Dune: House Atreides (46 page)

"Look at me, I said!" Hawat snapped. "I could have leaped forward and gutted both of you in the instant you exchanged those cute little glances." He took a menacing step toward them.

Leto and Rhombur wore fine clothes, comfortable yet regal-looking. Their capes snapped about in the breeze. Leto's was brilliant emerald merh-silk trimmed in black, while the Prince of Ix proudly sported the purple and copper of House Vernius. But Rhombur looked decidedly uneasy to be out under the towering sky.

"It's all so . . . wide-open," he whispered.

After interminable silence, Hawat raised his chin, ready to begin. "First of all, remove those ridiculous capes."

Leto reached up to the clasp at his throat, but Rhombur hesitated just a moment.

Within the space of a heartbeat, Hawat had ripped out his short sword and slashed the tiny cord mere millimeters from the Prince's jugular vein. The wind grasped the purple-on-copper cape and carried it like a lost banner over the cliff. The cloth flew like a kite until it drifted to the churning water below.

"Hey!" Rhombur said. "Why did you --"

Hawat sidestepped the indignant outcry. "You came here to learn weapons training. So why did you dress for a Landsraad ball or an Imperial banquet?"

The Mentat snorted, then spat with the wind. "Fighting is dirty work, and unless you intend to conceal weapons in those capes, wearing them is foolish.

It's like carrying your own burial shroud on your shoulders."

Leto still held his green cape in his hands. Hawat reached forward, grabbed the end of the fabric, snapped it, twirled it around-and in a flash had captured Leto's right hand, his fighting hand. Hawat yanked hard and thrust out with his foot to catch the young man's ankle. Leto sprawled on the rocky ground.

Static spun in front of his eyes, and he gasped to catch his breath. Rhombur laughed at his friend, then managed to restrain himself.

Hawat yanked the cape free and tossed it up in the air, where it blew out on the ocean winds to join Rhombur's. "Anything can be a weapon," he said. "You're carrying your swords, and I see daggers at your sides. You have shields, all of which are obvious weapons.

"However, you should also conceal an assortment of other niceties: needles, stun-fields, poison tips. While your enemy can see the obvious weapons" --Hawat took a long training sword and slashed it in the air -- "you can use them as a decoy to attack with something even deadlier."

Leto stood up straight, brushing dirt and debris from himself. "But, sir, it's not sporting to use hidden weapons. Doesn't that go against the strictures of -

-"

Hawat snapped his fingers like a gunshot in front of Leto's face. "Don't talk to me about pretty points of assassination." The Mentat's rough skin turned more ruddy, as if he barely kept his anger in check. "Is your intention to show off for the ladies, or to eliminate your opponent? This is not a game."

The grizzled man focused on Rhombur, staring so intently that the young man backed up half a step. "Word has it there's an Imperial bounty on your head, Prince, if you ever leave the sanctuary of Caladan. You are the exiled son of House Vernius. Your life is not that of a commoner. You never know when the death blow will fall, so you must be prepared at all times. Court intrigues and politics have their own rules, but oft'times the rules are not known to all players."

Rhombur swallowed hard.

Turning to Leto, Hawat said, "Lad, your life is in danger, too, as heir to House Atreides. All Great Houses must constantly be on the alert against assassination."

Leto straightened, fixing his gaze on the instructor. "I understand, Thufir, and I want to learn." He looked over at Rhombur. "We want to learn."

Hawat's red-stained lips smiled. "That's a start," he said. "There may be clumsy clods working for other families in the Landsraad -- but you, my boys, must become shining examples. Not only will you learn shield-and-knife fighting and the subtle arts of killing, you must also learn the weaponry of politics and government. You must know how to defend yourselves through culture and rhetoric, as well as with physical blows." The warrior Mentat squared his shoulders and stood firm. "From me you will learn all these things."

He switched on his body-shield. Behind the shimmering field he held a dagger in one hand, a long sword in the other.

Instinctively, Leto switched on his own shield belt, and the flickering Holtzman field glimmered in front of him. Rhombur fumbled to do the same just as the Mentat feigned an attack, pulling back at the last possible second before drawing blood.

Hawat tossed the weapons from hand to hand -- left, right, and left again -proving he could use either for a killing strike. "Watch carefully. Your lives may someday depend on it.

Any path that narrows future possibilities may become a lethal trap. Humans do not thread their way through a maze; they scan a vast horizon filled with unique opportunities.

-The Spacing Guild Handbook

Junction was an austere world of limited geographic variations, unadorned scenery, and strict weather control to remove troublesome inconveniences. A serviceable place, it had been chosen as Spacing Guild headquarters because of its strategic location rather than its landscapes.

Here, candidates learned to become Navigators.

Second-growth forests covered millions of hectares, but they were stunted box trees and dwarf oaks. Certain Old Terran vegetables grew in abundance, cultivated by the locals -- potatoes, peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, and a variety of herbs -- but the produce tended to become alkaloid, edible only after careful processing.

After his mind-opening examination, stunned by the new vistas opened to him through the melange surge, D'murr Pilru had been brought here without a chance to say his goodbyes to his twin brother or his parents. At first he had been upset, but the requirements of Guild training rapidly filled him with so many wonders that he'd disregarded everything else. He found he could now focus his thoughts much better . . . and forget much more easily.

The buildings of junction -- huge bulging shapes with rounded and angular extrusions -- were of standard Guild design, much like the Embassy on Ix: practical in the extreme and awe-inspiring in their immensity. Each structure bore a rounded cartouche containing the mark of infinity. Mechanical infrastructures were both Ixian and Richesian, installed centuries earlier and still functioning.

The Spacing Guild preferred environments that did not interfere with its important work. To a Navigator, any distractions were potentially dangerous.

Every Guild student learned this lesson early, as did the young candidate D'murr

-- far from home and totally engrossed in his studies to the exclusion of any worries about his former planet's troubles.

On a blakgras field he was immersed in his own container of melange gas -- half swimming and half crawling as his body continued to change, his physical systems altering to adapt to the bombardment of spice. Membranes had begun to connect his toes and fingers; his body had grown longer than before and more flaccid, taking on a fish shape. No one had explained the extent of the inevitable changes to him, and he neither chose -- nor needed -- to ask. It made no difference. So much of the universe had been opened to him, he considered it a modest price to pay.

D'murr's eyes had grown smaller, without lashes; they were also developing cataracts. He didn't need them to see anymore, though, since he had other eyes

. . . inner vision. The panorama of the universe unfolded for him. In the process, he felt as if he were leaving everything else behind . . . and it didn't bother him.

Through the haze D'murr saw that the blakgras field was covered with neat rows of containerized candidates and their Navigator trainers. One life per container. The tanks vented orange clouds of filtered melange exhaust, swirling around masked humanoid attendants who stood nearby, waiting to move the tanks when told to do so.

The Head Instructor, a Navigator Steersman named Grodin, floated inside a black-framed tank that had been raised high on a platform; the trainees saw him more with their minds than with their eyes. Grodin had just returned from foldspace with a student, whose tank was adjacent to his and connected with flexible tubing, so that their gases merged.

D'murr himself had accomplished short flights on three occasions now. He was considered one of the top trainees. Once he learned to travel through foldspace by himself, he could be licensed as a Pilot, the lowest-ranking Navigator . . .

but still vastly higher than he'd once been as a mere human.

Steersman Grodin's foldspace treks were legendary quests of discovery through incomprehensible dimensional knots. The Head Instructor's voice gurgled from a speaker inside D'murr's tank, using higher-order language. He described a time he had transported dinosaur-like creatures in an old-style Heighliner. Unknown to him, the monsters could stretch their necks to incredible lengths. While the Heighliner was in flight, one had chewed its way into a navigation chamber, so that its face appeared outside Grodin's tank, peering in with a curious, wide-eyed expression . . . .

So pleasant in here, D'murr thought without forming words as he absorbed the story. With enlarged nostrils he drew in a deep breath of the sharp, rich melange. Humans with dulled senses compared this pungent scent to strong cinnamon . . . but melange was so much more than that, so infinitely complex.

D'murr no longer needed to concern himself with the mundane affairs of humans, so trivial were they, so limited and shortsighted: political machinations, populations milling about like ants in a disturbed hill, lives flickering bright and dull like sparks from a campfire. His former life was only a vague and fading memory, without specific names or faces. He saw images, but ignored them. He could never go back to what he had been.

Instead of simply finishing his story about the dinosaur creature, Steersman Grodin spoke on a tangent about the technical aspects of what the chosen student had just accomplished on his interstellar journey, how they had employed high-order mathematics and dimensional changes to peer into the future -- much the same way the long-necked monster had looked into his tank.

"A Navigator must do more than observe," Grodin's scratchy voice said over the speaker. "A Navigator utilizes what he sees in order to guide spaceships safely through the void. Failure to apply certain basic principles may lead to Heighliner disasters and the loss of all lives and cargo aboard."

Before any of the new adepts like D'murr could become Pilots into foldspace, they must master how to deal with crises such as partially folded space, faulty prescience, the onset of spice intolerance, malfunctioning Holtzman generators, or even deliberate sabotage.

D'murr tried to envision the fates that had befallen some of his unfortunate predecessors. Contrary to popular belief, Navigators did not themselves fold space; the Holtzman engines did that. Navigators used their limited prescience to choose safe paths to travel. A ship could move through the void without their guidance, but that perilous guessing game invariably led to disaster. A Guild Navigator did not guarantee a safe journey -- but he vastly improved the odds. Problems still arose when unforeseen events occurred.

D'murr was being trained to the limit of the Guild's knowledge . . . which could not include every eventuality. The universe and its inhabitants were in a state of constant change. All of the old schools understood this, including the Bene Gesserit and the Mentats. Survivors learned how to adjust to change, how to expect the unexpected.

At the edge of his awareness, his melange tank began to move on its suspensor field and fell into line behind the tanks of the other students. He heard an assistant instructor reciting passages from the Spacing Guild Manual; gas circulation mechanisms hummed around him. Every detail seemed so sharp, so clear, so important. He had never felt so alive!

Inhaling deeply of the orange-hued melange, he felt his concerns begin to dissipate. His thoughts drew back into order, sliding smoothly into the neuropathways of his Guild-enhanced brain.

"D'murr . . . D'murr, my brother. . ."

The name swirled with the gas, like a whisper in the universe -- a name he no longer used now that he had been assigned a Guild navnumber. Names were associated with individuality. Names imposed limitations and preconceptions, family connections and past histories, they imposed individuality -- the antithesis of what it meant to be a Navigator. A Guildsman merged with the cosmos and saw safe paths through the wrinkles of fate, prescient visions that enabled him to guide matter from place to place like chesspieces in a cosmic game.

"D'murr, can you hear me? D'murr?" The voice came from the speaker inside his tank, but also from a great distance. He heard something familiar in the timbre, the inflections. Could he have forgotten so much? D'murr. He'd almost erased that name from his thoughts.

D'murr's mind made connections that were becoming less and less important, and his slack mouth formed gurgling words. "Yes. I hear you."

Nudged by its attendant, D'murr's tank glided along a paved path, toward an immense, bulbous building where the Navigators lived. No one else seemed to hear the voice.

"This is C'tair," the transmission continued. "Your brother. You can hear me?

Finally, this thing worked. How are you?"

"C'tair?" The fledgling Navigator felt his mind fold back into itself, compressing to the remnants of its sluggish, pre-Guild state. Trying to be human again, just for a moment. Was that important?

This was painful and limiting, like a man putting blinders on himself, but the information was there: yes, his twin brother. C'tair Pilru. Human. He got flashes of his father in ambassadorial dress, his mother in Guild Bank uniform, his brother (like himself) with dark hair and dark eyes, playing together, exploring. Those images had been shunted out of his thoughts, like most everything of that realm . . . but not quite gone.