Dune: House Atreides (54 page)

Duke Paulus Atreides, this magnificent man of his people, was dead.

Deafening wails erupted from the spectator stands. Leto could feel the vibration rumbling through the ducal box. He couldn't tear his eyes from his father, lying broken and bloodied on the ground, and he knew it was a nightmare vision that would remain with him for the rest of his life.

Thufir Hawat stood next to the fallen Old Duke, but even a warrior Mentat could do nothing for him now.

Oddly, his mother's quiet voice cut through the surrounding din, and Leto heard the words clearly, like ice picks. "Leto, my son," Helena said, "you are Duke Atreides now."

Machine-vaccine principle: Every technological device contains within it the tools of its opposite, and of its own destruction.

-GIAN KANA,

Imperial Patent Czar

It didn't take the invaders long to make permanent changes in the prosperous underground cities. Many innocent Ixians died and many disappeared, while C'tair waited for someone to find and kill him.

During brief sojourns from his shielded hiding room, C'tair learned that Vernii, the former capital city of Ix, had been renamed Hilacia by the Tleilaxu. The fanatical usurpers had even changed Imperial records to refer to the ninth planet in the Alkaurops system as Xuttuh, rather than Ix.

C'tair wanted to strangle any Tleilaxu he found, but instead he developed a subtler plan.

He dressed like a low-level worker and doctored forms to show that he had once been a minor line supervisor, one step above a suboid, who had watched over a labor crew of twelve men. He'd read enough about hull-plate welding and sealing so that he could claim it had been his job. No one would expect much from him.

All around him, the Bene Tleilax were gutting his city and rebuilding it into a dark hell.

He abhorred the changes, loathed the Tleilaxu gall. And from what he could see, Imperial Sardaukar had actually assisted in this abomination.

C'tair could do nothing about it at the moment; he had to bide his time. He was alone here: his father exiled to Kaitain and afraid to return, his mother murdered, his twin brother taken away by the Guild. Only he remained on Ix, like a rat hiding within the walls.

But even rats could cause significant damage.

Over the months, C'tair learned to blend in, to appear to be an insignificant and cowed citizen. He kept his eyes averted, his hands dirty, his clothes and hair unkempt. He could not let it be known that he was the son of the former Ambassador to Kaitain, that he had faithfully served House Vernius -- and still would, if he could find a way to do it. He had walked freely through the Grand Palais, had escorted the Earl's own daughter. Acts that, if known, would mean a death sentence for him.

Above all, he could not let the rabid antitechnology invaders discover his shielded hiding place or the devices he had hoarded there. His stockpile might just be the last hope for the future of Ix.

Throughout the grottoes of the city, C'tair watched signs being torn down, streets and districts being renamed, and the little gnomes -- all men, no women

-- occupying huge research facilities for their secret, nefarious operations.

The streets, walkways, and facilities were guarded by diligent, thinly disguised Imperial Sardaukar or the invaders' own shape-shifting Face Dancers.

Shortly after their victory was secured, the Tleilaxu Masters had showed themselves and encouraged the suboid rebels to vent their anger on carefully selected and approved targets. Standing back, clothed in a simple workman's jumpsuit, C'tair had watched the smooth-skinned laborers cluster around the facility that had manufactured the new self-learning fighting meks.

"House Vernius has brought this upon themselves!" screamed a charismatic suboid agitator, almost certainly a Face Dancer infiltrator. "They would bring back the thinking machines. Destroy this place!"

While the helpless Ixian survivors had watched in horror, the suboids smashed the plaz windows and used thermal bombs to ignite the small manufactory. Filled with religious fervor, they howled and threw rocks.

A Tleilaxu Master on a hastily erected podium had bellowed into comspeakers and amplifiers. "We are your new masters, and we will make certain the manufacturing abilities of Ix are fully in accord with the strictures of the Great Convention." The flames continued to crackle, and some of the suboids had cheered, but most didn't seem to be listening. "As soon as possible, we must repair this damage and return this world to normal operations -- with better conditions for the suboids, of course."

C'tair had looked around, watched the building burn, and felt sick inside.

"All Ixian technology must henceforth be scrutinized by a strict religious review board, to assure its suitability. Any questionable technology will be scrapped. No one will ask you to endanger your souls by working on heretical machines." More cheering, more smashed plaz, a few screams.

C'tair had realized, though, that the cost of this takeover would be enormous for the Tleilaxu, even with Imperial support. Since Ix was one of the major powerhouse economies in the Imperium, the new rulers could not afford to let the production lines remain idle. The Tleilaxu would make a show of destroying some of the questionable products, such as the reactive meks, but he doubted any of the truly profitable Ixian devices would be discontinued.

Despite the promises of the new masters, the suboids had been put back to work -

- as they were bred to do -- but this time they followed only Tleilaxu designs and orders. C'tair realized that, before long, the manufactories would begin pouring out merchandise again; and shiploads of solaris would flow back into the Bene Tleilax coffers to pay them for this costly military adventure.

Now, though, the secrecy and security developed by generations of House Vernius would work against them. Ix had always shrouded itself in mystery, so who would notice the difference? Once the paying customers were satisfied with the exports, no one in the Imperium would much care about internal Ixian politics.

Anyone on the outside would forget all that had happened here. It would be cleanly swept under the rug.

That must be what the Tleilaxu were counting on, C'tair thought. The entire world of Ix -- he would never refer to it, not even in his mind, as Xuttuh -was walled off from the Imperium as an enigma . . . much as the homeworlds of the Bene Tleilax had been for centuries.

The new masters restricted travel off-planet and imposed curfews with deadly force. Face Dancers rooted out "traitors" from hiding rooms similar to C'tair's and executed them without fanfare or ceremony. He saw no end to the repression, but he vowed not to give up. This was his own world, and he would fight for it, in any way he could.

C'tair told no one his name, called little attention to himself -- but he listened, absorbed every whispered story or rumor, and he planned. Not knowing whom to trust, he assumed everyone was an informant, either a Face Dancer or simply a turncoat. Sometimes an informant was easily recognizable by the directness of a line of inquiry: Where do you work? Where do you live? What are you doing on this street?

But others were not so easy to detect, such as the gnarled old woman with whom he had initiated a conversation. He'd only meant to ask directions to a work site where he had been assigned. She hadn't sought him out at all, except to appear harmless . . . somewhat like a child with a grenade in its pocket.

"Such an interesting choice of words," she'd said, and he didn't even remember his own phrasing. "And your inflection . . . you are Ixian nobility, perhaps?"

She looked meaningfully at some of the ruined stalactite buildings in the ceiling.

He had stammered an answer. "N-no, although I have been a s-servant all my life, and perhaps I picked up some of their distasteful mannerisms. My apologies." He had bowed and departed quickly, without ever getting directions from her.

His response had been awkward and perhaps incriminating, so he'd thrown away the clothes he'd been wearing and hadn't gone down that narrow street again.

Afterward, he had paid more attention than ever before to masking his own vocal identity markers. Whenever possible, he avoided talking to strangers at all.

It appalled C'tair that so many opportunistic Ixians had switched allegiance to the new masters, forgetting House Vernius in less than a year.

In the first days of confusion following the takeover, C'tair had hoarded scraps of abandoned technology, from which he had constructed the cross-dimensional

"Rogo" transceiver. Soon, though, all but the most primitive technology had been confiscated and made illegal. C'tair still snatched what he could, scavenging anything that might prove valuable. He considered the risk well worth taking.

His fight here might continue for years, if not decades.

He thought back to the childhood he'd shared with D'murr, and the crippled inventor, Davee Rogo, who had befriended the boys. In his private laboratory, secreted inside an ignored coal vein in the upper crust, old Rogo had taught the youths many interesting principles, had shown them some of his failed prototypes. The inventor had chuckled, his bright eyes sparkling as he goaded the boys into disassembling and reassembling some of his complicated inventions.

C'tair had learned a great deal under the crippled man's tutelage.

Now C'tair recalled his Navigator brother's lack of interest when he'd told him of the wavy vision he'd seen in the rubble. Perhaps the ghost of Davee Rogo had not come back from the dead to provide instructions. He'd never seen a similar apparition, before or since. But that experience, whether a supernatural message or a hallucination, had permitted C'tair to accomplish a very human purpose: remaining in communication with his twin, maintaining the bond of love as D'murr became lost in the mysteries of the Guild.

Trapped in his various hiding places, C'tair had to live vicariously, soaring across the universe in his brother's mind whenever they made contact via the transceiver. Over the months he learned with excitement and pride of D'murr's first solo flights through foldspace as a trainee Pilot in his own Guild ship.

Then, a few days ago, D'murr had been approved for his first commercial assignment, navigating an unmanned colony transport craft that plied the void far beyond the Imperium.

If his outstanding work for the Guild continued, the Navigator trainee who had been D'murr Pilru would be promoted to transporting goods and personnel between the primary worlds of the Houses Major, and perhaps along the coveted Kaitain routes. He would become an actual Navigator, possibly even working his way up to Steersman . . . .

But the communications device exhibited persistent problems. The silicate crystals had to be sliced with a cutteray and connected in a precise manner; then they functioned only briefly before disintegrating from the strain.

Hairline cracks rendered them useless. C'tair had used the device on four occasions to reach his brother, and after each time he'd had to painstakingly cut and refit new crystals.

C'tair established careful ties to black market groups that furnished him with what he required. The contraband silicate crystals surreptitiously bore laser-scribed approvals by the Religious Review Board. Ever resourceful, the black marketers had their own means of counterfeiting the approval marks, and had scribed them everywhere, thus frustrating the controlling efforts of the occupation forces.

Still, he dealt with the furtive salesmen as little as possible to reduce his own risk of being caught . . . but that also limited the number of times he could talk with his brother.

C'TAIR STOOD BEHIND a barricade with other restless, sweaty people who studiously refused to recognize each other. He looked out across the sprawling grotto floor to the construction yards where the skeleton of the partially built Heighliner sat. Overhead, portions of the projected sky remained dark and damaged, and the Tleilaxu showed no inclination to repair it.

Suspensor-borne searchlights and speakers hovered over the crowd as the gathered people waited for an announcement and further instructions. No one wanted to ask, and no one wanted to hear.

"This Heighliner is of an unapproved Vernius design," the floating speakers boomed in a sexless voice that resonated against the rock walls, "and does not meet the standards of the Religious Review Board. Your Tleilaxu masters are returning to the previous design, so this craft is to be dismantled immediately."

A soft susurration of dismay crept across the crowd.

"Raw materials are to be salvaged and new work crews established. Construction begins again in five days."

C'tair's mind whirled as maroon-robed organizers marched through the crowds, assigning teams. As the son of an ambassador he'd had access to information that had not been available to others of his age. He knew the old-style Heighliners had a significantly smaller cargo capacity and operated less efficiently. But what possible religious objection could the invaders have to increased profits? What did the Tleilaxu have to gain from less efficient space transport?

Then he remembered a story that his ambassador father had told back in a time of smug assurance, that old Emperor Elrood had been displeased with the innovation, since it curtailed his tariff revenue. Pieces began to fit into place. House Corrino had provided disguised Sardaukar troops to maintain an iron grip on the Ixian population, and C'tair realized that reverting to the old Heighliner design might be how the Tleilaxu intended to repay the Emperor for his military support.

Wheels within wheels within wheels . . .

He felt sick inside. If true, it was such a petty reason for so many lives to have been lost, for the glorious traditions of Ix to have been destroyed, for the overthrow of an entire noble family and a planetary way of life. He was angry with everyone involved -- even with Earl Vernius, who should have foreseen this and taken steps not to create such powerful enemies.

The call to work came across the PA system, and C'tair was assigned to join suboid crews as they dismantled the partially finished ship and salvaged its parts in the grotto yard. Struggling to maintain a bland expression on his face as he wielded a construction laser to sever components, he wiped sweat from his dark hair. He wished instead that he could use the laser to attack the Tleilaxu. Other teams hauled the girders and plates away, stacking them for the next assembly project.