Paul of Dune hod-1 Page 18

“The details will be an artistic performance,” Margot said. “Since you are not involved, you will learn them after the fact.”

  Glancing up at a shadowy shape standing in a window overlooking the courtyard, Mohiam said, “Very well. We will watch with interest.”

  3

  Home is more than a mere location. Home is where, more than anyplace else, one wishes to be. Home is certainly not this horrible planet that I never wanted to see again.

  —GURNEY HALLECK, dispatch to Lady Jessica on Caladan

  When he returned to Arrakis, weary and unsettled from the most recent battles against Thorvald’s insurgents, Gurney just wanted to rest in his dusty quarters. But he had barely managed to remove his nose plugs and unfasten his cloak before a pompous Qizarate ambassador arrived at his doorway wearing cumbersome diplomatic garments instead of a traditional stillsuit. Frowning, Gurney took the decree from the functionary, broke the seal, and read it, not caring that the man might look on.

  The announcement took his breath away. “Why in the Seven Hells would Paul do that?”

  The Emperor had officially given Gurney Halleck the Barony of Giedi Prime. The lumpy, scarred man stood still, breathing quickly through flared nostrils, realizing that Paul probably intended for this to be a reward, shielding him from further horrors of the Jihad by sending him back to the planet of his childhood, just as Paul himself had visited Caladan. But though Giedi Prime had surrendered to Paul almost immediately after the fall of House Harkonnen, for Gurney the place was still a battlefield — a battlefield of the mind, a battlefield of harsh memories.

  Gurney shooed the functionary away and reread the decree, reflexively crumpling the spice paper, then straightening the document again. Paul had added a quiet, more personal note. “You can heal it, my loyal friend. It will take thousands of years before anyone might consider Giedi Prime a beautiful place. At the very least, try to change it from a festering wound to a scar. Do it for me, Gurney.”

  Sighing, Gurney said to himself, “I serve the Atreides.” And he meant it. He would face his past, and use his best abilities to free the people of Giedi Prime from many generations of Harkonnen repression and imposed darkness. It would not be a simple task.

  He already had an earldom on Caladan, but Jessica had taken the title of Duchess, and the people there loved her. He didn’t want to take anything away from her. But… Giedi Prime? Paul was doing him no favors.

  Gurney had often fantasized that after a lifetime of fighting he would retire to the country on a well-earned estate with a beautiful woman and a house full of rambunctious children. Somehow, though, he did not see that in his future.

  Do it for me, Gurney, Paul had said.

  ***

  WHEN HE ARRIVED at Giedi Prime, Gurney Halleck received a modest hero’s welcome, though the decidedly subdued population did not know what to make of him. He was the newly named Baron — another painfully unsettling honor. Paul-Muad’Dib had freed this planet from the Harkonnen boot heel, but the people did not know how to rejoice. They were not accustomed to loving their leaders. Even with the yoke of repression removed, no one raised a voice to celebrate.

  Seeing them crowded in Harko City reminded Gurney of the magnitude of the challenge he faced, and he felt hollow in his chest. Noting the wan faces, pale complexions, and washed-out demeanors, he remembered seeing the same expressions on the faces of his parents and on his poor sister Bheth, who was eventually raped and murdered, an offhand casualty of Beast Rabban’s cruelty.

  Gurney would try to summon the energy and compassion to inspire these people, to have them turn their world around, replant it, reenergize it. But he wasn’t sure they had the heart for it. “You are free now!” Simply telling that to a broken and weary populace did not undo generations of damage. The idea was a good one, in a logical sense, but did Paul honestly believe that a gift of freedom and self-determination would change the psyche of an entire planet?

  Yet that was Gurney’s new mission, and he intended to accomplish it — for Paul.

  With his own men, mostly drawn from Caladan, Gurney took residence in the city of Barony, the former seat of Harkonnen government. He had a lot of fixing and political housecleaning to do. The gigantic mansion had blocky walls and imposing columns, everything based on squares and angles instead of soft curves. Gurney felt wrong. He did not belong here. Even devastated Salusa Secundus, where he’d once lived among smugglers, was somehow a purer place. At least it did not have a Harkonnen stink about it.

  The giant building made him uncomfortable, as if he might find something dangerous around every corner, and he didn’t trust that the Harkonnens had not left unpleasant surprises for any new and unwelcome occupants.

  He ordered the great home of Baron Harkonnen to be searched, room by room, every chamber unlocked and scanned. His teams discovered numerous rooms that had obviously been used for torture, booby-trapped chambers that held nothing of obvious value, and several sealed vaults filled with solari coins, preserved melange, and incalculably expensive gems. The fact that none of these rooms had been looted, or even opened, in the five years since the fall of House Harkonnen demonstrated just how much fear the Baron must have inspired.

  Gurney had all the treasures liquidated and the profits distributed to the people in the form of public works, as a gesture of goodwill.

  He called his government together and summoned the administrators who had been left in de facto control of Giedi Prime for five years since Baron Harkonnen’s death. In an empire so vast and sprawling, no ruler, not even Muad’Dib, could meticulously manage every planet.

  The old Harkonnen administrators had been conspicuously absent since Gurney’s arrival on Giedi Prime, but they could no longer avoid him. Having learned of Gurney’s past here, they tried not to meet his gaze; some of them seemed fixated on his inkvine scar; others became simpering toadies trying to ooze their way into his good graces in order to keep their positions. Gurney didn’t much care for any of them; their leadership might have been effective under the old regime, but the harsh methods were ingrained. Just as the people didn’t know how to be free, these administrators did not understand what it meant to be compassionate. He would have to apply all his force of will to ensure that momentum did not drag Giedi Prime back to its former dark and repressive ways.

  He needed to make his new philosophy clear to this group of cautious and nervous administrators. He had put this off long enough. “I need to see familiar places. I will go to the slave pits, and to my old village of Dmitri. And you will accompany me.”

  Though Gurney had showed very little emotion toward the former leaders, he was sure they expected him to take out his ire on them, and Gurney did not disabuse them of that notion.

  First, he made a visit of state to the slave pits where he had been sentenced because he’d dared to sing songs that mocked the Baron. Here, he had mined and processed absurdly expensive blue obsidian, and Rabban had struck him with his inkvine whip. Here, he had been tied down and forced to watch in helpless horror as Rabban and his men sexually assaulted poor Bheth, then strangled her to death. Here, Gurney had found a way to escape by stowing away aboard a cargo ship that carried a load of blue obsidian bound for Duke Leto Atreides.

  Looking around the site, Gurney turned white with anger. How little had changed in all the years! He would much rather have faced rebel fanatics than confront the searing memories inspired by this sight. But if he did not heal these places, then no one would.

  His voice was quiet, but it may as well have been a shout. “I order these slave pits shut down immediately. Free these people and let them make their own lives. I hereby strip the slave masters of their authority.”

  “My Lord Halleck, you will disrupt everything! Our entire economy —”

  “I don’t give a damn. Let the slave masters work among the other people as equals.” His lips curled in a small smile. “Then we’ll see how well they survive.”

  Deciding to get the worst over with, he traveled nex
t to the shadow of Mount Ebony and the cluster of pleasure houses that had once serviced the Harkonnen troops. Giedi Prime had many such establishments, but he intended to go to a specific one.

  Gurney felt nauseated when he arrived at the doorstep. Memories of one night long ago howled inside his head. The administrators accompanying him were clearly frightened by his expression. “Who is the proprietor that runs these houses?” He remembered an old man who had wired himself into a chair, keeping careful business records but paying no attention to what went on behind the doors of his establishment.

  “Rulien Scheck has done an efficient job of managing in the absence of other leadership, my Lord Halleck. He has worked here for years, decades probably.”

  “Bring him to me. Now.”

  The old man came out, nearly stumbling, yet trying to smile as though proud of what he had accomplished. Prosthetic lines ran down his legs, keeping him from being otherwise crippled, but at least he was free from his chair now. A paunch hung over his waist, and soft rounded buttocks showed that he ate too well and sat down too much. His gray hair was heavy and oiled, as if he considered it to be stylish. Gurney recognized him immediately, but Rulien Scheck showed no sign that he remembered one particular desperate brother from one particular night….

  “I am honored that Giedi Prime’s new Lord would come to see my humble establishment. All of my financial records are open to you, sir. I run a clean and honest business, with the most beautiful women. I have banked the expected share of profits in a sealed account, formerly designated to the Harkonnens and now available to you. You will find no evidence of impropriety, I promise you that, my Lord.” He bowed.

  “This very house is evidence of impropriety.” Gurney pushed his way inside, but needed to see very little. He remembered the rooms, the pallets, the stains on the walls, the endless lines of sweaty Harkonnen soldiers who had come here seeking pleasure slaves like his sister Bheth, taking more delight in inflicting abuse on the unfortunate women than in the sex itself. By cauterizing her larynx, they had prevented Bheth even from screaming.

  He closed his eyes and did not turn to face the old proprietor. “I want this man garroted.”

  The administrators remained silent. Scheck squawked, began to argue, and Gurney pointed a blunt finger at him. “Be thankful that I do not first command a hundred soldiers to sodomize you — some of them with spiked clubs. But even though that is what you deserve, I am not a Harkonnen. Your death will be swift enough.”

  Gurney pushed past the astonished group and rushed back outside, breathing hard, anxious to get away. “And when they are done, see that all the women are freed, given a place to live — and burn this place to the ground. Burn all the pleasure houses across Giedi Prime.”

  Finally, he returned to the village of Dmitri, a poor and hopeless place that had not changed at all. His mother and father were gone. Because lives meant so little, the town kept no records of its people. Gurney could find no marker in the rundown and overcrowded graveyard, no sign that his parents had ever existed.

  Someday, he supposed Paul would offer to erect a monument for the victims. Gurney didn’t want that. His parents had not changed this world for the better. The people in the village had not stood up against tyranny. They had not defended him when the Harkonnen raiders had taken him away. They had refused to speak out against the injustice they encountered every single day.

  Gurney felt sadness, but no need to mourn. “Enough of this. Take me back to Barony….”

  Even there, though, every day brought a foul taste to his mouth. I am doing this for Paul, he reminded himself. He began to issue proclamations and sweeping orders — cities would be renamed, marks of the old Harkonnen way of life would be erased. He ordered the construction of a new government center, a seat where he could rule without being reminded of the Harkonnens.

  But human pain went deep into the strata of the grimy planet. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could bear to stay on Giedi Prime.

  4

  Every new year brings great hope and expectations. Every previous year fails to live up to them.

  —GURNEY HALLECK, unfinished song

  According to the Imperial Calendar, recalibrated so that its primary clocks and meridian were centered on Arrakis rather than Kaitain, the year changed to 10,198 A.G. Another year of Muad’Dib’s greatness, another year with more and more victories in his great Jihad. In Arrakeen, the wild and hedonistic celebrations rivaled a millennial fervor.

  The Emperor Paul-Muad’Dib stood at a corner of the high open balcony outside his sietch-austere bedchamber. He watched people milling below in the streets and squares, and was unsurprised by their mania. For thousands of years, the Fremen had understood the human need for animalistic release in their tau orgies. This was similar, but on a much larger scale, and he had planned it carefully.

  His holiness Muad’Dib, beloved of the people, had opened his coffers to provide spice and food for all supplicants. He emptied his cisterns so that water flowed into outstretched hands, and people reveled in it. In the months to come, he could easily refill his reservoirs, if only by using the deathstill water from all the nameless dead rounded up by his undertakers from side alleys and squalid housing.

  Chani joined him outside the moisture seal, barely touching him. She still hadn’t conceived another child, a much-anticipated heir. They both knew the necessity, and both wanted a baby, but the deep hurt of losing their first son, Leto — killed in a Sardaukar raid in the days before Paul won his victory against Emperor Shaddam — filled them with unconscious hesitation. The doctors said nothing was physically wrong with Chani, but Paul knew they could not measure or test for a mother’s broken heart.

  A second son would come, however. There would be another Leto, but that, too, carried heavy consequences — especially for Chani.

  They both breathed deeply of warm night air that smelled of smoke, cooking fires, incense, and unwashed bodies. So many people pushed together, rippling and swaying in a Brownian motion that Paul thought of as a large-scale unconscious dance as difficult to interpret as many of his visions.

  “They love me so easily when I demonstrate my largesse,” Paul said to her. “Does that mean that when times turn hard, they will be as quick to hate me?”

  “They will be quick to hate someone else, Beloved.”

  “And is that fair to the scapegoats?”

  “One should not be concerned with fairness when dealing with scapegoats,” Chani said, showing her ruthless Fremen streak.

  From the expansion of Arrakeen, many new houses pressed against each other, built along tried-and-true designs to huddle in the desert heat and preserve every breath of moisture. Other buildings stood defiantly (or foolishly) against tradition — homesick architects having erected structures that reminded Paul of Fharris, Grand Hain, Zebulon, and even Culat, planets so bleak and miserable that their inhabitants were happy to leave them in favor of Dune.

  As project master, Whitmore Bludd had continued to oversee the enormous construction of the new palace, and his blueprints became more grandiose day after day. Already, remarkably, the completed portion of Muad’Dib’s citadel was larger than the Imperial Palace they had burned on Kaitain, and Bludd was just getting started….

  When Korba entered their private wing, Paul noted how easily his guards let the man pass, even bowing respectfully, making a sign from one of the Qizara rites. He did not suspect treachery from the former head of his Fedaykin — the man’s loyalty was as unwavering as his fervor — but Paul did not like to be so glibly interrupted.

  “Korba, did I summon you?” The sharpness of Paul’s tone brought the other man up short.

  “If you had, I would have been here faster, Muad’Dib.” He apparently did not see the reason for Paul’s annoyance.

  “Chani and I were enjoying a private moment. Were you not raised in a sietch? A Fremen should know to respect privacy.”

  “Then please excuse the interruption.” Korba bowed, and blurte
d out the matter that concerned him so much. “Pardon me for saying so, but I do not like these immense public gatherings. They celebrate the Imperial Calendar. We should no longer follow that old relic.”

  “It is 10,198 A.G., Korba, counted from the formation of the Spacing Guild. That is not linked to the old Imperium, or to mine. They merely celebrate the turning of the new year, a harmless but necessary release of their energies.”

  “But there should be a new age — the Age of Muad’Dib,” Korba insisted, then laid out an idea he had obviously been planning for some time. “I propose that we start counting the calendar from the day you overthrew Shaddam IV and the Harkonnens. I have already asked several priest-scientists to draw up specific plans for its implementation and to search for numerological implications.”

  Paul refused the idea, much to Korba’s consternation.

  “But we are living in the greatest moment in history. We should signify it as such!”

  “One cannot see history while living it. If every Emperor were to reset the calendar just because he considered himself great, we would have a new age every century or so.”

  “But you are Muad’Dib!”

  Paul shook his head. “I am still but a man. History will determine the measure of my greatness.” Or Irulan will, he thought.

  ***

  LATER THAT NIGHT, when they lay in bed and neither of them could sleep, Chani stroked his cheek. “You are troubled, Usul.”

  “I am thinking.”

  “Always thinking. You need to rest.”

  “When I rest, I dream… and that makes me think even more.” He sat up in bed, noticing how cool and slick the expensive sheets felt. He had wanted his quarters to have nothing more than a simple Fremen-style pallet, no extravagances at all, but amenities had crept in nonetheless. Despite his best intentions, and the honor that his father had taught him, Paul feared that such ready access to so much power was likely to corrupt him eventually.