Dune: House Atreides (20 page)

"I've heard you're also masters of industrial sabotage and patent law," Leto said, remembering what his mother had claimed.

Rhombur shook his head. "Lies told by jealous Houses. Vermilion hells, we don't steal ideas or patents -- we waged only a technological war against Richese, and won without firing a single shot. But as sure as if we'd used atomics, we struck mortal blows against them. It was either them or us. A generation ago they lost their stewardship of Arrakis at about the same time they lost their lead in technology. Bad family leadership, I guess."

"My mother is Richesian," Leto said crisply.

Rhombur flushed with deep embarrassment. "Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot." He scratched his tousled blond hair just to give his hands something to do.

"That's okay. We don't wear blinders," Leto said. "I know what you're talking about. Richese still exists, but on a vastly smaller scale. Too much bureaucracy and too little innovation. My mother's never wanted to take me there, not even to visit her family. Too many painful memories, I suppose, though I think she hoped marrying my father might help restore Richese fortunes."

Below, the tank bearing the mysterious Navigator entered an orifice at the front end of the Heighliner. The polished black chamber vanished into the vessel's immensity like a gnat inhaled into the mouth of a large fish.

Though she was younger than her brother, when Kailea spoke, her voice sounded more businesslike. "The new Heighliner program is going to be the most profitable of all time for us. Large sums will be pouring into our accounts from this contract. House Vernius will get twenty-five percent of all the solaris we save the Spacing Guild during the first decade."

Overwhelmed, Leto thought back to the small-scale activities on Caladan: the pundi rice harvest, the boats unloading cargoes from ships . . . and the dedicated cheers the population had hurled at the Old Duke after the bullfight.

Grating sirens sounded from speakers mounted throughout the huge chamber.

Below, like iron filings flowing within magnetic-field lines, the suboid workers evacuated from all sides of the newly constructed Heighliner. Up and down the ceiling city, lights twinkled from other large observation windows in the stalactite towers. Leto could make out tiny forms pressed close to distant panes.

Rhombur stood near Leto as the spectators around them fell into a hush.

"What is it?" Leto asked. "What's happening now?"

"The Navigator is going to fly the ship out," the twin C'tair said.

"He'll take it away from Ix so it can begin its rounds," D'murr added.

Leto stared at the rock ceiling, the impenetrable barrier of a planetary crust, and knew this was impossible. He heard a faint, barely discernible humming.

"Piloting such a vessel out isn't difficult -- uh, at least, not for one of them." Rhombur crossed his arms over his chest. "Much easier than guiding a Heighliner back into a confined space like this. Only a top-level Steersman could do that."

As Leto watched, holding his breath just like all the other spectators, the Heighliner shimmered, became indistinct -- then vanished entirely.

The air inside the huge grotto reverberated with a loud boom from the sudden volume displacement. A tremor ran through the observation building, and Leto's ears popped.

The grotto now stood empty, a vast enclosed space with no trace of the Heighliner, just leftover equipment and a pattern of discolorations on the floor and walls and ceiling.

"Remember how a Navigator operates a ship," D'murr said, seeing Leto's confusion.

"He folds space," C'tair said. "That Heighliner never passed through the crustal rock of Ix at all. The Navigator simply went from here . . . to his destination."

A few members of the audience applauded. Rhombur seemed immensely pleased as he gestured to the new emptiness below that extended as far as they could see.

"Now we have room to start building another one!"

"Simple economics." Kailea glanced at Leto, then demurely flicked her eyes away. "We don't waste any time."

The slave concubines permitted my father under the Bene Gesserit-Guild agreement could not, of course, bear a Royal Successor, but the intrigues were constant and oppressive in their similarity. We became adept, my mother and sisters and I, at avoiding subtle instruments of death.

-From "In My Father's House"

by the Princess Irulan

Crown Prince Shaddam's tutoring chambers in the Imperial Palace would have been large enough to house a village on some worlds. With total disinterest, the Corrino heir brooded in front of his teaching machine while Fenring watched him.

"My father still wants me to sit in training classes like a child." Shaddam scowled down at the lights and spinning mechanisms of the machine. "I should be married by now. I should have an Imperial heir of my own."

"Why?" Fenring laughed. "So the throne can skip a generation and go directly to your son when he reaches his prime, hmmmm?"

Shaddam was thirty-four years old and seemingly a lifetime away from becoming Emperor. Each time the old man took a drink of spice beer, he activated more of the secret poison -- but the n'kee had been working for months, and the only result seemed to be increasingly irrational behavior. As if they needed more of that!

That very morning Brood had scolded Shaddam for not paying closer attention to his studies. "Watch, and learn!" -- one of his father's tedious phrases -- "Do as well as Fenring, for once."

Since childhood, Hasimir Fenring had attended classes with the Crown Prince.

Ostensibly, he provided companionship for Shaddam, while he himself gleaned an understanding of Court intrigues and politics. In academics, Fenring always did better than his royal friend: He devoured any bit of data that could help him increase his position.

His mother Chaola, an introspective lady-in-waiting, had settled into a quiet home and lived on her Imperial pension after the death of the Emperor's fourth wife Habla. In raising the two young boys together while she attended the Empress Habla, Chaola had given Fenring the chance to be so much more -- almost as if she had planned it that way.

These days Chaola pretended not to understand what her son did at Court, though she was Bene Gesserit-trained. Fenring was wily enough to know that his mother comprehended far more than her station suggested, and that many plans and breeding schemes had gone on without his knowledge.

Now Shaddam let out a miserable groan and turned from the machine. "Why can't the old creature just die and make it easy for me?" He covered his mouth, suddenly alarmed at what he had blurted.

Fenring paced the long floor, glancing up at the hanging banners of the Landsraad. The Crown Prince was expected to know the colors and crests of every Great and Minor House, but Shaddam had difficulty simply remembering all the family names.

"Be patient, my friend. All in its own time." In one of the alcoves, Fenring struck a combustible spike of vanilla-scented incense and inhaled a long breath of the fumes. "In the meantime, learn about subjects that will be relevant to your reign. You'll need such information in the near future, hmm-m-m-ah?"

"Stop making that noise, Hasimir. It's annoying."

"Hmmmm?"

"It irritated me when we were children, and you know it still does. Stop it!"

In the adjoining room, behind supposed privacy screens, Shaddam could hear his tutor giggling, the sounds of clothes rustling, bedsheets, skin upon skin. The tutor spent his afternoons with a willowy, achingly beautiful woman who had been sexually trained to Expert Class. Shaddam had given the girl her orders, and her ministrations kept the tutor out of the way so that he and Fenring could have private conversations -- difficult enough in a palace full of prying eyes and attentive ears.

The tutor did not know, however, that the girl was intended for Elrood as a gift, a perfect addition to his harem. This little trick gave the Crown Prince a large club to wield as a threat against the bothersome teacher. If the Emperor ever found out . . .

"Learning to manipulate people is an important part of ruling," Fenring often told him upon suggesting an idea. That much, at least, Shaddam had understood.

As long as the Crown Prince listens to my advice, Fenring thought, he could become a good enough ruler, after all.

Screens displayed dull statistics of shipping resources, primary exports of major planets, holographic images of every conceivable product from the finest dyed whale-fur, to Ixian soothe-sonic tapestries . . . inkvines, shigawire, fabulous Ecazi art objects, pundi rice, and donkey dung. Everything spewed from the teaching machine like an out-of-control font of wisdom, as if Shaddam was supposed to know and remember all the details. But that's what advisors and experts are for.

Fenring glanced down at the display. "Of all the things in the Imperium, Shaddam, what do you suppose is most important, hm-m-m-m?"

"Are you my tutor now too, Hasimir?"

"Always," Fenring replied. "If you turn out to be a superb Emperor, it will benefit all the populace . . . including me."

The bed in the next room made rhythmic, thought-scattering sounds.

"Peace and quiet is the most important thing." Shaddam grumbled his answer.

Fenring tapped a key on the teaching machine. Machinery clicked, chimed, hummed. An image of a desert planet appeared. Arrakis. Fenring slid onto the bench beside Shaddam. "The spice melange. That's the most important thing.

Without it, the Imperium would crumble."

He leaned forward, and his nimble fingers flew across the controls, calling up displays of the desert planet's spice-harvesting activities. Shaddam glanced at footage of a giant sandworm as it destroyed a harvesting machine in the deep wastelands.

"Arrakis is the only known source of melange in the universe." Fenring curled his hand into a fist and brought it down with a hard thump on the milky marbleplaz tabletop. "But why? With all the Imperial explorers and prospectors, and the huge reward House Corrino has offered for generations, why has no one found spice anywhere else? After all, with a billion worlds in the Imperium, it must be somewhere else."

"A billion?" Shaddam pursed his lips. "Hasimir, you know that's just hyperbole for the masses. The tally I've seen is only a million or so."

"A million, a billion, what's the difference, hmmmm? My point is, if melange is a substance found in the universe, we should find it in more than one place.

You know about the Planetologist your father sent to Arrakis?"

"Of course, Pardot Kynes. We expect another report from him at any moment.

It's been a few weeks since the last one." He raised his head in pride. "I've made a point to read them whenever they arrive."

From the curtained side room, they heard gasping and giggling, heavy furniture sliding aside, something overturning with a thump. Shaddam allowed himself a thin smile. The concubine was well trained, indeed.

Fenring rolled his large eyes, then turned back to the teaching machine. "Pay attention, Shaddam. Spice is vital, and yet all production is controlled by a single House on a single world. The threat of a bottleneck is enormous, even with Imperial oversight and pressure from CHOAM. For the stability of the Imperium, we need a better source of melange. We should create it synthetically if we have to. We need an alternative." He turned to the Crown Prince, his dark eyes glittering. "One that's in our control."

Shaddam enjoyed discussions like this much more than the tutor's programmed learning routines. "Ah, yes! An alternative to melange would shift the entire balance of power in the Imperium, wouldn't it?"

"Exactly! As it is, CHOAM, the Guild, the Bene Gesserit, the Mentats, the Landsraad, even House Corrino, all fight over the spice production and distribution from a single planet. But if there was an alternative, one solely in the hands of the Imperial House, your family would become true Emperors, not just puppets under the control of other political forces."

"We are not puppets," Shaddam snapped. "Not even my doddering father." He flicked a nervous glance at the ceiling, as if comeyes might be hidden there, though Fenring had already run thorough scans for observational apparatus. "Uh, long may he live."

"As you say, my Prince," Fenring said without conceding a millimeter. "But if we put the wheels in motion now, then you will reap those benefits when the throne is yours." He fiddled with the teaching machine. "Watch, and learn!"

he said in a creaking falsetto imitation of Elrood's ponderous pronouncements.

Shaddam chuckled at the sarcasm.

The machine displayed scenes of Ixian industrial accomplishments, all the new inventions and modifications that had been made during a profitable rule by House Vernius. "Why do you think it is the Ixians can't use their technology to find a spice alternative?" Fenring asked. "They've been instructed time and again to analyze the spice and develop another option for us, yet they play with their navigation machines and their silly timepieces. Who needs to tell the exact hour on any planet of the Imperium? How are those pursuits more important than the spice itself? House Vernius is an utter failure, as far as you are concerned."

"This tutoring machine is Ixian. The annoying new Heighliner design is Ixian.

So's your high-performance groundcar and . . ."

"Off the point," Fenring said. "I don't believe House Vernius invests any of its technological resources in solving the alternative-spice problem. It is not a high priority for them."

"Then my father should give them firmer guidance." Shaddam clasped his hands behind his back and tried to look Imperial, flushed with forced indignation.

"When I'm Emperor, I'll be certain people understand their priorities. Ah, yes, I will personally direct what is most important to the Imperium and to House Corrino."

Fenring circled the teaching machine like a prowling Laza tiger. He plucked a sugared date from a fruit tray unobtrusively displayed on a side table. "Old Elrood made similar pronouncements a long time ago, yet so far he hasn't followed through on any of them." He waved his long-fingered hand. "Oh, in the beginning he asked the Ixians to look into the matter. He also offered a large bounty for any explorer who found even melange precursors on uncharted planets."