Dune (38 page)

“Keep your shield, Duncan. Your right arm is shield enough for me.”

Jessica saw the way the praise took effect, how Idaho moved closer to Paul, and she thought:
Such a sure hand my son has with his people.

The Fremen removed a rock plug that opened a passage down into the native basement complex of the desert. A camouflage cover was rigged for the opening.

“This way,” one of the Fremen said, and he led them down rock steps into darkness.

Behind them, the cover blotted out the moonlight. A dim green glow came alive ahead, revealing the steps and rock walls, a turn to the left. Robed Fremen were all around them now, pressing downward. They rounded the corner, found another down-slanting passage. It opened into a rough cave chamber.

Kynes stood before them, jubba hood thrown back. The neck of his still-suit glistening in the green light. His long hair and beard were mussed. The blue eyes without whites were a darkness under heavy brows.

In the moment of encounter, Kynes wondered at himself:
Why am I helping these people? It's the most dangerous thing I've ever done. It could doom me with them.

Then he looked squarely at Paul, seeing the boy who had taken on the mantle of manhood, masking grief, suppressing all except the position that now must be assumed—the dukedom. And Kynes realized in that moment the dukedom still existed and solely because of this youth—and this was not a thing to be taken lightly.

Jessica glanced once around the chamber, registering it on her senses in the Bene Gesserit way—a laboratory, a civil place full of angles and squares in the ancient manner.

“This is one of the Imperial Ecological Testing Stations my father wanted as advance bases,” Paul said.

His father wanted!
Kynes thought.

And again Kynes wondered at himself.
Am I foolish to aid these fugitives? Why am I doing it? It'd be so easy to take them now, to buy the Harkonnen trust with them.

Paul followed his mother's example, gestalting the room, seeing the workbench down one side, the walls of featureless rock. Instruments lined the bench—dials glowing, wire gridex planes with fluting glass emerging from them. An ozone smell permeated the place.

Some of the Fremen moved on around a concealing angle in the chamber and new sounds started there—machine coughs, the whinnies of spinning belts and multidrives.

Paul looked to the end of the room, saw cages with small animals in them stacked against the wall.

“You've recognized this place correctly,” Kynes said. “For what would you use such a place, Paul Atreides?”

“To make this planet a fit place for humans,” Paul said.

Perhaps that's why I help them,
Kynes thought.

The machine sounds abruptly hummed away to silence. Into this void there came a thin animal squeak from the cages. It was cut off abruptly as though in embarrassment.

Paul returned his attention to the cages, saw that the animals were brown-winged bats. An automatic feeder extended from the side wall across the cages.

A Fremen emerged from the hidden area of the chamber, spoke to Kynes: “Liet, the field-generator equipment is not working. I am unable to mask us from proximity detectors.”

“Can you repair it?” Kynes asked.

“Not quickly. The parts. . . .” The man shrugged.

“Yes,” Kynes said. “Then we'll do without machinery. Get a hand pump for air out to the surface.”

“Immediately.” The man hurried away.

Kynes turned back to Paul. “You gave a good answer.”

Jessica marked the easy rumble of the man's voice. It was a
royal
voice, accustomed to command. And she had not missed the reference to him as Liet. Liet was the Fremen alter ego, the other face of the tame planetologist.

“We're most grateful for your help, Doctor Kynes,” she said.

“Mm-m-m, we'll see,” Kynes said. He nodded to one of his men. “Spice coffee in my quarters, Shamir.”

“At once, Liet,” the man said.

Kynes indicated an arched opening in the side wall of the chamber. “If you please?”

Jessica allowed herself a regal nod before accepting. She saw Paul give a hand signal to Idaho, telling him to mount guard here.

The passage, two paces deep, opened through a heavy door into a square office lighted by golden glowglobes. Jessica passed her hand across the door as she entered, was startled to identify plasteel.

Paul stepped three paces into the room, dropped his pack to the floor. He heard the door close behind him, studied the place—about eight meters to a side, walls of natural rock, curry-colored, broken by metal filing cabinets on their right. A low desk with milk glass top shot full of yellow bubbles occupied the room's center. Four suspensor chairs ringed the desk.

Kynes moved around Paul, held a chair for Jessica. She sat down, noting the way her son examined the room.

Paul remained standing for another eyeblink. A faint anomaly in the room's air currents told him there was a secret exit to their right behind the filing cabinets.

“Will you sit down, Paul Atreides?” Kynes asked.

How carefully he avoids my title,
Paul thought. But he accepted the chair, remained silent while Kynes sat down.

“You sense that Arrakis could be a paradise,” Kynes said. “Yet, as you see, the Imperium sends here only its trained hatchetmen, its seekers after the spice!”

Paul held up his thumb with its ducal signet. “Do you see this ring?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know its significance?”

Jessica turned sharply to stare at her son.

“Your father lies dead in the ruins of Arrakeen,” Kynes said. “You are technically the Duke.”

“I'm a soldier of the Imperium,” Paul said,
“technically
a hatchetman.”

Kynes face darkened. “Even with the Emperor's Sardaukar standing over your father's body?”

“The Sardaukar are one thing, the legal source of my authority is another,” Paul said.

“Arrakis has its own way of determining who wears the mantle of authority,” Kynes said.

And Jessica, turning back to look at him, thought:
There's steel in this man that no one has taken the temper out of . . . and we've need of steel. Paul's doing a dangerous thing.

Paul said: “The Sardaukar on Arrakis are a measure of how much our beloved Emperor feared my father. Now,
I
will give the Padishah Emperor reasons to fear the—”

“Lad,” Kynes said, “there are things you don't—”

“You will address me as Sire or My Lord,” Paul said.

Gently,
Jessica thought.

Kynes stared at Paul, and Jessica noted the glint of admiration in the planetologist's face, the touch of humor there.

“Sire,” Kynes said.

“I am an embarrassment to the Emperor,” Paul said. “I am an embarrassment to all who would divide Arrakis as their spoil. As I live, I shall continue to be such an embarrassment that I stick in their throats and choke them to death!”

“Words,” Kynes said.

Paul stared at him. Presently, Paul said: “You have a legend of the Lisan al-Gaib here, the Voice from the Outer World, the one who will lead the Fremen to paradise. Your men have—”

“Superstition!” Kynes said.

“Perhaps,” Paul agreed. “Yet perhaps not. Superstitions sometimes have strange roots and stranger branchings.”

“You have a plan,” Kynes said. “This much is obvious...
Sire.”

“Could your Fremen provide me with proof positive that the Sardaukar are here in Harkonnen uniform?”

“Quite likely.”

“The Emperor will put a Harkonnen back in power here,” Paul said. “Perhaps even Beast Rabban. Let him. Once he has involved himself beyond escaping his guilt, let the Emperor face the possibility of a Bill of Particulars laid before the Landsraad. Let him answer there where—”

“Paul!” Jessica said.

“Granted that the Landsraad High Council accepts your case,” Kynes said, “there could be only one outcome: general warfare between the Imperium and the Great Houses.”

“Chaos,” Jessica said.

“But I'd present my case to the Emperor,” Paul said, “and give him an alternative to chaos.”

Jessica spoke in a dry tone: “Blackmail?”

“One of the tools of statecraft, as you've said yourself,” Paul said, and Jessica heard the bitterness in his voice. “The Emperor has no sons, only daughters.”

“You'd aim for the throne?” Jessica asked.

“The Emperor will not risk having the Imperium shattered by total war,” Paul said. “Planets blasted, disorder everywhere—he'll not risk that.”

“This is a desperate gamble you propose,” Kynes said.

“What do the Great Houses of the Landsraad fear most?” Paul asked. “They fear most what is happening here right now on Arrakis—the Sardaukar picking them off one by one. That's why there is a Landsraad. This is the glue of the Great Convention. Only in union do they match the Imperial forces.”

“But they're—”

“This is what they fear,” Paul said. “Arrakis would become a rallying cry. Each of them would see himself in my father—cut out of the herd and killed.”

Kynes spoke to Jessica: “Would his plan work?”

“I'm no Mentat,” Jessica said.

“But you are Bene Gesserit.”

She shot a probing stare at him, said: “His plan has good points and bad points . . . as any plan would at this stage. A plan depends as much upon execution as it does upon concept.”

“ ‘Law is the ultimate science,' ” Paul quoted. “Thus it reads above the Emperor's door. I propose to show him law.”

“And I'm not sure I could trust the person who conceived this plan,” Kynes said. “Arrakis has its own plan that we—”

“From the throne,” Paul said, “I could make a paradise of Arrakis with the wave of a hand. This is the coin I offer for your support.”

Kynes stiffened. “My loyalty's not for sale, Sire.”

Paul stared across the desk at him, meeting the cold glare of those blue-within-blue eyes, studying the bearded face, the commanding appearance. A harsh smile touched Paul's lips and he said: “Well spoken. I apologize.”

Kynes met Paul's stare and, presently, said: “No Harkonnen ever admitted error. Perhaps you're not like them, Atreides.”

“It could be a fault in their education,” Paul said. “You say you're not for sale, but I believe I've the coin you'll accept. For your loyalty I offer
my
loyalty to you . . . totally.”

My son has the Atreides sincerity,
Jessica thought.
He has that tremendous, almost naïve honor—and what a powerful force that truly is.

She saw that Paul's words had shaken Kynes.

“This is nonsense,” Kynes said. “You're just a boy and—”

“I'm the Duke,” Paul said. “I'm an Atreides. No Atreides has ever broken such a bond.”

Kynes swallowed.

“When I say totally,” Paul said, “I mean without reservation. I would give my life for you.”

“Sire!” Kynes said, and the word was torn from him, but Jessica saw that he was not now speaking to a boy of fifteen, but to a man, to a superior. Now Kynes meant the word.

In this moment he'd give his life for Paul,
she thought.
How do the Atreides accomplish this thing so quickly, so easily?

“I know you mean this,” Kynes said. “Yet the Harkon—”

The door behind Paul slammed open. He whirled to see reeling violence—shouting, the clash of steel, wax-image faces grimacing in the passage.

With his mother beside him, Paul leaped for the door, seeing Idaho blocking the passage, his blood-pitted eyes there visible through a shield blur, claw hands beyond him, arcs of steel chopping futilely at the shield. There was the orange fire-mouth of a stunner repelled by the shield. Idaho's blades were through it all, flick-flicking, red dripping from them.

Then Kynes was beside Paul and they threw their weight against the door.

Paul had one last glimpse of Idaho standing against a swarm of Harkonnen uniforms—his jerking, controlled staggers, the black goat hair with a red blossom of death in it. Then the door was closed and there came a snick as Kynes threw the bolts.

“I appear to've decided,” Kynes said.

“Someone detected your machinery before it was shut down,” Paul said. He pulled his mother away from the door, met the despair in her eyes.

“I should've suspected trouble when the coffee failed to arrive,” Kynes said.

“You've a bolt hole out of here,” Paul said. “Shall we use it?”

Kynes took a deep breath, said: “This door should hold for at least twenty minutes against all but a lasgun.”

“They'll not use a lasgun for fear we've shields on this side,” Paul said.

“Those were Sardaukar in Harkonnen uniform,” Jessica whispered.

They could hear pounding on the door now, rhythmic blows.

Kynes indicated the cabinets against the right-hand wall, said: “This way.” He crossed to the first cabinet, opened a drawer, manipulated a handle within it. The entire wall of cabinets swung open to expose the black mouth of a tunnel. “This door also is plasteel,” Kynes said.

“You were well prepared,” Jessica said.

“We lived under the Harkonnens for eighty years,” Kynes said. He herded them into the darkness, closed the door.

In the sudden blackness, Jessica saw a luminous arrow on the floor ahead of her.