Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson - Dune 08 - House Harkonne

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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.
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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.
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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.
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"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."
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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!"
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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.
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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
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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.
"I won't." Gurney wondered if she would notice if he stayed out all night. "I'll need my
strength to tackle those trenches tomorrow." He raised a well-muscled arm, feigning enthusiasm
for the tasks all of them knew would never end. He made his way across the packed-dirt streets
down to the tavern.
In the wake of a deadly fever several years ago, four of the prefab structures had been left
empty. The villagers had moved the buildings together, knocked down the connecting walls, and
fashioned themselves a large community house. Although this wasn't exactly against the numerous
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Harkonnen restrictions, the local enforcers had frowned at such a display of initiative. But the
tavern remained.
Gurney joined the small crowd of men who had already gathered for the fellowship down at the
tavern. Some brought their wives. One man already lay slumped across the table, more exhausted
than drunk, his flagon of watery beer only half-consumed. Gurney crept up behind him, held out
his baliset, and strummed a jangling chord that startled the man to full wakefulness.
"Here's a new one, friends. Not exactly a hymn that your mothers remember, but I'll teach it to
you." He gave them a wry grin. "Then you'll all sing along with me, and probably ruin the tune."
None of them were very good singers, but the songs were entertaining, and it brought a measure of
brightness to their lives.
With full energy, he tacked sardonic words onto a familiar melody:
O Giedi Prime!
Thy shades of black are beyond compare,
From obsidian plains to oily seas,
To the darkest nights in the Emperor's Eye.
Come ye from far and wide
To see what we hide in our hearts and minds,
To share our bounty
And lift a pickax or two . . .
Making it all lovelier than before.
O Giedi Prime!
Thy shades of black are beyond compare,
From obsidian plains to oily seas,
To the darkest nights in the Emperor's Eye.
When Gurney finished the song, he wore a grin on his plain, blocky face and bowed to imagined
applause. One of the men called out hoarsely, "Watch yourself, Gurney Halleck. If the Harkonnens
hear your sweet voice, they'll haul you off to Harko for sure -- so you can sing for the Baron
himself."
Gurney made a rude noise. "The Baron has no ear for music, especially not lovely songs like
mine." This brought a round of laughter. He picked up a mug of the sour beer and chugged it
down.
Then the door burst open and Bheth ran in, her flaxen hair loose, her face flushed. "Patrol
coming! We saw the suspensor lights. They've got a prisoner transport and a dozen guards."
The men sat up with a jolt. Two ran for the doors, but the others remained frozen in place,
already looking caught and defeated.
Gurney strummed a soothing note on his baliset. "Be calm, my friends. Are we doing anything
illegal? 'The guilty both know and show their crimes.' We are merely enjoying fellowship. The
Harkonnens can't arrest us for that. In fact, we're demonstrating how much we like our
conditions, how happy we are to work for the Baron and his minions. Right, mates?"
A somber grumbling was all the agreement he managed to elicit. Gurney set aside his baliset and
went to the trapezoidal window of the communal hall just as a prisoner transport pulled up in the
center of the village. Several human forms could be seen in shadow behind the transport's plaz
windows, evidence that the Harkonnens had been busy arresting people -- all women, it appeared.
Though he patted his sister's hand and maintained his good humor for the benefit of the others,
Gurney knew the troopers needed few excuses to take more captives.
Brilliant spotlights targeted the village. Dark armored forms rushed up the packed-dirt streets,
pounding on houses. Then the door to the communal building was shouldered open with a loud crash.
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Six men strode inside. Gurney recognized Captain Kryubi of the baronial guard, the man in charge
of House Harkonnen security. "Stand still for inspection," Kryubi ordered. A shard of mustache
bristled on his lip. His face was narrow and his cheeks looked sunken, as if he clenched his jaw
too often.
Gurney remained by the window. "We've done nothing wrong here, Captain. We follow Harkonnen
rules. We do our work."
Kryubi looked over at him. "And who appointed you the leader of this village?"
Gurney did not think fast enough to keep his sarcasm in check. "And who gave you orders to harass
innocent villagers? You'll make us incapable of doing our tasks tomorrow."
His companions in the tavern were horrified at his impudence. Bheth clutched Gurney's hand,
trying to keep her brother quiet. The Harkonnen guards made threatening gestures with their
weapons.
Gurney jerked his chin to indicate the prisoner escort vehicle outside the window. "What did
those people do? What crimes worthy of arrest?"
"No crimes are necessary," Kryubi said, coolly unafraid of the truth.
Gurney took a step forward, but three guards grasped his arms and threw him heavily to the floor.
He knew the Baron often recruited guards from the farming villages. The new thugs -- rescued from
bleak lives and given new uniforms, weapons, lodgings, and women -- often became scornful of their
previous lives and proved crueler than off-world professionals. Gurney hoped he would recognize a
man from a neighboring village, so he could spit in his eye. His head struck the hard floor, but
he sprang back to his feet.
Bheth moved quickly to her brother's side. "Don't provoke them anymore."
It was the worst thing she could have done. Kryubi pointed at her. "All right, take that one,
too."
Bheth's narrow face paled when two of the three guards grabbed her by her thin arms. She
struggled as they hauled her to the still-open door. Gurney cast his baliset aside and lunged
forward, but the remaining guard produced his weapon and brought the butt down hard across the
young man's forehead and nose.
Gurney staggered, then threw himself forward again, swinging balled fists like mallets. "Leave
her alone!" He knocked one of the guards down and tore the second one away from his sister. She
screamed as the three converged upon Gurney, pummeling him, slamming their weapons so brutally
into him that his ribs cracked; his nose was already bloodied.
"Help me!" Gurney shouted to the saucer-eyed villagers. "We outnumber the bastards."
No one came to his aid.
He flailed and punched, but went down in a flurry of kicking boots and pounding weapons.
Struggling to lift his head, he saw Kryubi watching as his men pulled Bheth toward the door.
Gurney pushed, trying to throw off the heavy men who held him down.
Between the gauntleted arms and padded legs, he saw the villagers frozen in their seats, like
sheep. They watched him with stricken expressions, but remained as motionless as stones in a
castle keep. "Help me, damn you!"
One guard punched him in the solar plexus, making him gasp and retch. Gurney's voice was gone,
his breath fading. Black spots danced in front of his eyes. Finally, the guards withdrew.
He propped himself on an elbow just in time to see Bheth's despairing face as the Harkonnen men
dragged her into the night.
Enraged and frustrated, he swayed back to his feet, fighting to remain conscious. He heard the
prison transport power up in the square outside. Haloed by a glow of illumination against the
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