Tales of Dune Read online

  Book Description

  Frank Herbert’s magnificent Dune saga sprawls across countless planets and tens of millennia. Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson have written thirteen international bestselling novels set in this epic universe. But the wealth of material leaves many side tales or interesting ideas that can be told, hors d’oeuvres to accompany the exotic main course.

  Sometimes, a short story is exactly what’s needed.

  Tales of Dune collects eight of Herbert and Anderson’s Dune short stories, ranging from the period of the Butlerian Jihad, to the time of young Paul Atreides, to a story set during the events of the novel Dune, to the very end of Frank Herbert’s future history.

  These are the missing pieces in the epic of Dune.

  Smashwords Edition – 2017

  WordFire Press

  wordfirepress.com

  ISBN: 978-1-61475-565-4

  TALES OF DUNE EXPANDED EDITION

  Copyright © 2017 Herbert Properties LLC

  “Hunting Harkonnens” copyright © 2002 Herbert Properties LLC, originally appeared as a promotional booklet released by Tor Books.

  “Whipping Mek” copyright © 2003 Herbert Properties LLC, originally appeared as a promotional booklet released by Tor Books.

  “The Faces of a Martyr” copyright © 2004 Herbert Properties LLC, first appearance in The Road to Dune by Frank Herbert, Brian Herbert, and Kevin J. Anderson (Tor Books, 2004).

  “Red Plague” copyright © 2016 Herbert Properties LLC, first published on tor.com, November 2016.

  “Wedding Silk” copyright © 2011 Herbert Properties LLC, originally appeared in Tales of Dune by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson (WordFire Press, 2011).

  “Sea Child” copyright © 2006 Herbert Properties LLC, originally appeared in Elemental: The Tsunami Relief Anthology, edited by Steven Savile and Alethea Kontis (Tor Books, 2006).

  “Treasure in the Sand” copyright © 2006 Herbert Properties LLC, originally appeared in Jim Baen’s Universe online magazine.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where permitted by law. This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Cover painting by Stephen Youll

  Cover design by Janet McDonald

  Kevin J. Anderson, Art Director

  Book Design by RuneWright, LLC

  www.RuneWright.com

  Kevin J. Anderson & Rebecca Moesta, Publishers

  Published by

  WordFire Press, an imprint of

  WordFire, Inc.

  PO Box 1840

  Monument, CO 80132

  Contents

  Book Description

  Title Page

  Introduction

  The Butlerian Jihad Period

  Hunting Harkonnens

  Whipping Mek

  The Faces of a Martyr

  Red Plague

  The Dune Period

  Wedding Silk

  A Whisper of Caladan Seas

  After the Scattering

  Sea Child

  Treasure in the Sand

  Chronology of Dune Fiction

  About the Author

  If You Liked …

  Other WordFire Press Titles

  Introduction

  The Dune universe sprawls across countless planets and dozens of millennia. Frank Herbert’s original six Dune novels in addition to the fourteen other books we have added to the canon tell large parts of the story, but sometimes an idea only warrants a briefer exploration.

  Considering the immensity of the Dune universe, we often have trouble keeping each novel from getting too big. There are so many potential storylines and intriguing ideas to explore. The wealth of material leaves many side stories that can be told, hors d’oeuvres to accompany the exotic main course.

  Sometimes, a short story was exactly what we needed.

  Even before the publication of our first new Dune novel, House Atreides, we delved into some of the missing pieces in the original classic. When we wrote “A Whisper of Caladan Seas” and published it in Amazing Stories in 1999, it was the first piece of new Dune fiction published since the death of Frank Herbert thirteen years earlier. The issue promptly sold out: even back issues are no longer available. And it whet the appetite of Dune fans for the release of the new novel by Bantam Books. House Atreides became a runaway bestseller, selling three times the publisher’s projections, and proving that Dune fans were alive and well and hungry for more.

  As we wrote our novels, we looked for opportunities to write standalone stories, interesting tales that couldn’t fit into the larger novels. We wrote character studies, connective stories, side stories, pieces that would fill in the gaps. Some of these stories were published in magazines, in online venues, in anthologies, while others were released as special promotional booklets by our publisher, Tor Books.

  Tales of Dune collects all of these stories in one place, eight tales that range from the earliest adventure in the Dune universe, to a story at the very end of Frank Herbert’s grand future history. The stories are standalone, and should be enjoyable as they are, but the chronology at the end of this book shows exactly how they fit into the overall epic.

  The Butlerian Jihad Period

  Hunting Harkonnens

  Introduction

  By the time we turned in the Legends of Dune trilogy, which chronicles the epic Butlerian Jihad, we were introducing Dune fans to history ten thousand years prior to the events in the novel Dune. We felt this deserved an appetizer that would ease readers into an epoch that would span more than two centuries, establishing the origins of much of the Dune universe.

  “Hunting Harkonnens” is our short story introduction to the world of the Butlerian Jihad. During one of our book-signing tours, we found ourselves stuck for several hours in the Los Angeles train station. There, while sitting on an uncomfortable wooden bench larger than a church pew, we brainstormed all of “Hunting Harkonnens.” In this preliminary tale, which lays the foundations of the holy war between humans and thinking machines, we introduced readers to the ancestors of the Atreides and the Harkonnens, and to the evil machines with human minds that Frank Herbert mentioned in Dune.

  Passing a laptop computer back and forth, the two of us blocked out the story in detail, scene by scene. Then, like team managers picking baseball players during a draft, we each chose the scenes that interested us. Shortly after returning home from the tour, we wrote our parts of the story, swapped computer disks (yes, that’s how long ago it was), and rewrote each other’s work, sending the changes to each other by mail until we were satisfied with the end result.

  Hunting Harkonnens

  I

  The Harkonnen space yacht left the family-held industries on Hagal and crossed the interstellar gulf toward Salusa Secundus. The streamlined vessel flew silently, in contrast to the fusillade of angry shouts inside the cockpit.

  Stern, hardline Ulf Harkonnen piloted the yacht, concentrating on the hazards of space and the constant threat of thinking machines, though he kept lecturing his twenty-one-year-old son, Piers. Ulf’s wife Katarina, too gentle a soul to be worthy of the Harkonnen name, asserted that the quarrel had gone on long enough. “Further criticism and
shouting will serve no purpose, Ulf.”

  Vehemently, the elder Harkonnen disagreed.

  Piers sat fuming, unrepentant; he was not cut out for the cutthroat practices his noble family expected, no matter how much his father tried to bully them into him. He knew Ulf would browbeat and humiliate him all the way home. The gruff older man refused to consider that his son’s ideas for more humane methods might actually be more efficient than the inflexible, domineering ways.

  Clutching the ship controls as if in a death grip, Ulf growled at his son, “Thinking machines are efficient. Humans, especially riffraff like our slaves on Hagal, are meant to be used. I doubt you’ll ever get that through your skull.” He shook his large, squarish head. “Sometimes, Piers, I think I should clean up the gene pool by eliminating you.”

  “Then why don’t you?” Piers snapped, defiant. His father believed in forceful decisions, every question with a black-and-white answer, and that belittling his son would drive him to do better.

  “I can’t, because your brother Xavier is too young to be the Harkonnen heir, so you’re the only choice I have … for the time being. I keep hoping you’ll understand your responsibility to our family. You’re a noble, meant to command, not to show the workers how soft you can be.”

  Katarina pleaded, “Ulf, you may not agree with the changes Piers made on Hagal, but at least he thought it through and was trying a new process. Given time it might have led to improved productivity.”

  “And meanwhile the Harkonnen family goes bankrupt?” Ulf held a thick finger toward his son as if it were a weapon. “Piers, those people took terrible advantage of you, and you’re lucky I arrived in time to stop the damage. When I provide you with detailed instructions on how our family holdings are to be run, I do not expect you to come up with a ‘better’ idea.”

  “Is your mind so fossilized that you can’t accept new ideas?” Piers asked.

  “Your instincts are faulty, and you have a very naïve view of human nature.” Ulf shook his head, growling in disappointment. “He takes after you, Katarina—that’s his main problem.” Like his mother, Piers had a narrow face, full lips and a delicate expression … quite different from Ulf’s shaggy gray hair framing a blunt-featured face. “You would have been a better poet than a Harkonnen.”

  That was meant to be a grave insult, but Piers secretly agreed. The young man had always enjoyed reading histories of the Old Empire, days of decadence and ennui before the thinking machines had conquered many civilized solar systems. Piers would have fit into those times well as a writer, a storyteller.

  “I gave you an opportunity, son, hoping that I could depend on you. But I have had my answer.” The elder Harkonnen stood clenching his large, callused fists. “This whole trip has been a waste.”

  Katarina caressed her husband’s broad back, trying to calm him. “Ulf, we’re passing near the Caladan system. You talked about stopping there to investigate the possibility of new holdings … maybe fishing operations?”

  Ulf hunched his shoulders. “All right, we’ll divert to Caladan and take a look.” He snapped his head up. “But in the meantime, I want this disgrace of a son sealed in the lifepod chamber. It’s the closest thing to a brig onboard. He needs to learn his lesson, take his responsibilities seriously, or he will never be a true Harkonnen.”

  II

  As he sulked inside his improvised cell, with its cream-colored walls and silver instrument panels, Piers stared out the small porthole window. He hated arguments with his stubborn father. The rigid old ways of the Harkonnen family were not always best. Instead of imposing tough conditions and harsh punishments, why not try treating workers with respect?

  Workers. He remembered how his father had reacted to the word. “Next you’ll want to call them employees. They are slaves!” Ulf had thundered as they stood in the overseer’s office back on Hagal. “They have no rights.”

  “But they deserve rights,” Piers responded. “They’re human beings, not machines.”

  Ulf had barely contained his violence. “Perhaps I should beat you the way my father beat me, pounding contrition and responsibility into you. This isn’t a game. You’re leaving now, boy. Get on the ship.”

  Like a scolded child, Piers had done as he was commanded.…

  He wished he could stand toe to toe with his father, just once. Every time he tried, though, Ulf made him feel that he had let the family down, as if he were a shirker who would waste their hard-won fortunes.

  His father had entrusted him to manage the family holdings on Hagal, grooming him as the next head of the Harkonnen businesses. This assignment had been an important step for Piers, with complete authority over the sheet diamond operations. A chance, a test. The implicit understanding was that he would operate the mines as they had always been run.

  Harkonnens held the mining rights to all sheet diamonds on sparsely populated Hagal. The largest mine filled an entire canyon. Piers recalled how sunlight played off the glassy cliffs, dancing on the prismatic surfaces. He had never seen anything so beautiful.

  The cliff faces were diamond sheets with blue-green quartz marking the perimeters, like irregular picture frames. Human-operated mining machines crawled along the cliffs like fat, silver insects: no artificial intelligence, and therefore considered safe. History had shown that even the most innocuous types of AI could ultimately turn against humans. Entire star systems were now under the control of diabolically smart machines, and in those dark sectors of the universe, human slaves followed the commands of mechanized masters.

  At optimal spots on the shimmering cliffs, the mining machines would lock onto the surface with suction devices and separate the diamond material with sound waves at natural points of fissure; holding diamond sheets in their grasp, the dumb machines would make their way back down the cliff to loading areas.

  It was an efficient process, but sometimes the sonic cutting procedure shattered the diamond sheets. Once Piers gave the slaves a stake in the profits, though, such mishaps occurred much less frequently, as if they took greater care after they received a vested interest.

  Overseeing the Hagal operation, Piers had come up with the idea of letting the captive gangs work without typical Harkonnen regulations and close oversight. While some slaves accepted the incentive program, a number of problems did surface. With reduced supervision, some slaves ran away; others were disorganized or lazy, just waiting for someone to tell them what to do. Initially, productivity dropped, but he was sure the output would eventually meet and even exceed previous levels.

  Before that could happen, though, his father had made an unannounced visit to Hagal. And Ulf Harkonnen wasn’t interested in creative ideas or humanitarian improvements if profits were down.…

  His parents had been forced to leave their younger son Xavier on Salusa with a pleasant old-school couple. “I shudder to think how the boy will turn out if they raise him. Emil and Lucille Tantor don’t know how to be strict.”

  Eavesdropping, Piers knew why his manipulative father had left his little brother with the Tantors. Since the aging couple was childless, wily Ulf was working his way into their good graces. He hoped the Tantors might eventually leave their estate to their dear “godson” Xavier.

  Piers hated the way his father used people, whether they were slaves, other nobles, or members of his own family. It was disgusting. But now, trapped inside the cramped lifepod chamber, he could do nothing about it.

  III

  Programming made the thinking machines relentless and determined, but only the cruelty of a human mind could generate enough ruthless hatred to feed a war of extermination for a thousand years.

  Though they were kept in reluctant thrall by the pervasive computer mind Omnius, the cymeks—hybrid machines with human minds—often bided their time by hunting between the stars. They could capture feral humans, bring them back to slavery on the Synchronized Worlds, or just kill them for sport.…

  The leader of the cymeks, a general who had taken the imposing name of
Agamemnon, had once led a group of tyrants to conquer the decaying Old Empire. As implacable soldiers in the cause, the tyrants had reprogrammed the subservient robots and computers to give them a thirst for conquest. When his mortal human body grew old and weak, Agamemnon had undergone a surgical process that removed his brain and implanted it within a preservation canister that he could install into varying mechanical bodies.

  Agamemnon and his fellow tyrants had intended to rule for centuries … but then the artificially aggressive computers stepped into power when they saw the chance, exploiting the tyrants’ lack of diligence. The Omnius network then ruled the remnants of the Old Empire, subjugating the cymek tyrants along with the rest of already-downtrodden humanity.

  For centuries, Agamemnon and his fellow conquerors had been forced to serve the computer evermind, with no chance of regaining their own rule. Their greatest source of amusement was in tracking down stray humans who had managed to maintain their independence from machine domination. Still, the cymek general found it a most unsatisfactory venting of his frustrations.

  His brain canister had been installed inside a fast scout vessel that patrolled areas known to be inhabited by League humans. Six cymeks accompanied the general as their ships skirted the edge of a small solar system. They found little of interest, only one human-compatible world composed of mostly water.

  Then Agamemnon’s long-range sensors spotted another vessel. A human vessel.

  He increased resolution and pointed out the target to his companions. Triangulating with their combined detection abilities, Agamemnon discerned that the lone ship was a small space yacht, its sophisticated configuration and style implying that its passengers were important members of the League, rich merchants … perhaps even smug nobles, the most gratifying victims of all.

  “Just what we’ve been waiting for,” said Agamemnon.

  The cymek ships adjusted course and accelerated. Connected through thoughtrodes, Agamemnon’s brain flew his ship-body as if it were a large bird of prey, zeroing in on his helpless target. He also had a terrestrial walker stored aboard, a warrior form that could be used for planetary combat.