Dune: House Atreides (24 page)

The tip of the Prince's blade found a soft spot on the mek's charcoal body, and it fell over "dead."

"Good, Rhombur!" Leto called.

Zhaz nodded. "Much better."

Leto had fought the mek twice that day, defeating it each time on higher difficulty settings than Prince Rhombur was using. When Zhaz asked how Leto had acquired such skills, the young Atreides hadn't said much, not wishing to brag.

But now he had firsthand proof that the Atreides method of training was superior, despite the mek's chilling near intelligence. Leto's background involved rapiers, knives, slow-pellet stunners, and body-shields -- and Thufir Hawat was a more dangerous and unpredictable instructor than any automated device could ever hope to be.

Just as Leto took up his own weapon and prepared for the next round, the lift doors opened and Kailea entered, sparkling with jewels and a comfortable metal-fiber outfit whose design seemed calculated to look gorgeous but casual. She bore a stylus and ridulian recorder pad. Her eyebrows arched in feigned surprise at finding them there. "Oh! Excuse me. I came to look at the mek design."

The Vernius daughter usually contented herself with intellectual and cultural pursuits, studying business and art. Leto couldn't keep himself from watching her. At times her eyes almost seemed to flirt with him, but more often she ignored him with such intensity he suspected she shared the same attraction he felt.

During his time in the Grand Palais, Leto had crossed her path in the dining hall, on the open observation balconies, in library facilities. He had responded to her with snatches of awkward conversation. Aside from the inviting sparkle in her beautiful green eyes, Kailea had given him no special encouragement, but he couldn't stop thinking about her.

She's only a stripling, Leto reminded himself, playing at being a Lady.

Somehow, though, he couldn't convince his imagination of that. Kailea had complete confidence that she was destined for a greater future than living underground on Ix. Her father was a war hero, the head of one of the wealthiest Great Houses, and her mother had been beautiful enough to be an Imperial concubine, and the girl herself had an excellent head for business. Kailea Vernius obviously had a wealth of possibilities.

She focused her complete attention on the motionless gray ovoid. "I've gotten Father to consider marketing our new-phase fighting meks commercially." She studied the motionless training machine, but glanced at Leto out of the corner of her eye, noted his strong profile and regal, high-bridged nose. "Ours are better than any other combat device -- adaptable, versatile, and self-learning.

The closest thing to a human adversary developed since the Jihad."

He felt a chill, thinking back to all the warnings his mother had given him.

Right now she would be pointing an accusing finger and nodding in satisfaction.

Leto looked over at the charcoal-colored ovoid. "Are you saying that thing has a brain?"

"By all the saints and sinners, you mean in violation of the strictures after the Great Revolt?" Captain Zhaz replied in stern surprise. " 'Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of the human mind.'"

"We're, uh, very careful about that, Leto," Rhombur said, using a purple towel to wipe sweat from the back of his neck. "Nothing to worry about."

Leto didn't back down. "Well, if the mek scans people, if it reads them as you said, how does it process the information? If not through a computer brain, then how? This isn't just a reactive device. It learns and tailors its attack."

Kailea jotted notes down on her crystal pad and adjusted one of the gold combs in her copper-dark hair. "There are many gray areas, Leto, and if we tread very carefully House Vernius stands to make a tremendous profit." She ran a fingertip along her curved lips. "Still, it might be best to test the waters by offering some unmarked models on the black market first."

"Don't trouble yourself, Leto," Rhombur said, avoiding the uncomfortable subject. His tousled blond hair still dripped with sweat, and his skin showed a flush from his exertion. "House Vernius has teams of Mentats and legal advisors scrutinizing the letter of the law." He looked over at his sister for reassurance. She nodded absently.

In some of his instruction sessions in the Grand Palais, Leto had learned of interplanetary patent disputes, minor technicalities, subtle loopholes. Had the Ixians come up with a substantially different way of using mechanical units to process data, one that did not raise the spectre of thinking machines like those that had enslaved mankind for so many centuries? He didn't see how House Vernius could have created a self-learning, reactive, adaptable fighting mek without somehow going over the line into Jihad violation.

If his mother ever found out, she would haul him home from Ix, no matter what his father might say.

"Let's see just how good this product is," Leto said, taking up a weapon and turning his back on Kailea. He could feel her eyes on his bare shoulders, the muscles of his neck. Zhaz stood back casually to watch.

Leto shifted his pike from hand to hand and jogged onto the floor. Taking a classic fighting stance, he called out a degree of difficulty to the charcoal oval shape. "Seven point two-four!" Eight notches higher than the time before.

The mek refused to move.

"Too high," the training master said, thrusting his bearded chin forward. "I disabled the dangerous higher levels."

Leto scowled. The fight instructor did not want to challenge his students, or risk more than the slightest injury. Thufir Hawat would have laughed out loud.

"Are you trying to show off for the young lady, Master Atreides? Could get you killed."

Looking at Kailea, he saw her watching him, a bemused, teasing expression on her face. She quickly turned to the ridulian pad and scratched a few more ciphers.

He flushed, felt the hotness. Zhaz reached over to grab a soft towel from a rack and tossed it to Leto.

"The session's over. Distractions of this sort are not good for your training, and can lead to serious injury." He turned to the Princess. "Lady Kailea, I request that you avoid the training floor whenever Leto Atreides is fighting our meks. Too many hormones in the way." The guard captain could not cover his amusement. "Your presence could be more dangerous than any enemy."

We must do a thing on Arrakis never before attempted for an entire planet. We must use man as a constructive ecological force -- inserting adapted terraform life: a plant here, an animal there, a man in that place -- to transform the water cycle, to build a new kind of landscape.

-Report from Imperial Planetologist PARDOT KYNES, directed to Padishah EMPEROR

ELROOD IX (unsent)

When the blood-spattered Fremen youths asked Pardot Kynes to accompany them, he didn't know whether he was to be their guest or prisoner. Either way, the prospect intrigued him. Finally, he would have his chance to experience their mysterious culture firsthand.

One of the young men quickly and efficiently carried his injured companion over to Kynes's small groundcar. The other Fremen reached into the back storage compartments and tossed out Kynes's painstakingly collected geological samples to make more room. The Planetologist was too astonished to object; besides, he didn't want to alienate these people -- he wanted to learn more about them.

In moments, they had stuffed the bodies of the dead Harkonnen bravos into the bins, no doubt for some Fremen purpose. Perhaps a further ritual desecration of their enemies. He ruled out the unlikely possibility that the youths simply wished to bury the dead. Are they hiding the bodies for fear of reprisals?

That, too, seemed wrong somehow, not in keeping with what little he had heard about Fremen. Or will these desert folk render them for resources, reclaiming the water in their tissues?

Then, without asking, without giving thanks or making any comment whatsoever, the first grim Fremen youth took the vehicle, its injured passenger, and the bodies, and drove off rapidly, spewing sand and dust in all directions. Kynes watched it go, along with his desert-survival kit and maps, including many he had prepared himself.

He found himself alone with the third young man -- a guard, or a friend? If these Fremen meant to strand him without his supplies, he would be dead before long. Perhaps he could get his bearings and make it back to the village of Windsack on foot, but he had paid little attention to the locations of population centers during his recent wanderings. An inauspicious end for an Imperial Planetologist, he thought.

Or perhaps the young men he'd rescued wanted something else from him. Because of his own newly formed dreams for the future of Arrakis, Kynes desperately wanted to know the Fremen and their unorthodox ways. Clearly, these people were a valuable secret hidden from Imperial eyes. He thought they'd be sure to greet him with enthusiasm once he told them his ideas.

The remaining Fremen youth used a small patch-kit to repair a fabric rip on the leg of his stillsuit, then said, "Come with me." He turned toward a sheer rock wall a short distance away. "Follow, or you'll die out here." He flashed an indigo-eyed glare over his shoulder. His face held a hard humor, an impish smile as he said, "Do you think the Harkonnens will take long to seek vengeance for their dead?"

Kynes hurried to him. "Wait! You haven't told me your name."

The young man looked at him strangely; he had the blue-within-blue eyes of long spice addiction, and weathered skin that gave him an appearance of age far beyond his years. "Is it worthwhile to exchange names? The Fremen already know who you are."

Kynes blinked. "Well, I did just save your life and the lives of your companions. Doesn't that count for something among your people? It does in most societies."

The young man seemed startled, then resigned. "You are right. You have forged a water bond between us. I am called Turok. Now we must go."

Water bond? Kynes suppressed his questions and trailed after his companion.

In his well-worn stillsuit, Turok scrambled over the rocks toward the vertical cliff. Kynes trudged beside fallen boulders, slipping on loose footing. Only as they approached did the Planetologist notice a discontinuity in the strata, a seam that split the old uplifted rock, forming a fissure camouflaged by dust and muted colors.

The Fremen slipped inside, penetrating the shadows with the speed of a desert lizard. Curious and anxious not to become lost, Kynes followed, moving quickly.

He hoped he would get a chance to meet more of the Fremen and learn about them.

He didn't waste time considering that Turok might be leading him into a trap.

What would be the point? The young man could easily have killed him out in the open.

Turok stopped in the cool shade, giving Kynes a moment to catch up. He pointed toward specific places on the wall near him. "There, there -- and there."

Without waiting to see if his charge understood, the youth stepped in each indicated spot, near-invisible handholds and footholds. The young man slithered up the cliff, and Kynes did his best to climb after. Turok seemed to be playing a game with him, testing him somehow.

But the Planetologist surprised him. He was no water-fat bureaucrat, no mere bumbler into places where he didn't belong. As a wanderer on some of the harshest worlds the Imperium had to offer, he was in good shape.

Kynes kept pace with the youth, climbing up behind him, using the tips of his fingers to haul his body higher. Moments after the Fremen boy stopped and squatted on a narrow ledge, Kynes sat beside him, trying not to pant.

"Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth," Turok said. "Your filters are more efficient that way." He nodded in faint admiration. "I think you might make it all the way to the sietch."

"What's a sietch?" Kynes asked. He vaguely recognized the ancient Chakobsa language, but had not studied archaeology or phonetics. He had always found it irrelevant to his scientific study.

"A secret place to retreat in safety -- it's where my people live."

"You mean it's your home?"

"The desert is our home."

"I'm eager to talk with your people," Kynes said, then continued, unable to contain his enthusiasm. "I've formed some opinions of this world and have developed a plan that might interest you, that might interest all the inhabitants of Arrakis."

"Dune," the Fremen youth said. "Only the Imperials and the Harkonnens call this place Arrakis."

"All right," Kynes said. "Dune, then."

DEEP IN THE rocks ahead of them waited a grizzled old Fremen with only one eye, his useless left socket covered by a puckered prune of leathered eyelid. Naib of Red Wall Sietch, Heinar had also lost two fingers in a crysknife duel in his younger days. But he had survived, and his opponents had not.

Heinar had proven to be a stern but competent leader of his people. Over the years, his sietch had prospered, the population had not decreased, and their hidden stockpiles of water grew with every cycle of the moons.

In the infirmary cave, two old women tended foolish Stilgar, the injured youth who had been brought in by groundcar only moments ago. The old women checked the medical dressing that had been applied by the outsider, and augmented it with some of their own medicinals. The crones conferred with each other, then both nodded at the sietch leader.

"Stilgar will live, Heinar," one old woman said. "This would have been a mortal wound, had it not been tended immediately. The stranger saved him."

"The stranger saved a careless fool," the Naib said, looking down at the young man on the cot.

For weeks, troublesome reports of a curious outsider had reached Heinar's ears.

Now the man, Pardot Kynes, was being led to the sietch by a different route, through rock passageways. The stranger's actions were mind-boggling -- an Imperial servant who killed Harkonnens?

Ommun, the Fremen youth who had brought bleeding Stilgar back to the sietch, waited anxiously beside his injured friend in the cave shadows. Heinar turned his monocular gaze to the young man, letting the women continue to tend their patient. "Why is it that Turok brings an outsider to our sietch?"