Dune (39 page)

“Does m’Lord forget that I was his regent-?siridar here before? And if m’Lord
will forgive me, his estimate may be low. It’s difficult to count a population
scattered among sinks and pans the way they are here. And when you consider the
Fremen of–”

“The Fremen aren’t worth considering!”

“Forgive me, m’Lord, but the Sardaukar believe otherwise.”

The Baron hesitated, staring at his nephew. “You know something?”

“M’Lord had retired when I arrived last night. I . . . ah, took the liberty
of contacting some of my lieutenants from . . . ah, before. They’ve been acting
as guides to the Sardaukar. They report that a Fremen band ambushed a Sardaukar
force somewhere southeast of here and wiped it out.”

“Wiped out a Sardaukar force?”

“Yes, m’Lord.”

“Impossible!”

Rabban shrugged.

“Fremen defeating Sardaukar,” the Baron sneered.

“I repeat only what was reported to me,” Rabban said. “It is said this
Fremen force already had captured the Duke’s redoubtable Thufir Hawat.”

“Ah-?h-?h-?h-?h-?h.”

The Baron nodded, smiling.

“I believe the report,” Rabban said. “You’ve no idea what a problem the
Fremen were.”

“Perhaps, but these weren’t Fremen your lieutenants saw. They must’ve been
Atreides men trained by Hawat and disguised as Fremen. It’s the only possible
answer.”

Again, Rabban shrugged. “Well, the Sardaukar think they were Fremen. The
Sardaukar already have launched a program to wipe out all Fremen.”

“Good!”

“But–”

“It’ll keep the Sardaukar occupied. And we’ll soon have Hawat. I know it! I
can feel it! Ah, this has been a day! The Sardaukar off hunting a few useless
desert bands while we get the real prize!”

“M’Lord . . . ” Rabban hesitated, frowning. “I’ve always felt that we
underestimated the Fremen, both in numbers and in–”

“Ignore them, boy! They’re rabble. It’s the populous towns, cities, and
villages that concern us. A great many people there, eh?”

“A great many, m’Lord.”

“They worry me, Rabban.”

“Worry you?”

“Oh . . . ninety per cent of them are of no concern. But there are always a
few . . . Houses Minor and so on, people of ambition who might try a dangerous
thing. If one of them should get off Arrakis with an unpleasant story about what
happened here, I’d be most displeased. Have you any idea how displeased I’d be?”

Rabban swallowed.
“You must take immediate measures to hold a hostage from each House Minor,”
the Baron said. “As far as anyone off Arrakis must learn, this was
straightforward House-?to-?House battle. The Sardaukar had no part in it, you
understand? The Duke was offered the usual quarter and exile, but he died in an
unfortunate accident before he could accept. He was about to accept, though.
That is the story. And any rumor that there were Sardaukar here, it must be
laughed at.”

“As the Emperor wishes it,” Rabban said.

“As the Emperor wishes it.”

“What about the smugglers?”

“No one believes smugglers, Rabban. They are tolerated, but not believed. At
any rate, you’ll be spreading some bribes in that quarter . . . and taking other
measures which I’m sure you can think of.”

“Yes, m’Lord.”

“Two things from Arrakis, then, Rabban: income and a merciless fist. You
must show no mercy here. Think of these clods as what they are–slaves envious
of their masters and waiting only the opportunity to rebel. Not the slightest
vestige of pity or mercy must you show them.”

“Can one exterminate an entire planet?” Rabban asked.

“Exterminate?” Surprise showed in the swift turning of the Baron’s head.
“Who said anything about exterminating?”

“Well, I presumed you were going to bring in new stock and–”

“I said squeeze. Nephew, not exterminate. Don’t waste the population, merely
drive them into utter submission. You must be the carnivore, my boy.” He smiled,
a baby’s expression in the dimple-?fat face. “A carnivore never stops. Show no
mercy. Never stop. Mercy is a chimera. It can be defeated by the stomach
rumbling its hunger, by the throat crying its thirst. You must be always hungry
and thirsty.” The Baron caressed his bulges beneath the suspensors. “Like me.”

“I see, m’Lord.”

Rabban swung his gaze left and right.

“It’s all clear then, Nephew?”

“Except for one thing. Uncle: the planetologist, Kynes.”

“Ah, yes, Kynes.”

“He’s the Emperor’s man, m’Lord. He can come and go as he pleases. And he’s
very close to the Fremen . . . married one.”

“Kynes will be dead by tomorrow’s nightfall.”

“That’s dangerous work, Uncle, killing an Imperial servant.”

“How do you think I’ve come this far this quickly?” the Baron demanded. His
voice was low, charged with unspeakable adjectives. “Besides, you need never
have feared Kynes would leave Arrakis. You’re forgetting that he’s addicted to
the spice.”

“Of course!”

“Those who know will do nothing to endanger their supply,” the Baron said.
“Kynes certainly must know.”

“I forgot, ”Rabban said.

They stared at each other in silence.

Presently, the Baron said: “Incidentally, you will make my own supply one of
your first concerns. I’ve quite a stockpile of private stuff, but that suicide
raid by the Duke’s men got most of what we’d stored for sale.”

Rabban nodded. “Yes, m’Lord.”

The Baron brightened. “Now, tomorrow morning, you will assemble what remains
of organization here and you’ll say to them: ‘Our Sublime Padishah Emperor has
charged me to take possession of this planet and end all dispute.’ ”

“I understand, m’Lord.”

“This time, I’m sure you do. We will discuss it in more detail tomorrow.
Now, leave me to finish my sleep.”

The Baron deactivated his doorfield, watched his nephew out of sight.
A tank-?brain, the Baron thought. Muscle-?minded tank-?brain. They will be
bloody pulp here when he’s through with them. Then, when I send in Feyd-?Rautha
to take the load off them, they’ll cheer their rescuer. Beloved Feyd-?Rautha.
Benign Feyd-?Rautha, the compassionate one who saves them from a beast. Feyd-
Rautha, a man to follow and die for. The boy will know by that time how to
oppress with impunity. I’m sure he’s the one we need. He’ll learn. And such a
lovely body. Really a lovely boy.

= = = = = =

At the age of fifteen, he had already learned silence.
-from “A Child’s History of Muad’Dib” by the Princess Irulan

As Paul fought the ‘thopter’s controls, he grew aware that he was sorting
out the interwoven storm forces, his more than Mentat awareness computing on the
basis of fractional minutiae. He felt dust fronts, billowings, mixings of
turbulence, an occasional vortex.

The cabin interior was an angry box lighted by the green radiance of
instrument dials. The tan flow of dust outside appeared featureless, but his
inner sense began to see through the curtain.

I must find the right vortex, he thought.

For a long time now he had sensed the storm’s power diminishing, but still
it shook them. He waited out another turbulence.

The vortex began as an abrupt billowing that rattled the entire ship. Paul
defied all fear to bank the ‘thopter left.

Jessica saw the maneuver on the attitude globe.

“Paul!” she screamed.

The vortex turned them, twisting, tipping. It lifted the ‘thopter like a
chip on a geyser, spewed them up and out–a winged speck within a core of
winding dust lighted by the second moon.

Paul looked down, saw the dust-?defined pillar of hot wind that had disgorged
them, saw the dying storm trailing away like a dry river into the desert–moon-
gray motion growing smaller and smaller below as they rode the updraft.

“We’re out of it,” Jessica whispered.

Paul turned their craft away from the dust in swooping rhythm while he
scanned the night sky.

“We’ve given them the slip,” he said.

Jessica felt her heart pounding. She forced herself to calmness, looked at
the diminishing storm. Her time sense said they had ridden within that
compounding of elemental forces almost four hours, but part of her mind computed
the passage as a lifetime. She felt reborn.

It was like the litany, she thought. We faced it and did not resist. The
storm passed through us and around us. It’s gone, but we remain.

“I don’t like the sound of our wing motion,” Paul said. “We suffered some
damage in there.”

He felt the grating, injured flight through his hands on the controls. They
were out of the storm, but still not out into the full view of his prescient
vision. Yet, they had escaped, and Paul sensed himself trembling on the verge of
a revelation.

He shivered.

The sensation was magnetic and terrifying, and he found himself caught on
the question of what caused this trembling awareness. Part of it, he felt, was
the spice-?saturated diet of Arrakis. But he thought part of it could be the
litany, as though the words had a power of their own.

“I shall not fear . . . ”
Cause and effect: he was alive despite malignant forces, and he felt himself
poised on a brink of self-?awareness that could not have been without the
litany’s magic.

Words from the Orange Catholic Bible rang through his memory: “What senses
do we lack that we cannot see or hear another world all around us?”

“There’s rock all around,” Jessica said.

Paul focused on the ‘thopter’s launching, shook his head to clear it. He
looked where his mother pointed, saw uplifting rock shapes black on the sand
ahead and to the right. He felt wind around his ankles, a stirring of dust in
the cabin. There was a hole somewhere, more of the storm’s doing.

“Better set us down on sand,” Jessica said. “The wings might not take full
brake.”

He nodded toward a place ahead where sandblasted ridges lifted into
moonlight above the dunes. “I’ll set us down near those rocks. Check your safety
harness.”

She obeyed, thinking: We’ve water and stillsuits. If we can find food, we
can survive a long time on this desert. Fremen live here. What they can do we
can do.

“Run for those rocks the instant we’re stopped,” Paul said. “I’ll take the
pack.”

“Run for . . . ” She fell silent, nodded. “Worms.”

“Our friends, the worms,” he corrected her. “They’ll get this ‘thopter.
There’ll be no evidence of where we landed.”

How direct his thinking, she thought.

They glided lower . . . lower . . .

There came a rushing sense of motion to their passage–blurred shadows of
dunes, rocks lifting like islands. The ‘thopter touched a dune top with a soft
lurch, skipped a sand valley, touched another dune.

He’s killing our speed against the sand, Jessica thought, and permitted
herself to admire his competence.

“Brace yourself!” Paul warned.

He pulled back on the wing brakes, gently at first, then harder and harder.
He felt them cup the air, their aspect ratio dropping faster and faster. Wind
screamed through the lapped coverts and primaries of the wings’ leaves.

Abruptly, with only the faintest lurch of warning, the left wing, weakened
by the storm, twisted upward and in, slamming across the side of the ‘thopter.
The craft skidded across a dune top, twisting to the left. It tumbled down the
opposite face to bury its nose in the next dune amid a cascade of sand. They lay
stopped on the broken wing side, the right wing pointing toward the stars.

Paul jerked off his safety harness, hurled himself upward across his mother,
wrenching the door open. Sand poured around them into the cabin, bringing a dry
smell of burned flint. He grabbed the pack from the rear, saw that his mother
was free of her harness. She stepped up onto the side of the right-?hand seat and
out onto the ‘thopter’s metal skin. Paul followed, dragging the pack by its
straps.

“Run!” he ordered.

He pointed up the dune face and beyond it where they could see a rock tower
undercut by sandblast winds.

Jessica leaped off the ‘thopter and ran, scrambling and sliding up the dune.
She heard Paul’s panting progress behind. They came out onto a sand ridge that
curved away toward the rocks.

“Follow the ridge,” Paul ordered. “It’ll be faster.”

They slogged toward the rocks, sand gripping their feet.

A new sound began to impress itself on them: a muted whisper, a hissing, an
abrasive slithering.

“Worm,” Paul said.

It grew louder.
“Faster!” Paul gasped.

The first rock shingle, like a beach slanting from the sand, lay no more
than ten meters ahead when they heard metal crunch and shatter behind them.

Paul shifted his pack to his right arm, holding it by the straps. It slapped
his side as he ran. He took his mother’s arm with his other hand. They scrambled
onto the lifting rock, up a pebble-?littered surface through a twisted, wind-
carved channel. Breath came dry and gasping in their throats.

“I can’t run any farther,” Jessica panted.

Paul stopped, pressed her into a gut of rock, turned and looked down onto
the desert. A mound-?in-?motion ran parallel to their rock island–moonlit
ripples, sand waves, a cresting burrow almost level with Paul’s eyes at a
distance of about a kilometer. The flattened dunes of its track curved once–a
short loop crossing the patch of desert where they had abandoned their wrecked
ornithopter.

Where the worm had been there was no sign of the aircraft.

The burrow mound moved outward into the desert, coursed back across its own
path, questing.

“It’s bigger than a Guild spaceship,” Paul whispered. “I was told worms grew
large in the deep desert, but I didn’t realize . . . how big.”

“Nor I,” Jessica breathed.

Again, the thing turned out away from the rocks, sped now with a curving
track toward the horizon. They listened until the sound of its passage was lost
in gentle sand stirrings around them.

Paul took a deep breath, looked up at the moon-?frosted escarpment, and
quoted from the Kitab al-?Ibar: “Travel by night and rest in black shade through
the day.” He looked at his mother. “We still have a few hours of night. Can you
go on?”