After Paul had delivered the mysterious and nonspecific warning from Sielto, revealing how the Face Dancers were sometimes involved in surreptitious assassinations, Duke Leto had scowled, then dispatched a message to Governor Kio to increase her security precautions.
But Leto had decided not to hide. “There are always threats against us, Paul, and we can’t let them prevent us from going out in public. As the Old Duke used to tell me, ‘If fear rules us, we don’t deserve to rule.’ ”
Paul had sat quietly in his room, the food hardly touched on the table, his stomach roiling. He hated to have his father, whom he admired greatly, disappointed in him. “I’ll do better, sir. I promise.”
“See that you do.” Duke Leto’s features then softened. “Besides, I wouldn’t want to miss the performance that is so important to you.”
Remarkably, the Duke now looked fully at ease, afraid of nothing, which imparted similar feelings to Paul. When he and his family arrived at the theater, they immediately noticed the heightened security. Governor Kio’s red-uniformed guards were on high alert, inspecting everyone who entered the premises, using scanners to search carefully for weapons, sending search teams into every corner of the building. Of course, Sielto and his Face Dancer cohorts were capable of looking like anyone, but at least Paul felt reassured that they would not be able to smuggle any weapons in.
Below them in the panoramic performance arena, the vivacious Jongleur leader bounded onto the stage as the lights rose, reflected, and were intensified into rainbows by the crystalline architecture. Rheinvar’s voice boomed across the chamber crowded with thousands of spectators. “Every member of the audience is our friend. We welcome you all to celebrate Governor Kio’s recent betrothal to Preto Heiron.” He raised his arms to draw the onlookers’ attention, as if he were a dominant source of gravity.
From her tall seat in the center of the special balcony, Alra Kio rose regally to her feet. She wore a tiara of gold threads over her dark hair, and her gown sparkled with thin folds of woven glass. She extended her left hand to take Preto’s, raising the muscular young artist to his feet beside her. Her beau showed youthful enthusiasm, as well as a hint of shyness, as he bowed to the vast crowds.
When the audience applauded, Paul sensed that the cheering was not as exuberant as it should be. Governor Kio studiously did not show that she noticed anything amiss, but entire sections of the stands sounded muted.
Paul could not stop thinking about Sielto’s odd comments. The Face Dancers’ attuned senses would have alerted them to the disputes brewing in the local noble circles. Had they been hired to perform another “necessary assassination”? Or was there a different danger?
Earl Rhombur Vernius sat on the Governor’s right in a reinforced seat. Formal robes of state and a loose sash covered the most obvious prosthetics, but his scars could not be hidden; the motors that drove his body hummed with well-contained power.
Attentive to his long-term patient, Dr. Wellington Yueh had a seat at the rear of the box, from which he could watch Rhombur more easily, albeit with a diminished view of the performance. Next to the Earl and across the balcony from Paul, Bronso eagerly waited for the performers to take the stage. He seemed fascinated by the illusory stage dressings and the dazzling lights he had helped to install.
Searching for subtleties of expression and body language, which his mother had taught him to identify, Paul could tell that Bronso and his father were both exhausted. Though he had not been privy to their discussions, Paul could imagine how drained they must both feel. Their father-son relationship had become a hurricane, the bonds spun and torn and then reassembled into a fragile construction that only time could strengthen.
After a glance at Paul, the redheaded boy looked away in apparent embarrassment and shame. Rhombur seemed more upset with Bronso because he had placed Duke Leto’s son in danger, than because of the foolish risks the boy had taken for himself.
After the Jongleur leader finished his announcement, the Face Dancer performers ran onto the exhibition platform in enormous frilly costumes, ridiculous exaggerations of noble fashions, with hairdos that stood half again as tall as each wearer and open-mouthed sleeves voluminous enough to swaddle babies. The air shimmered, and the holo-sets solidified, creating a translucent illusion through which the bright reflections of crystalline facets penetrated.
A mist generator spewed clouds of billowy fog into the upper portion of the arena to simulate thunderclouds. Strobes and lasers flashed, ricocheting reflective lightning bolts from the mirrors into a beautiful tapestry of light. In a booming voice, Rheinvar bellowed to his performers, “What are you waiting for? On with the show!”
Spreading huge costume-feathered wings, two of the most agile performers leapt from high transparent shelves, buoyed by suspensors hidden in their suits. They swooped like hawks down to the stage, and then the winged performers swooped back up into the misty cloud, followed by a tangle of beams that sketched a net in the air. The crowd let out a gasp, then applauded loudly.
Admiring the technical aspects of the displays, Paul squinted at the arrangement of mirrors that he and Bronso had installed, followed the lines, and remembered the pattern he had tested many times. The webwork was complicated, composed of many strands of light, but he had been meticulous in setting up the grid, and he remembered every step of the process.
Gradually, though, he began to sense something subtly out of order. He and Bronso had followed Rheinvar’s precise instructions: testing beam paths, aligning every mirror, checking and double-checking the reflections. He knew every strand of the pattern they had laid down, as well as the five amplifiers.
Though the remarkable tapestry of light was beautiful and dizzying, he saw that some of the angles were wrong. Several key intersections were not in the right places. No one else would have noticed, but Paul saw additional lines, out-of-place vertices. It was as if he had expected a five-pointed star, but instead saw a six-pointed star—only dozens of times more intricate than that. He tried to catch Bronso’s attention, but his friend was on the opposite side of the balcony, engrossed in the performance.
His pulse quickening, Paul turned his attention back to the mirrors studded up and down the prismatic walls, in an effort to understand what had changed. Soon, one of the largest flashes was scheduled to take place, a fishnet of incandescent skeins of light, at a climactic point at the end of the first act.
He could find no other answer: Someone had climbed up there, moved the reflective surfaces, and added a substation that looked similar to the others . . . an amplifier. But who would have put an amplifier there?
Perhaps Rheinvar had asked other members of his stage crew to change the setup. Maybe the explanation was that simple and innocent.
Then again, Sielto had cautioned him. . . .
As the Face Dancer antics reached a crescendo, Paul edged forward in his seat. The simulated storm built, and the sonic rumble of thunder echoed inside the magnificent Theater of Shards.
Paul’s gaze traced where the next network of beam paths would converge, and suddenly he knew that the added amplifier meant something was amiss, something that might use the architecture of the Theater itself for a dangerous purpose. He had no time to explain to his father—but he knew what he had to do.
The dramatic storm reached its climax, and the flying Face Dancers landed among the other costumed figures for a complex dance that would serve as the finale of the first half of the show.
Paul shouted at Alra Kio. “Governor, watch out!” She gave a dismissive gesture in the midst of a boom of simulated thunder, but Paul threw himself bodily onto the Governor, knocking her out of her chair and into Preto Heiron. They all tumbled to the floor.
A dance of hot threads, coherent light bouncing from mirror to mirror, pumped through the amplifier and converted into a bludgeon of energy. The blast of heat and ionized air vaporized the wobbling chair that had held the governor, spraying wooden fragments in all directions like flechette darts. Deflect
ed by the prismatic balcony, secondary beams set fire to hanging pennants, a small buffet table, and a guard’s red uniform.
The pulse lasted less than a second, and in the sudden blinding silence, the members of Rheinvar’s troupe stumbled in their dance. The stunned audience hesitated with a collective indrawn breath, trying to fathom whether what they had just seen was part of the performance. A large black starburst in the Governor’s Balcony showed where the deadly beam had struck.
Duke Leto grabbed his son’s shoulder. “Paul, are you all right?”
The young man scrambled back to his feet, tried to compose himself. “She was in danger, sir. I saw what needed to be done.”
The Governor looked at him in shock, then barked at her guards. “And you all missed something, despite the warning from this boy and his father! There will be a thorough review, and I want every guilty person arrested.”
The Balut guards succeeded in extinguishing the fires and blocked the exits, as if expecting a full military assault on the private balcony. Dr. Yueh quickly checked Kio and Preto Heiron for injuries.
The terrified audience began to stream away from their seats, trying to escape, some pushing others out of the way in panic. Down below, ushers and security men commandeered the public address system and demanded that the performance be shut down and everyone remain in their seats. Few people heeded their calls for calm.
In the main arena, a frantic Rheinvar and his Face Dancers clustered together at center stage. The flying performers had stripped off their costume wings and now the whole troupe stood back to back, ready to fight for their lives if the crowd turned against them. As Paul looked at them, they rippled in his vision, and other audience members cried out, shouting toward the stage.
Paul saw what others did not, that Rheinvar had used his Master Jongleur powers to camouflage his troupe, making them vanish from the view of most of the audience. Were they part of the failed assassination attempt, or just protecting themselves from a mob?
“It’s over now,” Jessica said. “Paul, you saved the Governor’s life, maybe all of your lives.”
Guards began to flood the balcony, much too late to do anything, but they searched for other surreptitious assassins.
Leto was shaking his head while anger suffused his stormy expression. “How did you know, Paul? What did you see?”
Standing where the Governor’s chair had been, Paul explained, trying to catch his breath. “The beam paths were changed, mirrors and an amplifier were added. With its architecture, the Theater itself became a weapon. If you study the performing-area blueprints, you’ll see what I mean.”
Rhombur strode forward, grinning at Paul. “Vermillion Hells, fine work, young man!”
Paul didn’t want to take all the credit. “Bronso could have seen it, too.”
The other boy crowded close, his face pale, eyes wide. “I should have figured it out earlier. Rheinvar told us about the original architect, the lost secret of the theater that died with him. The Theater of Shards was designed as a set of focusing lenses for exactly this sort of assassination. Apparently, the secret wasn’t lost completely.”
Rhombur clapped Paul on the shoulder, barely restraining the strength of his artificial limbs. “But it was you, young man. Leto, be proud of him!”
“Never doubt my pride in my son, Rhombur. He knows that.”
Then the cyborg Earl paused, as if something tickled the back of his mind. A dozen guards poked around in the balcony seating area; others had already whisked the Governor away to safety. The shouts and turmoil made the background noise in the arena deafening, but Rhombur continued to concentrate, using his enhanced hearing. “Do you hear that vibration? A high-pitched tone?”
Alerted now, Paul felt the balcony’s crystalline support structure thrumming like a tuning fork. “Some kind of resonance?” he asked. Suddenly he realized that the structure of the Theater of Shards was designed to reflect and intensify not only light but sound.
What if the lasers had merely been an opening salvo? A trigger to set up the vibration in all that layered crystal, reflecting the beams back and forth into a standing wave? The sound would continue to build, but the delay would be long enough to lure others closer. . . .
Rhombur moved with all the force and speed his cyborg body could manage. He knocked Bronso away as he pushed Paul to the other side of the balcony. “Move!”
But he couldn’t get out of the way himself. The invisible but intense acoustic hammer slammed into Rhombur like two colliding Heigh-liners, smashed him between a pair of oncoming sonic walls.
He crumpled.
The echoes of the blast hurt Paul’s ears, and made his skull ring. He pushed himself up to his hands and knees, looked around. His parents had both been knocked flat; Jessica reeled, disoriented, but not severely injured.
Paul was stunned, and the ringing remained in the back of his mind. A trap . . . a double trap. First the concentrated blast of the summed lasers, and moments later a second sonic onslaught. Killing blows of light and sound.
Three of Kio’s guards nearby were crushed, dropping to the ground, killed instantly. But Rhombur. . . .
Even with his artificial reinforcements, polymer-lined torso, and prosthetic arms, the cyborg Earl’s spine was bent as though someone had taken his shoulders and pelvis, then twisted him like the lid on a stubborn jar. His right prosthetic arm was folded back in on itself. Blood streamed out of his nose and eyes, and a wash of hemorrhages darkened his cheeks beneath pulped skin.
“Rhombur!” Leto threw himself down alongside his friend who had been at the center of the invisible blast. “Yueh, help him!”
The Suk doctor carried a minimal medical kit at all times, but nothing sufficient for this. Anguished, Yueh knelt beside the destroyed remnants of his most important patient.
Bronso was on his knees, sobbing over the fallen man. He touched the smashed shoulder. “Father . . . Father! Not now—I can’t lead House Vernius without you! There’s too much at stake, too much we still need to say to each other!”
Earl Rhombur Vernius opened his eyes, and a croak of unintelligible sound slid out of his throat. His artificial lungs were damaged, and he could barely breathe. Blood and nutrient liquids covered his face and leaked out onto the floor.
Leaning over him, Bronso continued, “I love you—I forgive you! I’m sorry for what I did, for leaving you, for denying—”
Rhombur twitched, rallied, and gathered a few last shreds of energy. He couldn’t see anyone, barely managed to form his broken thoughts into words. Bronso leaned close, desperate to hear his father’s final words.
Rhombur whispered, “Is Paul . . . safe?”
Then he shuddered, and died.
Bronso reeled back as if struck with a physical blow. Paul took a step closer to say how sorry he was, but Bronso flailed out at him, then fell weeping beside the mangled, lifeless body.
One sharp tragedy can erase years of friendship.
—THUFIR HAWAT, Weapons Master of House Atreides
In the days following the attack, Governor Kio launched a vigorous—some said excessive—investigation. The heirs of three old-guard noble families were soon implicated in the plot and, though evidence was thin, they were summarily executed in the dark of night. Afterward, Kio seized the assets of the guilty families and promptly married Preto Heiron.
Paul didn’t care one bit about local politics. He’d been unable to sleep following the terrible tragedy in the Theater. In that critical moment, Rhombur had knocked Bronso aside, but his reactive movement had been to save Paul. During that instant, that flashpoint of a decision, he had not been thinking of his own son. And Bronso saw it all.
In the days while he waited for a Heighliner bound for Ix, Bronso Vernius isolated himself in his quarters, grieving. He ignored all company, refused to see Paul, and turned his back on everyone, shattered by what he had witnessed, feeling betrayed by Paul as well as his own father. “Is Paul safe?” The words were like the twist of a knife. B
ronso would leave Balut as soon as possible, taking Rhombur’s smashed patchwork body with him.
Duke Leto shook his head, sitting alone with Paul. “That young man is the sole survivor of House Vernius, the ruler of Ix, but he is soft and inexperienced. I fear the technocrats will take control and turn him into nothing more than a puppet.”
“Why won’t he talk with me?” Paul said. “We’ve been through so much together. I thought we would have done anything for each other.”
Introspective now, Leto rarely left Paul’s side, wistfully telling stories of how he and Rhombur had once gone diving for coral-gems and how the volatile stones had set their boat on fire. He talked about how Rhombur had saved a Guild Heighliner when the Navigator was incapacitated by tainted spice gas . . . how Atreides armies and loyal Vernius forces had fought side by side to recapture Ix from the Tleilaxu invaders. Paul had heard those legendary accounts many times before, but now he let his father talk, because the Duke needed to relive those memories.
Governor Kio hosted an impromptu celebration for Paul, during which she rewarded him for his clever and selfless actions in saving her from assassination. Paul had no interest in the rewards or accolades, and he felt that the show of appreciation was inappropriate after the death of poor Rhombur. The ceremony was just another slap in the face to the already hurting Bronso.
In the uproar following the attack, Rheinvar, his Face Dancers, the performers and members of his traveling crew were all arrested, separated, and placed in permanent cells. Even a Master Jongleur could not maintain his illusions and widespread hypnosis for so long, against so many people howling for their blood. They had been caught . . . and blamed.
Paul saw from the outset that the people of Balut—and Governor Kio herself—needed scapegoats, and that the troupe members would do nicely. However, because Paul had saved her life, because she offered to reward him with more than a mere medal, he pressed his advantage. At the appreciation ceremony in front of a large crowd, he asked her to grant his one request: that Rheinvar and his troupe be allowed to depart safely from Balut, on the condition that they never return. Though she grumbled, Kio reluctantly issued the command.
The Winds of Dune Page 18
