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made slurping animal noises as he drank.
The Baron stepped away from the table and paced the floor, his movements oddly
jerky, as if he were having difficulty controlling his equilibrium. His clothes
seemed tight on him from his recent weight gains.
"It was supposed to start a sudden war, and after the carnage who could pick up
the pieces? But somehow the damned Atreides kept everyone from killing each
other. By insisting on a risky Trial by Forfeiture -- ancient rites be damned!
-- and his willingness to sacrifice himself just to protect his precious friends
and crew, Leto Atreides has gained favorable attention in the Landsraad. His
popularity is soaring."
Piter de Vries cleared his throat. "Perhaps, my Baron, it was a mistake to pit
them against the Tleilaxu. Nobody cares about the Tleilaxu. It was difficult
to foster a general sense of outrage among the Houses. We never planned for
this matter to come to trial."
"We made no mistakes!" Rabban grunted, immediately defending his uncle. "Do
you value your life, Piter?"
De Vries didn't respond, nor did he show any fear. He was a formidable fighter
in his own right, with tricks and experience that could undoubtedly defeat
Rabban's brawn, should it come to physical combat.
The Baron looked at his nephew, disappointed. You never seem to grasp anything
buried beneath even a single layer of subtlety.
Rabban glared at the Mentat. "Duke Leto is just an impetuous young ruler from
an unremarkable family. House Atreides makes its income through selling . . .
pundi rice!" He spat the words.
"The fact is, Rabban," the twisted Mentat said smoothly, with the voice of a
snake, "that the other members of the Landsraad Council actually seem to like
him. They admire what this boy-Duke has accomplished. We've made him a hero."
Rabban finished his drink, poured another, slurped it.
"The Landsraad Council becoming altruistic?" The Baron snorted. "That's even
more unbelievable than Leto winning his case."
From the surgery rooms down the long, dim halls, grisly noises could be heard,
screams of agony that echoed along the corridors all the way to the Baron's
workroom. The muted glowglobes flickered, but maintained their low level of
illumination.
The Baron looked piercingly at de Vries, then gestured toward the operating
rooms. "Perhaps you'd better attend to this yourself, Piter. I want to make
certain that idiot entertainment monitor survives his surgery . . . at least
until I've made sufficient use of him."
"Yes, my Baron," the Mentat said and scuttled down the halls to the medical
chambers. The screams grew higher-pitched and womanish. The Baron heard the
sounds of sizzling cutterays and a grinding saw.
The Baron thought of his newly shortened plaything and what he would do to
Yh'imm as soon as the painkillers began to wear off. Or could it be possible
the doctors had managed their task without using any painkillers? Perhaps.
Rabban let his thick-lidded eyes fall closed in supreme pleasure, just listening
and enjoying. Given the choice, he would rather have hunted the man down in
Giedi Prime's wilderness preserve. But the Baron thought that sounded like too
much trouble -- all that running and chasing and climbing snow-covered rocks.
He could come up with far better ways of spending his time. Besides, the
Baron's limbs and joints had been growing increasingly sore of late, his muscles
were weakened and trembled, his body was losing its edge . . . .
For now the Baron would simply make up his own sport. Once Yh'imm's stumps were
cauterized and sealed, he would pretend the hapless monitor was Duke Atreides
himself. That would be fun.
The Baron paused and realized how foolish it was for him to be so upset over the
failure of a single plan. For uncounted generations the Harkonnens had spun
subtle traps for their hated mortal enemies. But the Atreides were difficult to
kill, especially when their backs were to the wall. The feud extended all the
way back to the Great Revolt, the betrayal, the accusations of cowardice. Since
that time, Harkonnen had always hated Atreides, and vice versa.
And so it would always be.
"We still have Arrakis," the Baron said. "We still control melange production,
even though we're under CHOAM's thumb and the watchful eye of the Padishah
Emperor." He grinned at Rabban, who grinned back at him, strictly out of habit.
Deep in the heart of the dirty and dark grandeur of Harkonnen Keep, the Baron
clenched his fist and raised it high in the air. "As long as we control
Arrakis, we control our own fortunes." He clapped a hand on his nephew's padded
shoulder. "We will wring spice from the sands until Arrakis is nothing more
than an empty husk!"
The universe contains untapped and heretofore unimagined energy sources. They
are before your very eyes, yet you cannot see them. They are in your mind, yet
you cannot think them. But I can!
-TIO HOLTZMAN,
Collected Lectures
On the Spacing Guild world of Junction, the one who had been D'murr Pilru was
brought before a tribunal of Navigators. They didn't tell him the reason, and
even with all his intuition and conceptual understanding of the universe, he
could not fathom what they wanted from him.
No other trainees joined D'murr, none of the new Pilots who had learned the ways
of foldspace with him. On a huge open parade ground of stunted blakgras, the
sealed spice-filled tanks of the high-level tribunal were arrayed in a
semicircle on grooved flagstones, where tracks from thousands of previous
convocations could still be seen.
D'murr's smaller tank sat in front of them all, solitary at the center of the
semicircle. Relatively new to his life as a Navigator, still a low-ranking
Pilot, he retained much of his human shape inside the enclosed tank. The
members of the tribunal -- Steersmen all, each inside his own tank -- showed
only bloated heads and monstrously altered eyes peering out through the murk of
cinnamon-orange.
I will be like them someday, D'murr thought. At one time he would have recoiled
in horror; now he accepted it as inevitable. He thought of all the new
revelations he would have along the way.
The Guild tribunal spoke to him in their shorthand, higher-order mathematical
language, thoughts and words communicated through the fabric of space itself --
vastly more efficient than any human conversation. Grodin, the Head Instructor,
acted as their mouthpiece.
"You have been monitored," said Grodin. By long-standing procedure, Guild
Instructors set up holorecording devices in every Heighliner navigation chamber
and every training tank of the new and unproven Pilots. Periodically in the
ships' circuitous routes between the stars, these recordings were removed from
the transports and cargo ships and delivered to Junction.
"All evidence is studied in detail as a routine matter." D'murr knew that Guild
Bank officials and their economic partners in CHOAM had to make certain that
important navigation rules and safeguards were being followed. He questioned
none of it.
"The Guild is perplexed by targeted and unauthorized transmissions being
directed to your navigation chamber."
His brother's communication device! D'murr reeled inside his tank, floating [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]