The ’thopter waggled its wings to indicate it had the signal. It broke away from the swarm, sped down toward the darkened sand, circled the area with its detectors dangling close to the surface.
Amost immediately, it went through the wing-tucked dip and circle that told the waiting factory that spice had been found.
Gurney sheathed his binoculars, knowing the others had seen the signal. He liked this spot. The ridge offered some shielding and protection. This was deep in the desert, an unlikely place for an ambush … still …. Gurney signaled for a crew to hover over the ridge, to scan it, sent reserves to take up station in pattern around the area—not too high because then they could be seen from afar by Harkonnen detectors.
He doubted, though, that Harkonnen patrols would be this far south. This was still Fremen country.
Gurney checked his weapons, damning the fate that made shields useless out here. Anything that summoned a worm had to be avoided at all costs. He rubbed the inkvine scar along his jaw, studying the scene, decided it would be safest to lead a ground party through the ridge. Inspection on foot was still the most certain. You couldn’t be too careful when Fremen and Harkonnen were at each other’s throats.
It was Fremen that worried him here. They didn’t mind trading for all the spice you could afford, but they were devils on the warpath if you stepped foot where they forbade you to go. And they were so devilishly cunning of late.
It annoyed Gurney, the cunning and adroitness in battle of these natives. They displayed a sophistication in warfare as good as anything he had ever encountered, and he had been trained by the best fighters in the universe then seasoned in battles where only the superior few survived.
Again Gurney scanned the landscape, wondering why he felt uneasy. Perhaps it was the worm they had seen … but that was on the other side of the ridge.
A head popped up into the con-bubble beside Gurney—the factory commander, a one-eyed old pirate with full beard, the blue eyes and milky teeth of a spice diet.
“Looks like a rich patch, sir,” the factory commander said. “Shall I take’er in?”
“Come down at the edge of that ridge,” Gurney ordered. “Let me disembark with my men. You can tractor out to the spice from there. We’ll have a look at that rock.”
“Aye.”
“In case of trouble,” Gurney said, “save the factory. We’ll lift in the ’thopters.”
The factory commander saluted. “Aye, sir.” He popped back down through the hatch.
Again Gurney scanned the horizon. He had to respect the possibility that there were Fremen here and he was trespassing. Fremen worried him, their toughness and unpredictability. Many things about this business worried him, but the rewards were great. The fact that he couldn’t send spotters high overhead worried him, too. The necessity of radio silence added to his uneasiness.
The factory crawler turned, began to descend. Gently it glided down to the dry beach at the foot of the ridge. Treads touched sand.
Gurney opened the bubble dome, released his safety straps. The instant the factory stopped, he was out, slamming the bubble closed behind him, scrambling out over the tread guards to swing down to the sand beyond the emergency netting. The five men of his personal guard were out with him, emerging from the nose hatch. Others released the factory’s carrier wing. It detached, lifted away to fly in a parking circle low overhead.
Immediately the big factory crawler lurched off, swinging away from the ridge toward the dark patch of spice out on the sand.
A ’thopter swooped down nearby, skidded to a stop. Another followed and another. They disgorged Gurney’s platoon and lifted to hoverflight.
Gurney tested his muscles in his stillsuit, stretching. He left the filter mask off his face, losing moisture for the sake of a greater need—the carrying power of his voice if he had to shout commands. He began climbing up into the rocks, checking the terrain—pebbles and pea sand underfoot, the smell of spice.
Good site for an emergency base, he thought. Might be sensible to bury a few supplies here.
He glanced back, watching his men spread out as they followed him. Good men, even the new ones he hadn’t had time to test. Good men. Didn’t have to be told every time what to do. Not a shield glimmer showed on any of them. No cowards in this bunch, carrying shields into the desert where a worm could sense the field and come to rob them of the spice they found.
From this slight elevation in the rocks, Gurney could see the spice patch about half a kilometer away and the crawler just reaching the near edge. He glanced up at the coverflight, noting the altitude—not too high. He nodded to himself, turned to resume his climb up the ridge.
In that instant, the ridge erupted.
Twelve roaring paths of flame streaked upward to the hovering ’thopters and carrier wing. There came a blasting of metal from the factory crawler, and the rocks around Gurney were full of hooded fighting men.
Gurney had time to think: By the horns of the Great Mother! Rockets! They dare to use rockets!
Then he was face to face with a hooded figure who crouched low, crysknife at the ready. Two more men stood waiting on the rocks above to left and right. Only the eyes of the fighting man ahead of him were visible to Gurney between hood and veil of a sand-colored burnoose, but the crouch and readiness warned him that here was a trained fighting man. The eyes were the blue-in-blue of the deep-desert Fremen.
Gurney moved one hand toward his own knife, kept his eyes fixed on the other’s knife. If they dared use rockets, they’d have other projectile weapons. This moment argued extreme caution. He could tell by sound alone that at least part of his skycover had been knocked out. There were gruntings, too, the noise of several struggles behind him.
The eyes of the fighting man ahead of Gurney followed the motion of hand toward knive, came back to glare into Gurney’s eyes.
“Leave the knife in its sheath, Gurney Halleck,” the man said.
Gurney hesitated. That voice sounded oddly familiar even through a stillsuit filter.
“You know my name?” he said.
“You’ve no need of a knife with me, Gurney,” the man said. He straightened, slipped his crysknife into its sheath back beneath his robe. “Tell your men to stop their useless resistance.”
The man threw his hood back, swung the filter aside.
The shock of what he saw froze Gurney’s muscles. He thought at first he was looking at a ghost image of Duke Leto Atreides. Full recognition came slowly.
“Paul,” he whispered. Then louder: “Is it truly Paul?”
“Don’t you trust your own eyes?” Paul asked.
“They said you were dead,” Gurney rasped. He took a half-step forward.
“Tell your men to submit,” Paul commanded. He waved toward the lower reaches of the ridge.
Gurney turned, reluctant to take his eyes off Paul. He saw only a few knots of struggle. Hooded desert men seemed to be everywhere around. The factory crawler lay silent with Fremen standing atop it. There were no aircraft overhead.
“Stop the fighting,” Gurney bellowed. He took a deep breath, cupped his hands for a megaphone. “This is Gurney Halleck! Stop the fight!”
Slowly, warily, the struggling figures separated. Eyes turned toward him, questioning.
“These are friends,” Gurney called.
“Fine friends!” someone shouted back. “Half our people murdered.”
“It’s a mistake,” Gurney said. “Don’t add to it.”
He turned back to Paul, stared into the youth’s blue-blue Fremen eyes.
A smile touched Paul’s mouth, but there was a hardness in the expression that reminded Gurney of the Old Duke, Paul’s grandfather. Gurney saw then the sinewy harshness in Paul that had never before been seen in an Atreides—a leathery look to the skin, a squint to the eyes and calculation in the glance that seemed to weigh everything in sight.
“They said you were dead,” Gurney repeated.
“And it seemed the best protection to let
them think so,” Paul said.
Gurney realized that was all the apology he’d ever get for having been abandoned to his own resources, left to believe his young Duke … his friend, was dead. He wondered then if there were anything left here of the boy he had known and trained in the Ways of fighting men.
Paul took a step closer to Gurney, found that his eyes were smarting. “Gurney ….”
It seemed to happen of itself, and they were embracing, pounding each other on the back, feeling the reassurance of solid flesh.
“You young pup! You young pup!” Gurney kept saying.
And Paul: “Gurney, man! Gurney, man!”
Presently, they stepped apart, looked at each other. Gurney took a deep breath. “So you’re why the Fremen have grown so wise in battle tactics. I might’ve known. They keep doing things I could’ve planned myself. If I’d only known ….” He shook his head. “If you’d only got word to me, lad. Nothing would’ve stopped me. I’d have come arunning and ….”
A look in Paul’s eyes stopped him … the hard, weighing stare.
Gurney sighed. “Sure, and there’d have been those who wondered why Gurney Halleck went arunning, and some would’ve done more than question. They’d have gone hunting for answers.”
Paul nodded, glanced to the waiting Fremen around them—the looks of curious appraisal on the faces of the Fedaykin. He turned from the death commandos back to Gurney. Finding his former swordmaster filled him with elation. He saw it as a good omen, a sign that he was on the course of the future where all was well.
With Gurney at my side….
Paul glanced down the ridge past the Fedaykin, studied the smuggler crew who had come with Halleck.
“How do your men stand, Gurney?” he asked.
“They’re smugglers all,” Gurney said. “They stand where the profit is.”
“Little enough profit in our venture,” Paul said, and he noted the subtle finger signal flashed to him by Gurney’s right hand—the old hand code out of their past. There were men to fear and distrust in the smuggler crew.
Paul pulled at his lip to indicate he understood, looked up at the men standing guard above them on the rocks. He saw Stilgar there. Memory of the unsolved problem with Stilgar cooled some of Paul’s elation.
“Stilgar,” he said, “this is Gurney Halleck of whom you’ve heard me speak. My father’s master-of-arms, one of the swordmasters who instructed me, an old friend. He can be trusted in any venture.”
“I hear,” Stilgar said. “You are his Duke.”
Paul stared at the dark visage above him, wondering at the reasons which had impelled Stilgar to say just that. His Duke. There had been a strange subtle intonation in Stilgar’s voice, as though he would rather have said something else. And that wasn’t like Stilgar, who was a leader of Fremen, a man who spoke his mind.
My Duke! Gurney thought. He looked anew at Paul. Yes, with Leto dead, the title fell on Paul’s shoulders.
The pattern of the Fremen war on Arrakis began to take on new shape in Gurney’s mind. My Duke! A place that had been dead within him began coming alive. Only part of his awareness focused on Paul’s ordering the smuggler crew disarmed until they could be questioned.
Gurney’s mind returned to the command when he heard some of his men protesting. He shook his head, whirled. “Are you men deaf?” he barked. “This is the rightful Duke of Arrakis. Do as he commands.”
Grumbling, the smugglers submitted.
Paul moved up beside Gurney, spoke in a low voice. “I’d not have expected you to walk into this trap, Gurney.”
“I’m properly chastened,” Gurney said. “I’ll wager yon patch of spice is little more than a sand grain’s thickness, a bait to lure us.”
“That’s a wager you’d win,” Paul said. He looked down at the men being disarmed. “Are there any more of my father’s men among your crew?”
“None. We’re spread thin. There’re a few among the free traders. Most have spent their profits to leave this place.”
“But you stayed.”
“I stayed.”
“Because Rabban is here,” Paul said.
“I thought I had nothing left but revenge,” Gurney said.
An oddly chopped cry sounded from the ridgetop. Gurney looked up to see a Fremen waving his kerchief.
“A maker comes,” Paul said. He moved out to a point of rock with Gurney following, looked off to the southwest. The burrow mound of a worm could be seen in the middle distance, a dust-crowned track that cut directly through the dunes on a course toward the ridge.
“He’s big enough,” Paul said.
A clattering sound lifted from the factory crawler below them. It turned on its treads like a giant insect, lumbered toward the rocks.
“Too bad we couldn’t have saved the carryall,” Paul said.
Gurney glanced at him, looked back to the patches of smoke and debris out on the desert where carryall and ornithopters had been brought down by Fremen rockets. He felt a sudden pang for the men lost there—his men, and he said: “Your father would’ve been more concerned for the men he couldn’t save.”
Paul shot a hard stare at him, lowered his gaze. Presently, he said: “They were your friends, Gurney. I understand. To us, though, they were trespassers who might see things they shouldn’t see. You must understand that.”
“I understand it well enough,” Gurney said. “Now, I’m curious to see what I shouldn’t.”
Paul looked up to see the old and well-remembered wolfish grin on Halleck’s face, the ripple of the inkvine scar along the man’s jaw.
Gurney nodded toward the desert below them. Fremen were going about their business all over the landscape. It struck him that none of them appeared worried by the approach of the worm.
A thumping sounded from the open dunes beyond the baited patch of spice—a deep drumming that seemed to be heard through their feet. Gurney saw Fremen spread out across the sand there in the path of the worm.
The worm came on like some great sandfish, cresting the surface, its rings rippling and twisting. In a moment, from his vantage point above the desert, Gurney saw the taking of a worm—the daring leap of the first hookman, the turning of the creature, the way an entire band of men went up the scaly, glistening curve of the worm’s side.
“There’s one of the things you shouldn’t have seen,” Paul said.
“There’s been stories and rumors,” Gurney said. “But it’s not a thing easy to believe without seeing it.” He shook his head. “The creature all men on Arrakis fear, you treat it like a riding animal.”
“You heard my father speak of desert power,” Paul said. “There it is. The surface of this planet is ours. No storm nor creature nor condition can stop us.”
Us, Gurney thought. He means the Fremen. He speaks of himself as one of them. Again, Gurney looked at the spice blue in Paul’s eyes. His own eyes, he knew, had a touch of the color, but smugglers could get offworld foods and there was a subtle caste implication in the tone of the eyes among them. They spoke of “the touch of the spicebrush” to mean a man had gone too native. And there was always a hint of distrust in the idea.
“There was a time when we did not ride the maker in the light of day in these latitudes,” Paul said. “But Rabban has little enough air cover left that he can waste it looking for a few specks in the sand.” He looked at Gurney. “Your aircraft were a shock to us here.”
To us … to us ….
Gurney shook his head to drive out such thoughts. “We weren’t the shock to you that you were to us,” he said.
“What’s the talk of Rabban in the sinks and villages?” Paul asked.
“They say they’ve fortified the graben villages to the point where you cannot harm them. They say they need only sit inside their defenses while you wear yourselves out in futile attack.”
“In a word,” Paul said, “They’re immobilized.”
“While you can go where you will,” Gurney said.
“It’s a tactic I
learned from you,” Paul said. “They’ve lost the initiative, which means they’ve lost the war.”
Gurney smiled, a slow, knowing expression.
“Our enemy is exactly where I want him to be,” Paul said. He glanced at Gurney. “Well, Gurney, do you enlist with me for the finish of this campaign?”
“Enlist?” Gurney stared at him. “My Lord, I’ve never left your service. You’re the only one left me … to think you dead. And I, being cast adrift, made what shrift I could, waiting for the moment I might sell my life for what it’s worth—the death of Rabban.”
An embarrassed silence settled over Paul.
A .woman came climbing up the rocks toward them, her eyes between stillsuit hood and face mask flicking between Paul and his companion. She stopped in front of Paul. Gurney noted the possessive air about her, the way she stood close to Paul.
“Chani,” Paul said, “this is Gurney Halleck. You’ve heard me speak of him.”
She looked at Halleck, back to Paul. “I have heard.”
“Where did the men go on the maker?” Paul asked.
“They but diverted it to give us time to save the equipment.”
“Well then ….” Paul broke off, sniffed the air,
“There’s wind coming,” Chani said.
A voice called out from the ridgetop above them: “Ho, there—the wind!”
Gurney saw a quickening of motion among the Fremen now—a rushing about and sense of hurry. A thing the worm had not ignited was brought about by fear of the wind. The factory crawler lumbered up onto the dry beach below them and a way was opened for it among the rocks … and the rocks closed behind it so neatly that the passage escaped his eyes.
“Have you many such hiding places?” Gurney asked.
“Many times many,” Paul said. He looked at Chani. “Find Korba. Tell him that Gurney has warned me there are men among this smuggler crew who’re not to be trusted.”
She looked once at Gurney, back to Paul, nodded, and was off down the rocks, leaping with a gazelle-like agility.
“She is your woman,” Gurney said.
“The mother of my firstborn,” Paul said. “There’s another Leto among the Atreides.”
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