Dune: House Atreides (9 page)

Duncan ran as he'd never run before, knowing his child's legs couldn't outrace adults conditioned for fighting. But he refused to give up. It wasn't in his blood.

Ahead, where the corridor opened, he saw bright lights at an intersection of passageways. As he approached, he skidded to a stop only to find that the cross-passage was no tunnel at all, but a suspensor tube, a cylindrical shaft with a Holtzman field in the center. Levitating bullet-trains shot down the tube without resistance, traveling from one end of the enormous prison city to the other.

There were no doors, no open passageways. Duncan could run no farther. The men surged close behind him, extending their guns. If he surrendered, he wondered if they would still shoot him down. Probably, he thought, since I've gotten their adrenaline going.

The suspensor field shimmered in the center of the horizontal shaft in front of him. He vaguely knew what it would do. He had only one place left to go, and he wasn't sure what would happen -- but he knew he'd be punished, or most likely slaughtered, if the guards captured him.

So as they pressed closer, Duncan turned around and gazed into the suspensor field. Taking a deep breath for courage, he swung his short arms behind him and leaped out into the open shimmering tube.

His curly black hair rippled in the breeze as he plummeted. He shouted, the sound halfway between a despairing wail and a cry of glorious release. If he died here, at least he would be free!

Then the Holtzman field wrapped around him and caught him with a jolt. Feeling as if his stomach had just lurched to the center of his chest, Duncan found himself adrift in an invisible net. He floated without falling, hanging in the neutral center of the field. This force held the bullet-trains suspended as they careened through mammoth Barony. It could certainly hold him.

He saw the guards rushing to the edge of the platform, shouting at him in anger.

One shook a fist. Two others pointed their guns.

Duncan flailed in the field, trying to swim -- anything to move away.

With a shout of alarm, a guard knocked the other's lasgun aside. Duncan had heard about the nightmarish effects of a lasgun beam crossing a Holtzman field: They produced an interacting destructive potential as deadly as forbidden atomics themselves.

So the guards fired their stun weapons instead.

Duncan writhed in the air. Though he could get no leverage, at least he made a moving target as he squirmed and spun. Stun blasts arced on either side of him, diverted into curving paths.

Despite the confining embrace of the Holtzman field, he felt the air pressure change around him, sensed the currents of movement. He rotated himself, bobbing in the air -- until he saw the oncoming lights of a bullet-train.

And he was at the center of the field!

Duncan thrashed, desperate to move. He drifted toward the opposite edge of the levitation zone, away from the guards. They continued to fire, but the change in air pressure pushed their stun blasts even farther off the mark than before.

He saw the uniformed men making adjustments.

Below him were other doorways, ramps, and platforms that led into the bowels of Barony. Maybe he could reach one . . . if he could just escape the confining field.

Another stun blast tore past and this time caught the edge of his back near his shoulder, numbing him, making the muscles and skin crawl with a sensation like a thousand stinging insects.

Duncan finally wrenched himself away from the field and dropped. Falling facedown, he saw the platform just in time. He reached out with his good arm and snagged a railing. The bullet-train screamed past, whistling as it displaced air . . . missing him by centimeters.

He hadn't had time to pick up much momentum in his fall; even so, the jarring stop nearly ripped his other arm out of its socket. Duncan scrambled up and ran into a tunnel, but found only a tiny alcove with metawalls. He could see no exit. The hatch was sealed and locked. He pounded on it, but couldn't go anywhere.

Then, the outer door clanged shut behind him, sealing him into a small armor-walled box. He was trapped. This time it was over.

Moments later, the guards unsealed the rear hatch. Their stares, as pointed as their weapons, held a mixture of anger and admiration. Duncan waited with resignation for them to gun him down.

Instead, the hunt captain smiled without humor and said, "Congratulations, boy.

You made it."

EXHAUSTED AND BACK in his cell, Duncan sat with his mother and father. They ate their daily meal of bland cereals, starch-cakes, and protein chips --nutritionally satisfying yet almost maliciously made with either foul flavors or no taste whatsoever. So far the boy hadn't been told more by his captors, just that he'd "made it." That had to mean freedom. He could only hope.

The family's cell was filthy. Though his parents tried to keep it clean, they had no brooms, mops, or soap, and very little water, which couldn't be wasted on mere sanitation.

During the months of confinement, Duncan had undergone vigorous and violent

"training," while his family sat fearfully offstage, doing nothing with their days. All of them had been given numbers, slave-cell addresses, and (with the exception of Duncan) nothing to do -- no labor, no entertainment. They simply awaited any change in their sentence . . . and dreaded that such a change would someday come.

Now with excitement and pride Duncan told his mother of his adventures, how he had outwitted the pursuers, how he had been resourceful enough to defeat even the best Harkonnen trackers. None of the other children had succeeded on this day, but Duncan was certain he'd done what was necessary to buy freedom.

Any minute now they'd be released. He tried to imagine his family standing together again, free, outside, looking up into a clear, starlit night.

His father gazed proudly at the boy, but his mother found it difficult to believe that such a thing could possibly be true. She had good reason not to trust Harkonnen promises.

Before long, the cell lights flickered, and the opaque door field became transparent, then opened. A group of blue-uniformed prison guards stood beside the smiling hunt captain who had chased him. Duncan's heart leaped. Are we going to be set free?

He didn't like the hunt captain's smile, though.

The uniformed men stepped aside in deference to a man with broad shoulders, thick lips, and big muscles. His face was sunburned and ruddy, as if he had spent a great deal of time far from gloomy Giedi Prime.

Duncan's father sprang to his feet, then bowed clumsily. "M'Lord Rabban!"

Ignoring the parents, Rabban's eyes sought out only the round-faced young trainee. "The captain of the hunt tells me you're the best boy," he said to Duncan. As he stepped into the cell, the guards hustled in behind him. Rabban grinned.

"You should have seen him in today's exercise, m'Lord," the hunt captain said.

"Never had a more resourceful pup."

Rabban nodded. "Number 11368, I've seen your records, watched holos of your hunts. How are your injuries? Not too bad? You're young, so you'll heal quickly." His eyes hardened. "Lots more fun left in you. Let's see how you do against me."

He turned about. "Come with me for the hunt, boy. Now."

"My name is Duncan Idaho," the boy responded, in a defiant tone. "I'm not a number." His voice was thin and high-pitched, but held a gruff bravery that shocked his parents. Surprised, the guards turned to stare at him. Duncan looked to his mother for support, as if hoping for some kind of challenge or reward. Instead, she tried to hush him.

Rabban coolly snatched a lasgun from the guard standing next to him. Without the slightest pause, he fired a lethal blast into the chest of Duncan's father.

The man slammed against the wall. Before his corpse could slide to the floor, Rabban shifted his weapon and incinerated the head of Duncan's mother.

Duncan screamed. Both of his parents tumbled to the floor, lifeless mounds of blistering, burned flesh.

"Now you have no name, 11368," Rabban said. "Come with me."

The guards grabbed him, not even letting Duncan rush to his fallen parents. Not even giving him time to cry.

"These men will have to prepare you before we can begin the next round of fun.

I need a good hunt for a change."

The guards dragged Duncan, kicking and screaming, out of the noisome cell. He felt dead inside -- except for an icy flame of hatred that blossomed in his chest and burned away all vestiges of his childhood.

The populace must think their ruler is a greater man than they, else why should they follow him? Above all a leader must be a showman, giving his people the bread and circuses they require.

The weeks of preparation for his sojourn on Ix passed in a blur as Leto tried to drink up a year's worth of memories and store them, fixing all the images of his ancestral home in his mind. He would miss Caladan's moist salty air, its fog-shrouded mornings, and the musical afternoon rainstorms. How could a stark, colorless machine planet compare with this?

Of the many palaces and vacation villas on the water-rich planet, Castle Caladan, perched high on a cliff over the sea, was the true place where Leto belonged, the main seat of government. Someday, when he finally put on the ducal signet ring, he would be the twenty-sixth Duke Atreides to sit in the Castle.

His mother Helena spent much time fussing over him, seeing omens in many things, and quoting passages she considered important from the Orange Catholic Bible.

She was distressed to be losing her son for a year, but would not countermand the Old Duke's orders -- not in anyone's hearing, at least. Her expression was troubled, and Leto realized it especially alarmed her that Paulus had chosen to send him to Ix, of all places. "It's a festering hotbed of suspect technology,"

she said to him when her husband was gone, far out of earshot.

"Are you sure you aren't just reacting because Ix is the main rival to House Richese, Mother?" he asked.

"I think not!" Her long, slender fingers paused as they laced up an elegant collar on his shirt. "House Richese relies on old, tried-and-true technology -established devices that fall safely within prescribed guidelines. No one questions Richesian adherence to the strictures of the Jihad."

She looked at him, her dark eyes hard, then cracking with tears. She stroked his shoulder. From a recent spurt of growth, he was almost her height. "Leto, Leto, I don't want you to lose your innocence there, or your soul," she told him. "There's too much at stake."

Later, in the dining hall during a quiet family meal of fish stew and biscuits, Helena had once again begged the Old Duke to send him somewhere else. Paulus merely laughed at her concerns, though, until finally her quiet but firm refusal to back down drove him to rage. "Dominic is my friend -- and by God our son couldn't learn at the hands of a better man!"

Trying to concentrate on his own meal, yet disturbed over his mother's protestations, Leto had nonetheless stood by his father. "I want to go there, Mother," he said, gently resting his spoon beside his bowl, then repeated the line she always told him. "It's for the best."

During Leto's upbringing, Paulus had made many choices with which Helena disagreed: putting the young man to work with villagers, taking him out to meet citizens face-to-face, letting him make friends with commoners, encouraging him to get his hands dirty. Leto could see the wisdom in this, since he would be Duke of these people someday, but Helena still objected on various grounds, often quoting passages from the Orange Catholic Bible to justify her opinions.

His mother was not a patient woman and not warm to her only child, though she maintained a perfect front during important meetings and public events. She always fussed about her own appearance, and often said she would never have any more children. Bringing up one son and running the ducal household already took up most of her valuable time, which could otherwise have been spent studying the Orange Catholic Bible and other religious texts. It was obvious that Helena had borne a son only out of duty to House Atreides, rather than out of any desire to nurture and raise a child.

No wonder the Old Duke sought out the companionship of other women who proved less prickly.

Sometimes at night, behind the massive doors of layered Elaccan teak, Leto heard the loud, reverberating arguments of his father and mother. Lady Helena could disagree all she wanted about sending their son to Ix, but Old Duke Paulus was House Atreides. His word was law, in the Castle and on Caladan, no matter how much his distraught wife tried to sway his opinion.

It's for the best.

Leto knew that theirs had been an arranged marriage, a bargain struck among the Houses of the Landsraad to fulfill the requirements of the important families.

It had been a desperate action on the part of crumbling Richese, and House Atreides could always hope the former grandeur of the innovative technological House might rise again. In the meantime, the Old Duke had received substantial concessions and rewards for taking in one of the many daughters of House Richese.

"A noble household has little room for the swooning and romanticism lesser peoples feel when hormones guide their actions," his mother had once said to him, explaining the politics of marriage. He knew such a fate undoubtedly lay in store for him as well. His father even agreed with her in this regard, and was more adamant about it than she.

"What's the first rule of the House?" the Old Duke would say, ad nauseam. And Leto would have to repeat it, word for word: "Never marry for love, or it will bring our House down."

At fourteen, Leto had never been in love himself, though he had certainly felt the fires of lust. His father encouraged him to dally with the village girls, to toy with anyone he found attractive -- but never to promise anything. Leto doubted, given his position as heir apparent to House Atreides, that he would ever have much chance to fall in love, especially not with the woman he would eventually take as his wife ....