Dune (7 page)

Paul continued to back, but now he directed his retreat toward the exercise table.
If I can turn him beside the table, I'll show him a trick,
Paul thought.
One more step, Gurney.

Halleck took the step.

Paul directed a parry downward, turned, saw Halleck's rapier catch against the table's edge. Paul flung himself aside, thrust high with rapier and came in across Halleck's neckline with the bodkin. He stopped the blade an inch from the jugular.

“Is this what you seek?” Paul whispered.

“Look down, lad,” Gurney panted.

Paul obeyed, saw Halleck's kindjal thrust under the table's edge, the tip almost touching Paul's groin.

“We'd have joined each other in death,” Halleck said. “But I'll admit you fought some better when pressed to it. You seemed to get the
mood
.” And he grinned wolfishly, the inkvine scar rippling along his jaw.

“The way you came at me,” Paul said. “Would you really have drawn my blood?”

Halleck withdrew the kindjal, straightened. “If you'd fought one whit beneath your abilities, I'd have scratched you a good one, a scar you'd remember. I'll not have my favorite pupil fall to the first Harkonnen tramp who happens along.”

Paul deactivated his shield, leaned on the table to catch his breath. “I deserved that, Gurney. But it would've angered my father if you'd hurt me. I'll not have you punished for my failing.”

“As to that,” Halleck said, “it was my failing, too. And you needn't worry about a training scar or two. You're lucky you have so few. As to your father—the Duke'd punish me only if I failed to make a first-class fighting man out of you. And I'd have been failing there if I hadn't explained the fallacy in this
mood
thing you've suddenly developed.”

Paul straightened, slipped his bodkin back into its wrist sheath.

“It's not exactly play we do here,” Halleck said.

Paul nodded. He felt a sense of wonder at the uncharacteristic seriousness in Halleck's manner, the sobering intensity. He looked at the beet-colored inkvine scar on the man's jaw, remembering the story of how it had been put there by Beast Rabban in a Harkonnen slave pit on Giedi Prime. And Paul felt a sudden shame that he had doubted Halleck even for an instant. It occurred to Paul, then, that the making of Halleck's scar had been accompanied by pain—a pain as intense, perhaps, as that inflicted by a Reverend Mother. He thrust this thought aside; it chilled their world.

“I guess I did hope for some play today,” Paul said. “Things are so serious around here lately.”

Halleck turned away to hide his emotions. Something burned in his eyes. There was pain in him—like a blister, all that was left of some lost yesterday that Time had pruned off him.

Halleck spoke without turning: “I sensed the play in you, lad, and I'd like nothing better than to join in it. But this no longer can be play. Tomorrow we go to Arrakis. Arrakis is real. The Harkonnens are real.”

Paul touched his forehead with his rapier blade held vertical.

Halleck turned, saw the salute and acknowledged it with a nod. He gestured to the practice dummy. “Now, we'll work on your timing. Let me see you catch that thing sinister. I'll control it from over here where I can have a full view of the action. And I warn you I'll be trying new counters today. There's a warning you'd not get from a real enemy.”

Paul stretched up on his toes to relieve his muscles. He felt solemn with the sudden realization that his life had become filled with swift changes. He crossed to the dummy, slapped the switch on its chest with his rapier tip and felt the defensive field forcing his blade away.

“En garde!” Halleck called, and the dummy pressed the attack.

Paul activated his shield, parried and countered.

Halleck watched as he manipulated the controls. His mind seemed to be in two parts: one alert to the needs of the training fight, and the other wandering in fly-buzz.

For some reason, he recalled his younger sister, her elfin face so clear in his mind. But she was dead now—in a pleasure house for Harkonnen troops. She had loved pansies . . . or was it daisies? He couldn't remember. It bothered him that he couldn't remember.

Paul countered a slow swing of the dummy, brought up his left hand
entretisser.

The clever little devil!
Halleck thought, intent now on Paul's interweaving hand motions.
He's been practicing and studying on his own. That's not Duncan style, and it's certainly nothing I've taught him.

This thought only added to Halleck's sadness.
I'm infected by mood,
he thought. And he began to wonder about Paul, if the boy ever listened fearfully to his pillow throbbing in the night.

“If wishes were fishes we'd all cast nets,” he murmured.

It was his mother's expression and he always used it when he felt the blackness of tomorrow on him. Then he thought what an odd expression that was to be taking to a planet that had never known seas or fishes.

 

ALTHOUGH HE heard Dr. Yueh enter the training room, noting the stiff deliberation of the man's pace, Paul remained stretched out face down on the exercise table where the masseuse had left him. He felt deliciously relaxed after the workout with Gurney Halleck.

“You do look comfortable,” said Yueh in his calm, high-pitched voice.

Paul raised his head, saw the man's stick figure standing several paces away, took in at a glance the wrinkled black clothing, the square block of a head with purple lips and drooping mustache, the diamond tattoo of Imperial Conditioning on his forehead, the long black hair caught in the Suk School's silver ring at the left shoulder.

“You'll be happy to hear we haven't time for regular lessons today,” Yueh said. “Your father will be along presently.”

Paul sat up.

“However, I've arranged for you to have a filmbook viewer and several lessons during the crossing to Arrakis.”

“Oh.”

Paul began pulling on his clothes. He felt excitement that his father would be coming. They had spent so little time together since the Emperor's command to take over the fief of Arrakis.

Yueh crossed to the ell table, thinking:
How the boy has filled out these past few months. Such a waste! Oh, such a sad waste.
And he reminded himself:
I must not falter. What I do is done to be certain my Wanna no longer can be hurt by the Harkonnen beasts.

Paul joined him at the table, buttoning his jacket. “What'll I be studying on the way across?”

“Ah-h-h, the terranic life forms of Arrakis. The planet seems to have opened its arms to certain terranic life forms. It's not clear how. I must seek out the planetary ecologist when we arrive—a Dr. Kynes—and offer my help in the investigation.”

And Yueh thought:
What
am I
saying?
I
play the hypocrite even with myself
.

“Will there be something on the Fremen?” Paul asked.

“The Fremen?” Yueh drummed his fingers on the table, caught Paul staring at the nervous motion, withdrew his hand.

“Maybe you have something on the whole Arrakeen population,” Paul said.

“Yes, to be sure,” Yueh said. “There are two general separations of the people—Fremen, they are one group, and the others are the people of the graben, the sink, and the pan. There's some intermarriage, I'm told. The women of pan and sink villages prefer Fremen husbands; their men prefer Fremen wives. They have a saying: ‘Polish comes from the cities; wisdom from the desert.' ”

“Do you have pictures of them?”

“I'll see what I can get you. The most interesting feature, of course, is their eyes—totally blue, no whites in them.”

“Mutation?”

“No; it's linked to saturation of the blood with melange.”

“The Fremen must be brave to live at the edge of that desert.”

“By all accounts,” Yueh said. “They compose poems to their knives. Their women are as fierce as the men. Even Fremen children are violent and dangerous. You'll not be permitted to mingle with them, I daresay.”

Paul stared at Yueh, finding in these few glimpses of the Fremen a power of words that caught his entire attention.
What a people to win as allies!

“And the worms?” Paul asked.

“What?”

“I'd like to study more about the sandworms.”

“Ah-h-h, to be sure. I've a filmbook on a small specimen, only one hundred and ten meters long and twenty-two meters in diameter. It was taken in the northern latitudes. Worms of more than four hundred meters in length have been recorded by reliable witnesses, and there's reason to believe even larger ones exist.”

Paul glanced down at a conical projection chart of the northern Arrakeen latitudes spread on the table. “The desert belt and south polar regions are marked uninhabitable. Is it the worms?”

“And the storms.”

“But any place can be made habitable.”

“If it's economically feasible,” Yueh said. “Arrakis has many costly perils.” He smoothed his drooping mustache. “Your father will be here soon. Before I go, I've a gift for you, something I came across in packing.” He put an object on the table between them—black, oblong, no larger than the end of Paul's thumb.

Paul looked at it. Yueh noted how the boy did not reach for it, and thought:
How cautious he is.

“It's a very old Orange Catholic Bible made for space travelers. Not a filmbook, but actually printed on filament paper. It has its own magnifier and electrostatic charge system.” He picked it up, demonstrated. “The book is held closed by the charge, which forces against spring-locked covers. You press the edge—thus, and the pages you've selected repel each other and the book opens.”

“It's so small.”

“But it has eighteen hundred pages. You press the edge—thus, and so ... and the charge moves ahead one page at a time as you read. Never touch the actual pages with your fingers. The filament tissue is too delicate.” He closed the book, handed it to Paul. “Try it.”

Yueh watched Paul work the page adjustment, thought:
I salve my own conscience. I give him the surcease of religion before betraying him. Thus may I say to myself that he has gone where I cannot go.

“This must've been made before filmbooks,” Paul said.

“It's quite old. Let it be our secret, eh? Your parents might think it too valuable for one so young.”

And Yueh thought:
His mother would surely wonder at my motives.

“Well. . . .” Paul closed the book, held it in his hand. “If it's so valuable. . . .”

“Indulge an old man's whim,” Yueh said. “It was given to me when I was very young.” And he thought:
I must catch his mind as well as his cupidity.
“Open it to four-sixty-seven Kalima—where it says: ‘From water does all life begin.' There's a slight notch on the edge of the cover to mark the place.”

Paul felt the cover, detected two notches, one shallower than the other. He pressed the shallower one and the book spread open on his palm, its magnifier sliding into place.

“Read it aloud,” Yueh said.

Paul wet his lips with his tongue, read: ‘Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us? What is there around us that we cannot—”

“Stop it!” Yueh barked.

Paul broke off, stared at him.

Yueh closed his eyes, fought to regain composure.
What perversity caused the book to open at my Wanna's favorite passage?
He opened his eyes, saw Paul staring at him.

“Is something wrong?” Paul asked.

“I'm sorry,” Yueh said. “That was . . . my . . . dead wife's favorite passage. It's not the one I intended you to read. It brings up memories that are . . . painful.”

“There are two notches,” Paul said.

Of course,
Yueh thought.
Wanna marked her passage. His fingers are more sensitive than mine and found her mark. It was an accident, no more.

“You may find the book interesting,” Yueh said. “It has much historical truth in it as well as good ethical philosophy.”

Paul looked down at the tiny book in his palm—such a small thing. Yet, it contained a mystery . . . something had happened while he read from it. He had felt something stir his terrible purpose.

“Your father will be here any minute,” Yueh said. “Put the book away and read it at your leisure.”

Paul touched the edge of it as Yueh had shown him. The book sealed itself. He slipped it into his tunic. For a moment there when Yueh had barked at him, Paul had feared the man would demand the book's return.