Dune: House Atreides (47 page)

"Yes," D'murr said. "I know you. I remember."

ON IX, IN a shadowed alcove where he used his cobbled-together transmission device, C'tair hunched over, desperate to avoid discovery -- but this was worth any risk. Tears streaked down his cheeks, and he swallowed hard. The Tleilaxu and the suboids had continued their rampages and purges, destroying any residue of unfamiliar technology that they found.

"They took you away from me, in the Guild testing chamber," C'tair said, his voice a husky whisper. "They wouldn't let me see you, wouldn't let me say goodbye. Now I realize you were the lucky one, D'murr, considering everything that's happened here on Ix. It would break your heart to see it now." He took a deep, shuddering breath. "Our city was destroyed not long after the Guild took you away from us. Hundreds of thousands are dead. The Bene Tleilax now rule here."

D'murr paused, taking time to slide back into the limited manner of person-to-person communication. "I have guided a Heighliner through foldspace, brother.

I hold the galaxy in my mind, I see mathematics." His sluggish words garbled together. "Now I know why . . . I know . . . Uhhh, I feel pain from your connection. C'tair, how?"

"This communication hurts you?" He drew back from the transmitter, concerned, and held his breath, fearful that one of the furtive Tleilaxu spies might hear him. "I'm sorry, D'murr. Maybe I should --"

"Not important. Pain shifts, like a headache . . . but different. Swimming through my mind . . . and beyond it." D'murr sounded distracted, his voice distant and ethereal. "What connection is this? What device?"

"D'murr, didn't you hear me? Ix is destroyed -- our world, our city is now a prison camp. Mother was killed in an explosion! I couldn't save her. I've been hiding here, and I'm at great risk while making this communication. Our father is in exile somewhere . . . on Kaitain, I think. House Vernius has gone renegade. I'm trapped here, alone!"

D'murr remained focused on what he considered the primary question.

"Communication directly through foldspace? Impossible. Explain it to me."

Taken aback at his twin brother's lack of concern over the horrendous news, C'tair nonetheless chose not to rebuke him. D'murr had, after all, undergone extreme mental changes and couldn't be blamed for the way he was now. C'tair could never understand what his twin had been through. He himself had failed the Guild's tests; he had been too fearful and rigid. Otherwise, he, too, might be a Navigator now.

Holding his breath, he listened to a creaking sound in the passageway overhead, distant footsteps that faded. Whispering voices. Then silence returned, and C'tair was able to continue the conversation.

"Explain," D'murr said again.

Eager for any kind of conversation, C'tair told his brother of the equipment he had salvaged. "Do you remember Davee Rogo? The old inventor who used to take us into his laboratory and show us the things he was working on?"

"Crippled . . . suspensor crutches. Too decrepit to walk."

"Yes, he used to talk about communicating in neutrino energy wavelengths? A network of rods wrapped in silicate crystals?"

"Uhhh . . . pain again."

"You're hurting!" C'tair looked around, fearful of the risk he continued to take himself. "I won't talk much longer."

The tone was impatient. D'murr wanted to hear more. "Continue explanation.

Need to know this device."

"One day during the fighting, when I really wanted to talk with you, bits and pieces of his conversation came back to me. In the rubble of a ruined building, I thought I saw a hazy image of him next to me. Like a vision. He was talking in that creaky old voice, telling me what to do, what parts I would require and how to put them together. He gave me the ideas I needed."

"Interesting." The Navigator's voice was flat and bloodless.

His brother's lack of emotion and compassion disturbed him. C'tair tried to ask questions about D'murr's Spacing Guild experiences, but his twin had no patience for the queries and said that he couldn't discuss Guild secrets, not even with his brother. He had traveled through foldspace, and it was incredible. That was all D'murr would say.

"When can we talk again?" C'tair asked. The apparatus felt dangerously warm, ready to break down. He would have to shut it off soon. D'murr groaned with distant pain, but gave no definite response.

Still, even knowing his brother's discomfort, he had a human need to say goodbye, even if D'murr no longer did. "Farewell, for now, then. I miss you."

As he spoke the long-overdue words, he sensed an easing of his own pain -- odd, in a way, since he could no longer be sure his brother understood him as he once had.

Feeling guilty, C'tair broke the connection. Then he sat in silence, overwhelmed by conflicting emotions: joy at having spoken to his twin again, but sadness at D'murr's ambivalent reactions. How much had his brother changed?

D'murr should have cared about the death of their mother and the tragic events that had befallen Ix. A Guild Navigator's position affected all mankind.

Shouldn't a Navigator be more caring, more protective of humanity?

But instead the young man seemed to have severed all ties, burned all bridges.

Was D'murr reflecting Guild philosophy, or had he become so consumed with himself and his new abilities that he'd turned into an egomaniac? Was it necessary for him to behave that way? Had D'murr severed all contact with his humanity? No way to tell yet.

C'tair felt as if he had lost his brother all over again.

He removed the bioneutrino machine contacts that had temporarily expanded his mental powers, amplifying his thoughts and thus enabling him to communicate with distant Junction. Suddenly dizzy, he returned to his shielded bolt-hole and lay down on the narrow cot. Eyes closed, he envisioned the universe behind his lids, wondering what it must be like for his twin. His mind hummed with a strange residue of the contact, a backwash of mental expansion.

D'murr had sounded as if he were speaking underwater, through filters of comprehension. Now, underlying meanings occurred to C'tair -- subtleties and refinements. Throughout the evening in the isolation of his hidden room, thoughts percolated through his mind, overwhelming him like a demonic possession. The contact had sparked something unexpected in his own brain, an amazing reaction.

For days he did not leave the enclosure, consumed with his enhanced memories, using the prototype apparatus to focus his thoughts to an obsessive clarity.

Hour after hour, the replayed conversation became clearer to him, words and double meanings blossoming like flower petals . . . as if he traversed his own kind of foldspace of mind and memory. Nuances of D'murr's dialogue became increasingly apparent, meanings C'tair hadn't noticed at first. This gave him only an inkling of what his brother had become.

He found it exciting. And terrifying.

Finally, coming back to awareness an unknown number of days later, he noticed that food and beverage packages lay scattered around him. The room stank. He looked in a mirror, shocked to see that he had grown a scratchy dark brown beard. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair wild. C'tair barely recognized himself.

If Kailea Vernius were to set eyes on him now, she would draw back in horror or disdain and send him to work in the dimmest lower levels with the suboids.

Somehow, though, after the tragedy of Ix, the rape of his beautiful underground city, his boyish crush on the Earl's daughter seemed irrelevant. Of all the sacrifices C'tair had made, that was among the smallest.

And he was sure there would be harder ones to come.

Before cleaning himself or the hiding place, though, he began preparations for the next call to his brother.

Perceptions rule the universe.

-Bene Gesserit Saying

A robo-controlled shuttle left its orbiting Heighliner in the Laoujin system and streaked toward the surface of Wallach IX, transmitting appropriate security codes to bypass the Sisterhood's primary defenses. The Bene Gesserit homeworld was just another stop on its long circuitous route wandering among the stars in the Imperium.

Her thick hair beginning to turn gray, her body starting to hint at its age, Gaius Helen Mohiam thought it would be good to be home after many months of other duties, each separate assignment a thread in the vast Bene Gesserit tapestry. No Sister understood the entire pattern, the entire weaving of events and people, but Mohiam did her part.

With her advancing pregnancy, the Sisterhood had called her home, to remain at the Mother School until such time as Mohiam delivered the much-anticipated daughter. Only Kwisatz Mother Anirul comprehended her true value to the breeding program, how everything hinged on the child she now carried. Mohiam understood that this baby was important, but even the whispers of her Other Memory, which could always be called upon to offer a cacophony of advice, remained deliberately silent on the subject.

The Guild shuttle carried only her. Working under the spectre of the Jihad, the Richesian manufacturers of the robo-pilot had gone out of their way to make a clunky-looking, rivet-covered device that most vehemently neither emulated the human mind nor looked the least bit human . . . or even sophisticated, for that matter.

The robo-pilot transported passengers and materials from a big ship to the surface of a planet, and back again in a well-rehearsed chain of events. Its functions included barely enough programming flexibility to deal with air-traffic patterns or adverse weather conditions. The robo-pilot took its shuttle in a routine sequence: from Heighliner to planet, from planet to Heighliner . .

.

At a window seat in the shuttle, Mohiam reflected on the delicious revenge she had exacted on the Baron. It had been months already, and no doubt he still suspected nothing, but a Bene Gesserit could wait a long time for the appropriate payment. Over the years, as his precious body weakened and bloated from the disease, an utterly defeated Vladimir Harkonnen might even contemplate suicide.

Mohiam's vengeful action might have been impulsive, but it was fitting and appropriate after what the Baron had done. Mother Superior Harishka would not have allowed House Harkonnen to go unpunished, and Mohiam thought her spontaneous idea had been cruelly apt. It would save the Sisterhood time and trouble.

As the ship descended into the cloud layer, Mohiam hoped this new child would be perfect, because the Baron would no longer be of any use to them. But if not, the Sisterhood always had other options and other plans. They had many different breeding schemes.

Mohiam was of a type considered optimal for a certain mysterious genetic program. She knew the names of some, but not all, of the other candidates, and knew as well that the Sisterhood didn't want simultaneous pregnancies in the program, fearing this might muddle the mating index. Mohiam did wonder, though, why she had been selected again, after the first failure. Her superiors hadn't explained it to her, and she knew better than to ask. And again, the Voices in Other Memory kept their counsel to themselves.

Do the details matter? she wondered. I carry the requested daughter in my womb. A successful birth would elevate Mohiam's stature, might even result in her eventual election as Mother Superior by the proctors, when she got much older . . . depending on how important this daughter really was.

She sensed the girl would be very important.

Aboard the robo-piloted shuttle, she felt a sudden change of motion. Looking out the narrow window, she saw the horizon of Wallach IX lurch as the craft flipped over and plunged down, out of control. The safety field around her seat glimmered an unfamiliar, disconcerting yellow. Machine sounds, which had been limited to a smooth whir, now screamed through the cabin, hurting her ears.

Lights blinked wildly on the control module ahead of her. The robo's movements were jerky and uncertain. She had been trained to handle crises, and her mind worked rapidly. Mohiam knew about occasional malfunctions on these shuttles --statistically unlikely -- exacerbated by the lack of pilots with the ability to think and react. When a problem did occur -- and Mohiam felt herself in the midst of one now -- the potential for disaster was high.

The shuttle plummeted, lurching and bucking. Clothlike scraps of cloud slapped the windows. The robo-pilot went through the same circular motions, unable to try anything new. The engine flared out, went silent.

This can't be, Mohiam thought. Not now, not when I'm carrying this child.

Viscerally, she felt that if she could just survive this, her baby would be healthy and would be the one so badly needed by the Sisterhood.

But dark thoughts assailed her, and she began to tremble. Guild Navigators, such as the one in the Heighliner above her, utilized higher-order dimensional calculations, and they did so in order to see the future, enabling them to maneuver ships safely through the dangerous voids of foldspace. Had the Spacing Guild learned of the secret Bene Gesserit program, and did they fear it?

As the shuttle hurtled toward disaster, an incredible array of possibilities tumbled through Mohiam's mind. The safety field around her stretched and grew more yellow. Her body pressed against it, threatening to break through.

Holding her hands protectively over her womb, she felt a frantic desire to live, and for her unborn child to thrive -- and her thoughts went beyond the parochial concerns of a mother and child, to a much larger significance.

She wondered if her suspicions might be totally in error. What if some higher force than either she or her Sisters could possibly imagine was behind this?

Were the Bene Gesserit, through their breeding program, playing God? Did a real God -- regardless of the Sisterhood's cynicism and skepticism toward religion --in fact exist?

What a cruel joke that would be.

The deformities of her first child, and now the impending death of this fetus and Mohiam, too . . . it all seemed to add up to something. But if so, who --or what -- was behind this emergency?