What had those lost women found?
In the lemon glow of dawn, she stood on a second-floor balcony of the Residency. Fine dust and grit filtered the rising sun and gave the landscape a new look, leaving deep shadows where creatures concealed themselves. She watched a desert hawk fly toward the sun-drenched horizon, flapping its wings with slow power. The sunrise was like an oil painting by one of the great masters, a wash of pastels that sharply defined the rooftops of the town and the Shield Wall.
Somewhere out there, in countless sietches nestled in the rocky wasteland, dwelled the elusive Fremen. They had the answers she needed, the essential information Mother Superior Harishka had pressed her to obtain. Had the desert nomads listened to the teachings of the Missionaria Protectiva, or had they simply killed the messengers and stolen their water?
Behind her, the recently completed conservatory had been sealed with an airlock that opened only for her. Count Fenring, still asleep in their bedroom, had helped her to obtain some of the most exotic plants in the Imperium. But they were for her eyes alone.
Lately, she’d heard rumors of a Fremen dream for a green Arrakis— typical Edenic myths of the type often spread by the Missionaria Protectiva. That could have been an indication of the missing Sisters. It was not unusual, however, for a struggling people in a harsh environment to develop their own dreams of paradise, even without Bene Gesserit prompting. It would have been interesting to discuss the stories with Planetologist Kynes, perhaps ask him who the Fremen’s mysterious “Umma” might be. She could not imagine how all this might be connected.
The desert hawk rose on thermals and soared.
Still standing at the balcony window, Margot took a sip of melange tea from a small cup; the soothing glow of its spicy essence filled her mouth. Though she had lived on Arrakis for a dozen years, she consumed spice only in moderation, careful not to become addicted enough that her eye color altered. In the mornings, though, melange enhanced her ability to perceive the natural beauty of Arrakis. She’d heard it said that melange never tasted the same twice, that it was like life, changing each time one partook of it. . . .
Change was an essential concept here, a key to understanding the Fremen. Superficially, Arrakis appeared always the same, a wasteland stretching into the unending distance, and into infinite time. But the desert was so much more than that. Margot’s Fremen housekeeper, the Shadout Mapes, had suggested as much one day. “Arrakis is not what it seems, my Lady.” Tantalizing words.
Some said the Fremen were strange, suspicious, and smelly. Outsiders spoke with a critical eye and sharp tongue, with no compassion or any attempt to understand the indigenous population. Margot, though, viewed the Fremen oddness as intriguing. She wanted to learn about their fiercely independent ways, to understand how they thought, and how they survived here. If she got to know them better, she could perform her job more effectively.
She could learn the answers she needed.
Studying the Fremen who worked in the mansion, Margot recognized barely discernible identifiers in body language, vocal inflection, odor. If the Fremen had anything to say, and if they thought you deserved to hear it, they would tell you. Otherwise, they went about their chores diligently, with heads bowed, disappearing into the tapestry of their society afterward like grains of sand in the desert.
In her search for answers, Margot had considered stating her questions outright, demanding any information about the missing Sisters, hoping the household servants would take her request out into the desert. But she knew the Fremen would simply vanish, refusing to be coerced.
Perhaps she should expose her own vulnerabilities to gain their trust. The Fremen would be shocked at first, then confused . . . and possibly even willing to cooperate with her.
My only duty is to the Sisterhood. I am a loyal Bene Gesserit.
But how to communicate without being obvious, without raising suspicions? She considered writing a note and leaving it in a place where it was sure to be found. The Fremen were always listening, always gathering information in their furtive ways.
No, Margot would have to be subtle, and also treat them with respect. She would have to tantalize them.
Then she remembered an odd practice that came to her through centuries of Other Memory . . . or was it just a bit of trivia she had read while studying on Wallach IX? No matter. On Old Terra, in an honor-based society known as Japan, there had been a tradition of hiring ninja assassins, quiet yet effective, in order to dodge legal entanglements. When a person wished to engage the services of the shadowy killers, he would go to a designated wall, face it, and whisper the name of the target and the fee offered. Though never seen, the ninja were always listening, and a contract was made.
Here in the Residency, the Fremen, too, were always listening.
Margot tossed her blonde hair over her shoulder, loosened her cool slikweave garment, and stepped into the hall outside of her offices. In the immense mansion, even in the cool early morning, people moved about, cleaning, dusting, polishing.
Margot stood in the central atrium and looked up toward the high-arched ceiling. She spoke in a soft, directed voice, knowing that the architecture of the old Residency created a whisper gallery. Some would hear her, in random places. She didn’t know who, nor did she look to identify them.
“The Bene Gesserit Sisters, whom I represent here, hold the utmost respect and admiration for Fremen ways. And I, personally, am interested in your affairs.” She waited for the faint echoes to die away. “If anyone could hear me, perhaps I have information to share about the Lisan al-Gaib— information you do not know at this time.”
The Lisan al-Gaib, or “Voice from the Outer World,” was a Fremen myth concerning a messianic figure, a prophet who bore striking parallels with the Sisterhood’s own plans. Obviously, some prior representative of the Missionaria Protectiva had planted the legend as a precursor to the arrival of the Bene Gesserit’s Kwisatz Haderach. Such preparation had been done on countless worlds in the Imperium; her comments were sure to spark Fremen interest.
She saw a flitting shadow, a drab robe, leathery skin.
Later that day, upon observing the Fremen employees moving about their household tasks, Margot thought they stared at her with a different kind of intensity, assessing her rather than just averting their blue-within-blue eyes.
Now, she began to wait, with the supreme patience of a Bene Gesserit.
Humiliation is a thing never forgotten.
— REBEC of Ginaz
The next island of the Ginaz School was the remnant of an ancient volcano, a bleak scab raised out of the water and left to dry in the tropical sun. The settlement inside the bowl of the dry crater looked like another penal colony.
Duncan stood in formation on the stony exercise field with a hundred and ten other young men, including the redheaded Grumman trainee Hiih Resser. Of the original hundred and fifty, thirty-nine had not completed their initial testing.
The curly black hair on Duncan’s head had been shaved, and he wore the loose black gi of the school. Each student carried whatever weapon he’d brought to Ginaz, and Duncan had the Old Duke’s sword— but he would learn to rely above all on his own abilities and reactions, not a talisman that reminded him of home. The young man felt comfortable now, and strong, and ready. He was eager to begin his training, at long last.
Inside the crater compound, the junior training master identified himself as Jeh-Wu. He was a muscular man with a rounded nose, and a weak chin that gave him the appear-ance of an iguana. His long dark hair was kinked into snakelike dreadlocks. “The Pledge,” he said. “In unison, please!”
“To the memory of the Swordmasters,” Duncan and the other students intoned, “in heart, soul, and mind, we do pledge ourselves without condition, in the name of Jool-Noret. Honor is the core of our being.”
A moment of silence ensued as they contemplated the great man who had established the principles upon which Ginaz was founded, whose sacred remains could still be viewed i
n the tall administration building on the main school island.
As they stood at attention, the new instructor strolled up and down each row, inspecting the candidates. Jeh-Wu thrust his head forward, paused in front of Duncan. “Produce your weapon.” He spoke Ginazee, with the words translated into Galach by a thin purple collar that circled his neck.
Duncan did as he was told, handing over the Old Duke’s sword hilt first. Jeh-Wu’s eyebrows arched beneath massed dreadlocks that hung like a thundercloud on his head. “Fine blade. Marvelous metallurgy. Pure Damasteel.” He flexed the blade expertly, bent it back, then released it to snap into position with a thrummm like a struck tuning fork.
“Each newly forged Damasteel blade is said to be quenched in the body of a slave.” Jeh-Wu paused; his dreadlocks looked like serpents ready to strike. “Are you thickheaded enough to believe crap like that, Idaho?”
“That depends on whether or not it’s true, sir.”
The dour training master finally gave a thin smile, but did not answer Duncan. “I understand this is the blade of Duke Paulus Atreides?” He narrowed his eyes and spoke in a warmer voice. “See that you are worthy of it.” He slipped it back into Duncan’s scabbard.
“You will learn to fight with other weapons until you are ready for this one. Go to the armory and pick up a heavy broadsword, then don a full set of body armor— antique medieval plate.” Now Jeh-Wu’s smile seemed more sinister on his iguana-like face. “You’ll need it for this afternoon’s lesson. I intend to make an example of you.”
• • •
On the pumice-and-gravel field in the crater, with forbidding crags all around him, Duncan Idaho clanked forward in full plate armor. The hauberk blocked his peripheral vision, forcing him to stare straight ahead through the slit. The metal pressed down on him, falling as if it weighed hundreds of pounds. Over his chain-mail shirt he wore shoulder plates, gorget, breastplate, greaves, cuirass, and tasset. He carried an enormous two-handed broadsword.
“Stand over there.” Jeh-Wu pointed to a packed gravel area. “Consider how you intend to fight in that suit. It is not an easy task.”
Before long, the island sun turned his outfit into a claustrophobic oven. Already sweating, Duncan struggled to stride across the uneven ground. He could barely bend his arms and legs.
None of the other students wore similar armor, but Duncan did not feel fortunate. “I’d rather be wearing a personal shield,” he said, his voice muffled in the echoing helmet.
“Raise your weapon,” the junior training master ordered.
Like a shackled prisoner, Duncan clumsily lifted the broadsword. With a conscious effort, he bent his stiff gauntlets into place around the hilt.
“Remember, Duncan Idaho, you have the best armor . . . supposedly the greatest advantage. Now, defend yourself.”
He heard a shout from beyond his constricted range of vision, and suddenly he was surrounded by other students. They pummeled him with conventional swords, clanging against the steel plate. It sounded like a brutal hailstorm on a thin metal roof.
Duncan swiveled and struck out with his blade, but he moved too slowly. A pommel bashed his helmet, making his ears buzz. Although he swung again, he could barely see his opponents through the slit in his helmet, and they easily sidestepped the blow. Another blade rang against his shoulder plate. He fell to his knees, struggled to stand.
“Well, fight back, Idaho,” Jeh-Wu said, raising his eyebrows in impatience. “Don’t just stand there.”
Duncan was reluctant to harm the other students with his huge broadsword, but none of his flat-bladed blows even touched a target. The students returned to pound him again. Sweat poured down his skin, and black spots danced in front of his eyes. The air inside his helmet grew stifling.
I can fight better than this!
Duncan responded with more energy, and the students dodged his thrusts and swings, but the heavy plate armor denied him free movement. In his ears, the roar of his breathing, the pounding of his heart was deafening.
The attack went on and on until he finally collapsed on the uneven gravel. The training master came forward and tore off the heavy helmet so that Duncan blinked in a blaze of sunlight. He gasped, shaking salty sweat out of his eyes. The heavy suit pinned him to the ground like a giant’s foot.
Jeh-Wu stood over him. “You had the best armor of all of us, Duncan Idaho. You also had the largest sword.” The training master looked down at his helpless form and waited for him to consider. “And yet you failed utterly. Would you care to explain why?”
Duncan remained silent; he didn’t make any excuses for the abuse and embarrassment he had suffered during the exercise. It was clear there were hardships in life that a man had to face and overcome. He would accept adversity and use it to grow stronger. Life was not always fair.
Jeh-Wu turned to the other students. “Tell me the lesson here.”
A short, dark-skinned trainee from the artificial world of Al-Dhanab barked out immediately, “Perfect defenses are not always an advantage. Complete protection can become a hindrance, for it limits you in other ways.”
“Good.” Jeh-Wu ran a finger along a scar on his chin. “Else?”
“Freedom of movement is a better defense than cumbersome armor,” said Hiih Resser. “The hawk is safer from attack than the turtle.”
Duncan forced himself to sit up, and slid the heavy broadsword aside in disgust. His voice was hoarse. “And the largest weapon is not always the deadliest.”
The training master looked down at him, dreadlocks drooping, and gave him a genuine smile. “Excellent, Idaho. You may yet learn something here.”
Learn to recognize the future the way a Steersman identifies guiding stars and corrects the course of his vessel. Learn from the past; never use it as an anchor.
— SIGAN VISEE, First Head Instructor,
Guild Navigator School
Deep beneath the city grottoes on Ix, the hot subterranean tunnels were illuminated red and orange. Generations ago, Ixian architects had drilled field-lined pits into the molten mantle of the planet, bottomless shafts that served as hungry mouths for industrial waste. The thick air smelled of acrid chemicals and sulfur.
Suboid workers sweated through twelve-hour shifts beside automated conveyors that dumped debris over the lip into the brimstone fires. Robed Tleilaxu guards stood perspiring, bored and inattentive. Dull-faced laborers tended the conveyors, removing items of value, gleaning bits of precious metal, wires, and components from wreckage torn out of scrapped factories.
On the job, C’tair Pilru stole what he could.
Unnoticed on the line, the young man was able to snag several valuable crystals, tiny power sources, even a microsensor grid. After the Sardaukar raid on the freedom fighters two months earlier, he no longer had a network to supply him with the technological items he needed. He was all alone in his battle now, but he refused to concede defeat.
For two months he’d lived in paranoia. Though he still had a few peripheral contacts in the port-of-entry grottoes and the resource-processing docks, all the rebels C’tair knew, all the black marketeers he’d dealt with, had been slaughtered.
He kept a desperately low profile, avoiding his previous haunts, afraid that one of the captured and interrogated rebels had provided some clue to his identity. Out of contact with even Miral Alechem, he went deeper underground, literally, than he had ever gone before, working on a labor gang in the refuse-disposal shafts.
Beside him, one of the disposal workers fidgeted too much, glanced around too often. The man sensed intelligence in C’tair, though the dark-haired man studiously avoided him. He made no eye contact, did not initiate conversation, though his work partner clearly wanted to make a connection. C’tair suspected the man was another refugee pretending to be much less than he actually was. But C’tair could afford to trust no one.
He maintained his dull demeanor, pondering a shift in jobs. A curious work partner could be dangerous, perhaps even a Face Dancer mimic. C�
��tair might need to flee before anyone closed in on him. The Tleilaxu had systematically wiped out the Ixian middle class as well as the nobles, and would not rest until they had ground even the dust under their boot heels.
Accompanied by a Master, robed guards approached them one afternoon in the middle of a shift. With hair hanging limp in front of his fatigued eyes, C’tair was drenched in sweat. His curious work mate stiffened, then concentrated furiously on the task at hand.
C’tair felt cold and sick. If the Tleilaxu had come for him, if they knew who he was, they would torture him for days before executing him. He tensed his muscles, ready to fight. Perhaps he could throw several of them down into the one-way magma pit before he himself was killed.
Instead, the guards stepped up to the fidgety man beside C’tair. Leading them, a Tleilaxu Master rubbed his spidery fingers together and smiled. He had a long nose and a narrow chin; his grayish skin looked as if it had been leached of all life. “You, Citizen— suboid . . . or whatever you are. We have discovered your true identity.”
The man looked up quickly, glanced over at C’tair as if beseeching him for help, but C’tair studiously averted his gaze.
“There’s no longer any need to hide,” the Master continued in a syrupy voice. “We’ve found records. We know that you were actually an accountant, one of those who kept inventories of Ixian-manufactured items.”
The guard clapped a hand on the man’s shoulders. The worker squirmed, panicked. All pretense slid away.
The Tleilaxu Master stepped closer, more paternal than threatening. “You misjudge us, Citizen. We have expended a great deal of effort to track you down because we have need of your services. We Bene Tleilax, your new masters, require intelligent workers to assist us in our government headquarters. We could use someone with your mathematical expertise.”
Dune: House Harkonnen Page 17
