“The army of tame killers, the subtle pressures and the not so subtle ones.” Kynes gripped the arms of his chair until his fingers were white. “I had hoped that this time …” He shook his head. “This planet could be a paradise! But all you and the Harkonnens ever think about is grubbing money out of the spice!”
She spoke dryly: “And how is our planet to become a paradise without money?”
Kynes blinked at her.
“As with most visionaries,” she said, “you see very little outside your vision.”
Kynes chewed his lower lip. “My Lady, I know I’ve spoken bluntly, but …”
“Let’s understand each other,” she said. “My Duke is not in the habit of destroying valuable men. Your … ah … sharp words merely show your value. They prove there’s steel in you that the Harkonnens didn’t take the temper out of. My Duke has need of steel.”
Kynes drew a deep breath, hunted the corners of the room with his eyes.
“How can you be sure I speak the truth?” she asked. A wry smile touched her mouth. “You can’t be, of course, until it’s too late, until after you’re committed to an irrevocable decision. But the Harkonnen way offered you no hope at all, did it?”
He shook his head, staring at her.
“I, too, can speak bluntly,” she said. “My Duke has his back to the wall. This fief is his last hope. If he can build Arrakis to a strong and secure Duchy, there will be a future for the Atreides line. He comes from Caladan, a planet that was a natural paradise. Too soft, perhaps. Men lost their edge quite easily there.”
“My Lady, there was talk of Harkonnen agents left behind.” The words were wrenched from him as though he were trying to say more and could not.
“Of course there were agents left behind!” And now we find out about him, she thought. “Do you know any of those agents?”
Kynes glanced at the door, wet his lips with his tongue. “No, My Lady. Of course not. I have very little contact with the world outside my work.”
He’s lying, she thought. And the thought pained her more than it should have. She sighed. Another time, perhaps. And Tuek would have to be told of this man’s knowledge, of course. Again, she sighed.
“What does your Duke really want of me?” Kynes asked.
Well, why not change the subject? she thought. “Can the spice grow artificially?” she asked.
Kynes pursed his lips. “Mélange is not an ordinary … that is, it’s possible … unless … you see, I suspect there’s a symbiotic relationship between the worms and whatever produces the spice.”
“Oh?” She found herself surprised by the idea. But why not? she asked herself. We know of stranger relationships. “What evidence of such symbiosis do you have?”
“It’s very tenuous, My Lady, I agree. But each worm defends its own sector of spice sands. Each seems to have a territory that … well … you see, we have only one preserved specimen … it’s in another … location. The capture of that specimen was quite a project, you may …”
“You have a live worm?”
“Oh, no! It’s quite dead. Preserved. We stunned it with a chemical explosion, dug down and killed each ring with repeated applications of high-voltage electricity. Each ring had to be killed separately.”
She noted the increased alertness in Kynes, the animation as he warmed to his subject. “Is it a large one?” she asked.
“Quite small, really. It’s only about eighty meters long and some fifteen meters in diameter. They grow much larger in the deep desert—ten times that size. We caught this one in the high latitudes where the sand cover on the basic rock is rather thin. They’re rare in that region, of course, and, I might add, so is the spice rare there. You never find the worms this far north.” He gestured around him. “Too much rock and there are the mountains between us and the desert. And there’s no evidence of spice in these latitudes.”
“Just because there’s no spice where there are no worms,” she said, “that doesn’t …”
“But there’s other evidence,” he said. “My examination of our specimen suggests a complicated relationship. It is very difficult to find true knowledge about the deep desert. Factory crawlers, aircraft, anything that’s forced down in the deep desert and unable to get away stands little chance of survival. Your only hope is rescue … and that as fast as possible unless you can hold out on one of the rather rare outcroppings of substratum. There are a predictable number of personnel disappearances every year.”
“Ah, the uses of statistics,” she murmured.
“What, My Lady?”
“The ubiquitous sand,” she said. “And you spoke of making it a paradise.”
“Well, My Lady, with sufficient water and …”
The door behind Kynes slammed open onto reeling violence, shouting, the clash of steel, and wax-image faces grimacing. Jessica found herself on her feet, staring at Idaho’s blood-pitted eyes, claw hands around him, arcs of blurred steel chopping. She saw Paul crawling past Idaho … the orange fire-mouth of a stunner. Paul had his small knife, the poison one, in his hand, flicking it, flicking it … at the people who clawed at Idaho and himself.
In a different version of the scene:
Our first move,” Paul said, “should be to recover our Family Atomics. They’re …”
“What of your father’s … body, his water?” Kynes asked.
Paul sensed hidden meaning in the question, said: “My father died with honor.”
“You know this without knowing the manner of his death?”
“I know it.”
“I think perhaps you do, yet the Harkonnens … still have his water.”
“The Harkonnens will overlook his water,” Paul said. “They don’t follow the Arrakeen Way. My father’s water will escape into the air and soil of Arrakis, become a part of Arrakis, just as I will become a part of Arrakis.”
“Fremen will hesitate to follow a man who has not recovered his father’s water.”
“I see,” Paul said.
“You asked for my counsel, sire.”
“Could you suggest a way of recovering my father’s … water ?”
“A force is being formed now to recover our own bodies from Arrakeen. They could be told to recover your father, also. If they’re successful, a token battle with the leader of this band, you being victorious, would restore the pattern of things.”
“But that’s not the best way,” Paul said.
“No. The best way is for you to do it yourself.”
“Our Family Atomics are in Arrakeen,” Paul said. “They’re shielded and hidden deep underneath our residency there, planted directly in line with the house’s power plant and masked by that plant.”
He does not hesitate to tell this man anything, Jessica thought. He knows he has the loyalty. Indeed, what an Emperor my son would make. She pushed the thought aside, warning herself : I must not become infected by his scheme!
“On Arrakis,” Kynes said, “the water is more important.”
“In the Imperium, a Family’s atomics are also important,” Paul said. “Without them, you lack an unspoken bargaining point.”
“The suicide threat,” Kynes said, and his voice was bitter. “I will shatter your planet.”
“Without the atomics,” Paul said, “one is not quite a Great House. But then …” He gestured to the crysknife hilt partly concealed beneath the robe at Kynes’ waist. “ … is a Fremen a Fremen without his knife?”
A smile touched Kynes’ lips, white teeth glistening within his beard.
New Chapter: THE FLIGHT FROM KYNES’S DESERT BASE
In the cave’s blackness, Jessica felt that her life had become sand curling in an hourglass, running faster and faster … There were no more luminous arrows to guide them—only a slit in rock that she felt with her hands. The slit gave out into night with the sound of a sandstorm keening overhead, and the fall of sand on her outstretched hand. Her eyes tried to force light from memory, but found only the empty present.
�
��What is it?” Paul asked. “Where are we?”
“It’s the end of the tunnel,” she said. She tried to speak calmly, helping preserve his courage. “You saw that last arrow?”
“There was a sign on it,” he said. “What did it mean?”
“Square within a square,” she said. “That means ‘end of path.’ It’s a Bene Gesserit symbol.” And she wondered at the mystery of it. How had Kynes or whoever had made this place known to put a Bene Gesserit symbol there? The end that is a beginning.
“What do you feel when you put your foot out?” Paul asked.
“There’s a drop-off of some kind,” she said. “I can’t feel the bottom of it. We’ll have to wait for dawn unless we can find some light.”
“I feel sand blowing,” he said. “And there’s dust in my nose.”
“If only we had shields. You know, I blamed Idaho for not offering you his shield,” she said.
“Lump-lump-lump-lump!”
It was a fluttering sound, directionless in the dark. Somewhere out there. Jessica held herself motionless except for a hand that reached out and gripped Paul’s shoulder. Fingernails of terror scraped along her nerves.
“What’s that?” Paul whispered.
“Chireeep!” It came from the inky dark.
“Maybe something blowing in the wind,” she said. “Be quiet and listen.”
The waiting moment was packed with a sense of movements. Every sound had its own dimension. They were so tiny, the little movements. Realization flooded through her, squeezing fear into controllable size. The ungainly thumping of her heartbeats evened, shaping out the moments of time. She forced inner calmness.
“It’s little animals, or perhaps birds,” she said. “They were all around us and we frightened them.”
And she realized that this cave must have been a storm sanctuary for creatures from the desert.
“What was that other sound?” Paul asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Whatever it was … it was out there … quite a ways.”
She felt Paul move under her hand. Her son’s first hope was to melt into the protective coloration among the people here, to sink back into the people. But first they had to find them.
“I feel some kind of handle on the wall over here,” he whispered.
“Careful,” she said. She moved her hand along his arm, groped fingers over his and onto cold metal: a bar in a vertical slot. The bar had been pushed to the top of its slot.
“It felt like a hydraulic latch,” Paul said. “The kind they have on shipboard for airtight doors.”
Airtight, she thought. Sandtight.
Gently, she pulled down the bar.
A crack of luminosity opened before them—a vertical rectangle.
“It is a door,” Paul whispered.
“Shhhh,” she cautioned.
She pushed the door and it swung wide onto more blackness broken by two puddles of radiance beyond the opening. She recognized the glowing spots for what they were—footswitches.
“Inside,” she ordered. “Stay close. Keep hold of me.”
They slipped through the doorway, and she pulled it closed behind. The sound of the sandstorm dropped to a distant mewing. The air around them felt old—touched with dust … and faintly cinnamon.
Jessica probed into the black with her senses, felt no living thing except themselves.
“What’re those two glowing pieces?” Paul whispered.
She spoke aloud, shaping confidence into her tone. “Footswitches. This must be where the’copter’s hidden, the one Dr. Kynes said was at the end of the tunnel.” She extended an arm, moved it to set up air currents, sensed a gross object. “Be careful you don’t bump into it.”
“I’m thirsty,” Paul said.
“Maybe there’ll be water in the’copter,” she said. She took his shoulder, crept forward to the puddles of radiance on the floor: two glowing circles enclosing black designs. One held a rayflash—it was a light switch. The other was bisected by a straight line—a door control. She touched the rayflash with her toe.
Light drove back the darkness.
Jessica darted her glance around the revealed room, testing it. The ornicopter was there in front of them, sealed beneath a transparent cover. Around it, an irregular space had been carved from the native rock and closed away from the outside by a flat expanse of metal. The place was just big enough to maneuver around the squat shape of the ornicopter.
“It’s a big one,” Paul said. “I wonder …”
She motioned him to silence, listening: The faint shrilling of the storm was punctuated now by interval chirps, a tiny whistling. Some of the sound came from above and behind them. She turned, looked up at broken rock.
“What’s that?” Paul whispered.
“I don’t …”
A flurry of birdwings shocked her to silence. A feathered shape shot across the room over their heads, darted into a cranny on the opposite wall. The chirping whistles arose to a new height, slowly died away.
“A bird,” she sighed. “It has a nest in there.”
“It looked like a little owl,” Paul said. “But how could it get in here?”
“There’s dust,” she said. She pointed to the cover on the ornicopter and to the floor. “There must be a small hole in the rocks somewhere.” She moved forward to the shield over the ornicopter. “Help me uncover this thing.”
Dust filled the air as they rolled back the cover. Paul sneezed. And Jessica recalled the precautionary lectures on this planet. Nose filters, she thought. We’ll have to find nose filters somewhere. She slipped into the’copter, tested one set of its twin controls.
Paul, right behind her, looked up from an examination of the panel and the interior walls. “It has no battle shield,” he said.
“It’s not a battle craft,” she said. She looked left and right at the spread of wings, the delicate metal interleaving that could open to lift them in a soaring glide or compress for jet-driven speed.
“What’re those things on the rear seat?” Paul asked.
She turned, followed the direction of his pointing finger. Two low mounds of black fabric. She had taken them for cushions, saw now that they were shaped to fit a human back, that they had adjustable straps—packs. She reached back, flipped one over. It was surprisingly heavy and gave off a gurgling sound. Orange lettering came into view. She read it aloud: “Emergency use only. Contents: stilltent, one; literjons, four; energy caps …”
“Literjons,” Paul said. “That’s what it said on a water machine at the landing field. ‘Fill literjons here.’ Could that mean water?”
“Yes.” She continued reading, feeling the rigors of this planet press in on her with every word: “Energy caps, sixty; recaths, two; burnooses, two; distrans, one; medkit, one; digger, one; sandsnork, one; stillsuits, two; repkit, one; baradye pistol, one; sinkchart, one; filtplugs, eight; paracompass, one; instructs, one.”
“What’s a recath?” Paul asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. She dropped her attention to the handwritten addition, below the printing, and in the same orange : “Fremkit, one; thumpers, four.”
Paul said. “Thumper?”
“I suppose there’ll be an instruction manual,” she said. Out of the pack’s ziptop came a micro-manual with a magnifier and glowtab for turning the miniscule pages.
“Stilltent,” Paul read. “Saaaay … it reclaims the water that evaporates from your body.” He bent over the book, reading: “Breath reclamation—breathe through the dry-pass tube at all times. Remember, if your stay in the desert may be extended, that all moisture must be conserved. Make sure you wear the recath and its collection bottle at all times. See instructions for correct use of catheter equip …” He glanced down the page. “Mother! Do we drink …”
“Hush,” she said. “If it’s purified, water is water. What do you think we drank on the spaceship coming here?”
“But …”
“Go on reading,” she ordered. When my
water is gone, she thought, Paul will still have some left. “Our lives depend on how well we learn this. You’ll see here, it says people have worn catheters for months at a time without ill effect, but we can expect some irritation from them at first.”
“I don’t like it,” he said. His voice sounded sullen.
“What don’t you like?” she asked. “Living?”
He looked up at her, then back to the book. Presently, he bent over it, reading and examining the things from the pack.
Stillsuits. They were like a tent, only to be worn at all times.
Nose filters. She showed him how to install them.
Within an hour they had finished the manual and followed its instructions, escaping out to the open sands. They wore the light plastic stillsuits beneath sand-colored robes. A stilltent covered them with its snorkel protruding upward along a rock face.
Only a rough package marked “fremkit” remained to be examined from Jessica’s pack. She opened it. Out puffed a pastel blue kerchief that fluttered gauzily as she lifted it. Beneath the kerchief lay what appeared to be a knife in a sheath and a small package marked thumpers. On the thumper package was scrawled: “See instructions for calling sandworms inside.”
“Calling a sandworm,” Paul said. “Who’d want to?”
“I don’t know,” she said. She pulled the knife from its sheath. The blade was about twenty centimeters long, four-edged, and made of some milkwhite cloudy substance. She held it up, looked down the point. It had a cross-section in the shape of a shallow X and the tip was pierced by a hair-sized hole.
Poison? she wondered.
The handle felt warm and resilient beneath her fingers. She hesitated on the point of squeezing the handle, decided against it. She put the knife back in its sheath for later examination when they were out of the tent.
There remained now the flat little case labeled distrans, which was a distress transmitter, and the baradye pistol. She slipped the transmitter back into the pack, hefted the pistol. The instructions said it could be fired into the sand and would spread a patch of orange dye about twenty meters in diameter.
“What’s this?” Paul asked. He lifted a tiny booklet out of the fremkit.
Road to Dune Page 29
