Nefud shifted from one foot to the other.
“Well?”
“M’Lord, the Sardaukar have... two persons in custody who might be of interest to you. They’ve caught the Duke’s Master of Assassins.”
“Hawat? Thufir Hawat?”
“I’ve seen the captive myself, m‘Lord. ’Tis Hawat.”
“I’d not’ve believed it possible!”
“They say he was knocked out by a stunner, m’Lord. In the desert where he couldn’t use his shield. He’s virtually unharmed. If we can get our hands on him, he’ll provide great sport.”
“This is a Mentat you speak of,” the Baron growled. “One doesn’t waste a Mentat. Has he spoken? What does he say of his defeat? Could he know the extent of ... but no.”
“He has spoken only enough, m’Lord, to reveal his belief that the Lady Jessica was his betrayer.”
“Ah-h-h-h-h.”
The Baron sank back, thinking; then: “You’re sure? It’s the Lady Jessica who attracts his anger?”
“He said it in my presence, m’Lord.”
“Let him think she’s alive, then.”
“But, m’Lord—”
“Be quiet. I wish Hawat treated kindly. He must be told nothing of the late Doctor Yueh, his true betrayer. Let it be said that Doctor Yueh died defending his Duke. In a way, this may even be true. We will, instead, feed his suspicions against the Lady Jessica.”
“M‘Lord, I don’t—”
“The way to control and direct a Mentat, Nefud, is through his information. False information—false results.”
“Yes, m’Lord, but ...”
“Is Hawat hungry? Thirsty?”
“M’Lord, Hawat’s still in the hands of the Sardaukar!”
“Yes. Indeed, yes. But the Sardaukar will be as anxious to get information from Hawat as I am. I’ve noticed a thing about our allies, Nefud. They’re not very devious... politically. I do believe this is a deliberate thing; the Emperor wants it that way. Yes. I do believe it. You will remind the Sardaukar commander of my renown at obtaining information from reluctant subjects.”
Nefud looked unhappy. “Yes, m’Lord.”
“You will tell the Sardaukar commander that I wish to question both Hawat and this Kynes at the same time, playing one off against the other. He can understand that much, I think.”
“Yes, m’Lord.”
“And once we have them in our hands....” The Baron nodded.
“M’Lord, the Sardaukar will want an observer with you during any ... questioning.”
“I’m sure we can produce an emergency to draw off any unwanted observers, Nefud.”
“I understand, m’Lord. That’s when Kynes can have his accident.”
“Both Kynes and Hawat will have accidents then, Nefud. But only Kynes will have a real accident. It’s Hawat I want. Yes. Ah, yes.”
Nefud blinked, swallowed. He appeared about to ask a question, but remained silent.
“Hawat will be given both food and drink,” the Baron said. “Treated with kindness, with sympathy. In his water you will administer the residual poison developed by the late Piter de Vries. And you will see that the antidote becomes a regular part of Hawat’s diet from this point on ... unless I say otherwise.”
“The antidote, yes.” Nefud shook his head. “But—”
“Don’t be dense, Nefud. The Duke almost killed me with that poison-capsule tooth. The gas he exhaled into my presence deprived me of my most valuable Mentat, Piter. I need a replacement.”
“Hawat?”
“Hawat.”
“But—”
“You’re going to say Hawat’s completely loyal to the Atreides. True, but the Atreides are dead. We will woo him. He must be convinced he’s not to blame for the Duke’s demise. It was all the doing of that Bene Gesserit witch. He had an inferior master, one whose reason was clouded by emotion. Mentats admire the ability to calculate without emotion, Nefud. We will woo the formidable Thufir Hawat.”
“Woo him. Yes, m’Lord.”
“Hawat, unfortunately, had a master whose resources were poor, one who could not elevate a Mentat to the sublime peaks of reasoning that are a Mentat’s right. Hawat will see a certain element of truth in this. The Duke couldn’t afford the most efficient spies to provide his Mentat with the required information.” The Baron stared at Nefud. “Let us never deceive ourselves, Nefud. The truth is a powerful weapon. We know how we overwhelmed the Atreides. Hawat knows, too. We did it with wealth.”
“With wealth. Yes, m’Lord.”
“We will woo Hawat,” the Baron said. “We will hide him from the Sardaukar. And we will hold in reserve... the withdrawal of the antidote for the poison. There’s no way of removing the residual poison. And, Nefud, Hawat need never suspect. The antidote will not betray itself to a poison snooper. Hawat can scan his food as he pleases and detect no trace of poison.”
Nefud’s eyes opened wide with understanding.
“The absence of a thing,” the Baron said, “this can be as deadly as the presence. The absence of air, eh? The absence of water? The absence of anything else we’re addicted to.” The Baron nodded. “You understand me, Nefud?”
Nefud swallowed. “Yes, m’Lord.”
“Then get busy. Find the Sardaukar commander and set things in motion.”
“At once, m’Lord.” Nefud bowed, turned, and hurried away.
Hawat by my side! the Baron thought. The Sardaukar will give him to me. If they suspect anything at all it’s that I wish to destroy the Mentat. And this suspicion I’ll confirm! The fools! One of the most formidable Mentats in all history, a Mentat trained to kill, and they’ll toss him to me like some silly toy to be broken. I will show them what use can be made of such a toy.
The Baron reached beneath a drapery beside his suspensor bed, pressed a button to summon his older nephew, Rabban. He sat back, smiling.
And all the Atreides dead!
The stupid guard captain had been right, of course. Certainly, nothing survived in the path of a sandblast storm on Arrakis. Not an ornithopter... or its occupants. The woman and the boy were dead. The bribes in the right places, the unthinkable expenditure to bring overwhelming military force down onto one planet... all the sly reports tailored for the Emperor’s ears alone, all the careful scheming were here at last coming to full fruition.
Power andfear—fearand power!
The Baron could see the path ahead of him. One day, a Harkonnen would be Emperor. Not himself, and no spawn of his loins. But a Harkonnen. Not this Rabban he’d summoned, of course. But Rabban’s younger brother, young Feyd-Rautha. There was a sharpness to the boy that the Baron enjoyed... a ferocity.
A lovely boy, the Baron thought. A year or two more—say, by the time he’s seventeen, I’ll know for certain whether he’s the tool that House Harkonnen requires to gain the throne.
“M’Lord Baron.”
The man who stood outside the doorfield of the Baron’s bedchamber was low built, gross of face and body, with the Harkonnen paternal line’s narrow-set eyes and bulge of shoulders. There was yet some rigidity in his fat, but it was obvious to the eye that he’d come one day to the portable suspensors for carrying his excess weight.
A muscle-minded tank-brain, the Baron thought. No Mentat, my nephew... not a Piter de Vries, but perhaps something more precisely devised for the task at hand. If I give him freedom to do it, he’ll grind over everything in his path. Oh, how he’ll be hated here on Arrakis!
“My dear Rabban,” the Baron said. He released the doorfield, but pointedly kept his body shield at full strength, knowing that the shimmer of it would be visible above the bedside glowglobe.
“You summoned me,” Rabban said. He stepped into the room, flicked a glance past the air disturbance of the body shield, searched for a suspensor chair, found none.
“Stand closer where I can see you easily,” the Baron said.
Rabban advanced another step, thinking that the damnable old man had deliberately removed all
chairs, forcing a visitor to stand.
“The Atreides are dead,” the Baron said. “The last of them. That’s why I summoned you here to Arrakis. This planet is again yours.”
Rabban blinked. “But I thought you were going to advance Piter de Vries to the—”
“Piter, too, is dead.”
“Piter?”
“Piter.”
The Baron reactivated the doorfield, blanked it against all energy penetration.
“You finally tired of him, eh?” Rabban asked.
His voice fell flat and lifeless in the energy-blanketed room.
“I will say a thing to you just this once,” the Baron rumbled. “You insinuate that I obliterated Piter as one obliterates a trifle.” He snapped fat fingers. “Just like that, eh? I am not so stupid, Nephew. I will take it unkindly if ever again you suggest by word or action that I am so stupid.”
Fear showed in the squinting of Rabban’s eyes. He knew within certain limits how far the old Baron would go against family. Seldom to the point of death unless there were outrageous profit or provocation in it. But family punishments could be painful.
“Forgive me, m’Lord Baron,” Rabban said. He lowered his eyes as much to hide his own anger as to show subservience.
“You do not fool me, Rabban,” the Baron said.
Rabban kept his eyes lowered, swallowed.
“I make a point,” the Baron said. “Never obliterate a man unthinkingly, the way an entire fief might do it through some due process of law. Always do it for an overriding purpose—and know your purpose!”
Anger spoke in Rabban: “But you obliterated the traitor, Yueh! I saw his body being carried out as I arrived last night.”
Rabban stared at his uncle, suddenly frightened by the sound of those words.
But the Baron smiled. “I’m very careful about dangerous weapons,” he said. “Doctor Yueh was a traitor. He gave me the Duke.” Strength poured into the Baron’s voice. “I suborned a doctor of the Suk School! The Inner School! You hear, boy? But that’s a wild sort of weapon to leave lying about. I didn’t obliterate him casually.”
“Does the Emperor know you suborned a Suk doctor?”
This was a penetrating question, the Baron thought. Have I misjudged this nephew?
“The Emperor doesn’t know it yet,” the Baron said. “But his Sardaukar are sure to report it to him. Before that happens, though, I’ll have my own report in his hands through CHOAM Company channels. I will explain that I luckily discovered a doctor who pretended to the conditioning. A false doctor, you understand? Since everyone knows you cannot counter the conditioning of a Suk School, this will be accepted.”
“Ah-h-h, I see,” Rabban murmured.
And the Baron thought: Indeed, I hope you do see. I hope you do see how vital it is that this remain secret. The Baron suddenly wondered at himself. Why did I do that? Why did I boast to this fool nephew of mine—the nephew I must use and discard? The Baron felt anger at himself. He felt betrayed.
“It must be kept secret,” Rabban said. “I understand.”
The Baron sighed. “I give you different instructions about Arrakis this time, Nephew. When last you ruled this place, I held you in strong rein. This time, I have only one requirement.”
“M’Lord?”
“Income.”
“Income?”
“Have you any idea, Rabban, how much we spent to bring such military force to bear on the Atreides? Do you have even the first inkling of how much the Guild charges for military transport?”
“Expensive, eh?”
“Expensive!”
The Baron shot a fat arm toward Rabban. “If you squeeze Arrakis for every cent it can give us for sixty years, you’ll just barely repay us!”
Rabban opened his mouth, closed it without speaking.
“Expensive,” the Baron sneered. “The damnable Guild monopoly on space would’ve ruined us if I hadn’t planned for this expense long ago. You should know, Rabban, that we bore the entire brunt of it. We even paid for transport of the Sardaukar.”
And not for the first time, the Baron wondered if there ever would come a day when the Guild might be circumvented. They were insidious—bleeding off just enough to keep the host from objecting until they had you in their fist where they could force you to pay and pay and pay.
Always, the exorbitant demands rode upon military ventures. “Hazard rates,” the oily Guild agents explained. And for every agent you managed to insert as a watchdog in the Guild Bank structure, they put two agents into your system.
Insufferable!
“Income then,” Rabban said.
The Baron lowered his arm, made a fist. “You must squeeze.”
“And I may do anything I wish as long as I squeeze?”
“Anything.”
“The cannons you brought,” Rabban said. “Could I—”
“I’m removing them,” the Baron said.
“But you—”
“You won’t need such toys. They were a special innovation and are now useless. We need the metal. They cannot go against a shield, Rabban. They were merely the unexpected. It was predictable that the Duke’s men would retreat into cliff caves on this abominable planet. Our cannon merely sealed them in.”
“The Fremen don’t use shields.”
“You may keep some lasguns if you wish.”
“Yes, m’Lord. And I have a free hand.”
“As long as you squeeze.”
Rabban’s smile was gloating. “I understand perfectly, m’Lord.”
“You understand nothing perfectly,” the Baron growled. “Let us have that clear at the outset. What you do understand is how to carry out my orders. Has it occurred to you, nephew, that there are at least five million persons on this planet?”
“Does m‘Lord forget that I was his regent-siridar here before? And if m’Lord will forgive me, his estimate may be low. It’s difficult to count a population scattered among sinks and pans the way they are here. And when you consider the Fremen of—”
“The Fremen aren’t worth considering!”
“Forgive me, m’Lord, but the Sardaukar believe otherwise.”
The Baron hesitated, staring at his nephew. “You know something?”
“M’Lord had retired when I arrived last night. I ...ah, took the liberty of contacting some of my lieutenants from... ah, before. They’ve been acting as guides to the Sardaukar. They report that a Fremen band ambushed a Sardaukar force somewhere southeast of here and wiped it out.”
“Wiped out a Sardaukar force?”
“Yes, m’Lord.”
“Impossible!”
Rabban shrugged.
“Fremen defeating Sardaukar,” the Baron sneered.
“I repeat only what was reported to me,” Rabban said. “It is said this Fremen force already had captured the Duke’s redoubtable Thufir Hawat.”
“Ah-h-h-h-h-h.”
The Baron nodded, smiling.
“I believe the report,” Rabban said. “You’ve no idea what a problem the Fremen were.”
“Perhaps, but these weren’t Fremen your lieutenants saw. They must’ve been Atreides men trained by Hawat and disguised as Fremen. It’s the only possible answer.”
Again, Rabban shrugged. “Well, the Sardaukar think they were Fremen. The Sardaukar already have launched a program to wipe out all Fremen.”
“Good!”
“But—”
“It’ll keep the Sardaukar occupied. And we’ll soon have Hawat. I know it! I can feel it! Ah, this has been a day! The Sardaukar off hunting a few useless desert bands while we get the real prize!”
“M’Lord....” Rabban hesitated, frowning. “I’ve always felt that we underestimated the Fremen, both in numbers and in—”
“Ignore them, boy! They’re rabble. It’s the populous towns, cities, and villages that concern us. A great many people there, eh?”
“A great many, m’Lord.”
“They worry me, Rabban.”
�
��Worry you?”
“Oh ... ninety per cent of them are of no concern. But there are always a few... Houses Minor and so on, people of ambition who might try a dangerous thing. If one of them should get off Arrakis with an unpleasant story about what happened here, I’d be most displeased. Have you any idea how displeased I’d be?”
Rabban swallowed.
“You must take immediate measures to hold a hostage from each House Minor,” the Baron said. “As far as anyone off Arrakis must learn, this was straightforward House-to-House battle. The Sardaukar had no part in it, you understand? The Duke was offered the usual quarter and exile, but he died in an unfortunate accident before he could accept. He was about to accept, though. That is the story. And any rumor that there were Sardaukar here, it must be laughed at.”
“As the Emperor wishes it,” Rabban said.
“As the Emperor wishes it.”
“What about the smugglers?”
“No one believes smugglers, Rabban. They are tolerated, but not believed. At any rate, you’ll be spreading some bribes in that quarter... and taking other measures which I’m sure you can think of.”
“Yes, m’Lord.”
“Two things from Arrakis, then, Rabban: income and a merciless fist. You must show no mercy here. Think of these clods as what they are—slaves envious of their masters and waiting only the opportunity to rebel. Not the slightest vestige of pity or mercy must you show them.”
“Can one exterminate an entire planet?” Rabban asked.
“Exterminate?” Surprise showed in the swift turning of the Baron’s head. “Who said anything about exterminating?”
“Well, I presumed you were going to bring in new stock and—”
“I said squeeze, Nephew, not exterminate. Don’t waste the population, merely drive them into utter submission. You must be the carnivore, my boy.” He smiled, a baby’s expression in the dimple-fat face. “A carnivore never stops. Show no mercy. Never stop. Mercy is a chimera. It can be defeated by the stomach rumbling its hunger, by the throat crying its thirst. You must be always hungry and thirsty.” The Baron caressed his bulges beneath the suspensors. “Like me.”
“I see, m’Lord.”
Rabban swung his gaze left and right.
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