Dune: House Corrino

by Brian Herbert; Kevin J. Anderson

  Harishka stood inside a stucco-walled private meeting chamber. Her most trusted advisors, well trained in subtleties and consequences, moved around the room, their robes rustling like the wings of ravens. Duke Leto’s unexpected request had spurred them into a sudden and unwelcome meeting.

  Acolytes brought in a selection of juices, tea, and spice coffee. The Sisters pondered, sipping beverages, but the room remained strangely silent, devoid of casual conversation. Such matters required serious contemplation.

  Harishka glided to a rough stone bench and sat down. Cold and hard, it was not the sort of throne a powerful leader could have asked for, but the Bene Gesserit knew how to cope with discomfort. Her mind was sharp, her memories vivid. That was all a Mother Superior required.

  The appointed Sisters settled down with a rustle of skirts. As gray-muffled sunshine filtered through the prismatic skylights, their crystal-shard eyes turned toward Harishka. It was time for the Mother Superior to speak.

  “We have allowed ourselves to ignore this matter for years, and now we are forced to make a choice.” She mentioned the message cylinder that had recently arrived from Caladan.

  “We should not have told Leto Atreides of the no-ship’s existence in the first place,” said dour Reverend Mother Lanali, who managed the Mother School’s map room and geographical archives.

  “It was necessary,” Harishka said. “He would not have accepted Jessica unless we threw him a significant bone. To his credit, the Duke has not abused the information.”

  “He is doing it now,” said Reverend Mother Thora, who tended the orchards and was an expert in cryptography. Early in her career, she had developed a technique for implanting messages on the leaves of plants.

  Harishka disagreed. “The Duke could have used the information in many ways, yet instead he chose to go through private channels, maintaining our secret. Thus far, he has not betrayed our confidence. And, I might remind you that Jessica now carries his child, as we had hoped.”

  “But what took her so long to get pregnant?” asked another woman. “It should have been done much sooner.”

  Harishka did not meet her gaze. “It makes no difference. Let us attend to the matter at hand.”

  “I concur,” said Reverend Mother Cienna, whose heart-shaped face still bore the aura of innocent beauty that had deceived so many men in her younger years. “If anyone should be granted the power to make unseen warships, it is Duke Atreides. Like his father and grandfather before him, he is a man of impeccable credentials, a man of honor.”

  Lanali made a disbelieving sound. “Have you forgotten what he did on Beakkal? Wiping out the entire war memorial?”

  “His war memorial,” Cienna countered. “And he was provoked.”

  “Even if Duke Leto is trustworthy, what about future Atreides Dukes?” Lanali said, her words measured. “That opens up a significant unknown factor, and unknowns are dangerous.”

  “But there are significant known factors, as well,” Cienna said. “You worry too much.”

  The youngest member of the group, slender Sister Cristane, interrupted. “This decision has nothing to do with Atreides moral character. Such a weapon, even if used for passive defense, would change the texture of warfare in the Imperium. Invisibility technology offers a huge tactical advantage to any House that possesses it. Whether you have a softness for him or not, Cienna, Leto Atreides is no more than a pawn in our master plan, as was Baron Harkonnen.”

  “The Harkonnens developed the terrible weapon in the first place,” said Thora, finishing her spice coffee and standing to refill her cup. “Thankfully, they lost the secret and have not been able to retrieve it.”

  Lately, Harishka had begun to note the increasing amounts of melange the orchard-keeper consumed. Bene Gesserits could control their body chemistry, but they were strongly discouraged from extending their lifetimes beyond certain levels. Flaunting their longevity could move popular opinion against the Sisterhood.

  Harishka decided to conclude this phase of the discussion. She had heard enough. “We have no choice in the matter. We must reject Leto’s demand. We will send our response with Reverend Mother Mohiam when she goes to escort Jessica to Kaitain.” She lifted her head. Her brain was so full of memories and free thoughts, it weighed heavily on her shoulders.

  Thora let out a sigh, recalling how much work the Acolytes had done to dissect and analyze the damaged ship. “I don’t know how much we could tell Duke Leto anyway. We could give him the vessel wreckage, but even we do not understand how the field generator works.” She looked around the room, gulped more spice coffee.

  Dark-haired Sister Cristane spoke up again. “Such a weapon could be catastrophic if unleashed in the Imperium. But how much more terrible if even we do not understand how it functions? We must learn all we can and keep the secret safely with the Sisterhood.”

  She had been trained as a commando to slip in and perform aggressive actions when subtler schemes failed to achieve their desired ends. Because of her youth, Cristane did not have the patience of a Reverend Mother, though at times Harishka considered such impetuousness useful.

  “Absolutely correct.” The Mother Superior shifted on the hard stone bench. “Certain markings on the wreckage indicate that someone named Chobyn was involved. We have since learned that an inventor by that name defected from Richese to Giedi Prime around the time this invisibility system was developed.”

  Thora finished her third cup of spice coffee, ignoring Harishka’s disapproving frown. “The Harkonnens must have disposed of the man too soon, or they would not have had such difficulty reproducing the invisibility generator for themselves.”

  Harishka folded her spidery hands in her lap. “Naturally, we will begin our inquiries on Richese.”

  Superstition and desert necessities permeate the Fremen life, in which religion and law are intertwined.

  — The Ways of Arrakis, an Imperial filmbook for children

  On a day that would establish the future of his people, Liet-Kynes awoke thinking of the past. He sat at the edge of the bed he shared with Faroula, a padded mat upon the rock floor of a small but comfortable room in Red Wall Sietch.

  The great Fremen convocation would begin today, a meeting of all sietch leaders to determine a unified response against the Harkonnens. Too often, the desert people had remained scattered, independent, and ineffective. They allowed clan rivalries, feuds, and distractions to come between them. Liet would have to make them understand.

  His father would have been able to accomplish such a change with no more than an offhand comment. Pardot Kynes, the ecological prophet, had never understood his own power, but simply accepted it as a means to accomplish his goal of creating an Eden on Dune. His son Liet, though, was young and unproven.

  Sitting on the sleeping pallet, Liet heard the low, almost imperceptible hum of machinery recirculating air in the sietch. Beside him, Faroula breathed softly, obviously awake but silent and contemplative. She liked to look at her husband with her deep blue eyes.

  “My troubles have kept you from resting, my love,” he said to her.

  Faroula rubbed his shoulders. “Your thoughts are my thoughts, dearest. My heart feels your concern and your passion.”

  He kissed her hand. She rubbed her knuckles across the thin sandy beard he had grown. “Do not worry. The blood of Umma Kynes flows within you, as does his dream.”

  “But will the Fremen see it?”

  “Our people may be foolish at times, but not blind.”

  Liet-Kynes had loved her for years. Faroula was a Fremen woman, the daughter of old Heinar, the sietch’s one-eyed Naib. She knew her role. She was the best healer in the tribe, and her greatest work had been to heal Liet’s grief-stricken soul. She knew how to touch her husband, and love him.

  Still worried about the challenge of the convocation, he drew her to him and held her close on the warm sleeping pallet. But she kissed his uncertainty away, stroked his anxiety until it was gone, and imparted strength to him.
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  “I will be with you, my love,” Faroula said, although women would not be allowed into the speaking chamber, where the Naibs of the scattered sietches gathered to hear his words. Once they left their quarters, Liet and his wife would become formal again, cultural strangers. But he understood what Faroula meant. She would indeed be with him. His heart felt glad with the knowledge.

  Across the doorway hung a colorful spice-fiber tapestry, into which the women of the sietch had woven an inspiring depiction of Plaster Basin, where his father had established a bountiful greenhouse demonstration project. The tapestry showed running water, hummingbirds, fruit trees, and bright flowers. Closing his eyes, Liet imagined the ambrosia of the plants and pollens, felt damp air on his cheeks.

  “I hope today I will do something to make you proud, Father,” he murmured to himself, as if in prayer.

  Tragically, a moisture-laden ceiling had collapsed on Pardot and several of his assistants. Less than a year had passed since that terrible day, but to Liet it seemed much longer. He had to fill the shoes of the great visionary.

  The old must always make way for the new.

  Heinar, the aging Naib, might soon relinquish his leadership of Red Wall Sietch, and many Fremen assumed Liet would take his place as Naib. The Fremen word had an ancient Chakobsa meaning, “Servant of the sietch.” Liet harbored no personal ambitions of any sort; he simply wanted to serve his people, fight against Harkonnens, and continue guiding the wasteland toward an eventual garden on Dune.

  Liet was only half-Fremen, but from the first breaths he had taken, the first moments his heart had beaten free of his mother’s womb, his soul had been Fremen. As the new Imperial Planetologist, successor to the great dreamer Pardot Kynes, Liet could not confine his work to a single tribe.

  Before the last leaders arrived and the great convocation began, Liet needed to complete his daily duties as Planetologist. Though he did not value Shaddam IV as a man or an Emperor, Liet’s scientific work remained a valuable part of his existence. Each moment of life was as precious as water itself, and he would not waste it.

  He dressed quickly, wide-awake now. By the time dawn broke in a splash of orange across the landscape, he was outside wearing his new stillsuit. Even at such an early hour, the sand and rocks were warm, and heat devils danced over the terrain. He trudged along a rocky ridge only a few hundred meters from the sietch entrance.

  In a hollow he inspected a small biological testing station, an array of sensors and data-collection devices built into the rock. Pardot Kynes had renovated the forgotten equipment years ago, and Liet’s sietch members continued to maintain the raised panel of meters and control switches. The instruments measured wind velocities, temperatures, and aridity. One sensor showed an infinitesimal air-moisture reading, a trace of dew picked up by the egg-shaped collector.

  Hearing a loud squeak and a frantic fluttering of wings, he turned quickly. A small desert mouse, called a muad’dib in the language of the Fremen, had been trapped by a hawk in the shiny metalplaz bowl of the solar scanner.

  The little mouse tried to scramble up the slick sides of the bowl, only to be swatted back down by the swipe of a powerful talon as the hawk tried to secure its prey. The muad’dib appeared to be doomed.

  Liet did not interfere. Nature must take its course.

  To his surprise, he saw the collector begin to move as the mouse tripped a small release catch in the bowl. Its scurryings changed the angle so that reflected rays of the rising sun flashed directly into the hawk’s eyes. Blinded, the bird missed with another swipe of its claw— and the desert mouse escaped into a tiny crack in the rocks.

  Liet watched with amazed amusement and muttered the ancient words of a Fremen hymn that Faroula had taught him:

  “I drove my feet through a desert

  Whose mirage fluttered like a ghost.

  Voracious for glory, greedy for danger,

  I roamed the horizons of al-Kulab,

  Watching time level the mountains

  In its search and its hunger for me.

  And I saw the sparrows swiftly approach,

  Bolder than the onrushing wolf.

  They spread in the tree of my youth.

  I heard the flock in my branches

  And was caught on their beaks and claws!”

  What was it his friend Warrick had said in agony after consuming the Water of Life? The hawk and the mouse are the same. A true vision, or just ravings?

  As he watched the frustrated hawk fly away, rising on thermals to where it could survey the desert for any movement, Liet-Kynes wondered if the muad’dib had escaped by accident, or if it had been crafty enough to take advantage of its circumstances.

  Fremen saw signs and omens everywhere. It was a common belief that the appearance of a muad’dib before making a difficult decision did not bode well. And the important meeting of sietch leaders was about to begin.

  As Planetologist, though, Liet was bothered by something else. The solar scanner, installed by man, had interfered with the chain of desert life, predator and prey. While only an isolated event, Liet considered it in a much larger context, as his father would have done. Even the tiniest of human interferences, when built up over time, could lead to monumental, potentially disastrous changes.

  Distressed, Liet returned to the sietch.

  * * *

  Leathery-faced Fremen leaders arrived from hidden settlements all across the desert. Red Wall Sietch made an ideal place for the gathering. Adjoining an extensive network of natural caves and passageways, it could easily accommodate the visitors, who brought their own water, food, and bedding.

  The visitors would stay for days— weeks if necessary, until an accord could be reached. Liet would keep them here, even if he had to pound heads together to force cooperation. The desert men must coordinate their struggle, deciding on short-term targets and long-term goals. A recovered but still weakened Turok would speak to them about how the Baron was willing to sacrifice entire spice crews just to steal an unrecorded cargo of melange. Then Stilgar would describe what he and his raiders had found in the sacred caves of Hadith Sietch.

  The arriving delegates had traveled great distances by sandworm, or walked in on foot; others flew at night in stolen ornithopters, which were quickly camouflaged on arrival or moved into the caves. Dressed in a new jubba cloak, Liet-Kynes greeted each of them as they passed through the doorseal entrance into the sietch proper.

  Beside him stood his dark-haired wife, with their baby daughter and the toddler Liet-chih. Worked into the silky loops of Faroula’s hair were tinkling water rings, representing Liet’s wealth and status in the tribe. She hovered close to him for as long as she was allowed.

  Outside, the sun set in a blaze of orange, and early evening settled over the dunes. The women served the men a large communal meal in the sietch gathering chamber, traditional at the outset of such sessions. Liet sat at a low table beside Naib Heinar. In the company of the sietch leaders, Liet offered a toast in honor of the gruff old man. In response, Heinar shook his gray-haired head and declined to make a speech of his own. “No, Liet. This is your moment. Mine is past.” With a hand missing two fingers from a knife duel long ago, he clasped his son-in-law’s arm in a strong grip.

  After dinner, as the rugged men took their places in the high-vaulted gathering chamber, Liet considered many things. He had prepared well to address this convocation— but would they choose to cooperate and resist the Harkonnens, mobilizing their desert power on Dune? Or would they flee deeper into the wastelands, each tribe fighting for itself? Worst of all, would the Fremen prefer to quarrel with each other instead of the true enemy, as they had already done too many times in the past?

  Liet had a plan in mind. Finally, he stood on a high balcony overlooking the floor of the chamber. Ramallo, the old Sayyadina, stood beside him in a dusty black robe. Her dark eyes peered out of hollows in her face.

  Hundreds of people stood below, hardened fighters, leaders who had risen through the ranks o
f their respective tribes. All shared the vision of a green Dune, all revered the memory of Umma Kynes. Additional spectators stood on benches and balconies that zigzagged up the sheer interior walls. The sour odor of unwashed desert men filled the air, along with the sharp turbulence of spice.

  Sayyadina Ramallo extended her age-spotted hands in front of her face, palms turned up to say a blessing. The throng fell silent, heads bowed. On an adjacent balcony, a white-robed Fremen boy sang a traditonal lament in a lilting soprano voice, describing in ancient Chakobsa the arduous journeys of their Zensunni ancestors who had come here after fleeing Poritrin so long ago.

  When the boy finished, Ramallo glided back into shadows, leaving Liet alone on the high balcony. All eyes looked at him. This was his time.

  The perfect acoustics of the chamber carried Liet’s voice. “My brothers, this is a time of great challenge for us. On distant Kaitain I informed the Corrino Emperor of the Harkonnen atrocities here on Dune. I told him of the destruction of the desert, of Harkonnen squads that hunt Shai-Hulud for sport.”

  A murmur passed through the chamber, but he had merely reminded them of what they already knew.

  “In my role as Imperial Planetologist, I have requested botanists, chemists, and ecologists. I have begged for vital equipment. I have asked that a large-scale plan be enacted to preserve our world. I have demanded that he force the Harkonnens to cease their crimes and senseless destruction.” He paused, letting the suspense build. “But I was dismissed summarily. Emperor Shaddam IV did not care to listen to me!”

  The crowd’s vocal displeasure caused the rock floor beneath Liet to tremble. Rigorously independent, the Fremen did not consider themselves true Imperial subjects. They viewed the Harkonnens as interlopers, temporary occupants who would be cast aside one day in favor of another ruling House. In time, the Fremen themselves would rule here. Their legends foretold this.

  “In this great caucus we must discuss our alternatives, as free men. We ourselves must take action to protect our way of life, regardless of the Imperium and its foolish politics.”