Mentats of Dune

Chapter 23 (Every hammer has the innate capacity to strike a nail)

Even before he left Arrakis orbit, Taref was weary of being astonished. He didn’t know how many more remarkable things he could endure. Even his dreams had never imagined so much.

If he returned to the desert sietch now and told them everything he had experienced in the short time since accepting VenHold’s offer, Naib Rurik would tell him to abandon such nonsense, and his older brothers would mock him.

But Taref knew it was all true.

His wide-eyed companions clustered together aboard the VenHold shuttle, staring out the windowports as the craft rose into orbit and approached the main spacefolder. The isolated Freemen tribes were vaguely aware of other planets and other ways, but none of his friends had known much beyond their lives in an isolated cave settlement … until now.

Taref and Lillis stood at the windowport, marveling at the view. Even dour Shurko, unable to hide his nervousness, stared at the brassy sphere of the planet. That was Arrakis down there — it seemed utterly incomprehensible. The largest sietch was no more than an immeasurable speck from here, and the sandworms were too small to be seen. Even Arrakis City, the largest metropolis Taref had ever visited or imagined, was barely a mark tucked into a sheltered rock-rimmed basin. As the shuttle continued to rise, he managed to locate the city only after careful concentration and help from Lillis.

“Will we ever go back? Did we make the right decision, Taref?” she asked, and Shurko looked to him as well, eager to hear his answer.

“Of course we did. Our people will be proud.”

“Our people will never understand us,” Shurko said. “They won’t know why we did this.”

Taref had always felt like a misfit, imagining stories and worlds while the rest of his tribe found all they needed to know in the sand at their feet and the wind on their faces. But he remembered history. “Generations ago, our ancestors escaped slavery and flew an unguided spacefolder to our new home. We’ve been stranded on Arrakis ever since — and now we are simply returning to the rest of the universe, breaking our chains and escaping our enslavement to the desert. And if we do well out there, my friends, we’ll be the first of many Freemen who branch out. Our people no longer need to be trapped where there is nothing but dunes and the prospect of a parched death.”

Taref doubted he would ever want to return to that dust bowl, and he did not know many others in the sietch who thought the way he did. Even though he had instilled a sense of curiosity in his friends, they didn’t really feel the depth of his dreams; the others merely listened to his impassioned stories rather than dreaming for themselves.

For much of his life, Taref had felt trapped in the isolated, primitive settlement. His father had berated him for dreaming about places other than Arrakis. “How does that help your survival? If Shai-Hulud comes because you walk with too much rhythm across the sands, will he listen to your stories before he devours you?”

But Taref had dreamed anyway. He chafed under Naib Rurik’s stern disapproval, and questioned many of the rules of the desert. He knew that traditions were a basis for day-to-day survival, but some of the old ways were no longer valid. He asked questions about old customs, drawing only ire from other tribe members, not answers. Peculiar Taref would never become his people’s Naib, nor did he ever want to. Naib Rurik would probably rule the sietch for many years, and Taref’s two older brothers would take their father’s place.

Taref had seen the rigid path his own life was set to take, like a channel carved deep into the rock — and he didn’t accept what he saw. He wanted the universe! It must be so wonderful out there, planet after planet of miracles. Back in the clear, dry air of the desert, he used to look up at the stars and imagine other worlds. Several times, he had made the journey to Arrakis City just to watch the spaceships arrive and depart … and dream of what might be.

Taref wanted to be like the offworlders. They had so many opportunities open to them, yet in a way he also resented them. Several times he had volunteered to work aboard spice harvesters because he knew it would draw his father’s disapproval. And when he and his friends sabotaged the harvesting equipment, Taref pretended he was getting even with the offworlders because of who they were and the opportunities they had.

When the Mentat Draigo Roget had made his offer, Taref at first had tried to remain aloof, but the longing was like a thirst in him, and the VenHold Mentat had offered a symbolic literjon of cool water.

Watching the desert planet recede as the spacefolder accelerated away, Taref struggled to imagine the sights and experiences they would have on faraway worlds. The Holtzman engines folded space, and the ship twisted itself out of the Canopus star system.

While the great vessel was in transit, Draigo went to address his new recruits. “You have everything you need? We will provide water, food, and new clothing.”

“So much water,” Lillis said in a voice like a sigh.

“And we already have clothing,” Chumel said.

Though Taref knew their distilling suits were well-made outfits that had saved their lives many times out in the open desert, Draigo frowned at the dusty garb. “You will clean up and dress exactly like other workers. You cannot complete your mission if you stand out. You must pass unnoticed like faint shadows.” He wrinkled his nose and sniffed deeply, although Taref had never noticed any odor among the desert people. “We will instruct you in traditional hygiene practices.”

“No Freeman will let another take away his stillsuit,” said Bentur, a gruff-voiced young man who usually kept his words to himself.

“We will provide better garments for your temporary use. In the meantime we will hold your things for you and return them whenever you wish to go back to Arrakis.”

“I heard offworlders are thieves,” Shurko said.

Draigo gave a small smile that was more like a smirk. “And I heard that the Freemen of the desert know very little about offworlders.” Shurko took offense and looked ready to fight the Mentat.

Taref said, “Stop, Shurko — you gave me your word.”

“I did not agree to be insulted!”

“Stop being stupid. They are taking us away from Arrakis at great expense, showing us their ways. They have no need to steal from us. Remember that planet with the ocean and the rain falling from the sky? If he meant to deceive us, this is an elaborate and costly trick.”

“But what does he expect from us that would be worth such an investment?” Lillis asked.

“It is not a trick — it’s an opportunity,” Draigo said. “We will teach you about offworlders and about our commercial competitors. We will give you the modern wonders that were merely rumors in your little desert village.”

“It’s called a sietch,” Lillis said.

Draigo gave a brief nod. “Very well. I will learn from you, as you learn from me.”

TAREF WAS STUNNED when he and his friends were sprayed with water to rinse off the dust and grit, and the leftover water was allowed to simply drain away, where it was presumably recycled. Always before, he had scrubbed his hands and body with fine powder-sand, but now he felt much cleaner — even cleaner than a person might be if he were blasted by a sandstorm.

This waste of water was an unbelievable extravagance — and a hint of what was possible out there. Draigo had told them there were many worlds in the Imperium, and most were far more hospitable than Arrakis. Thinking back on his life up to this point, Taref realized that he had seen nothing, done nothing, been nothing. If VenHold let him travel as promised, there seemed as many possibilities for him now as there were stars in the night sky.

Lillis was unsettled and unrecognizable when she came to him wearing a clean jumpsuit. Her light brown hair was clean and loose, and — Taref marveled about this — still wet. Waddoch drank and drank of the free-flowing water until he became sick and vomited up a puddle, which embarrassed him. The ship’s maintenance workers used even more water to wash the vomit away.

“This is … unbelievable.” Taref felt a bit ill from being surrounded by so much moisture; he and his companions had some difficulty breathing the humid air, but he assumed that gradually they would get used to it.

When the spacefolder arrived at Kolhar, the planetary shields were shunted aside to allow passage for the descending shuttle. The ship passed through storm clouds, and water pelted the hull, streaming in amazing runnels along the windowport.

When they landed at the Kolhar spaceport and emerged onto a new world, cold white ice fell from the sky and pelted Taref’s face. He had never felt such biting cold. The stinging droplets drenched him and his companions. Shurko protected his face with his hands and peered through his fingers into the sky, awestruck and afraid.

Draigo laughed and ushered them away. “That is called sleet, or snow — frozen water. It falls from the sky and collects on the ground. Some planets are covered with it, just as Arrakis is covered with sand.”

Taref held out his hand, marveling as the snowflakes dissolved in his palm. “This is water? Frozen water?” The snow continued to fall, and though it melted quickly at the warm spaceport, brushstrokes of white marked the hills outside the city.

“Offworld weather patterns may be interesting to you, but they are not relevant to our goals.” Draigo brushed white flakes off his shoulders. “This is just a part of the new universe I have promised you. We’ll show you more later, and there will be time for instruction.”

THE FOLLOWING DAY, Draigo took Taref and his companions out to the field of proto-Navigators, private compartments that contained volunteers undergoing transformation.

Taref sniffed. “There is melange in the air.”

“Not much of it, I hope,” Draigo said. “Spice is too valuable to let it leak out indiscriminately.”

Lillis went to one of the chambers and peered through an observation window. “There are people inside, suffocating in spice gas!”

“It causes them to transform into something special. This is why we need to harvest so much melange from Arrakis. Combined Mercantiles helps us create the Navigators that guide our starships.”

The desert people gathered around the chambers, saw misshapen forms wallowing in spice gas. “Spice helps the Freemen to open their minds and see possibilities,” Taref said. But this was not what he had expected, and the grotesque sight made him uneasy.

“It does the same for our Navigators, but in ways no one can understand,” Draigo said. “They encompass the vastness of space in their minds, and envision safe pathways for our spaceships.”

The pungent cinnamon odor was comforting to Taref, though he did not miss the desert planet at all. Although Shurko and Bentur already seemed homesick, Taref did not regret his choice. He was determined to see the marvels in the rest of the galaxy. While these spice-filled chambers and the distorted Navigators were intriguing, Taref thought the snow falling from the sky was even more amazing.…

Draigo took them back to the sprawling Kolhar spaceport complex, and Lillis noted out loud that the high, exposed buildings would never survive one of the powerful Coriolis storms of Arrakis. Along the way, he also told them about his abilities as a Mentat, noting their wide-eyed stares of disbelief. Just another marvel.

Myriad ships of all types and configurations sat alongside cranes and suspensor lifts that brought the components together and locked them into place. Work crews assembled frameworks, then added engines and fleshed out the interiors. Other workers welded and painted the ships. The air smelled of acrid solvents, grease, and spilled fuel.

Draigo took his new recruits from one spacecraft to another, dodging cargo unloaders and refueling vessels, as well as flatbeds filled with replacement energy packs. Shurko put his hands to his ears. “So much noise. And the new smells! It makes my mind spin.”

“This is a spaceport,” Draigo said. “You’ll have to grow comfortable with it, because I intend to turn you loose in the shipyards at other spaceports. Familiarize yourself with the hangars, the activity, the tasks. You will need to look as comfortable in places like this as you do in your sietch.”

When his friends seemed intimidated, Taref squared his shoulders. “We learned how to operate spice machinery. We can learn the simple tasks performed by shipyard and spaceport workers.” He looked over at Draigo. “And then you want us to sabotage your rival’s engines?”

The Mentat nodded. “That time will come. We have ships of all common designs here on Kolhar. We will show you how to do basic work, teach you what you need to know, so that you’ll qualify for a job with EsconTran or any other shipping company.” As Draigo talked, Taref looked at the numerous spaceships, the rising shuttles, a cargo ship landing, a passenger vessel being constructed.

Draigo briskly got his attention again. “We’ll tell you what to say to convince others that you understand how a spacefolder works, as much as a dockhand needs to know. And”—he lowered his voice and leaned closer—“I will show you the simple things you can do to make critical systems fail.” He gestured around the busy spaceport. “You will become experts at making spacefaring vessels go wrong.”