Dune (6 page)

Paul watched the rolling, ugly man set himself back in motion, veer toward
the training table with the load of weapons, saw the nine-?string baliset slung
over Gurney’s shoulder with the multipick woven through the strings near the
head of the fingerboard.

Halleck dropped the weapons on the exercise table, lined them up — the
rapiers, the bodkins, the kindjals, the slow-?pellet stunners, the shield belts.
The inkvine scar along his jawline writhed as he turned, casting a smile across
the room.

“So you don’t even have a good morning for me, you young imp,” Halleck said.
“And what barb did you sink in old Hawat? He passed me in the hall like a man
running to his enemy’s funeral.”

Paul grinned. Of all his father’s men, he liked Gurney Halleck best, knew
the man’s moods and deviltry, his humors, and thought of him more as a friend
than as a hired sword.

Halleck swung the baliset off his shoulder, began tuning it. “If y’ won’t
talk, y’ won’t,” he said.

Paul stood, advanced across the room, calling out: “Well, Gurney, do we come
prepared for music when it’s fighting time?”

“So it’s sass for our elders today,” Halleck said. He tried a chord on the
instrument, nodded.

“Where’s Duncan Idaho?” Paul asked. “Isn’t he supposed to be teaching me
weaponry?”

“Duncan’s gone to lead the second wave onto Arrakis,” Halleck said. “All you
have left is poor Gurney who’s fresh out of fight and spoiling for music.” He
struck another chord, listened to it, smiled. “And it was decided in council
that you being such a poor fighter we’d best teach you the music trade so’s you
won’t waste your life entire.”

“Maybe you’d better sing me a lay then,” Paul said. “I want to be sure how
not to do it.”

“Ah-?h-?h, hah!” Gurney laughed, and he swung into “Galacian Girls.” his
multipick a blur over the strings as he sang:

“Oh-?h-?h, the Galacian girls
Will do it for pearls,
And the Arrakeen for water!
But if you desire dames
Like consuming flames,
Try a Caladanin daughter!”
“Not bad for such a poor hand with the pick,” Paul said, “but if my mother
heard you singing a bawdy like that in the castle, she’d have your ears on the
outer wall for decoration.”

Gurney pulled at his left ear. “Poor decoration, too, they having been
bruised so much listening at keyholes while a young lad I know practiced some
strange ditties on his baliset.”

“So you’ve forgotten what it’s like to find sand in your bed,” Paul said. He
pulled a shield belt from the table, buckled it fast around his waist. “Then,
let’s fight!”

Halleck’s eyes went wide in mock surprise. “So! It was your wicked hand did
that deed! Guard yourself today, young master — guard yourself.” He grabbed up
a rapier, laced the air with it. “I’m a hellfiend out for revenge!”

Paul lifted the companion rapier, bent it in his hands, stood in the aguile,
one foot forward. He let his manner go solemn in a comic imitation of Dr. Yueh.

“What a dolt my father sends me for weaponry,” Paul intoned. “This doltish
Gurney Halleck has forgotten the first lesson for a fighting man armed and
shielded.” Paul snapped the force button at his waist, felt the crinkled-?skin
tingling of the defensive field at his forehead and down his back, heard
external sounds take on characteristic shield-?filtered flatness. “In shield
fighting, one moves fast on defense, slow on attack,” Paul said. “Attack has the
sole purpose of tricking the opponent into a misstep, setting him up for the
attack sinister. The shield turns the fast blow, admits the slow kindjal!” Paul
snapped up the rapier, feinted fast and whipped it back for a slow thrust timed
to enter a shield’s mindless defenses.

Halleck watched the action, turned at the last minute to let the blunted
blade pass his chest. “Speed, excellent,” he said. “But you were wide open for
an underhanded counter with a slip-?tip.”

Paul stepped back, chagrined.

“I should whap your backside for such carelessness,” Halleck said. He lifted
a naked kindjal from the table and held it up. “This in the hand of an enemy can
let out your life’s blood! You’re an apt pupil, none better, but I’ve warned you
that not even in play do you let a man inside your guard with death in his
hand.”

“I guess I’m not in the mood for it today,” Paul said.

“Mood?” Halleck’s voice betrayed his outrage even through the shield’s
filtering. “What has mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises —
no matter the mood! Mood’s a thing for cattle or making love or playing the
baliset. It’s not for fighting.”

“I’m sorry, Gurney.”

“You’re not sorry enough!”

Halleck activated his own shield, crouched with kindjal outthrust in left
hand, the rapier poised high in his right. “Now I say guard yourself for true!”
He leaped high to one side, then forward, pressing a furious attack.

Paul fell back, parrying. He felt the field crackling as shield edges
touched and repelled each other, sensed the electric tingling of the contact
along his skin. What’s gotten into Gurney? he asked himself. He’s not faking
this! Paul moved his left hand, dropped his bodkin into his palm from its wrist
sheath.

“You see a need for an extra blade, eh?” Halleck grunted.

Is this betrayal? Paul wondered. Surely not Gurney!

Around the room they fought — thrust and parry, feint and counterfeint. The
air within their shield bubbles grew stale from the demands on it that the slow
interchange along barrier edges could not replenish. With each new shield
contact, the smell of ozone grew stronger.
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.

How soon this child must assume his manhood, Halleck thought. How soon he
must read that form within his mind, that contract of brutal caution, to enter
the necessary fact on the necessary line: “Please list your next of kin.”

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.

I’m the well-?trained fruit tree, he thought. Full of well-?trained feelings
and abilities and all of them grafted onto me — all bearing for someone else to
pick.

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.

That 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’s
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.

= = = = = =

YUEH (yu’e), Wellington (weling-?tun), Stdrd 10,082-10,191; medical doctor of the
Suk School (grd Stdrd 10,112); md: Wanna Marcus, B.G. (Stdrd 10,092-10,186?);
chiefly noted as betrayer of Duke Leto Atreides. (Cf: Bibliography, Appendix VII
[Imperial Conditioning] and Betrayal, The.)
-from “Dictionary of Muad’Dib” by the Princess Irulan

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-?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.”