Dune: House Atreides

by Brian Herbert; Kevin J. Anderson

  Fenring gave a quiet snort. “I wouldn’t exactly call the Arrakis assignment a promotion. ‘Imperial Observer’ doesn’t sound terribly exalted, does it?”

  Shaddam smiled and raised his chin in a very Imperial gesture. He had intended to do this all along. “Ah, yes . . . but how does Count Fenring sound?”

  Fenring was taken aback. “You’re . . . making me a Count?”

  Shaddam nodded. “Count Hasimir Fenring, Imperial Observer assigned to Arrakis. Your family fortunes are improving, my friend. Eventually, we’ll see about establishing you in the Landsraad.”

  “With a CHOAM directorship, as well?”

  Shaddam laughed. “All in good time, Hasimir.”

  “That makes Margot a Countess, I presume?” His large eyes glittered as Shaddam nodded to him. He tried to hold his pleasure inside, but the Emperor could see it clearly on his face.

  “And now I’ll tell you why this is such a critically important assignment, for you and for the Imperium. Do you remember a man named Pardot Kynes— the Planetologist my father stationed there several years ago?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, he hasn’t been much help lately. A few erratic reports, incomplete and seemingly censored. One of my spies even sent word that Kynes has grown too close to the Fremen, that he may have crossed the line and become one of them. Gone native.”

  Fenring’s eyebrows arched. “An Imperial servant mixing with that nasty, primitive brood?”

  “I hope not, but I’d like you to uncover the truth. In essence, I’m making you my Imperial Spice Czar, secretly overseeing the melange operations on Arrakis as well as the progress of our synthetic-spice experiments on Xuttah. You’ll shuttle back and forth between those planets and the Imperial Palace. You will transmit only coded messages, and only to me.”

  As the magnitude of the task and its repercussions sank in, Fenring felt a renewed fervor that burned away his discontent. Yes, he did see the possibilities now. He couldn’t wait to tell Margot— with her Bene Gesserit mind, she would no doubt see additional advantages.

  “That sounds provocative, Sire. A challenge worthy of my particular talents. Um-m-m-m, I might actually enjoy it.”

  Turning back to the game, Fenring engaged the spinning interior disk and guided the floating shield-ball. It dropped into the number “8” receptacle. Dissatisfied, he shook his head.

  “Too bad,” Shaddam said. With a deft movement he dropped his final ball into number “10,” winning the game.

  Progress and profit require a substantial investment in personnel, equipment, and capital funding. However, the resource most often overlooked, yet which can often provide the greatest payoff, is an investment in time.

  —DOMINIC VERNIUS,

  The Secret Workings of Ix

  Nothing left to lose.

  Nothing left at all.

  The renegade Earl and war hero once known as Dominic Vernius was dead, erased from records and removed from the bosom of the Imperium. But the man himself lived on in different guises. He was a person who would never give up.

  Dominic had once fought for the glory of his Emperor. In war, he had killed thousands of enemies with fighter craft and handheld lasguns; he had also felt the blood of his victims up close when he used bladed weapons, or even his bare hands. He fought hard, worked hard, and loved hard.

  And the payment for his lifetime’s investment was dishonor, banishment, the death of his wife, the disgrace of his children.

  Despite all that, Dominic was a survivor, a man with a purpose. He knew how to bide his time.

  Though the bitter vulture Elrood was already dead, Dominic felt no glimmer of forgiveness within him. The power of the Imperial throne itself had brought about such abuses and such pain. Even the new ruler Shaddam would turn out no better. . . .

  He had watched Caladan from a distance. Rhombur and Kailea seemed safe enough; their sanctuary was holding, even without the charismatic presence of the Old Duke. He had mourned the death of his friend Paulus Atreides, but he dared not attend the funeral or even send coded messages to the young heir Leto.

  He had, though, been sorely tempted to arrive on Kaitain during the Trial by Forfeiture. Rhombur had foolishly left Caladan and come to the Imperial Court to lend support to his companion, though in doing so he had risked capture and summary execution. If things had gone wrong, Dominic would have gone there and sacrificed himself to buy the life of his son.

  But that had been unnecessary. Leto had been freed, given amnesty, impossibly forgiven— and so, too, Rhombur and Kailea. How had it all come about? Dominic’s mind was in a turmoil and his brow furrowed on his shaved-smooth head. Shaddam himself had saved young Leto. Shaddam Corrino IV, son of the despicable Emperor Elrood who had destroyed House Vernius, had— seemingly on a whim— dismissed the case. Dominic suspected enormous bribes and coercion had gone into that resolution, but he couldn’t imagine what a sixteen-year-old untried Duke could possibly use to blackmail the Emperor of the Known Universe.

  One risk, though, Dominic decided he had to take. Against good judgment but blinded by grief, he had dressed in shabby clothes, tinted his skin a ruddy copper, and traveled alone to Bela Tegeuse. Before he could go anywhere else, he felt compelled to see where his wife had been slaughtered by Elrood’s Sardaukar.

  Using air and ground vehicles he searched the planet in silence, not daring to ask questions, though many reports hinted at where the massacre had taken place. Finally he found an unmarked spot where the crops had been leveled, plowed under, and then salted so that nothing would ever grow there again. A manor house had been burned to the ground and then covered with syncrete. Of Shando’s grave there was nothing, but he felt her presence.

  My love has been here.

  Under the dim double suns, Dominic knelt on the ruined land and wept until he lost all track of time. And when the tears had run out of him, his heart was filled with a great, hard emptiness.

  Now he was at last ready for the next step.

  And so Dominic Vernius traveled the backwater worlds of the Imperium, gathering loyal men who had escaped from Ix— men who would prefer to work with him, no matter his goals, than drowse through quiet lives on agricultural planets, eking out mundane livings.

  He rounded up fellow officers who had fought with him during the Rebellion on Ecaz, people to whom he owed his life a dozen times over. In searching out these men, he knew he put himself at great peril, but Dominic trusted his former comrades. Despite the large bounty that remained on his head, he knew none of them would be willing to pay the price in conscience of betraying their former commander.

  Dominic hoped that the overwhelmed new Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV would not think to track down the subtle movements and disappearances of men who had fought under Vernius back when Shaddam had barely been in his teens and not even the heir apparent to the throne . . . back in the days when Crown Prince Fafnir had been first in the line of succession.

  Many years had passed now, long enough that most of those veterans sat around talking about the glory days, convincing themselves the war and the bloodshed had been more exciting and more glorious than it really was. About a third of them chose not to join him, but the others quietly signed on and awaited further orders. . . .

  When Shando had gone into hiding, she’d erased all records, changed her name, used unmarked credits to buy a small estate on the gloomy world of Bela Tegeuse. Her one mistake had been in underestimating the persistence of the Emperor’s Sardaukar.

  Dominic would not make his wife’s mistake. For what he had in mind, he would go where no one could see him . . . a place where he could prey upon the Landsraad and be a thorn in the Emperor’s side.

  That was about the only weapon he had left.

  Ready to begin his real work, Dominic Vernius took the pilot controls of an unregistered smuggler’s craft loaded with a dozen loyal men. These comrades had gathered up hoarded cash and equipment in order to join him in striking a blow for glory and honor�
�� and perhaps vengeance along the way.

  Then he went to the Vernius family’s stockpile of atomics— forbidden weapons, nevertheless held in reserve by every Great House of the Landsraad. Absolutely restricted by the articles of the Great Convention, the Ixian atomics had been secreted away for generations, sealed on the dark side of a moonlet orbiting the fifth planet in the Alkaurops system. The Tleilaxu vermin on Ix knew nothing of this.

  Now Dominic’s smuggler ship carried enough doomsday firepower to annihilate a world.

  “Vengeance is in the hands of the Lord,” stated the Orange Catholic Bible. But after what he had gone through, Dominic did not feel terribly religious, nor did he care to be bound by the niceties of law. He was a renegade now, and beyond the touch— or protection— of the legal system.

  He envisioned himself as the greatest of all smugglers, hiding where no one would find him, yet where he could inflict great economic damage on all the powerhouses that had betrayed him and refused to offer help.

  With these atomics, he could make his mark on history.

  Shielded from the outdated weather-satellite network maintained by the Guild, Dominic brought his ship and his atomic stockpile down in an uninhabited polar region of the desert planet Arrakis. A brisk, cool wind whipped the ragged uniforms of his men as they stepped onto desolate land. Arrakis. Their new base of operations.

  It would be a long time before anyone heard of Dominic Vernius again. But when he was ready . . . the entire Imperium would remember.

  A world is supported by four things: the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous, and the valor of the brave. But all of these are as nothing without a ruler who knows the art of ruling.

  —PRINCE RAPHAEL CORRINO,

  Discourses on Galactic Leadership

  Leto worked his way down to the shore alone, zigzagging along the steep cliffside path and staircase to reach the old quays below the edifice of Castle Caladan.

  Through cloud patches, midday sunlight glimmered off the placid water that stretched to the horizon. Leto paused on the sheer, black-rock cliff, shading his eyes to look beyond the aqueous kelp forests, the fishing fleets with their chanting crews, and the line of reefs that sketched a hard topography onto the sprawling sea.

  Caladan—his world, rich in seas and jungles, arable land and natural resources. It had belonged to House Atreides for twenty-six generations. Now it belonged to him, uncontested.

  He loved this place, the smell of the air, the salt of the ocean, the tang of kelp and fish. The people here had always worked hard for their Duke, and Leto tried to do his best for them as well. If he had lost his Trial by Forfeiture, what would have happened to the good citizens of Caladan? Would they even have noticed if these holdings had been given over to the surrogate governorship of, say, House Teranos, House Mutelli, or any other reputable member of the Landsraad? Perhaps. . . . Perhaps not.

  Leto, though, could not imagine being anyplace else. This was where the Atreides belonged. Even if he’d been stripped of everything, he would have returned to Caladan to live out his life near the sea.

  Though Leto knew he was innocent, he still did not understand what had happened to the Tleilaxu ships inside the Heighliner. He had no evidence to prove to anyone else that he hadn’t fired the blasts that nearly triggered a major war. On the contrary, he’d certainly had sufficient motive, and because of this, the other Houses had been reluctant to speak strongly in his defense, allies or not. Had they done so, they would have risked their share of the spoils if the Atreides holdings were forfeited and divided. Yet even during that time, many Houses had sent silent expressions of approval for the way Leto had protected his crew members and friends.

  And then, by some miracle, Emperor Shaddam had saved him.

  On the flight home from Kaitain, Leto had spoken at length with Thufir Hawat, but neither the young Duke nor the warrior Mentat could fathom Emperor Shaddam’s reason for coming to the aid of the Atreides, or why he had so feared Leto’s desperate bluff. Even as a boy, Leto had known never to trust an explanation of pure altruism, no matter what Shaddam said in his moving statement before the court. This much was certain: The new Emperor had something to hide. Something involving the Tleilaxu.

  Under Leto’s guidance, Hawat had dispatched Atreides spies to many worlds, hoping to uncover further information. But the Emperor, forewarned by Leto’s mysterious, provocative message, would no doubt be more careful than ever.

  In the vast spectrum of the Imperium, House Atreides was still not particularly powerful and had no hold on the Corrino family, no apparent reason to be protected. The blood ties were not in themselves enough. Though Leto himself was a cousin to Shaddam, many in the Landsraad could trace their bloodlines at least peripherally back to the Corrinos, especially if one went all the way back to the days of the Great Revolt.

  And where did the Bene Gesserit fit in? Were they Leto’s allies, or his enemies? Why had they offered to help him? Who had sent the information about Shaddam’s involvement in the first place? The coded message cube had disintegrated. Leto had come to expect hidden enemies— but not allies who remained so secretive.

  And, most enigmatic of all, who really had destroyed the Tleilaxu ships?

  Alone for the moment, but still troubled, Leto stepped away from the cliffs and crossed a gentle downslope along the gray-black shingle at the water’s edge, until he reached the quiet docks. All the boats had been taken out for the day, save for one small beached coracle and a yacht at anchor, flying a faded pennant with the hawk crest of the Atreides.

  That hawk had come perilously close to extinction.

  In bright sunlight, Leto sat at the end of the main dock, listening to the lapping waves and the songs of gray gulls. He smelled salt and fish and the sweet, fresh air. He remembered when he and Rhombur had gone out together to dive for coral gems . . . the accidental fire and the near disaster they had suffered out on the distant reefs. A small matter in comparison with what had occurred later.

  Peering into the water below him, he watched a rock crab as it clung to the dock piling, then disappeared into the blue-green depths.

  “So, are you satisfied to be a Duke, or would you rather be a simple fisherman, after all?” Prince Rhombur’s loud voice sounded bright, blustering with good cheer.

  Leto turned, feeling the sun-warmed dock boards beneath the seat of his trousers. Rhombur and Thufir Hawat trudged across the crunching shingle toward him. Leto knew the Master of Assassins would chide him for sitting with his back vulnerable to the open beach, where the white noise from the ocean might mask any stealthy approach.

  “Perhaps I can be both,” Leto said, standing and brushing himself off. “The better to understand my people.”

  “ ‘Understanding your people paves the road to understanding leadership,’ ” Hawat intoned— an old Atreides maxim. “I hope you were meditating upon statecraft, as we have much work to do, now that all is returning to normal.”

  Leto sighed. “Normal? I think not. Someone tried to start a war with the Tleilaxu and blame my family in the process. The Emperor fears what he thinks I know. House Vernius is still renegade, and Rhombur and Kailea remain exiled here, though at least they were pardoned and the blood price on their heads has been lifted. Moreover, my name was never actually cleared— a lot of people still think I attacked those ships.”

  He scooped up a beach pebble that lay on the dock and tossed it far out on the water where he couldn’t discern the splash it made. “If this is a victory for House Atreides, Thufir, it’s bittersweet, at best.”

  “Perhaps,” Rhombur said, standing next to the beached coracle. “But better than a defeat.”

  The old Mentat nodded, his leathery skin reflecting the harsh sun. “You handled yourself with an air of true honor and nobility, my Duke, and House Atreides has gained widespread respect. That is a victory you must never discount.”

  Leto looked up at the tall towers of Castle Caladan looming high on
the cliff. His Castle, his home.

  He thought of the ancient traditions of his Great House, and how he would build on them. In his royal station he was an axis upon which millions of lives revolved. The life of a simple fisherman might have been easier, after all, and more peaceful— but not for him. He would always be Duke Leto Atreides. He had his name, his title, his friends. And life was good.

  “Come, young masters,” Thufir Hawat said. “It’s time for another lesson.”

  In high spirits, Leto and Rhombur followed the Master of Assassins back up to the Castle.

  AFTERWORD

  For more than a decade there had been rumors that I would write another novel set in my father’s Dune universe, a sequel to the sixth book in the series, CHAPTERHOUSE: DUNE. I had published a number of acclaimed science fiction novels, but wasn’t sure I wanted to tackle something so immense, so daunting. After all, DUNE is a magnum opus that stands as one of the most complex, multilayered novels ever written. A modern-day version of the myth of the dragon’s treasure, DUNE is a tale of great sandworms guarding a precious treasure of melange, the geriatric spice. The story is a magnificent pearl with layers of luster running deep beneath its surface, all the way to its core.

  At the time of my father’s untimely death in 1986, he was beginning to think about a novel that carried the working title DUNE 7, a project he had sold to Berkley Books, but on which there were no known notes or outlines. Dad and I had spoken in general terms about collaborating on a Dune novel one day in the future, but we’d set no date, had established no specific details or direction. It would be sometime after he completed DUNE 7 and other projects.

  In ensuing years I thought about my late father’s uncompleted series, especially after I concluded a five-year project writing DREAMER OF DUNE, a biography of this complex, enigmatic man— a biography which required that I analyze the origins and themes of the Dune series. After long consideration it seemed to me that it would be fascinating to write a book based upon the events he had described so tantalizingly in the Appendix to DUNE, a new novel in which I would go back ten thousand years to the time of the Butlerian Jihad, the legendary Great Revolt against thinking machines. That had been a mythical time in a mythical universe, a time when most of the Great Schools had been formed, including the Bene Gesserit, the Mentats, and the Swordmasters.