Dune: House Atreides Read online

  Anirul took her position in the center of the chamber. Overhead, a vaulted ceiling spread like a flower to the tops of Gothic stained-glasplaz windows; within each window section, panes contained the family crests of great historical leaders of the order.

  Fighting back nervousness, Anirul took a deep breath and suppressed the multitude of voices within her. Many of the Bene Gesserit Order would not like what she had to say. Though the voices of past lives might offer her comfort and support, she was about to give her own assessment, and had to stand by it. She also had to be completely honest; Mother Superior was adept at sensing the slightest deceit. Mother Superior noticed everything, and now her almond eyes flashed with expectation, as well as impatience.

  Anirul cleared her throat and covered her mouth as she began her report in a directed-whisper that carried to the ears of everyone in the sealed room, but nowhere else. Nothing escaped into the ambient air for any concealed listening device. They all knew of her work, but she gave them the details anyway, adding to the import of her announcement.

  “Thousands of years of careful breeding have brought us closer than ever before to our goal. For ninety generations, a plan begun even before the Butlerian warriors led us to freedom from the thinking machines, we of the Sisterhood have planned to create our own weapon. Our own superbeing who will bridge space and time with his mind.”

  Her words droned on. The other Bene Gesserit did not stir, though they appeared bored with her standard summary of the project. Very well, I will give them something to awaken their hopes.

  “With the dance of DNA, I have determined we are, at most, only three generations removed from success.” Her pulse accelerated. “Soon, we will have our Kwisatz Haderach.”

  “Take care when you speak of this secret of all secrets,” Mother Superior warned, but her delight could not be covered by her sternness.

  “I take care with every aspect of our program, Mother Superior,” Anirul countered, in too haughty a tone. She caught herself, kept her narrow face expressionless, but others had already seen the slip. There would be more murmurings about her brashness, her youth and unsuitability for such an important role. “That is why I am so certain of what we must do. The gene samples have been analyzed, all possibilities projected. The path is plainer now than ever before.”

  So many Sisters before her had worked toward this incredible goal, and now it was her duty to administer the final breeding decisions and supervise the birth and upbringing of a new girl-child, who would in all probability be the grandmother of the Kwisatz Haderach himself.

  “I have the names of the final genetic pairings,” Anirul announced. “Our mating index indicates that these will produce the highest likelihood of success.” She paused, savoring the absolute attention the others paid to her.

  To any outsider, Anirul appeared to be no more than another Reverend Mother, indistinguishable from the rest of her Sisters and not terribly talented or gifted in any way. The Bene Gesserit were good at keeping secrets, and the Kwisatz Mother was one of the greatest of these.

  “We need a particular bloodline from an ancient House. This will produce a daughter— our equivalent to the mother of the Virgin Mary— who must then take the mate we choose. These two will be the grandparents, and their offspring, also a daughter, will be trained here on Wallach IX. This Bene Gesserit woman will become the mother of our Kwisatz Haderach, a boy-child to be raised by us, under our complete control.” Anirul let out her last words with a slow sigh, and considered the immensity of what she had said.

  Only a few decades more, and the astounding birth would occur— potentially within Anirul’s lifetime. Thinking back through the tunnels of Other Memory, grasping the canvas of time that had spread out in preparation for this event, Anirul realized how lucky she was to be alive now, in this period of time. Her predecessors stood in a spectral line inside her mind, eagerly watching and waiting.

  When the unparalleled breeding program finally came to fruition, the Bene Gesserit would no longer need to remain a subtle, manipulative presence in the politics of the Imperium. Everything would belong to them, and the archaic galactic feudal system would fall.

  Though no one spoke, Anirul detected concern in the hawkish eyes of her Sisters, bordering on a doubt that none of them dared express. “And what is this bloodline?” Mother Superior asked.

  Anirul did not hesitate, drew herself taller. “We must have a daughter by . . . the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen.”

  She read the surprise on their faces. Harkonnens? They had been part of the overall breeding programs, of course— all Landsraad Houses were— but no one would have imagined the Bene Gesserit savior springing from the seed of such a man. What did such a lineage bode for the Kwisatz Haderach? Given a Harkonnen-bred superman, could the Bene Gesserit hope to control him?

  All of these questions— and many more— passed between the Sisters, without the utterance of a sound or even a directed-whisper. Anirul saw it plainly.

  “As all of you know,” she said at last, “the Baron Harkonnen is a dangerously cunning and manipulative man. Though we can be certain he is generally aware of the numerous Bene Gesserit breeding programs, our plan cannot be revealed. Still, we must find a way for him to impregnate a chosen Sister without telling him why.”

  Mother Superior pursed her wrinkled lips. “The Baron’s sexual appetites run exclusively to men and boys. He will have no interest in accepting a female lover— especially not one thrust upon him by us.”

  Anirul nodded soberly. “Our seductive abilities will be taxed as never before.” She gave a challenging look to the powerful Reverend Mothers in attendance. “But I have no doubt that with all the resources of the Bene Gesserit, we will find a way to coerce him.”

  In response to the strict Butlerian taboo against machines that perform mental functions, a number of schools developed enhanced human beings to subsume most of the functions formerly performed by computers. Some of the key schools arising out of the Jihad include the Bene Gesserit, with their intense mental and physical training, the Spacing Guild, with the prescient ability to find a safe path through foldspace, and the Mentats, whose computerlike minds are capable of extraordinary acts of reasoning.

  —Ikbhan’s Treatise on the Mind, Volume I

  As he made ready to depart from home for an entire year, Leto tried to hold on to his self-confidence. He knew this was an important step for him, and understood why his father had chosen Ix as a place to study. But he would still miss Caladan terribly.

  It was not the young ducal heir’s first trip to a different star system. Leto and his father had explored the multiple worlds of Gaar and the fog-bound planet of Pilargo, where Caladanian primitives were thought to have originated. Those had been mere outings, exciting sight-seeing trips.

  However, the prospect of going away for so long, and all alone, made him worry more than he’d expected. He didn’t dare show it, though. I will be Duke someday.

  Dressed in Atreides finery, Leto stood with the Old Duke at the Cala Municipal Spaceport, awaiting a shuttle that would carry him to a Guild Heighliner. Two suspensor-borne suitcases hovered near his feet.

  His mother had suggested he take retainers, cargo cases full of garments and diversions, and supplies of good Caladanian food; Duke Paulus, on the other hand, had laughed and explained how when he was Leto’s age he’d survived for months on the battlefield with only the few possessions in a pack on his back. He did, however, insist that Leto take one of Caladan’s traditional fishing knives in a sheath at his back.

  Siding with his father, as usual, Leto chose to be minimal in his packing. Besides, Ix was a rich industrial planet, not a wilderness; he wouldn’t suffer many privations during his schooling.

  When anyone could see her, the Lady Helena bore the decision with stoic good grace. Now she stood beside the departure group dressed in fine robes and a shimmering cape. Though he knew his mother genuinely feared for his well-being, Lady Atreides would never show anything but the mos
t perfect public face.

  Adjusting the oil lenses of his father’s field glasses, Leto peered away from the shifting pastels of the dawn horizon, up into the vestiges of night. A glinting speck moved against the stars. When he touched the zoompad, the speck grew until Leto recognized a Heighliner in low orbit surrounded by the shimmering blur of a shield defensive system.

  “Do you see it?” Paulus asked, standing at his son’s shoulder.

  “It’s there— with full shields activated. Are they worried about military action? Here?” With such severe political and economic consequences, Leto couldn’t imagine anyone attacking a Guild craft. Although the Spacing Guild had no military power of its own, it could— through withdrawal of transportation services— cripple any solar system. And with elaborate surveillance mechanisms, the Guild could trace and identify rogue attackers and send messages off to the Emperor, who in turn would dispatch Imperial Sardaukar according to mutual treaty.

  “Never underestimate the tactics of desperation, lad,” Paulus said, but did not elaborate further. From time to time he had told his son stories of trumped-up charges against particular people, situations fabricated in the past in order to wipe out enemies of the Emperor or the Guild.

  Leto thought that of all the things he was leaving behind, he would miss his father’s insights most, the Old Duke’s brief and perceptive lessons tossed off the cuff. “The Empire functions beyond mere laws,” Paulus continued. “An equally strong foundation is the network of alliances, favors, and religious propaganda. Beliefs are more powerful than facts.”

  Leto stared through the thick sky at the magnificent, distant ship and frowned. It was often difficult to separate truth from fiction. . . .

  He watched a speck of orange appear below the immense orbiting craft. The color became a streak of descending light that resolved into the shape of a shuttle, which soon hovered over the Cala landing field. Four white gulls whipped around, soaring in the stirred air currents from the shuttle’s descent, then flew shrieking out to the sea cliffs.

  Around the shuttle, a shield shimmered and flickered off. All along the spaceport fences, pennants snapped in a salty morning breeze. The shuttle, a white bullet-shaped craft, floated across the field toward the embarkation platform on which Leto and his parents stood separate from the honor guard. A crowd of onlookers and well-wishers waved and shouted from the outskirts of the landing field. The craft and platform connected, and a door slid open in the fuselage.

  His mother came forward to say her goodbyes, embracing him without words; she had threatened simply to watch from one of the towers in Castle Caladan, but Paulus had convinced her otherwise. The crowd cheered and shouted their farewells; Duke Paulus and Lady Helena stood hand in hand and waved back at them.

  “Remember what I told you, son,” Paulus said, referring to intense counseling he had given the boy in recent days. “Learn from Ix, learn from everything.”

  “But use your heart to know what is true,” his mother added.

  “Always,” he said. “I’ll miss you both. I’ll make you proud of me.”

  “We already are, lad.” The older man stepped back to the formal guard escort. He exchanged Atreides salutes with his son— an open right hand beside the temple— and all the soldiers did the same. Then Paulus bounded forward to give Leto a hearty hug. . . .

  Moments later the robo-piloted shuttle rose away from the black cliffs, churning seas, and cloud-wreathed croplands of Caladan. Inside, Leto sat in a plush chair in the observation lounge, peering out a windowport. As the craft reached the indigo darkness of space, he saw the metallic island of the Guild Heighliner with sunlight glinting off its surface.

  At their approach, a yawning black hole opened in the underside. Leto took a deep breath, and the immense ship swallowed the shuttle. He envisioned what he had once seen in a filmbook about Arrakis, a sandworm inhaling a spice harvester. The metaphor unsettled him.

  The shuttle slid smoothly into the docking port of a Wayku passenger ship that hung in its designated berth inside the cavernous hold of the Heighliner. Leto boarded, his suitcases floating along behind, and made up his mind to do as his father had instructed.

  Learn from everything. His determined curiosity pushing his intimidation aside, Leto climbed a stairway to the main passenger lounge, where he found a seat on a bench by another window. Two soostone merchants sat nearby, their rapid conversation sprinkled with jargon. Old Paulus had wanted Leto to learn how to fend for himself. So, to enhance the experience, Leto was traveling as an ordinary passenger, with no special amenities, no pomp or entourage, no indication that he was the son of a Duke.

  His mother had been horrified.

  Aboard the ship, Wayku vendors wearing dark glasses and earclamp headsets moved from passenger to passenger, selling confections and perfumed beverages at exorbitant prices. Leto waved off a persistent vendor, though the spicy-salty broths and broiled meat sticks smelled delicious. He could hear an overflow of music from the man’s headset, saw his head, shoulders, and feet moving to the beat of music piped into his skull. The Wayku did their jobs, tended to the customers, but managed to live in their own sensory cacophony; they preferred the universe within to any spectacle they might experience outside.

  This mass-transit craft, operated by the Wayku under Guild contract, carried passengers from system to system. A disgraced House Major whose planets had all been destroyed in the Third Coalsack War, the Wayku were gypsies now and lived as nomads aboard Guild Heighliners. Although ancient surrender terms prevented members of their race from setting foot on any planet in the Imperium, the Guild had, for undisclosed reasons, granted them sanctuary. For generations, the Wayku had showed no interest in petitioning the Emperor for amnesty or a revocation of the severe restrictions placed upon them.

  Looking through the window of the lounge, Leto saw the dimly illuminated cargo hold of the Heighliner, a vacuum chamber so large that this passenger ship was, by comparison, even smaller than a grain of pundi rice in the belly of a fish. He could see the ceiling high overhead, but not the walls kilometers away. Other ships, large and small, were arrayed in the hold: frigates, cargo haulers, shuttles, lighters, and armored monitors. Strapped-together stacks of “dump boxes”— unpiloted cargo containers designed to dump material directly from low orbit onto a planet’s surface— hung next to the main exterior hatches.

  Guild regulations, etched on ridulian crystals mounted to the main wall of every room, prohibited passengers from leaving the isolation of their ship. Through adjacent windows Leto snatched glimpses of passengers inside other craft— a potpourri of races bound for all parts of the Imperium.

  The Wayku deckhands finished their first round of service, and the passengers waited. The trip through foldspace took no more than an hour, but preparations for departure sometimes required days.

  Finally, with no announcement whatsoever, Leto detected a faint, smooth purring that seemed to come from far away. He could feel it in every muscle of his body. “We must be heading out,” he said, turning to the soostone merchants, who seemed unimpressed. From the quick diverting of their eyes and the way they studiously ignored him, Leto thought they must consider him an uncultured yokel.

  In an isolated chamber high atop the craft, a Guild Navigator swimming in a tank of gas saturated with melange began to encompass space with his mind. He envisioned and threaded a safe passage through the fabric of foldspace, transporting the Heighliner and its contents across a vast distance.

  At dinner the previous evening in the Castle’s dining hall, Leto’s mother had wondered aloud if Navigators might somehow violate the machine-human interaction prohibited by the Butlerian Jihad. Knowing Leto would soon be off to Ix and at risk of moral tainting, she innocently made the suggestion as she nibbled on a mouthful of lemon-broiled fish. She often used a most reasonable tone when she uttered her provocative statements. The effect was like dropping a boulder into a pool of still water.

  “Oh, nonsense, Helena!” Paulus said,
wiping his beard with a napkin. “Where would we be without Navigators?”

  “Just because you have become accustomed to a thing, does not make it right, Paulus. The Orange Catholic Bible says nothing about morality being defined by personal convenience.”

  Before his father could argue the point, Leto interrupted. “I thought that Navigators just saw the way, a safe way. Holtzman generators actually operate the spacecraft.” He decided to add a quote he remembered from the Bible. “ ‘The highest master in the material world is the human mind, and the beasts of the field and the machines of the city must be forever subordinate.’ ”

  “Of course, dear,” his mother said, and dropped the subject.

  Now, he didn’t notice any change of sensation upon passing into foldspace. Before Leto knew it, the Heighliner arrived in another solar system— Harmonthep, according to the transport schedule.

  Once there, Leto had to wait for five more hours as cargo ships and shuttles went in and out of the Heighliner hold, as well as transports and even a superfrigate. Then the Guild ship moved off again, folding space to a new solar system— Kirana Aleph, this time— where the cycle occurred once more.

  Leto took a nap in the sleeping compartments, then emerged to buy two of the sizzling meat sticks and a potent cup of stee. Helena might wish he’d been escorted by Atreides house guards, but Paulus had insisted that there was only one way for his son to learn to take care of himself. Leto had an agenda and instructions, and he vowed to do just that.

  Finally, on the third stop, a Wayku deckhand ordered Leto to descend three decks and board an automatic shuttle. She was a stern-looking woman in a gaudy uniform and did not seem to be in the mood for conversation. Her headset thrummed with an undercurrent of melody.

  “Is this Ix?” Leto inquired, reaching for his suspensor-buoyed suitcases. They followed him as he moved.

  “We are in the Alkaurops system,” she said. Her eyes couldn’t be seen because of her dark glasses. “Ix is the ninth planet. You get off here. We’ve already jettisoned the dump boxes.”