Dune: House Harkonnen Read online

  “Looks like somebody dropped a bomb here,” Kiel said.

  “Could be the aftermath of a spice blow,” Garan suggested. “I’ll set down for a closer look.”

  As the ’thopter settled on the churned sands, Kiel popped open the hatch. The temperature-controlled atmosphere hissed out, replaced by a wave of heat. He coughed dust.

  Garan leaned over from the cockpit and sniffed hard. “Smell it.” The odor of burned cinnamon struck his nostrils. “Spice blow for sure.”

  Josten squeezed past Kiel and dropped onto the soft ground. Amazed, he bent down, picked up a handful of ocher sand and touched it to his lips. “Can we scoop up some fresh spice and take it back? Must be worth a fortune.”

  Kiel had been thinking the same thing, but now he turned to the newcomer with scorn. “We don’t have the processing equipment. You need to separate it from the sand, and you can’t do that with your fingers.”

  Garan spoke in a quieter, but firmer voice. “If you went back to Carthag and tried to sell raw product to a street vendor, you’d be hauled in front of Governor Rabban— or worse yet, have to explain to Count Fenring how some of the Emperor’s spice ended up in a patrolman’s pockets.”

  As the troopers tromped out to the ragged pit at the center of the dissipating dust cloud, Josten glanced around. “Is it safe for us to be here? Don’t the big worms go to spice?”

  “Afraid, kid?” Kiel asked.

  “Let’s throw him to a worm if we see one,” Garan suggested. “It’ll give us time to get away.”

  Kiel saw movement in the sandy excavation, shapes squirming, buried things that tunneled and burrowed, like maggots in rotten meat. Josten opened his mouth to say something, then clamped it shut again.

  A whiplike creature emerged from the sand, two meters long with fleshy segmented skin. It was the size of a large snake, its mouth an open circle glittering with needle-sharp teeth that lined its throat.

  “A sandworm!” Josten said.

  “Only a runt,” Kiel scoffed.

  “Newborn— do you think?” Garan asked.

  The worm waved its eyeless head from side to side. Other slithering creatures, a nest of them, squirmed about as if they’d been spawned in the explosion.

  “Where in the hells did they come from?” Kiel asked.

  “Wasn’t in my briefing,” Garan said.

  “Can we . . . catch one?” Josten asked.

  Kiel stopped himself from making a rude rejoinder, realizing that the young recruit did have a good idea. “Come on!” He charged forward into the churned sand.

  The worm sensed the movement and reared back, uncertain whether to attack or flee. Then it arced like a sea serpent and plunged into the sand, wriggling and burrowing.

  Josten sprinted ahead and dove facefirst to grasp the segmented body three-quarters of the way to its end. “It’s so strong!” Following him, the sidegunner jumped down and grabbed the thrashing tail.

  The worm tried to tug away, but Garan reached the front, where he dug into the sand and grabbed behind its head with a stranglehold. All three troopers wrestled and pulled. The small worm thrashed like an eel on an electric plate.

  Other sandworms on the far side of the pit rose like a strange forest of periscopes sprouting from the sea of dunes, round mouths like black Os turned toward the men. For an icy moment, Kiel feared they might attack like a swarm of marrow leeches, but the immature worms darted away and disappeared underground.

  Garan and Kiel hauled their captive out of the sand and dragged it toward the ornithopter. As a Harkonnen patrol, they had all the equipment necessary to arrest criminals, including old-fashioned devices for trussing a captive like a herd animal. “Josten, go get the binding cords in our apprehension kit,” the pilot said.

  The new recruit came running back with the cords, fashioning a loop which he slipped over the worm’s head and cinched tight. Garan released his hold on the rubbery skin and grabbed the rope, tugging while Josten slipped a second cord lower on the body.

  “What are we going to do with it?” Josten asked.

  Once, early in his assignment on Arrakis, Kiel had joined Rabban on an abortive worm hunt. They had taken a Fremen guide, well-armed troops, even a Planetologist. Using the Fremen guide as bait, they had lured one of the enormous sandworms and killed it with explosives. But before Rabban could take his trophy, the beast had dissolved, sloughing into amoeba-creatures that fell to the sand, leaving nothing but a cartilaginous skeleton and loose crystal teeth. Rabban had been furious.

  Kiel’s stomach knotted. The Baron’s nephew might consider it an insult that three simple patrolmen could capture a worm, when he’d been unable to do so himself. “We’d better drown it.”

  “Drown it?” Josten said. “What for? And why would I want to waste my water ration to do that?”

  Garan stopped as if struck by a thunderbolt. “I’ve heard the Fremen do it. If you drown a baby worm, they say it spits out some kind of poison. It’s very rare.”

  Kiel nodded. “Oh, yeah. The crazy desert people use it in their religious rituals. It sends everybody into frenzied, wild orgies, and a lot of them die.”

  “But . . . we’ve only got two literjons of water in the compartment,” Josten said, still nervous.

  “Then we only use one. I know where we can refill it, anyway.” The pilot and his sidegunner exchanged glances. They had patrolled together long enough that they’d both thought of the same thing.

  As if understanding its fate, the worm bucked and thrashed even more, but it was already growing weaker.

  “Once we get the drug,” Kiel said, “let’s have some fun.”

  • • •

  At night, with the patrol ’thopter running in stealth mode, they flew over the razor-edged mountains, approaching from behind a ridge and landing on a rough mesa above the squalid village of Bilar Camp. The villagers lived in hollowed-out caves and aboveground structures that extended out to the flats. Windmills generated power; supply bins glittered with tiny lights that attracted a few moths and the bats that fed on them.

  Unlike the reclusive Fremen, these villagers were slightly more civilized but also more downtrodden: men who worked as desert guides and joined spice-harvesting crews. They had forgotten how to survive on their world without becoming parasites upon the planetary governors.

  On an earlier patrol, Kiel and Garan had discovered a camouflaged cistern on the mesa, a treasure trove of water. Kiel didn’t know where the villagers had gotten so much moisture; most likely, they had committed fraud, inflating their census numbers so that Harkonnen generosity provided more than they deserved.

  The people of Bilar Camp covered the cistern with rock so that it looked like a natural protrusion, but the villagers placed no guards around their illegal stockpile. For some reason desert culture forbade thievery even more than murder; they trusted the safety of their possessions from bandits or thieves of the night.

  Of course, the Harkonnen troopers had no intention of stealing the water— that is, no more than enough for their own needs.

  Dutifully, Josten trotted along with their sloshing container, which held the thick, noxious substance exuded by the drowned worm after it had stopped thrashing and bucking inside the container. Awed and nervous about what they’d done, they’d dumped the flaccid carcass near the perimeter of the spice blow and then taken off with the drug. Kiel had been concerned that the toxic exhalation from the worm might eat its way through the literjon.

  Garan operated the Bilar cistern’s cleverly concealed spigot and refilled one of their empty containers. No sense in letting all the water go to waste just for a practical joke on the villagers. Next, Kiel took the container of worm bile and upended it into the cistern. The villagers would certainly have a surprise next time they all drank from their illegal water hoard. “Serves them right.”

  “Do you know what this drug will do to them?” Josten asked.

  Garan shook his head. “I’ve heard plenty of crazy stories.”


  “Maybe we should make the kid try it first,” the side-gunner said.

  Josten backed away, raising his hands. Garan looked at the contaminated cistern again. “I bet they tear off their clothes and dance naked in the streets, squawking like dinfowl.”

  “Let’s stay here and watch the fun for ourselves,” Kiel said.

  Garan frowned. “Do you want to be the one to explain to Rabban why we’re late returning from patrol?”

  “Let’s go,” Kiel answered quickly.

  As the worm-poison infused the cistern, the Harkonnen troopers hurried back to their ornithopter, reluctantly content to let the villagers discover the prank for themselves.

  Before us, all methods of learning were tainted by instinct. Before us, instinct-ridden researchers possessed a limited attention span— often no longer than a single lifetime. Projects stretching across fifty or more generations never occurred to them. The concept of total muscle/nerve training had not entered their awareness. We learned how to learn.

  — Bene Gesserit Azhar Book

  Is this truly a special child? The Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam watched the perfectly proportioned girl perform prana-bindu muscular-nervature exercises on the hardwood floor of the Mother School’s training module.

  Recently returned from the abortive banquet on Arrakis, Mohiam tried to look at her student with impartiality, suppressing the truth. Jessica. My own daughter . . . The girl must never know her heritage, must never suspect. Even on the secret Bene Gesserit breeding charts, Mohiam was not identified by her Sisterhood-adopted name, but by her birth name of “Tanidia Nerus.”

  Twelve-year-old Jessica stood poised, arms at her sides, trying to relax herself, trying to arrest the movement of every muscle in her body. Gripping an imaginary blade in her right hand, she stared straight ahead at a chimerical opponent. She summoned untapped depths of inner peace and concentration.

  But Mohiam’s sharp eye noted the barely discernible twitches in Jessica’s calf muscles, around her neck, over one eyebrow. This one would need more practice in order to perfect the techniques, but the child had made excellent progress and showed great promise. Jessica was blessed with a supreme patience, an ability to calm herself and listen to what she was told.

  So focused, this one . . . so full of potential. As she was bred to be.

  Jessica feinted to the left, floated, whirled— then stiffened to become a sudden statue again. Her eyes, while looking at Mohiam, did not see her taskmistress and mentor.

  The stern Reverend Mother entered the training module, stared into the girl’s clear green eyes, and saw an emptiness there, like the gaze of a corpse. Jessica was gone, lost among her nerve and muscle fibers.

  Mohiam dampened a finger and placed it in front of the girl’s nose. She felt only the faintest stirring of air. The budding breasts on the slender torso barely moved. Jessica was close to a complete bindu suspension . . . but not quite.

  Much hard work remains.

  In the Sisterhood, only total perfection was good enough. As Jessica’s instructor, Mohiam would go over the ancient routines again and again, reviewing the steps that must be followed.

  The Reverend Mother pulled back, studying Jessica but not rousing her. In the girl’s oval face, she tried to identify her own features, or those of the father, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen: The long neck and small nose reflected Mohiam’s genetics, but the widow’s peak at the hairline, the wide mouth, generous lips, and clear skin derived from the Baron . . . back when he’d been healthy and attractive. Jessica’s widely set green eyes and hair the color of polished bronze came from more distant latencies.

  If you only knew. Mohiam recalled what she’d been told of the Bene Gesserit plan. Jessica’s own daughter, when grown to womanhood, was destined to give birth to the Kwisatz Haderach— the culmination of millennia of careful breeding. Mohiam looked into the girl’s face, searching for any twitch, any hint of grand historical import. You are not ready to discover this yet.

  Jessica began to speak, mouthing word-shapes as she recited a mantra as ancient as the Bene Gesserit School itself: “Each attacker is a feather drifting on an infinite path. As the feather approaches, it is diverted and removed. My response is a puff of air that blows the feather away.”

  Mohiam stepped back as her daughter snapped into a blur of motion, attempting to float through reflex moves. But Jessica still struggled to force her muscles to flow silently and smoothly, when she should have allowed them to do so.

  The girl’s movements were better than before, more focused and precise. Jessica’s recent progress had been impressive, as if she’d experienced a mind-clarifying epiphany that lifted her to the next level. However, Mohiam still detected too much youthful energy and unharnessed intensity.

  This girl was the product of a vicious rape by Baron Harkonnen, after the Sisterhood had blackmailed him into providing them with a daughter. Mohiam had exacted her revenge during the sexual attack, controlling her internal body chemistry in the Bene Gesserit way, inflicting him with a painful, debilitating disease. Such a delightfully slow torture. As his ailment progressed, the Baron had relied on a cane for the past Standard Year. At the Fenrings’ banquet, she’d been sorely tempted to tell the gross man what she’d done to him.

  But if Mohiam had told him, there would have been another act of violence in the Dining Hall of the Residency at Arrakeen, far worse than the squabble between the Ecazi and Grumman ambassadors. She might even have found it necessary to kill the Baron with her deadly fighting skills. Jessica herself, despite her limited training, could have dispatched the man— her own father— quickly and easily.

  Hearing a whir of machinery, Mohiam watched a life-size doll emerge from the floor. The next phase of the routine. In a blur the girl whirled and decapitated it with a single slashing kick.

  “More finesse. The killing touch must be delicate, precise.”

  “Yes, Reverend Mother.”

  “Still, I am proud of what you have accomplished.” Mohiam spoke in an uncharacteristically gentle tone, one that her superiors would not condone, had they heard it. Love, in any form, was prohibited.

  “The Sisterhood has great plans for you, Jessica.”

  “Xuttuh” is a word that means many things. Every Bene Tleilax knows it was the name of the first Master. But just as that man was more than a mere mortal, so there are depths and complexities in the appellation. Depending upon tone and vocal inflection, “Xuttuh” can mean “hello” or “blessings be upon you.” Or it can constitute a prayer encompassed in a single word, as a devotee prepares to die for the Great Belief. For such reasons, we have chosen this as our new name for the conquered planet formerly known as Ix.

  — Tleilaxu Training Disk

  A contingency plan is only as good as the mind that devises it.

  Deep in the labyrinthine research pavilion, Hidar Fen Ajidica understood that maxim only too well. One day, the Emperor’s man would attempt to kill him; therefore, careful defensive preparations were necessary.

  “This way, please, Count Fenring,” Ajidica said in his most pleasant voice while thinking, Unclean powindah. He glanced peripherally at the man. I should slay you now!

  But the Master Researcher could not accomplish this safely, and might never have the proper opportunity. Even if he did succeed, the Emperor would send in his investigators and even more Sardaukar troops to interfere with the delicate work.

  “It is good to hear that you are finally making progress on Project Amal. Elrood IX did commission it over a dozen years ago, hmmmm?” Fenring strolled along a featureless corridor in the underground city. He wore a scarlet Imperial jacket and tight-fitting gold trousers. His dark hair was razor-cut, sticking out in patches to emphasize his overlarge head. “We have been extremely patient.”

  Ajidica wore a white lab coat with ample pockets. Chemical odors clung to the fabric, his hair, his corpselike gray skin. “I warned all of you in the beginning that it could take many years to develop a completed product. A
dozen years is a mere eyeblink to develop a substance the Imperium has wanted for centuries upon centuries.” His nostrils narrowed as he forced a thin smile.

  “Nevertheless, I am pleased to report that our modified axlotl tanks have now been grown, that preliminary experiments have been conducted, and the data analyzed. Based on this, we have discarded unworkable solutions, thus narrowing down the remaining possibilities.”

  “The Emperor is not interested in ‘narrowed possibilities,’ Master Researcher, but in results.” Fenring’s voice was frozen acid. “Your expenses have been immense, even after we financed your takeover of Ixian facilities.”

  “Our records would stand up to any audit, Count Fenring,” Ajidica said. He knew full well that Fenring could never allow a Guild Banker to look at the expenditures; the Spacing Guild, more than any other entity, must not suspect the aim of this project. “All funds have been properly applied. All spice stockpiles are accounted for, exactly according to our original agreement.”

  “Your agreement was with Elrood, little man, not with Shaddam, hmmmm? The Emperor can stop your experiments at any moment.”

  Like all Tleilaxu, Ajidica was accustomed to being insulted and provoked by fools; he refused to take offense. “An interesting threat, Count Fenring, considering that you personally initiated the contact between my people and Elrood. We have recordings, back on the Tleilaxu homeworlds.”

  Fenring bristled, and pushed ahead, deeper into the research pavilion. “Just by observing you, Master Researcher, I have learned something,” he said in an oily voice. “You have developed a phobia of being underground, hmmm? The fear came upon you recently, a sudden onslaught.”

  “Nonsense.” Despite his denial, sweat broke out on Ajidica’s forehead.

  “Ah, but I detect something mendacious in your voice and expression. You take medication for the condition . . . a bottle of pills in the right pocket of your jacket. I see the bulge.”