Dune 08 - House Harkonnen

Dune: House Harkonnen

Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson

October 2000

To our mutual friend Ed Kramer, without whom this project would never have come

to fruition. He provided the spark that brought us together.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Jan Herbert, with appreciation for her unflagging devotion and constant creative

support.

Penny Merritt, for helping manage the literary legacy of her father, Frank

Herbert.

Rebecca Moesta Anderson's tireless support and enthusiasm for this project, her

ideas, imagination, and sharp eyes truly enhanced this project.

Robert Gottlieb and Matt Bialer of the William Morris Agency, Mary Alice Kier

and Anna Cottle of Cine/Lit Representation -- all of whom never wavered in their

faith and dedication, seeing the potential of the entire project.

Irwyn Applebaum and Nita Taublib at Bantam Books gave their support and

attention to such an enormous undertaking.

Pat LoBrutto's excitement and dedication to this project -- from the very start

-- helped to keep us on track. He made us consider possibilities and plot

threads that made Dune: House Harkonnen even stronger and more complex.

Picking up the editorial reins, Anne Lesley Groell and Mike Shohl offered

excellent advice and suggestions, even at the eleventh hour.

Our U.K. editor, Carolyn Caughey, for continuing to find things that everyone

else missed, and for her suggestions on details, large and small.

Anne Gregory, for editorial work on an export edition of Dune: House Atreides

that occurred too late to list her in the credits.

As always, Catherine Sidor at WordFire, Inc., worked tirelessly to transcribe

dozens of microcassettes and type many hundreds of pages to keep up with our

manic work pace. Her assistance in all steps of this project has helped to keep

us sane, and she even fools other people into thinking we're organized.

Diane E. Jones and Diane Davis Herdt worked hard as test readers and guinea

pigs, giving us honest reactions and suggesting additional scenes that helped

make this a stronger book.

The Herbert Limited Partnership, including Ron Merritt, David Merritt, Byron

Merritt, Julie Herbert, Robert Merritt, Kimberly Herbert, Margaux Herbert, and

Theresa Shackelford, all of whom have provided us with their enthusiastic

support, entrusting us with the continuation of Frank Herbert's magnificent

vision.

Beverly Herbert, for almost four decades of support and devotion to her husband,

Frank Herbert.

And, most of all, thanks to Frank Herbert, whose genius created such a wondrous

universe for all of us to explore.

Discovery is dangerous . . . but so is life. A man unwilling to take risk is

doomed never to learn, never to grow, never to live.

-PLANETOLOGIST PARDOT KYNES, An Arrakis Primer, written for his son Liet

WHEN THE SANDSTORM came howling up from the south, Pardot Kynes was more

interested in taking meteorological readings than in seeking safety. His son

Liet -- only twelve years old, but raised in the harsh ways of the desert -- ran

an appraising eye over the ancient weather pod they had found in the abandoned

botanical testing station. He was not confident the machine would function at

all.

Then Liet gazed back across the sea of dunes toward the approaching tempest.

"The wind of the demon in the open desert. Hulasikali Wala." Almost

instinctively, he checked his stillsuit fittings.

"Coriolis storm," Kynes corrected, using a scientific term instead of the Fremen

one his son had selected. "Winds across the open flatlands are amplified by the

planet's revolutionary motion. Gusts can reach speeds up to seven hundred

kilometers per hour."

As his father talked, the young man busied himself sealing the egg-shaped

weather pod, checking the vent closures, the heavy doorway hatch, the stored

emergency supplies. He ignored their signal generator and distress beacon; the

static from the sandstorm would rip any transmissions to electromagnetic shreds.

In pampered societies Liet would have been considered just a boy, but life among

the hard-edged Fremen had given him a tightly coiled adulthood that few others

achieved even at twice his age. He was better equipped to handle an emergency

than his father.

The elder Kynes scratched his sandy-gray beard. "A good storm like this can

stretch across four degrees of latitude." He powered up the dim screens of the

pod's analytical devices. "It lifts particles to an altitude of two thousand

meters and suspends them in the atmosphere, so that long after the storm passes,

dust continues to fall from the sky."

Liet gave the hatch lock a final tug, satisfied that it would hold against the

storm. "The Fremen call that El-Sayal, the 'rain of sand.' "

"One day when you become Planetologist, you'll need to use more technical

language," Pardot Kynes said in a professorial tone. "I still send the Emperor

occasional reports, though not as often as I should. I doubt he ever reads

them." He tapped one of the instruments. "Ah, I believe the atmospheric front

is almost upon us."

Liet removed a porthole cover to see the oncoming wall of white, tan, and

static. "A Planetologist must use his eyes, as well as scientific language.

Just look out the window, Father."

Kynes grinned at his son. "It's time to raise the pod." Operating long-dormant

controls, he managed to get the dual bank of suspensor engines functioning. The

pod tugged against gravity, heaving itself off the ground.

The mouth of the storm lunged toward them, and Liet closed the cover plate,

hoping the ancient meteorological apparatus would hold together. He trusted his

father's intuition to a certain extent, but not his practicality.

The egg-shaped pod rose smoothly on suspensors, buffeted by precursor breezes.

"Ah, there we are," Kynes said. "Now our work begins --"

The storm hit them like a blunt club, and vaulted them high into the maelstrom.

DAYS EARLIER, on a trip into the deep desert, Pardot Kynes and his son had

discovered the familiar markings of a botanical testing station, abandoned

thousands of years before. Fremen had ransacked most of the research outposts,

scavenging valuable items, but this isolated station in an armpit of rock had

gone undiscovered until Kynes spotted the signs.

He and Liet had cracked open the dust-encrusted hatch to peer inside like ghouls

about to enter a crypt. They were forced to wait in the hot sun for atmospheric

exchange to clear out the deadly stale air. Pardot Kynes paced in the loose

sand, holding his breath and poking his head into the darkness, waiting until

they could enter and investigate.

These botanical testing stations had been built in the golden age of the old

Empire. Back then, Kynes knew, this desert planet had been nothing special,

with no resources of note, no reason to colonize. When the Zensunni Wanderers

had come here after generations of slavery, they'd hoped to build a world where

they could be free.

But that had been before the discovery of the spice melange, the precious

substance found nowhere else in the universe. And then everything had changed.

Kynes no longer referred to this world as Arrakis, the name listed in Imperial

records, but instead used the Fremen name: Dune. Though he was, by nature,

Fremen, he remained a servant of the Padishah Emperors. Elrood IX had assigned

him to unravel the mystery of the spice: where it came from, how it was formed,

where it could be found. For thirteen years Kynes had lived with the desert

dwellers; he had taken a Fremen wife, and he'd raised a half-Fremen son to

follow in his footsteps, to become the next Planetologist on Dune.

Kynes's enthusiasm for this planet had never dimmed. He thrilled at the chance

to learn something new, even if he had to thrust himself into the middle of a

storm . . . .

THE POD'S ANCIENT SUSPENSORS hummed against the Coriolis howl like a nest of

angry wasps. The meteorological vessel bounced on swirling currents of air, a

steel-walled balloon. Wind-borne dust scoured the hull.

"This reminds me of the aurora storms I saw on Salusa Secundus," Kynes mused.

"Amazing things -- very colorful and very dangerous. The hammer-wind can come

up from out of nowhere and crush you flat. You wouldn't want to be caught

outside."

"I don't want to be outside in this one, either," Liet said.

Stressed inward, one of the side plates buckled; air stole through the breach

with a thin shriek. Liet lurched across the deck toward the leak. He'd kept

the repair kit and foam sealant close at hand, certain the decrepit pod would

rupture. "We are held in the hand of God, and could be crushed at any moment."

"That's what your mother would say," the Planetologist said without looking up

from the skeins of information pouring through the recording apparatus into an

old datapack. "Look, a gust clocked at eight hundred kilometers per hour!" His

voice carried no fear, only excitement. "What a monster storm!"

Liet looked up from the stone-hard sealant he had slathered over the thin crack.

The squealing sound of leaking air faded, replaced by a muffled hurricane din.

"If we were outside, this wind would scour the flesh off our bones."

Kynes pursed his lips. "Quite likely true, but you must learn to express

yourself objectively and quantitatively. 'Scour the flesh off our bones' is not

a phrasing one would include in a report to the Emperor."

The battering wind, the scraping sand, and the roar of the storm reached a

crescendo; then, with a burst of pressure inside the survey pod, it all broke

into a bubble of silence. Liet blinked, swallowing hard to clear his ears and

throat. Intense quiet throbbed in his skull. Through the hull of the creaking

vessel, he could still hear Coriolis winds like whispered voices in a nightmare.

"We're in the eye." Glowing with delight, Pardot Kynes stepped away from his

instruments. "A sietch at the center of the storm, a refuge where you would

least expect it."

Blue static discharges crackled around them, sand and dust rubbing together to

generate electromagnetic fields. "I would prefer to be back in the sietch right

now," Liet admitted.

The meteorological pod drifted along in the eye, safe and silent after the

intense battering of the storm wall. Confined together in the small vessel, the

two had a chance to talk, as father and son.

But they didn't . . . .

Ten minutes later they struck the opposite sandstorm wall, thrown back into the

insane flow with a glancing blow of the dust-thick winds. Liet stumbled and

held on; his father managed to maintain his footing. The vessel's hull vibrated

and rattled.

Kynes looked at his controls, at the floor, and then at his son. "I'm not sure

what to do about this. The suspensors are" -- with a lurch, they began to

plunge, as if their safety rope had been severed -- "failing."

Liet held himself against an eerie weightlessness as the crippled pod dropped

toward the ground, which lay obscured by dusty murk. As they tumbled in the

air, the Planetologist continued to work the controls.

The haphazard suspensors sputtered and caught again just before impact. The

force from the Holtzman field generator cushioned them enough to absorb the

worst of the crash. Then the storm pod slammed into the churned sand, and the

Coriolis winds roared overhead like a spice harvester trampling a kangaroo mouse

under its treads. A deluge of dust poured down, released from the sky.

Bruised but otherwise unharmed, Pardot and Liet Kynes picked themselves up and

stared at each other in the afterglow of adrenaline. The storm headed up and

over them, leaving the pod behind . . . .

AFTER WORKING A SANDSNORK out through the clogged vent opening, Liet pumped

fresh air into the stale confinement. When he pried open the heavy hatch, a

stream of sand fell into the interior, but Liet used a static-foam binder to

pack the walls. Using a scoop from his Fremkit as well as his bare hands, he

set to work digging them out.

Pardot Kynes had complete confidence in his son's abilities to rescue them, so

he worked in dimness to collate his new weather readings into a single old-style

datapack.

Blinking as he pushed himself into the open air like an infant emerging from a

womb, Liet stared at the storm-scoured landscape. The desert was reborn: Dunes

moved along like a marching herd; familiar landmarks changed; footprints, tents,

even small villages erased. The entire basin looked fresh and clean and new.

Covered with pale dust, he scrambled up to more stable sand, where he saw the

depression that hid the buried pod. When they'd crashed, the vessel had slammed

a crater into the wind-stirred desert surface, just before the passing storm

dumped a blanket of sand on top of them.

With Fremen instincts and an inborn sense of direction, Liet was able to

determine their approximate position, not far from the South False Wall. He

recognized the rock forms, the cliff bands, the peaks and rilles. If the winds

had blown them a kilometer farther, the pod would have crashed into the

blistering mountains . . . an ignominious end for the great Planetologist, whom

the Fremen revered as their Umma, their prophet.

Liet called down into the hole that marked the buried vessel. "Father, I

believe there's a sietch in the nearby cliffs. If we go there, the Fremen can

help us dig out the pod."

"Good idea," Kynes answered, his voice muffled. "Go check to make sure. I'll

stay here and work. I've . . . got an idea."

With a sigh, the young man walked across the sand toward the jutting elbows of

ocher rock. His steps were without rhythm, so as not to attract one of the

great worms: step, drag, pause . . . drag, pause, step-step . . . drag, step,

pause, step. . . .

Liet's comrades at Red Wall Sietch, especially his blood-brother Warrick, envied

him for all the time he spent with the Planetologist. Umma Kynes had brought a

vision of paradise to the desert people -- they believed his dream of

reawakening Dune, and followed the man.

Without the knowledge of the Harkonnen overlords -- who were only on Arrakis to

mine the spice, and viewed people only as a resource to be squeezed -- Kynes

oversaw armies of secret, devoted workers who planted grasses to anchor the

mobile dunes; these Fremen established groves of cacti and hardy scrub bushes in

sheltered canyons, watered by dew-precipitators. In the unexplored south polar

regions, they had planted palmaries, which had gained a foothold and now

flourished. A lush demonstration project at Plaster Basin produced flowers,

fresh fruit, and dwarf trees.

Still, though the Planetologist could orchestrate grandiose, world-spanning

plans, Liet did not trust his father's common sense enough to leave him alone

for long.

The young man went along the ridge until he found subtle blaze marks on the

rocks, a jumbled path no outsider would notice, messages in the placement of

off-colored stones that promised food and shelter, under the respected al'amyah

Travelers' Benediction rules.

With the aid of strong Fremen in the sietch, they could excavate the weather pod

and drag it to a hiding place where it would be salvaged or repaired; within an

hour, the Fremen would remove all traces and let the desert fall back into

brooding silence.

But when he looked back at the crash site, Liet was alarmed to see the battered

vessel moving and lurching, already protruding a third of the way out of the

sand. With a deep-throated hum, the pod heaved and strained, like a beast of

burden caught in a Bela Tegeusan quagmire. But the pulsing suspensors had only

enough strength to wrench the vessel upward a few centimeters at a time.

Liet froze when he realized what his father was doing. Suspensors. Out in the

open desert!

He ran, tripping and stumbling, an avalanche of powder sand following his

footsteps. "Father, stop. Turn them off!" He shouted so loudly that his

throat grew raw. With dread in the pit of his stomach, he gazed across the

golden ocean of dunes, toward the hellish pit of the faraway Cielago Depression.

He scanned for a telltale ripple, the disturbance indicating deep movement. . .

.

"Father, come out of there." He skidded to a stop in front of the open hatch as

the pod continued to shift back and forth, straining. The suspensor fields

thrummed. Grabbing the edge of the door frame, Liet swung himself through the

hatch and dropped inside the weather pod, startling Kynes.

The Planetologist grinned at his son. "It's some sort of automated system -- I

don't know what controls I bumped into, but this pod just might lift itself out

in less than an hour." He turned back to his instruments. "It gave me time to

collate all our new data into a single storage --"

Liet grabbed his father by the shoulder and pulled him from the controls. He

slammed his hands down on the emergency cutoff switch, and the suspensors faded.

Confused, Kynes tried to protest, but his son urged him toward the open hatch.

"Get out, now! Run as fast as you can toward the rocks."

"But --"

Liet's nostrils flared in angry exasperation. "Suspensors operate on a Holtzman

field, just like shields. You know what happens when you activate a personal

shield out in the open sand?"

"The suspensors are working again?" Kynes blinked, then his eyes lit up as he

understood. "Ah! A worm comes."

"A worm always comes. Now run!"

The elder Kynes staggered out of the hatch and dropped to the sand. He

recovered his balance and oriented himself in the glaring sun. Seeing the cliff

line Liet had indicated, a kilometer away, he trudged off in a jerky, mismatched

walk, stepping, sliding, pausing, hopping forward in a complicated dance. The

young Fremen dropped out of the hatch and followed along, as they made their way

toward the safety of rocks.

Before long, they heard a hissing, rolling sound from behind. Liet glanced over

his shoulder, then pushed his father over a dune crest. "Faster. I don't know

how much time we'll have." They increased their pace. Pardot stumbled, got

back up.

Ripples arrowed across the sands directly toward the half-buried pod. Toward

them. Dunes lurched, rolled, then flattened with the inexorable tunneling of a

deep worm rising to the surface.

"Run with your very soul!" They sprinted toward the cliffs, crossed a dune

crest, slid down, then surged forward again, the soft sand pulling at their

feet. Liet's spirits rose when he saw the safety of rocks less than a hundred

meters away.

The hissing grew louder as the giant worm picked up speed. The ground beneath

their boots trembled.

Finally, Kynes reached the first boulders and clutched them like an anchor,

panting and wheezing. Liet pushed him farther, though, onto the slopes, to be

sure the monster could not rise from the sand and strike them.

Moments later, sitting on a ledge, wordless as they sucked hot air through their

nostrils to catch their breath, Pardot Kynes and his son stared back to watch a

churning whirlpool form around the half-buried weather pod. In the loosening

powder, as the viscosity of the stirred sand changed, the pod shifted and began

to sink.

The heart of the whirlpool rose up in a cavernous scooped mouth. The desert

monster swallowed the offending vessel along with tons of sand, forcing all the

debris down into a gullet lined with crystal teeth. The worm sank back into the

arid depths, and Liet watched the ripples of its passage, slower now, returning

into the empty basin. . . .

In the pounding silence that followed, Pardot Kynes did not look exhilarated

from his near brush with death. Instead, he appeared dejected. "We lost all

that data." The Planetologist heaved a deep breath. "I could have used our

readings to understand those storms better."

Liet reached inside a front pocket of his stillsuit and held up the old-style

datapack he had snatched from the pod's instrument panel. "Even while watching

out for our lives -- I can still pay attention to research."

Kynes beamed with fatherly pride.

Under the desert sun, they hiked up the rugged path to the safety of the sietch.

Behold, O Man, you can create life. You can destroy life. But, lo, you have no

choice but to experience life. And therein lies both your greatest strength and

your greatest weakness.

-Orange Catholic Bible, Book of Kimla Septima, 5:3

ON OIL-SOAKED GIEDI PRIME, the work crew left the fields at the end of a

typically interminable day. Encrusted with perspiration and dirt, the workers

slogged from trench-lined plots under a lowering red sun, making their way back

home.

In their midst, Gurney Halleck, his blond hair a sweaty tangle, clapped his

hands rhythmically. It was the only way he could keep going, his way of

resisting the oppression of Harkonnen overlords, who for the moment were not

within earshot. He made up a work song with nonsense lyrics, trying to get his

companions to join in, or at least to mumble along with the chorus.

We toil all day, the Harkonnen way,

Hour after hour, we long for a shower,

Just workin' and workin' and workin' . . .

The people trudged along silently. Too tired after eleven hours in the rocky

fields, they hardly gave the would-be troubadour a notice. With a resigned

sigh, Gurney finally gave up his efforts, though he maintained his wry smile.

"We are indeed miserable, my friends, but we don't have to be dismal about it."

Ahead lay a low village of prefabricated buildings -- a settlement called Dmitri

in honor of the previous Harkonnen patriarch, the father of Baron Vladimir.

After the Baron had taken control of House Harkonnen decades ago, he'd

scrutinized the maps of Giedi Prime, renaming land features to his own tastes.

In the process he had added a melodramatic flair to the stark formations: Isle

of Sorrows, Perdition Shallows, Cliff of Death. . . .

No doubt a few generations hence, someone else would rename the landmarks all

over again.

Such concerns were beyond Gurney Halleck. Though poorly educated, he did know

the Imperium was vast, with a million planets and decillions of people . . . but

it wasn't likely he'd travel even as far as Harko City, the densely packed,

smoky metropolis that shed a perpetual ruddy glow on the northern horizon.

Gurney studied the crew around him, the people he saw every day. Eyes downcast,

they marched like machines back to their squalid homes, so sullen that he had to

laugh aloud. "Get some soup in your bellies, and I'll expect you to start

singing tonight. Doesn't the O. C. Bible say, 'Make cheer from your own heart,

for the sun rises and sets according to your perspective on the universe'?"

A few workers mumbled with faint enthusiasm; it was better than nothing. At

least he had managed to cheer them up some. With a life so dreary, any spot of

color was worth the effort.

Gurney was twenty-one, his skin already rough and leathery from working in the

fields since the age of eight. By habit, his bright blue eyes drank in every

detail . . . though the village of Dmitri and the desolate fields gave him

little to look at. With an angular jaw, a too-round nose, and flat features, he

already looked like an old farmer and would no doubt marry one of the washed-

out, tired-looking girls from the village.

Gurney had spent the day up to his armpits in a trench, wielding a spade to

throw out piles of stony earth. After so many years of tilling the same ground,

the villagers had to dig deep in order to find nutrients in the soil. The Baron

certainly didn't waste solaris on fertilizers -- not for these people.

During their centuries of stewardship on Giedi Prime, the Harkonnens had made a

habit of wringing the land for all it was worth. It was their right -- no,

their duty -- to exploit this world, and then move the villages to new land and

new pickings. One day when Giedi Prime was a barren shell, the leader of House

Harkonnen would undoubtedly request a different fief, a new reward for serving

the Padishah Emperors. There were, after all, many worlds to choose from in the

Imperium.

But galactic politics were of no interest to Gurney. His goals were limited to

enjoying the upcoming evening, sharing a bit of entertainment and relaxation

down at the meeting place. Tomorrow would be another day of back-breaking work.

Only stringy, starchy krall tubers grew profitably in these fields; though most

of the crop was exported as animal feed, the bland tubers were nutritious enough

to keep people working. Gurney ate them every day, as did everyone else. Poor

soil leads to poor taste.

His parents and coworkers were full of proverbs, many from the Orange Catholic

Bible; Gurney memorized them all and often set them to tunes. Music was the one

treasure he was allowed to have, and he shared it freely.

The workers spread out to their separate but identical dwellings, defective

prefabricated units House Harkonnen had bought at discount and dumped there.

Gurney gazed ahead to where he lived with his parents and his younger sister,

Bheth.

His home had a brighter touch than the others. Old, rusted cookpots held dirt

in which colorful flowers grew: maroon, blue, and yellow pansies, a shock of

daisies, even sophisticated-looking calla lilies. Most houses had small

vegetable gardens where the people grew plants, herbs, vegetables -- though any

produce that looked too appetizing might be confiscated and eaten by roving

Harkonnen patrols.

The day was warm and the air smoky, but the windows of his home were open.

Gurney could hear Bheth's sweet voice in a lilting melody. In his mind's eye he

saw her long, straw-colored hair; he thought of it as "flaxen" -- a word from

Old Terran poems he had memorized -- though he had never seen homespun flax.

Only seventeen, Bheth had fine features and a sweet personality that had not yet

been crushed by a lifetime of work.

Gurney used the outside faucet to splash the gray, caked dirt from his face,

arms, and hands. He held his head under the cold water, soaking his snarled

blond hair, then used blunt fingers to maul it into some semblance of order. He

shook his head and strode inside, kissing Bheth on the cheek while dripping cold

water on her. She squealed and backed away, then returned to her cooking

chores.

Their father had already collapsed in a chair. Their mother bent over huge

wooden bins outside the back door, preparing krall tubers for market; when she

noticed Gurney was home, she dried her hands and came inside to help Bheth

serve. Standing at the table, his mother read several verses from a tattered

old O. C. Bible in a deeply reverent voice (her goal was to read the entire

mammoth tome to her children before she died), and then they sat down to eat.

He and his sister talked while sipping a soup of stringy vegetables, seasoned

only with salt and a few sprigs of dried herbs. During the meal, Gurney's

parents spoke little, usually in monosyllables.

Finishing, he carried his dishes to the basin, where he scrubbed them and left

them to drip dry for the next day. With wet hands he clapped his father on the

shoulder. "Are you going to join me at the tavern? It's fellowship night."

The older man shook his head. "I'd rather sleep. Sometimes your songs just

make me feel too tired."

Gurney shrugged. "Get your rest then." In his small room, he opened the

rickety wardrobe and took out his most prized possession: an old baliset,

designed as a nine-stringed instrument, though Gurney had learned to play with

only seven, since two strings were broken and he had no replacements.

He had found the discarded instrument, damaged and useless, but after working on

it patiently for six months . . . sanding, lacquering, shaping parts . . . the

baliset made the sweetest music he'd ever heard, albeit without a full tonal

range. Gurney spent hours in the night strumming the strings, spinning the

counterbalance wheel. He taught himself to play tunes he had heard, or composed

new ones.

As darkness enclosed the village, his mother sagged into a chair. She placed

the precious Bible in her lap, comforted more by its weight than its words.

"Don't be late," she said in a dry, empty voice.

Dune 08 - House Harkonnen

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