Dune: House Atreides

by Brian Herbert; Kevin J. Anderson

  Setting down the empty mug, Elrood grew suddenly lethargic. He adjusted his pillows, shifted onto his back, and fell into a fitful sleep.

  Exchanging a knowing glance with Fenring, Shaddam thought of the conspiracy within the conspiracy— their own secret participation in the events on Ix, and how he and Fenring had put the Tleilaxu Master in contact with Elrood in the first place. Now the Bene Tleilax, employing their own genetically altered shape-shifters, were stirring up religious fervor and discontent among Ix’s lower classes. To the fanatical Tleilaxu, any hint of a thinking machine— and the Ixians who created them— was the work of Satan.

  As the two young men left the Emperor’s chamber, Fenring smiled with similar thoughts. “Watch, and learn,” the old fool had said.

  Elrood, you condescending bastard, you have much to learn yourself— and no time left in which to learn it.

  The leaders of the Butlerian Jihad did not adequately define artificial intelligence, failing to foresee all possibilities of an imaginative society. Therefore, we have substantial gray areas in which to maneuver.

  —Confidential Ixian Legal Opinion

  Though the explosion was distant, the concussion rocked the table where Leto and Rhombur sat studying sample resource ledgers. Small chunks of decorative plascrete trickled from the ceiling above them, where a long crack had just appeared. A jagged lightning bolt zigzagged across one of the broad plaz observation windows, fracturing it.

  “Vermilion hells! What was that?” Rhombur said.

  Leto had already surged to his feet, knocking the ledgers aside and looking for the source of the explosion. He saw the farside of the underground grotto, where several badly damaged buildings crumbled into rubble. The two young men exchanged blank looks.

  “Get ready,” Leto said, instantly on guard.

  “Uh, ready for what?”

  Leto didn’t know.

  They had gone together into one of the tutorial rooms of the Grand Palais, first studying Calculus Philosophy and the underpinnings of the Holtzman Effect, and then Ixian manufacturing and distribution systems. On the walls around them, ancient paintings hung in hermetically sealed frames, including works of the Old Terran masters Claude Monet and Paul Gauguin, with interactive plates that allowed enhancements by Ixian depth artists. Since Leto had reported his adventure down in the suboid tunnels, he had heard of no further discussions or investigations. Perhaps the Earl hoped the problem would just go away.

  Another concussion rocked the room, this one closer, stronger. The Prince of Ix gripped the table to keep it from toppling. Leto rushed over to the cracked window. “Rhombur, look out here!”

  From the crosswalk streets connecting the stalactite buildings, someone screamed. Off to the left, an out-of-control transport capsule plummeted to smash into the ground far below with a spray of crystal shards and mutilated passengers.

  The door to the tutorial room crashed open. Captain Zhaz of the Palace Guard burst in, carrying one of the new pulsed assault lasguns. Four subordinates followed him, all armed in the same fashion, all wearing the silver-and-white uniforms of House Vernius. No one on Ix, especially not the Earl himself, had ever thought Leto or Rhombur would need the protection of personal bodyguards.

  “Come with us, young masters!” Zhaz said, breathing hard. The man’s dark eyes, framed by his squarish brown beard, darted with excitement as he noted the stone fragments falling from the ceiling, then the cracked windowplaz. Though he was ready to fight to the death, Zhaz clearly didn’t understand what had taken place in the normally peaceful city of Vernii.

  “What’s happening, Captain?” Rhombur asked, as the retinue of guards hustled them out of the room and into the corridor, where the lights flickered. His voice quavered for a moment, then sounded stronger, as he reminded himself he was the heir of an Earl. “Tell me— is my family safe?”

  Other guards and members of the Ixian court ran helter-skelter, with excited shouts ringing out, high-pitched and strident, in counterpoint to yet another explosion. From far below came the hubbub of an angry mob, so distant it sounded like a deep murmur. Then Leto made out the buzzing hum of lasgun fire. Even before the captain answered Rhombur, Leto guessed the source of the disturbance.

  “There’s trouble with the suboids, my Lords!” Zhaz shouted. “Don’t worry, though— we’ll have it under control soon.” He touched a button on his belt, and a previously unseen door opened in the marble-mirrored wall. The captain and the household guard had drilled and prepared for so long against large-scale external attacks, they didn’t seem to know how to deal with a revolt from within. “This way to safety. I’m sure your family will be there waiting for you.”

  When the two young men ducked under the low half door behind the mirrors, the portal sealed shut behind them. In the yellow light of emergency glowglobes, Leto and Rhombur ran alongside an electromagnetic track, while the captain of the guard shouted frantically into a tiny handheld comceiver. Lavender light flashed from the face of the instrument, and Leto heard the metallic sound of a responding voice: “Help is on the way!”

  Seconds later an armored personnel car roared along the sheltered track and screeched to a stop. Zhaz boarded with the two young heirs and a pair of guards, leaving the rest of the security men behind to defend their exit. Leto tumbled into a bucket seat, while Zhaz and Rhombur clambered into the front. The railcar began to move.

  “Suboids blew two of the diamond columns,” Zhaz said, breathlessly consulting the lavender screen of his comceiver. “Part of the overhead crust has collapsed.” His face turned gray with disbelief, and he scratched his brown beard. “This is impossible.”

  Leto, who had seen the signs of the gathering storm all along, knew that the situation was probably even worse than the guard captain imagined. Ix’s troubles would not be solved within an hour.

  A metallic-voiced report clattered in, sounding desperate. “Suboids are boiling up from the lower levels! How did . . . how could they become so organized?”

  Rhombur cursed, and Leto looked knowingly at his stocky friend. He had tried to warn the Ixians, but he did not point out the fact. House Vernius had not been willing to consider the seriousness of the situation.

  In the railcar, a safety harness snapped into place over Leto as soon as he situated himself, and the car continued to accelerate with a smooth hum, traveling at high speed upward into caverns hidden in the rock ceiling. Captain Zhaz worked a comboard at the front of the compartment, his fingers dancing over the communication keys. A blue glow surrounded his hands. At his side, Rhombur watched the guard captain intently, as if knowing he might be expected to take charge.

  “We’re in an escape pod,” one of the secondary guards explained to Leto. “You two are safe, for now. The suboids won’t be able to penetrate our upper defenses, once we have them activated.”

  “But what about my parents?” Rhombur asked. “And Kailea?”

  “We’ve got a plan for this, an option. You and your family should all meet at a rendezvous point. By all the saints and sinners, I hope my people remember what to do. For the first time, it isn’t a drill.”

  The car made several track changes, clicking and humming along with increased speed, and then ascended steeply into darkness. Presently the track leveled off and the vehicle was bathed in light as it sped past an immense window wall of one-way armor-plaz. They caught just a glimpse of the riots down below: flares of spontaneous fires and swirling demonstrations going on beneath the city. Another explosion, and one of the transparent upper walkway tubes shattered, tumbling in shards to the floor of the cavern far below; tiny puppetlike figures of pedestrians flailed and fell to their doom.

  “Stop here, Captain!” Rhombur cried. “I need to see what’s happening out there.”

  “Please, sir, keep it to a few seconds,” the captain said. “The rebels could breach that wall.”

  Leto found it hard to comprehend what he was hearing. Rebels? Explosions? Emergency evacuations? Ix had seemed so sophistica
ted, so peaceful, so . . . protected from discord. Even dissatisfied with their lot, how could the suboids have orchestrated such a massive and coordinated assault? Where could they have gotten the resources?

  Through the one-way panel, Leto saw uniformed Vernius soldiers fighting a losing battle against swarms of the pale, smooth-skinned opponents down on the grotto floor. The suboids hurled crudely made explosive or incendiary devices, while Ixians cut the mobs down with purple beams of lasgun fire.

  “Comcommand says the suboids are rebelling on all levels,” Zhaz said in a tone of disbelief. “They’re screaming ‘Jihad’ as they attack.”

  “Vermilion hells!” Rhombur said. “What does the Jihad have to do with anything? What could it have to do with us?”

  “We need to leave the window, sir,” Zhaz insisted, tugging at Rhombur’s sleeve. “We have to make it to the rendezvous point.”

  Rhombur lurched back from the window as part of a tiled street collapsed behind it, and wave upon wave of the pale suboids scrambled out of the dark tunnels beneath.

  The railcar picked up speed along the track and curved left into darkness, then ascended again. Rhombur nodded to himself, his face pinched and distressed. “We’ve got secret command centers on the upper levels. Precautions have been taken for this sort of thing, and by now our military units will have surrounded the most vital manufacturing facilities. It shouldn’t take long to subdue this.” The Earl’s son sounded as if he were trying to convince himself.

  At the front of the car, Zhaz leaned intently over the comboard, which cast his face in pale light. “Look out— trouble ahead, sir!” He wrenched the controls. The railcar rocked, and Zhaz took a side track. The other two guards brought their weapons to bear, squinting into the rocky darkness all around them, ready to fire.

  “Unit Four has been overrun,” Captain Zhaz said. “Suboids broke through the sidewalls. I’m trying for Three instead!”

  “Overrun?” Rhombur said, and his face flushed with either embarrassment or fear. “How in the hells could suboids do that?”

  “Comcommand says Tleilaxu are involved— and some of their Face Dancers. They’re all heavily armed.” He gasped as he stared at the reports flowing in. “May God protect us!”

  Questions fell in an avalanche around Leto. Tleilaxu? Why would they attack Ix? Jihad? This is a machine planet . . . and the Tleilaxu are religious fanatics. Do they fear Ixian machines enough to use their tank-grown shape-shifters to infiltrate the suboid workforce? That would explain the coordination. But why would they be so interested? Why here?

  As the railcar soared along, Zhaz scrutinized the comboard, where he received battle reports. “By all the saints and sinners! Tleilaxu engineers have just blown the pipelines that feed heat from the molten core of the planet.”

  “But we need that energy to run the factories,” Rhombur cried, still hanging on to his seat.

  “They’ve also destroyed recycling lines where the industrial waste and exhaust chemicals are dumped into the mantle.” Now the captain’s voice sounded more ragged. “They’re hitting at the heart of Ix— paralyzing our manufacturing capacity.”

  As Leto thought back on what he had learned during his months on this planet, pieces of the puzzle began fitting together in his mind. “Think about it,” he said, “all of that can be fixed. They knew exactly where to hit in order to cripple Ix without causing permanent damage. . . . “ Leto gave a grim nod, the reason suddenly clear to him. “The Tleilaxu want this world and its facilities intact. They plan to take over here.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Leto. We’d never give Ix to the filthy Tleilaxu.” Rhombur looked perplexed more than miffed.

  “We may not . . . have any choice in the matter, sir,” Zhaz said.

  At Rhombur’s barked command for weapons one of the guards opened a cabinet beneath the railcar and brought out a pair of fléchette pistols and shield belts, which he handed to both Princes.

  Without questioning, Leto snapped on the belt, touched a test button to confirm that the unit was operational. The projectile weapon felt cold in his hand. He checked its clip of deadly darts, accepted two additional packs from the guard, and slid them into compartments on the shield belt.

  The escape pod thundered into a long, dark tunnel. Ahead, Leto saw light, which grew larger and brighter by the second. He remembered what his father had said to him about the Tleilaxu: “They destroy anything that resembles a thinking machine.” Ix would have been a natural target for them.

  The light ahead touched them now, dazzling his eyes, and they roared into it.

  Religion and law among the masses must be one and the same. An act of disobedience must be a sin and require religious penalties. This will have the dual benefit of bringing both greater obedience and greater bravery. We must depend not so much on the bravery of individuals, you see, as upon the bravery of a whole population.

  —PARDOT KYNES, address to gathered

  representatives of the greater sietches

  Oblivious to the fate that had been decided for him, Pardot Kynes strolled through the tunnels, accompanied by his now-faithful companions Ommun and Turok. The three went to visit Stilgar, who rested and healed in his family chambers.

  At first sight of his visitor, a lean Stilgar sat forward on his sickbed. Though his wound should have been fatal, the Fremen youth had almost entirely recovered in a short time. “I owe you the water of my life, Planetologist,” he said, and with great seriousness spat upon the floor of the cave.

  Kynes was startled for a moment, then thought he understood. He knew the importance of water to these people, especially the precious moisture contained within a person’s body. For Stilgar to sacrifice even a droplet of saliva showed him a great honor. “I . . . appreciate your water, Stilgar,” Kynes said with a forced smile. “But you may keep the rest of it for now. I want you to be well.”

  Frieth, Stilgar’s quiet sister, stayed by the young man’s bedside, always busy, her blue-in-blue eyes darting from side to side in search of something else to do. She looked long at Kynes, as if assessing him, but her expression was unreadable. Then she silently glided off to bring more unguents that would speed her brother’s healing.

  Later, as Kynes walked along the sietch passageways, curious people gathered to follow him and listen. In the midst of their daily routines, this tall, stubble-bearded Planetologist continued to be something new and interesting. His crazy but visionary words might sound ridiculous, the most preposterous of fantasies, but even the sietch’s children tagged along after the stranger.

  The bemused and talkative crowd accompanied Kynes as he lectured, gesturing with his hands, gazing at the ceiling as if he could see the open sky there. Though they tried, these Fremen could not imagine the sight of clouds gathering to pour rain upon the desert. Droplets of moisture falling from the empty sky? Absurd!

  Some of the children laughed at the very idea of rain on Dune, but Kynes kept talking, explaining the steps of his process to reap the faintest breath of water vapor from the air. He would collect every sparkle of dew in the shadows to help twist Arrakis in the way he required, to pave the way for a brilliant new ecology.

  “You must think of this world in engineering terms,” Kynes said, in a professorial tone. He was happy to have such an attentive audience, though he wasn’t sure how much they understood. “This planet, taken in its entirety, is merely an expression of energy, a machine driven by its sun.” He lowered his voice and looked down at a young, wide-eyed girl. “What it requires is reshaping to fit our needs. We have the ability to do that on . . . Dune. But do we have the self-discipline and the drive?”

  He lifted his gaze to someone else. “That is up to us.”

  By now Ommun and Turok had heard most of Kynes’s lectures. Although they had scoffed at first, eventually the words had sunk in. Now, the more they heard of his unbridled enthusiasm and bright honesty, the more they actually began to believe. Why not dream? Judging from the expressions on the faces of his list
eners, they could see that other Fremen had started to consider the possibilities as well.

  The sietch elders called these converts optimistic and overly gullible. Undaunted, Kynes continued to spread his ideas, as outrageous as they might seem.

  • • •

  Wearing a grim expression, Naib Heinar squinted his one eye and extended the holy crysknife, still sheathed. The strong warrior standing rigid in front of him held out his hands to receive the gift.

  The Naib intoned ritual words. “Uliet, older Liet, you have been chosen for this task for the good of our sietch. You have proven yourself many times in battle against the Harkonnens. You are an accomplished worm rider and one of the greatest fighters among the Fremen.”

  A man of middle years and craggy features, Uliet bowed. His hands remained outstretched. He waited and did not flinch. Though a deeply religious man, he held his awe in check.

  “Take this consecrated crysknife, Uliet.” Heinar now grasped the carved hilt and yanked the long milky white blade from its sheath. The crysknife was a sacred relic among the Fremen, fashioned from the crystal tooth of a sandworm. This particular blade was fixed, keyed to the body of its owner so that the weapon would dissolve upon his death.

  “Your blade has been dipped in the poisonous Water of Life, and blessed by Shai-Hulud,” Heinar continued. “As is our tradition, the sacred blade must not be sheathed again until it has tasted blood.”

  Uliet took the weapon, suddenly overwhelmed by the importance of the task for which he had been selected. Intensely superstitious, he had watched the great worms in the desert and had ridden atop them many times. But never had he allowed himself to become familiar with the magnificent creatures. He could not forget that they were the manifestations of the great creator of the universe.

  “I shall not fail the will of Shai-Hulud.” Uliet accepted the blade and held it up high, with its poisoned tip pointed away from him.