Road to Dune (34 page)

P
aul continued to stare at the old man. “Thufir, I just thought of something.”

“Heh?”

“I really know so little about you.”

“What’s that?” Hawat stared sharply at Paul, wondering:
Am I being insulted by this cub? Does he doubt my loyalty?

“I mean I don’t know
real
things about you,” Paul said. “Like, oh, have you ever been married, or …”

“I’ve had women,” the old man growled.

“And children?”

“Like as not.”

“But no family.”

“My Duke’s family is my family.”

“It’s not the same,” Paul said. “You’ve been so busy with our …”

“What I want or need my Duke gives me,” Hawat said. “If talk like yours came from a commoner it’d be a headsman offense. You’re born to rule, lad, and to accept the services of those whose loyalty you’ve earned. Being born to it isn’t enough, though. You’ve a deal to learn, too. That’s why we’re here now and we’d best get down to business.” He tapped the papers on the table. “Yueh and your mother and everyone with a scrap of knowledge about Arrakis has been pumping it into you. Now, what do you know about the place?”

PAUL & GURNEY HALLECK

G
urney was, in fact, the closest thing to a playmate that Paul knew.

Gurney dropped the weapons onto the exercise table, lined them up, gave them a last examination to be certain they were ready: stunners on safety, buttons secure on the rapier tips, bodkins and kindjals in their blunting sheaths, fresh power charges in the shield belts.

Behind him, Gurney heard the boy moving restlessly, and it occurred to Gurney that Paul was slow to warmth with most people, that few saw anything but a strange irregularity of friendliness beneath the manners.
Like the old Duke,
Gurney thought.
Always conscious of class. And it’s a pity because there’s so much fun in the boy, too much to be pushed under all the time.
He turned, swinging a baliset off his shoulder, began checking its tune.
There I go again,
he thought.
Filling my mind with fly-buzz when I should be getting down to work.

“YOU HATE THE Harkonnens almost as much as my father does,” Paul said.

“Almost as much,” Gurney agreed, and Paul heard the irony. “The Count Rabban at Lankiveil is a Harkonnen cousin. You’ve heard the tale of Ernso, the goldsmith, captured on Pedmiot and sold to slavery of the Count Rabban … with his family held in the same bondage?”

“I’ve heard you sing the ballad many a time,” Paul said.

Gurney spoke to the wall beyond the boy. “Then you’ll recall that Ernso was ordered to embellish the handle and blade of the Count’s best sword. And Ernso obeyed, but he hid in the design a curse calling on heaven to destroy an evil House.”

“Yes.” Paul nodded, puzzled. The bloody ballad was not one of his favorites.

“And the design remained hidden there,” Gurney said, “until a Court lackey chanced to see it and recognized the script from his childhood. Oh, it was a great joke at Court until word got back to Beast Rabban.”

“And for that Ernso was hung by his toes over a chirak nest until dead and his family scattered to the slave pits,” Paul said. “I remember the story, but …”

“I’d tell you a thing now that’s known to very few in this House,” Gurney said. “I’m properly called Gurney Halleck Ernson, the son of Ernso.”

Paul stared at the rippling of the scar on Gurney’s jaw.

“It was Hawat’s men brought me off Giedi Prime that time they nearly got the Baron,” Gurney said. “I was just a child, but I showed aptitude for the sword, there being motive behind my learning. Duncan Idaho found a way for me to train at his school on Ginaz. I had some large bids for my services when I graduated, lad, but you understand now why I came back to the Atreides and why I’ll never leave short of being carried out in the basket.”

PAUL & DR. YUEH

T
hat sounds like Hawat,” Yueh said, and he smoothed his drooping mustache. “Hawat’s gone, I hear. Taken most of the propaganda corps, all the presses. Interesting. I wonder what filmbooks he has in mind for first publication there. The Harkonnens, you know, didn’t use much printed matter on Arrakis. They relied on the persuasion of the sword.”

“My father does things differently,” Paul said.

“Indeed,” Yueh said. And he straightened the Suk School’s silver ring that bound his hair at the shoulder.

“My mother says you have some Bene Gesserit training,” Paul said. “Does the Suk School have Bene Gesserit teachers?”

“No.” Yueh dropped his hand to his lap. “My … Wanna … she was Bene Gesserit. A wife teaches a husband much even when he is not deep-trained … and when she’s Bene Gesserit …” He shook his head.

“Is she … dead?” Paul asked.

Yueh swallowed in a dry throat.
He has pity for me. I do not want his pity!

“Yes,” he said. And he thought:
I pray it is true. Let her be dead, and in that death, free of Harkonnens. Yet, I cannot be sure until I face the Baron in our own tahaddi alburhan. The challenge of the proof. My eyes shall see it.

“I’m sorry,” Paul said. And he thought:
Perhaps that’s why he makes me uneasy. He’s a man with a terrible grief. I must be kinder to him. Mayhap my father could get him a woman.

“I must leave in a few minutes,” Yueh said. “But we really haven’t studied much, have we? It’s all this upset. We’ll get back to regular lessons and a full schedule … on Arrakis.”

“Things are pretty mixed up,” Paul said. “And there’s all this huddling within our four walls because our forces are depleted by the ones we’ve sent on ahead. My father says we’re not very vulnerable here, though, because many of the Great Houses pray for the Harkonnens to violate the Convention. That’d make the Harkonnens fair game to anyone who wanted to hit them in force.”

“It
is
best to stay indoors, though,” Yueh said. “I hear they blasted a hunter-seeker out of the orchard last night.”

PAUL & DUKE LETO ATREIDES: THE SPACING GUILD & THE GREAT CONVENTION

B
ut first let us consider Salusa Secundus. Forgive me if I seem to deal in the obvious. I wish to be certain you see the matter as I see it.”

And Paul took a deep breath, thinking:
At last he’s going to tell me how we can win.

“The popular idea,” the Duke said, “is that our civilization is a scientific one, based on a Constitutional Monarchy in which even the lowliest may gain high position. After all, new planets are being discovered all the time, eh?”

“Hawat says new Terranic planets are as rare as hen’s teeth and that dispensation of them is a Royal monopoly,” Paul said. “Except for the ones we don’t know about that the Spacing Guild keeps for itself.”

“I’m glad to hear you quoting Hawat so much,” the Duke said. “It bespeaks a native caution in you. But I doubt that the Guild holds any planets. I don’t think they like living on the dirt … out in the open. I’ve ridden Guild ships to Court and elsewhere several times. You don’t see much of the crews except on viewscreens, but what you do see gives you the clear impression that they despise planet-bound humans.”

“Then why do they deal with us at all? Why not just …”

“Because they understand ecology,” the Duke said. “They know they have a nice safe niche in the scheme of things. It’s cheaper to depend on us for raw materials and those products they don’t care to manufacture … or cannot—such as melange. Their philosophy is
Don’t Rock the Boat.
They’ll transport us and our products for a profit. Anywhere, anytime— just as long as it doesn’t endanger them. The same service offered to all at the same price.”

“I know that, but it’s still puzzling,” Paul said. “I remember that Guildsman who came here when we contracted for the extra rice shipments. He gave me a picture of a landing frigate and …”

“He wasn’t a Guildsman,” the Duke said. “He was just an agent for the Guild, born and raised on a planet as we were. A true Guildsman has never been seen on dirt to my knowledge.”

“It seems strange that the Guild doesn’t just move in and take over the worlds,” Paul said. “If they control all the …”

“They chose their path,” the Duke said. “Give them that. They know what any Mentat knows—there’s a great deal of responsibility in ruling, even when you do it poorly. The Guild has shown many times it doesn’t want that responsibility. They like what they are, where they are.”

“Hasn’t anyone ever tried to compete with them?” Paul asked.

“Many times,” the Duke said. “Competing ships never come back, never arrive anywhere.”

“The Guild destroys them!”

“Probably. Then again, perhaps not. And the Guild does provide general transportation services at a reasonable price. It’s only when you get into the special services that the cost goes up.”

“They just destroy anyone who tries to compete with them,” Paul said.

The Duke frowned. “What would you do if a rival House set up next door to you and started competing for your world—openly, no holds barred?”

“But the Convention …”

“Hang the Convention! What would you do?”

“I’d throw every thing I had against them.”

“You’d destroy them.” The Duke tapped a finger on the table for emphasis. “Now, let us not forget something, a fact you’ve been told often enough: Ours is a feudal society, each world vulnerable from space. That’s the real reason for the Great Convention. A planet is vulnerable from space, and the Guild will transport anything anywhere anytime for a price. If they carry a cargo of short-range frigates, as they’ll carry ours to Arrakis, and those frigates bomb out a world, the information on who did it is also available … for a price. This is the Great Convention, the Landsraad, our only true agreement—to unite and destroy anyone who attempts such a thing.”

“Well, what about renegades?” Paul asked. “If …”

“Hasn’t anyone explained these things to you before?” the Duke demanded. He sighed. “When a renegade buys Guild silence, there are two requirements. He may not be fleeing after major violation of the Convention, and he may never again contact a central world—in any way. Otherwise, all bets are off. That’s part of the agreement between Guild and Landsraad. Things aren’t all one-sided. We share certain rules with the Guild.”

“I’ve heard all this before,” Paul said, “and read about it and asked about it. But it still seems … wrong. There’s …”

“A man’s promise is no better than his motives for keeping it,” the Duke said. “The agreements don’t bother you; it’s the motives.”

“That’s it!” Paul said.

“What holds the Universe together?” the Duke said. “Why aren’t we all renegades? One word, son: trade. Each world, each group of worlds, has something unique. Even Caladan’s pundi rice is unique to Caladan. And there are people who want it, who cannot get it anywhere else. It’s a superb food for babies and old people, you know … soothing, easily digested.”

“Trade?” Paul asked. “That doesn’t seem enough.”

“It isn’t for the wild adventurers and the rebels,” the Duke said. “But for most people it is. We don’t rock our boat, either. And
that’s
why we’re accepting Arrakis.
There’s
a planet that’s not only unique, but pricelessly so, and in a way that the Harkonnens and the Imperium do not suspect.”

There it is again,
Paul thought,
that hint at something in our favor.

“What is it they don’t suspect?” Paul asked. “You and Hawat keep hinting at …”

“Paul …” The Duke hesitated, staring hard at his son. “This is a most vital thing. I … but, no, it’s time you assumed more responsibilities.”

BARON HARKONNEN & PITER DE VRIES

Y
ou say I’ve not seen death,” Piter said. “You are so wrong. Once, I saw a woman die. She fell from the third balcony of our home into the courtyard where I was playing. I was only five, but I can still recall that I thought she looked like an odd green sack as she fell. She was wearing green, you see.”

The Baron, noting the odd change in Piter’s manner, said: “Many women do, Piter. Women die every day.”

“This one was my mother,” Piter said. “Oh, it meant little to me at the time. She was merely one of the many concubines around the palace. It was only on reflection years later that I drew significance from the event.”

“Ahhhh,” said the Baron, “and what was that significance?”

“The person falling is already dead,” Piter said. “The falling and the death are thoroughly anticlimactic. The event of true importance is the instant of toppling—then you can push or rescue the person about to fall. You control destiny.”

The Baron scowled, wondering:
Does this fool threaten me? Is he saying he could oppose me in the matter of the Duke?

“Then what of Duke Leto?” the Baron asked. “Could there be a change in his destiny?”

“Baron, that you should ask!” Piter said. “The Duke … ah, the Duke—he is already falling. An event of total unimportance, the Duke.”

New Chapter:
FROM CALADAN TO ARRAKIS

(Paragraph-by-paragraph word counts in margin suggest this chapter was cut due to length, per Campbell’s request for serialization in
Analog,
and never restored.)

How such a mass of misinformation as Wingate’s book, “Mentat, Guild and Shield,” could command so wide an acceptance is difficult to understand. The shield is pictured as a simple device (once you’ve learned its secret), easily maintained and enabling the righteous to defend themselves from all attack. The Guild comes through as a disembodied group of angels waiting in space for the day they can introduce universal Utopia. And the Mentat! Wingate’s Mentat is a golem, without any redeeming warmth. According to Wingate, when you put information into the Mentat, a sort of machine -encased-in-flesh spews out answers untainted by human emotions.

—FROM THE HUMANITY OF MUAD’DIB BY THE PRINCESS IRULAN