A different voice, cooler, more logical. “We can postulate. An Ixian has affronted the Imperial household. You hope that our Confederacy has information on the whereabouts of Bronso of Ix.”
The first voice: “We condemn the actions of the Vernius exile!”
Alia hardened her tone. “Bronso Vernius used Ixian technology to bring disaster to my brother’s funeral. What other tricks might he use? What technologies have you given him that he intends to turn against me?”
“None, my Lady! I guarantee that the Technocrat Council had nothing to do with it.” She detected no falsehood in his voice.
The second voice: “We respectfully ask you to remember that Ix was once a close friend to House Atreides. We hope to reestablish that beneficial alliance.”
“The Atreides alliance was not with the Technocrat Council,” she said, “but with House Vernius. Bronso himself severed those ties when he was young.”
“So, you see, my Lady—Bronso has been making unwise decisions for years. He does not represent the best interests of Ix. He is an unwanted remnant of an old time and obsolete ways.”
Old and obsolete, Alia thought. There was a time when my father and Rhombur Vernius were fast friends, when Ix served the needs of honor, not just commerce and industry. These men have forgotten so much from the days when House Atreides helped restore Vernius to power after the Tleilaxu takeover.
“Even so, you must earn your way back into my good graces.” She tapped her fingers on the arm of the throne. “Have your representatives bring me new technologies, devices that are not available to anyone else. Duncan Idaho will inspect them for me and decide which can be used to strengthen our Regency. When those choices are made, you must grant me exclusive use of the technologies. After you’ve impressed me, we will see about restoring Ix’s standing in my eyes.”
A slight hesitation, perhaps a silent consultation among the men, and finally the logical voice said, “The Technocrat Council sincerely appreciates the opportunity, Great Lady.”
Memories and lies are painful. But my memories are not lies.
—BRONSO OF IX, transcript of death-cell interview
Inside the Heighliner’s layered decks of public areas and service corridors, the Wayku always provided a place for Bronso to hide. Feeling an affinity for him, the gypsylike people who served as Guildship stewards had secretly helped Bronso since he started his strange quest to destroy the myth surrounding Paul Atreides.
Bronso switched his location from day to day and port to port, taking up temporary residence in unclaimed staterooms or tiny cabins. Always alert and wary, he kept his power usage to a minimum so that Guild watchdogs would find nothing amiss. He had been on the run for seven years, ever since he began distributing his writings.
Sometimes he took advantage of well-appointed suites that reminded him of his days in the Grand Palais of Ix, as the heir of House Vernius. Even so, Bronso did not for a moment regret losing his comforts and riches. He had rejected them voluntarily, in order to follow a more important calling. The Technocrat Council had corrupted everything that was good and noble on his home world. Now Bronso was performing vital work . . . history-making work.
In the turmoil that continued to ripple across the uncertain worlds following the death of Muad’Dib, most Guildships were overbooked, and wealthy noble family members fought over the available cabins. On this particular passage, Ennzyn—one of Bronso’s Wayku allies—had relegated him to a tiny crew cabin that was not listed in any brochure.
He didn’t complain, since his requirements were few: He needed only a light and a private place to sit while writing his latest condemnations. His struggle against the fanaticism that muddied Paul’s legacy always seemed impossible, but he had accepted the task. He was the only man brave enough to criticize Muad’Dib so openly. Bronso might have been reckless, but he had never been a coward.
His Wayku friends sheltered, protected, and aided him. As an itinerant class of workers, solicitous, unnoticed and unassuming, they possessed no real identity as far as the Imperium was concerned. When he and young Paul Atreides had first met these wayfarers nineteen years ago, Bronso had not expected to enlist them as such dedicated allies. Now, they quietly secreted his “heretical” tracts among the belongings of random travelers, so that the publications appeared on other planets, seemingly without any point of origin.
People needed to know the truth, needed skepticism to counterbalance the nonsense that Irulan had put forth as The Life of Muad’Dib. To him had fallen the task of swinging the pendulum in the opposite direction. To accomplish that, he had to commit the words to paper. His statements needed to be infuriating, irrefutable, and compelling.
Throughout the bloody Jihad and Alia’s recent crackdowns, the people accepted repression in the name of orthodoxy because Paul had allowed—allowed!—his Fremen bureaucracy to become a ravenous cancer. Bronso recognized that Paul had, at times, made attempts to rein in the excesses, but the warfare and fanaticism, like the mythology that deified him, had taken on a life of its own.
Exhausted, frightened people forgot the truth so easily. Paul’s apologists rewrote history and expunged the direst events from the official record: the horrific battles, the sterilization of entire planets, the mass murder of monks in the Lankiveil monastery. With so much privation and such a scattering of peoples, who would question histories kept by the “official” purveyors of truth? Who would gainsay a source as unimpeachable as the Princess Irulan herself, wife of Muad’Dib? Surely, her accounts must be the true version, the way history had actually occurred.
But it was not so, and Bronso had to continue the attempt to correct the record. It was a matter of honor, and he had given his word.
His Wayku companion had brought him food, but Bronso was not hungry. In his cramped cabin, he sat on an uncomfortable metal bench, leveled the writing surface, and sank into his memories. By the light of a low-power glowglobe, he laid crime after crime at Muad’Dib’s feet. Each damning line was like the crack of a flagellant’s whip.
Only by stripping away the softening untruths, only by laying bare the callous acts committed in the name of Muad’Dib, only by making the human race aware of the appalling crimes that Paul had unleashed, could Bronso accomplish what was necessary to preserve the future of mankind.
May God save us from a messiah of our own making!
As he wrote, the images of those events screamed behind his eyes. “Oh, Paul, my friend . . .” He continued to write, and tears streamed down his face.
Once, when Muad’Dib was walking in the desert, he came upon a kangaroo mouse, a muad’dib, perched in the shadows of a rock. “Tell me your story, little one,” he said. “Tell me of your life.”
The mouse was shy. “No one wants to know about me, for I am small and insignificant. Tell me of your life.”
To which Muad’Dib replied, “Then no one wants to know about me either, for I am just a man and equally insignificant.”
—A Child’s History of Muad’Dib by the PRINCESS IRULAN
When Alia commanded Irulan to accompany her to the Arrakeen warehouse quarter, the Princess had no choice but to obey. Though she had been freed from her death cell, and a formal pardon had been signed and stamped, Irulan knew that the Regent could easily exile her to Salusa, or worse.
They went together with a security contingent and entered a small warehouse. Inside, workers moved about like insects in a hive, busily packaging small books, stacking them into containers, preparing them for wide distribution across the Imperium. Irulan smelled spice-based plastic and paper dust in the air, along with the ubiquitous musk of sweat and the metal tang of machinery.
As she watched them work, Irulan recognized the volumes. The Life of Muad’Dib. “That’s my book.”
Alia smiled, delivering good news. “A revised edition.”
Irulan picked up a copy and thumbed through the thin, indestructible pages, the densely printed text. “What do you mean, revised?” She skimmed paragraphs a
nd tried to identify sections that had been changed, added, or deleted.
“A better version of the truth, edited for the benefit of the masses, taking into account changes in our political situation.”
Duncan Idaho, silent and uneasily threatening, stood beside the confident Regent. From his placid expression, Irulan could not tell if he approved, disapproved, or did not care.
Alia tossed her hair back and explained. “My brother was a tolerant, confident man. While your treatises were positive for the most part, he did allow you to write some critical passages that questioned his decisions, painted him in a slightly uncomplimentary light. I don’t know why he permitted this, but I am not my brother. I do not have Muad’Dib’s force of will. I am just the Regent.”
Irulan fought the annoyance in her voice. “Modesty and self-deprecation don’t suit you, Alia.”
“These are precarious times! With the future of the Empire in doubt, I am tiptoeing across drumsand. Anything that diminishes the worth of Paul’s memory will weaken my position. Bronso’s manifestos are like borer worms chewing away at our foundation, so I shall control what I can control.”
In the warehouse, workers piled boxes of the revised biography onto suspensor pallets and moved them out to waiting groundcars that took them to cargo ships. Nearly a billion of Irulan’s books had already been distributed to the planets Paul had conquered in his Jihad.
“Your purpose in my government is to be Bronso’s counterpoint. Given the governmentally subsidized distribution, your books will have a much broader platform than the traitor’s seditious publications can ever receive. Your official histories will easily overwhelm his lies, by brute force if necessary.”
Irulan wasn’t a coward who trembled at any threat made on her life, but she did feel an obligation to Paul, and she had to consider the welfare of her husband’s twins. “And what is it exactly that you want from me?”
“Imperial security depends upon the reverence the people still hold for my brother. From now on, your writings shall serve a specific purpose. Publish only good things about Paul, positive aspects of his rule, even if you have to distort the truth.” Alia gave her a girlish smile, looking like the child that Irulan had helped raise in the first years of Paul’s reign. “If you do that, you have absolutely nothing to fear.”
Over the ensuing weeks, Irulan returned to her writings with a passion and enthusiasm that took Jessica by surprise. The Princess seemed intent on preserving—and exaggerating—the memory of Paul. In a creative fervor, she wrote chapters that expanded the glorious legend of Muad’Dib, taking even more liberties than she had during Paul’s lifetime.
Finding it alarming and distasteful, Jessica decided to speak with Irulan. For Paul’s sake.
In her private wing of the immense citadel, the Princess had selected the décor and worked with craftsmen and artisans to create an echo of the Corrino palace on Kaitain, where she had grown up. Irulan had her own courtyards and glassed-in greenhouses, dry fountains and wind-scoured obelisks. She kept to herself on the Citadel grounds and did not often venture out in public.
Making her way without escort or criers, Jessica found the Princess in a courtyard gazebo, scribing words onto crystal sheets. The younger woman glanced up, and tucked a loose strand of gold hair behind her ear. “Lady Jessica, this is an unexpected pleasure.” She gestured toward an empty seat beside her at the writing table. “Join me. I’m always happy to talk with you.”
“You haven’t yet heard what I have to say.”
The words elicited a frown. “Have I done something to displease you?”
Taking the offered seat, Jessica did not mince words. “Paul deserves better than shameless propaganda. You’ve always shaded the truth one way or the other, Irulan, and most of the time I could not fault you for it, because you came close to representing my son accurately. But now, when I compare your histories with known and irrefutable facts, I find them far from the mark. The new revisions to The Life of Muad’Dib are very disturbing.”
“Alia’s revisions.” Irulan tried to cover her embarrassment. “In any case, who can know every fact? My purpose is not to memorialize dry data, but to aid our government in these uncertain times, for the sake of Imperial security. You know the way of it. We were both trained by the Sisterhood.”
“I know what Alia wants, and I understand the necessity for propaganda, but now . . . nothing negative at all? Not the tiniest thing? Even starry-eyed pilgrims can see your obvious slant.”
“In Alia’s view, the slant itself provides balance.” Irulan straightened her back. “She’s right, actually. Bronso’s constant unflattering revelations are doing a great deal of damage, and I find them personally reprehensible. They weaken the Regency at its most fragile, unstable moment, when it’s just getting under way. So, if my writings are overly favorable toward Muad’Dib in portraying historical events, it is only to counter the slander.” The emotion in Irulan’s voice surprised Jessica. “History is in my hands—Paul himself told me that. I can’t let Bronso’s seditious tracts go unchallenged.”
Jessica let out a long sigh. She had kept Paul’s secret for many years, but now she decided that Irulan needed to know. “There’s a key point you don’t understand.”
Irulan set down her stylus and pushed the crystal sheets away. She seemed stiff and overly formal. “Then enlighten me. What is it, exactly, that I am missing?”
“That Bronso was once Paul’s friend.”
Irulan frowned. “I studied Paul’s youth, so I know of his contacts with House Vernius.”
“And you know as well that there was a falling out between the Atreides and the Ixians.”
“Yes, but the historical record is sketchy and vague. It was not a subject that Paul wanted to discuss, though I did ask him about it.”
Jessica lowered her voice, concerned that someone might be eavesdropping, although these events were common knowledge to a person willing to dig into old Imperial records. “The two Houses once had strong ties, and Paul met Bronso when the Vernius family went to Caladan for Duke Leto’s wedding. Later, when Paul was twelve, he traveled to Ix to study with Bronso—just as my Leto went to study with Rhombur Vernius when he was young. Duke Leto felt it was important for Paul’s training, to make him the next leader of Caladan. The boys became the best of friends—blood brothers sworn to guard each other’s life. Until everything changed.”
With the comment hanging between them, Jessica met the other woman’s inquisitive gaze. Then Jessica proceeded to tell the story.
PART II
10,188 AG
Paul Atreides, age twelve, six months after the end of the War of Assassins between House Ecaz and House Moritani
Three years before House Atreides leaves Caladan for Arrakis
I do not regret any of the challenges of my youth. Each experience shaped me into what I am today. If you want to understand me and my motivations, look backward.
—Conversations with Muad’Dib by the PRINCESS IRULAN
Disembarking from the Heighliner at Ix, the Lady Jessica rode with young Paul, Duncan, and Gurney on one of the many shuttles to the surface, whereupon they descended through the crust to the cavern city of Vernii.
Jessica saw her son gazing at the immense enclosed space, fascinated by the artificial sky, graceful support girders, and glittering columns that extended from cavern floor to ceiling. The open area pulsed with activity, whirred with the sound of smoothly functioning machinery, and Paul said, “My father told me of his time studying here with House Vernius, but his descriptions did not do justice to this place.”
Gurney struggled not to show how impressed he was by the view. “You will find it time well spent, young Master. A worthy tradition—like father, like son.”
Duncan stood rigid, perhaps remembering when he had come to Ix in the battle to restore Rhombur to the throne. “Your invitation here demonstrates to everyone that House Vernius has restored normalcy to Ix after the Tleilaxu invaders were ousted.”
“Then we should get to the Grand Palais,” Paul said. “It would be rude to keep Bronso and his family waiting for us.” He was barely able to restrain his eagerness to begin his new adventure.
The past year’s experiences had dramatically matured Paul: his first trip offworld to Ecaz, his first taste of battle during the War of Assassins on Caladan and Grumman. Duke Leto had commented on the boy’s early transition to manhood, and Jessica could not help but agree. Whenever she guided him through prana-bindu exercises, pushing the boundaries of his mental and muscular abilities, she had begun to see him as an adult. Even at age twelve, Paul was more prepared for the hazards of his life than many of the Landsraad nobles she had met. Jessica thought Paul’s eyes looked wiser now than they had even half a year ago.
With businessmen, CHOAM representatives, and industrialists arriving and departing in a constant flow of shuttles, the city of Vernii was a bustling blur of activity. The small Atreides group made their way from the shuttle arrival area toward the inverted palace structure that glittered amidst the other industrial buildings. From the gliding tram that whisked them along the ceiling, they could see a dizzying view of diamond lattice columns that supported the ceiling, as well as the skeleton of an immense Heighliner being built on the wide cavern floor. The Spacing Guild constantly needed new ships, and construction continued at a furious pace.
When they reached the expansive portico station of the Grand Palais, Paul pointed to a tall, red-haired boy, whom he knew to be eleven years old. “There’s Bronso!” Overhead, crystal chandeliers glittered with myriad prisms, while hidden sonic vibrators in the walls played recorded Ixian folk songs.
The Winds of Dune Page 9
