight of Ginaz, rubbing a creamy salve on the worst blisters, as he had seen the natives do.

  The redhead hissed at the pain, bit back an outcry. He finally spoke in Galach, startling Duncan. “Thank you, whoever you are.” Then he lay back and closed his eyes. “Damned poor way to run a school, wouldn’t you say? What am I doing here?”

  The young man, Hiih Resser, came from one of the Houses Minor on Grumman. As part of a family tradition, every other generation selected a candidate to be trained on Ginaz, but during his generation he was the only one available. “I was considered a poor choice, a cruel joke to send here, and my father is convinced I’m going to fail.” Resser winced as he sat up, feeling his raw, blistered skin. “Everyone tends to underestimate me.”

  Neither of them knew how to explain his situation, stuck on an island populated by convicts. “It’ll toughen us up at least,” Duncan said.

  The next day, when Jamo Reed saw them talking with each other, he scratched his frizzy white hair, scowled, then assigned them to different work details on opposite sides of the island.

  Duncan did not see Resser again for quite a while. . . .

  As months passed with no further information, no structured exercises, Duncan began to grow angry, resenting the wasted time when he could have been serving House Atreides. How was he ever going to become a Swordmaster at this rate?

  One dawn as he lay in his hut, instead of the expected call from Workmaster Reed, Duncan heard a rhythmic beating of ’thopter wings, and his heart leaped. Racing outside, he saw a craft landing on the wide, wet beach just within the line of breakers. Wind from the articulated wings blew the leaf fronds like fans.

  A slender, bald form in a black gi climbed out and spoke with Jamo Reed. The sinewy workmaster grinned and extended a warm handshake; Duncan had never noticed that Reed’s teeth were so white. Karsty Toper stepped aside, letting her eyes rove across the curious prisoners who had emerged from their huts.

  Workmaster Reed turned back to the convicts standing beside their ramshackle huts. “Duncan Idaho! Come over here, rat.” Duncan ran across the rocky beach toward the ’thopter. When he got closer to the flying machine, he could see redheaded Hiih Resser already sitting inside the cockpit. He pressed a freckled, smiling face against the curved windowplaz.

  The woman bowed her shaved head to him, then ran her eyes up and down his body like a scanner. She turned to Reed and spoke in Galach. “Success, Master Reed?”

  The workmaster shrugged his whipcord shoulders, and his moist eyes suddenly filled with expression. “The other prisoners didn’t try to kill him. He didn’t get himself in trouble. And we worked some of the fat and weakness out of him.”

  “Is this part of my training?” Duncan asked. “A labor crew to toughen me up?”

  The bald woman placed her hands on her narrow hips. “This was a genuine prison crew, Idaho. These men are murderers and thieves, assigned here for the rest of their lives.”

  “And you sent me here? With them?”

  Jamo Reed came forward and gave him a surprising hug. “Yes, rat, and you survived. As did Hiih Resser.” He gave Duncan a paternal pounding on the back. “I’m proud of you.”

  Embarrassed and confused, Duncan mustered a disbelieving snort. “I lived through worse prisons when I was an eight-year-old boy.”

  “And you will face worse from this day forward.” In a no-nonsense tone, Karsty Toper explained, “This was a test of character and obedience— and patience. A Swordmaster must have the patience to study an opponent, to implement a plan, to ambush the enemy.”

  “But a real Swordmaster usually has more information about his situation,” Duncan said.

  “Now we have seen what you can do with yourself, rat.” Reed wiped a tear from his own cheek. “Don’t let me down— I expect to see you on your final day of testing.”

  “Eight years from now,” Duncan said.

  Toper directed him toward the still-fluttering ’thopter; he was delighted to see that she had brought the Old Duke’s sword back to him. The bald woman had to raise her voice to be heard over the loud hum of the aircraft’s engines as she applied thrust. “Now it is time to begin your real training.”

  Special knowledge can be a terrible disadvantage if it leads you too far along a path that you cannot explain anymore.

  — Mentat Admonition

  In a meditation alcove in the darkest basement of Harkonnen Keep, Piter de Vries could not hear the screech of amputation saws or the screams of torture victims from an open doorway just down the hall. His Mentat concentration was focused too intensely on other, more important matters.

  Numerous harsh drugs enhanced his thinking process.

  Sitting with his eyes closed, he pondered the clockwork of the Imperium, how the cogs meshed and slipped and ground together. The Great and Minor Houses of the Landsraad, the Spacing Guild, the Bene Gesserit, and the commercial trading conglomerate CHOAM were the key cogs. And all depended upon one thing.

  Melange, the spice.

  House Harkonnen reaped huge profits from its spice monopoly. When they’d learned of the secret “Project Amal” years ago, the Baron had needed little coaxing to realize how he would suffer financial ruin if a cheap melange substitute were ever developed— one that made Arrakis worthless.

  The Emperor (or, more likely, Fenring) had hidden the artificial spice scheme well. He’d buried the vastly expensive project in the vagaries of the Imperial budget— imposed higher taxes here, trumped-up fines there, called in long-standing debts, sold valuable properties. But Piter de Vries knew where to look. Consequences, plans, preparations, third- and
fourth-order ripples that could not remain invisible. Only a Mentat could follow them all, and the indications pointed to a long-term project that would bring about the economic ruin of House Harkonnen.

  The Baron, however, would not go quietly. He had even attempted to start a war between the Bene Tleilax and House Atreides in order to destroy the “Amal” work . . . but that plan had failed, thanks to the damnable Duke Leto.

  Since then, infiltrating spies onto the planet formerly known as Ix had proved predictably difficult, and his Mentat projections gave him no reason to believe the Tleilaxu had ceased their experiments. Indeed, since the Emperor was sending two more legions of “peacekeeper” Sardaukar to Ix, the research might finally be reaching a head.

  Or Shaddam might be reaching the limits of his patience.

  Now, in his Mentat trance, de Vries did not move a muscle, other than his eyes. A tray of mind-enhancing drugs hung around his neck, a slowly spinning platform like a table centerpiece. A yellow carrion fly landed on his nose, but he didn’t see it, didn’t feel it. The insect crawled onto his lower lip and kissed the spilled, bitter sapho juice there.

  De Vries studied the rotating smorgasbord of drugs, and with a flick of his eyes stopped the turntable. The tray tilted, pouring a vial of tikopia syrup into his mouth . . . and with it the hapless fly, followed by a capsule of melange concentrate. The Mentat bit down on the spice capsule and swallowed, tasting an explosion of sweet-burning cassia essence. Then he summoned a second capsule, more melange than he had ever consumed in one sitting. But he needed the clarity now.

  A torture victim in a distant cell howled, babbling a confession. But de Vries noticed nothing. Impervious to distractions, he plunged deeper into his own mind. Deeper. He felt his awareness opening, an unfolding of time like the spreading petals of a flower. He flowed along a continuum, each part accessible to his brain. He saw his exact place in it.

  In his mind’s eye, one of several possible futures became clear, an extraordinary Mentat projection based upon an avalanche of information and intuition, enhanced by massive melange consumption. The vision was a series of painful filmbook images, visual spikes driven into his eyes. He saw the Tleilaxu Master Researcher proudly holding a vial of synthetic spice, and laughing as he consumed it for himself. Success!