Dune: House Harkonnen Read online

  The young man’s intent eyes brightened. He raised a water flagon. “May I propose a toast to our host and hostess?” Pardot Kynes blinked at his son’s boldness, as if surprised that the social nicety had not occurred to him first.

  “An excellent suggestion,” the Baron gushed. Margot recognized a slackness in his speech from consuming too much melange wine.

  The twelve-year-old spoke in a firm voice, before taking a sip. “May the wealth you display for us here, with all this food and abundance of water, be merely a pale reflection of the riches in your hearts.”

  The assembled guests endorsed the blessing, and Margot detected a flicker of greed in their eyes. The Planetologist fidgeted and finally spoke what was on his mind, as the clinking of glasses diminished. “Count Fenring, I understand you have an elaborate wet-planet conservatory under construction here. I would be very interested in seeing it.” Margot suddenly understood why Kynes had accepted the invitation, the reason he had come in from the desert. Dressed in his plain but serviceable tunic and breeches, covered by a sandy-brown cloak, the man resembled a dirty Fremen more than an Imperial servant.

  “You have learned our little secret, hmmm-ah?” With obvious discomfort, Fenring pursed his lips. “I had intended to show it to my guests this evening, but sadly certain . . . hmmm-ahh, delays have made that impossible. Some other time, perhaps.”

  “By keeping a private conservatory, do you not flaunt things that the people of Arrakis cannot have?” young Weichih asked.

  “Yet,” Pardot Kynes said under his breath.

  Margot heard it. Interesting. She saw that it would be a mistake to underestimate this rugged man, or even his son. “Surely it is an admirable goal to collect plants from all over the Imperium?” she suggested, patiently. “I see it as a display of riches the universe has to offer, rather than a reminder of what the people lack.”

  In a low but firm tone, Pardot Kynes admonished the young man, “We did not come here to force our views on others.”

  “On the contrary, please be so good as to explain your views,” Margot urged, trying to ignore insulting looks still being exchanged across the table by the Ecazi and Grumman ambassadors. “We won’t take offense, I promise you.”

  “Yes,” said a Carthag weapons-importer from halfway down the table. His fingers were so laden with jeweled rings he could barely lift his hands. “Explain how Fremen think. We all want to know that!”

  Kynes nodded slowly. “I have lived with them for many years. To begin an understanding of the Fremen, realize that survival is their mind-set. They waste nothing. Everything is salvaged, reused.”

  “Down to the last drop of water,” Fenring said. “Even the water in dead bodies, hmmmm?”

  Kynes looked at his son, then back at Margot. “And your private conservatory will require a great deal of that precious water to maintain.”

  “Ahh, but as Imperial Observer here, I can do anything I please with natural resources,” Fenring pointed out. “I consider my wife’s conservatory a worthwhile expenditure.”

  “Your rights are not in doubt,” Kynes said, his tone as steady as the Shield Wall. “And I am the Planetologist for Emperor Shaddam, as I was for Elrood IX before him. We are each bound to our duties, Count Fenring. You will hear no speeches from me about ecological issues. I merely answered your Lady’s question.”

  “Well, then, Planetologist, tell us something we don’t know about Arrakis,” the Baron said, gazing down the table. “You’ve certainly been here long enough. More of my men die here than in any other Harkonnen holding. The Guild can’t even put enough functional weather satellites in orbit to provide reliable surveillance and make predictions. It is most frustrating.”

  “And, thanks to the spice, Arrakis is also most profitable,” Margot said. “Especially for you, dear Baron.”

  “This planet defies understanding,” Kynes said. “And it will take more than my brief lifetime to determine what is going on here. This much I know: We must learn how to live with the desert, rather than against it.”

  “Do the Fremen hate us?” Duchess Caula, an Imperial cousin, asked. She held a forkful of brandy-seasoned sweetbreads halfway to her mouth.

  “They are insular, and distrust anyone who is non-Fremen. But they are honest, direct people with a code of honor that no one at this table— not even myself— fully understands.”

  With an elegant lift of her eyebrows Margot asked the next question, watching carefully for his reaction. “Is it true what we’ve heard, that you’ve become one of them yourself, Planetologist?”

  “I remain an Imperial servant, my Lady, though there is much to be learned from the Fremen.”

  Murmurs rose from different seats, accompanied by louder pockets of discussion while the first dessert course arrived.

  “Our Emperor still has no heir,” Lupino Ord, the Grumman ambassador, commented. The big man’s voice was a lilting shrill. He’d been drinking steadily. “Only two daughters, Irulan and Chalice. Not that women aren’t valuable . . .” He looked around mischievously with his coal-black eyes, catching the disapproving gazes of several ladies at the table. “But without a male heir, House Corrino must step aside in favor of another Great House.”

  “If he lives as long as Elrood, our Emperor might have a century left in him,” Margot pointed out. “Perhaps you haven’t heard that Lady Anirul is with child again?”

  “My duties sometimes keep me out of the mainstream of news,” Ord admitted. He lifted his wineglass. “Let us hope the next one is a boy.”

  “Hear, hear!” several diners called out.

  But the Ecazi diplomat, Bindikk Narvi, made an obscene hand gesture. Margot had heard about the long-standing animosity between the Archduke Armand Ecaz and Viscount Moritani of Grumman, but hadn’t realized how serious it had grown. She wished she hadn’t seated the two rivals so close to one another.

  Ord grabbed a thin-necked bottle and poured more blue wine for himself before a servant could do it for him. “Count Fenring, you have many works of art featuring our Emperor— paintings, statues, plaques bearing his likeness. Is Shaddam funneling too much money into such self-serving commissions? They have sprouted up all over the Imperium.”

  “And someone keeps defacing them or knocking them down,” the Carthag weapons-importer said with a snort.

  Thinking of the Planetologist and his son next to her, Margot selected a sweet melange cake from the dessert tray. Perhaps the guests had not heard the other rumors, that those benevolent gifts of artwork contained surveillance devices to monitor activities around the Imperium. Such as the plaque on the wall right behind Ord.

  “Shaddam desires to make his mark as our ruler, hmmm?” Fenring commented. “I have known him for many years. He wishes to separate himself from the policies of his father, who served for so interminably long.”

  “Perhaps, but he’s neglecting the training of actual Sardaukar troops, while allowing the ranks of his generals . . . What are they called?”

  “Bursegs,” someone said.

  “Yes, while allowing the ranks of his Bursegs to increase, with exorbitant pensions and other benefits. Morale among the Sardaukar must be ebbing, as they are called upon to do more with fewer and fewer resources.”

  Margot noticed her husband had grown dangerously quiet. Having narrowed his large eyes to slits, he was staring at the foolish drunk.

  A woman whispered something to the Grumman ambassador. He ran a finger over the lip of his wineglass. “Oh yes, I apologize for stating the obvious to someone who knows our Emperor so well.”

  “You’re an idiot, Ord,” Narvi thundered, as if he’d been waiting for any chance to shout an insult.

  “And you’re a fool and a dead man.” The Grumman ambassador stood up, knocking his chair over behind him. He moved too swiftly, too accurately. Had his drunkenness all been an act, an excuse, just to provoke the man?

  Lupino Ord drew a gleaming cutterdisk pistol and, with ear-piercing reports, fired it repeatedly a
t his adversary. Had he planned this, provoking his Ecazi rival? Cutterdisks tore Narvi’s face and chest apart, killing him long before the poisons on the razor edges could have any effect.

  Diners cried out and scattered in all directions. Footmen grabbed the reeling ambassador and wrestled the expended weapon from him. Margot sat frozen in place, more astonished than terrified. What have I missed? How deep does this animosity between Ecaz and House Moritani go?

  “Lock him in one of the underground tunnels,” Fenring commanded. “Station a guard at all times.”

  “But I have diplomatic immunity!” Ord protested, his voice squeakier now. “You don’t dare hold me.”

  “Never assume what I might dare.” The Count glanced at the shocked faces around him. “I could simply allow my other guests to punish you, thus exercising their own . . . immunity, hmmm?” Fenring waved an arm, and the sputtering man was taken away until protected passage back to Grumman could be arranged.

  Medics hurried in, the same ones Fenring had seen earlier at the conservatory disaster. Clearly, they could do nothing for the mutilated Ecazi ambassador.

  Quite a body count around here today, Fenring mused. And I didn’t kill any of them.

  “Hmmm-ah,” he said to his wife, who stood by him. “I fear this will become an . . . incident. Archduke Ecaz is bound to issue a formal complaint, and there’s no telling how Viscount Moritani will respond.”

  He commanded the footmen to remove Narvi’s body from the hall. Many of the guests had scattered to other rooms of the mansion. “Shall we call people back?” He squeezed his wife’s hand. “I hate to see the evening end like this. Maybe we could bring in the Jongleurs, have them tell amusing stories.”

  Baron Harkonnen came up beside them, leaning on his wormhead cane. “This is your jurisdiction, Count Fenring, not mine. You send a report to the Emperor.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Fenring said, tersely. “I’m journeying to Kaitain on another matter, and I will provide Shaddam with the necessary details. And the proper excuses.”

  In the days of Old Terra there were experts in poisons, deviously clever persons who dealt in what were known as “the powders of inheritance.”

  — Filmbook excerpt, Royal Library of Kaitain

  Grinning with pride, Court Chamberlain Beely Ridondo marched through the doorway. “Your Imperial Majesty, you have another new daughter. Your wife has just delivered a fine and healthy girl.”

  Instead of rejoicing, Emperor Shaddam IV cursed under his breath and sent the man away. That makes three! What use is another daughter to me?

  He was in a foul mood, worse than any since the struggles to remove his decrepit father from the Golden Lion Throne. At a brisk pace Shaddam entered his private study, passing beneath an ancient plaque that read, “Law is the ultimate science”— some nonsense from Crown Prince Raphael Corrino, a man who’d never even bothered to wear the Imperial crown. He sealed the door behind him and thumped his angular frame into the textured, high-backed suspensor chair at his desk.

  A man of middle height, Shaddam had a loosely muscled body and an aquiline nose. His long nails were carefully manicured, his pomaded red hair combed straight back. He wore a gray Sardaukar-style uniform with epaulets and silver-and-gold trim, but the military trappings no longer comforted him as they once had.

  In addition to the birth of yet another daughter, he had much on his mind. Recently, at a gala concert in one of the inverted-pyramid stadiums on Harmonthep, someone had released a giant inflated effigy of Shaddam IV. Obscenely insulting, the gaudy caricature made him look like a buffoon. The inflatable construction had drifted over the vast laughing crowds until the Harmonthep dragoon guards had shot it down in flaming tatters— and any fool could see the symbolism in that act! Despite the most rigorous crackdown and interrogation, even Sardaukar investigators were not able to determine who’d been responsible for creating or releasing the effigy.

  In another incident, hundred-meter-high letters had been scrawled across the granite wall of Monument Canyon on Canidar II: “Shaddam, does your crown rest comfortably on your pointy head?” In scattered worlds across the Imperium, dozens of his new commemorative statues had been defaced. Nobody had ever seen the perpetrators.

  Someone hated him enough to do this. Someone. The question kept gnawing at his Imperial heart, along with other worries . . . including an impending visit from Hasimir Fenring to report on the secret synthetic spice experiments being conducted by the Tleilaxu.

  Project Amal.

  Initiated during his father’s reign, this research was known to only a few. Perhaps the most closely guarded secret in the Imperium, Project Amal could, if successful, give House Corrino a reliable, artificial source of melange, the most precious substance in the universe. But the damned Tleilaxu experiments were taking years too long, and the situation upset him more and more with each passing month.

  And now . . . a third cursed daughter! He didn’t know when— or if— he would bother to gaze upon this useless new girl-child.

  Shaddam’s gaze moved along the paneled wall, to a bookcase that contained a stand-up holophoto of Anirul in her wedding gown, shelved next to a thick reference volume of great historical disasters. She had large doe eyes— hazel in some light, darker at other times— that concealed something. He should have noticed before.

  It was the third time this Bene Gesserit “of Hidden Rank” had failed to produce the required male heir, and Shaddam had made no contingency plans for such an eventuality. His face grew hot. He could always impregnate a few concubines and hope for a son, but while legally married to Anirul, he would face tremendous political difficulties if he attempted to declare a bastard his heir for the Imperial throne.

  He could also kill Anirul and take another wife— his father had done that enough times— but such a course of action would risk the wrath of the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood. Everything could be solved if Anirul would just give him a son, a healthy male child he could call his heir.

  All these months of waiting, and now this . . .

  He’d heard that the witches could actually choose the gender of their children, through manipulations in body chemistry; these daughters could be no accident. He’d been deceived by the Bene Gesserit power brokers who had foisted Anirul on him. How dare they do that to the Emperor of a Million Worlds? What was Anirul’s true purpose in his royal household? Was she gathering blackmail information to use against him? Should he send her away?

  He tapped a stylus on his blood-grained elacca wood desk, stared at an image of his paternal grandfather, Fondil III. Commonly known as “the Hunter” for his propensity to attack every vestige of rebellion, Fondil had been no less feared in his own household. Though the old man had died long before Shaddam’s birth, he knew something of the Hunter’s moods and methods. Had Fondil been faced with an arrogant wife, he would have found a way to rid himself of her. . . .

  Shaddam pressed a button on his desk, and his personal Chamberlain reentered the study. Ridondo bowed, showing the gleaming top of his high forehead. “Sire?”

  “I wish to see Anirul now. Here.”

  “The Lady is in bed, Sire.”

  “Don’t make me repeat my order.”

  Without another word, Ridondo faded into the woodwork, disappearing through the side door with long, spidery movements.

  Moments later a pale and overly perfumed lady-in-waiting arrived. In a shaky voice, she said, “My Emperor, the Lady Anirul wishes me to convey that she is weakened from the birth of your child. She begs your indulgence in permitting her to remain in bed. Might it be possible for you to consider coming to visit her and the baby?”

  “I see. She begs my indulgence? I am not interested in seeing another useless daughter, or in hearing further excuses. This is a command from your Emperor: Anirul is to come here now. She is to do it alone, without the aid of any servant or mechanical device. Is that understood?”

  With any luck, she would drop dead along the way.

 
; Terrified, the lady-in-waiting bowed. “As you wish, Sire.”

  Presently, a gray-skinned Anirul stood in the doorway of his private study, holding tight to the fluted support column. She wore a wrinkled scarlet-and-gold robe that did not entirely conceal the nightclothes underneath. Though swaying on her feet, she held her head high.

  “What do you have to say for yourself?” he demanded.

  “I’ve just had a difficult childbirth, and I’m quite weak.”

  “Excuses, excuses. You are intelligent enough to figure out what I mean. You’ve been clever enough to fool me all these years.”

  “Fool you?” She blinked her doe eyes at him as if he were out of his mind. “Forgive me, Majesty, but I am tired. Why must you be so cruel, calling me here like this and refusing to see our daughter?”

  His lips were colorless, as if the blood had drained from them. His eyes were flat pools. “Because you could give me a male heir, but refuse to do so.”

  “There is no truth in that, Majesty, only rumors.” It required all of her Bene Gesserit training to remain standing.

  “I listen to intelligence reports, not rumors.” The Emperor peered at her through one open eye, as if he could see her in more minute detail that way. “Do you wish to die, Anirul?”

  It occurred to Anirul that he might kill her after all. There is certainly no love between us, but would he dare risk the Sisterhood’s ire by disposing of me? At the time of his ascension to the throne, Shaddam had agreed to marry her because he’d needed the strength of a Bene Gesserit alliance in the uneasy political climate. Now, after a dozen years, Shaddam felt too confident in his position. “Everyone dies,” she said.

  “But not the way I could arrange for you.”

  Anirul tried not to show emotion and reminded herself that she was not alone, that within her psyche were the collective memories of the multitudes of Bene Gesserit who had come before her and remained in Other Memory. Her voice was utterly calm. “We are not the complex, devious witches we’re made out to be.” This was not true, of course, though she knew Shaddam couldn’t possibly have more than suspicions to the contrary.