Dune

“Yueh! Yueh! Yueh!” goes the refrain. “A million deaths were not enough for Yueh!”

—FROM “A CHILD’S HISTORY OF MUAD’DIB”

BY THE PRINCESS IRULAN

The door stood ajar, and Jessica stepped through it into a room with yellow walls. To her left stretched a low settee of black hide and two empty bookcases, a hanging waterflask with dust on its bulging sides. To her right, bracketing another door, stood more empty bookcases, a desk from Caladan and three chairs. At the windows directly ahead of her stood Dr. Yueh, his back to her, his attention fixed upon the outside world.

Jessica took another silent step into the room.

She saw that Yueh’s coat was wrinkled, a white smudge near the left elbow as though he had leaned against chalk. He looked, from behind, like a fleshless stick figure in overlarge black clothing, a caricature poised for stringy movement at the direction of a puppet master. Only the squarish block of head with long ebony hair caught in its silver Suk School ring at the shoulder seemed alive—turning slightly to follow some movement outside.

Again, she glanced around the room, seeing no sign of her son, but the closed door on her right, she knew, let into a small bedroom for which Paul had expressed a liking.

“Good afternoon, Dr. Yueh,” she said. “Where’s Paul?”

He nodded as though to something out the window, spoke in an absent manner without turning: “Your son grew tired, Jessica. I sent him into the next room to rest.”

Abruptly, he stiffened, whirled with mustache flopping over his purpled lips. “Forgive me, my Lady! My thoughts were far away…I…did not mean to be familiar.”

She smiled, held out her right hand. For a moment, she was afraid he might kneel. “Wellington, please.”

“To use your name like that…I….”

“We’ve known each other six years,” she said. “It’s long past time formalities should’ve been dropped between us—in private.”

Yueh ventured a thin smile, thinking: I believe it has worked. Now, she’ll think anything unusual in my manner is due to embarrassment. She’ll not look for deeper reasons when she believes she already knows the answer.

“I’m afraid I was woolgathering,” he said. “Whenever I…feel especially sorry for you, I’m afraid I think of you as…well, Jessica.”

“Sorry for me? Whatever for?”

Yueh shrugged. Long ago, he had realized Jessica was not gifted with the full Truthsay as his Wanna had been. Still, he always used the truth with Jessica whenever possible. It was safest.

“You’ve seen this place, my…Jessica.” He stumbled over the name, plunged ahead: “So barren after Caladan. And the people! Those townswomen we passed on the way here wailing beneath their veils. The way they looked at us.”

She folded her arms across her breast, hugging herself, feeling the crysknife there, a blade ground from a sandworm’s tooth, if the reports were right. “It’s just that we’re strange to them—different people, different customs. They’ve known only the Harkonnens.” She looked past him out the windows. “What were you staring at out there?”

He turned back to the window. “The people.”

Jessica crossed to his side, looked to the left toward the front of the house where Yueh’s attention was focused. A line of twenty palm trees grew there, the ground beneath them swept clean, barren. A screen fence separated them from the road upon which robed people were passing. Jessica detected a faint shimmering in the air between her and the people—a house shield—and went on to study the passing throng, wondering why Yueh found them so absorbing.

The pattern emerged and she put a hand to her cheek. The way the passing people looked at the palm trees! She saw envy, some hate…even a sense of hope. Each person raked those trees with a fixity of expression.

“Do you know what they’re thinking?” Yueh asked.

“You profess to read minds?” she asked.

“Those minds,” he said. “They look at those trees and they think: ‘There are one hundred of us.’ That’s what they think.”

She turned a puzzled frown on him. “Why?”

“Those are date palms,” he said. “One date palm requires forty liters of water a day. A man requires but eight liters. A palm, then, equals five men. There are twenty palms out there—one hundred men.”

“But some of those people look at the trees hopefully.”

“They but hope some dates will fall, except it’s the wrong season.”

“We look at this place with too critical an eye,” she said. “There’s hope as well as danger here. The spice could make us rich. With a fat treasury, we can make this world into whatever we wish.”

And she laughed silently at herself: Who am I trying to convince? The laugh broke through her restraints, emerging brittle, without humor. “But you can’t buy security,” she said.

Yueh turned away to hide his face from her. If only it were possible to hate these people instead of love them! In her manner, in many ways, Jessica was like his Wanna. Yet that thought carried its own rigors, hardening him to his purpose. The ways of the Harkonnen cruelty were devious. Wanna might not be dead. He had to be certain.

“Do not worry for us, Wellington,” Jessica said. “The problem’s ours, not yours.”

She thinks I worry for her! He blinked back tears. And I do, of course. But I must stand before that black Baron with his deed accomplished, and take my one chance to strike him where he is weakest—in his gloating moment!

He sighed.

“Would it disturb Paul if I looked in on him?” she asked.

“Not at all. I gave him a sedative.”

“He’s taking the change well?” she asked.

“Except for getting a bit overtired. He’s excited, but what fifteen-year-old wouldn’t be under these circumstances?” He crossed to the door, opened it. “He’s in here.”

Jessica followed, peered into a shadowy room.

Paul lay on a narrow cot, one arm beneath a light cover, the other thrown back over his head. Slatted blinds at a window beside the bed wove a loom of shadows across face and blanket.

Jessica stared at her son, seeing the oval shape of face so like her own. But the hair was the Duke’s—coal-colored and tousled. Long lashes concealed the lime-toned eyes. Jessica smiled, feeling her fears retreat. She was suddenly caught by the idea of genetic traces in her son’s features—her lines in eyes and facial outline, but sharp touches of the father peering through that outline like maturity emerging from childhood.

She thought of the boy’s features as an exquisite distillation out of random patterns—endless queues of happenstance meeting at this nexus. The thought made her want to kneel beside the bed and take her son in her arms, but she was inhibited by Yueh’s presence. She stepped back, closed the door softly.

Yueh had returned to the window, unable to bear watching the way Jessica stared at her son. Why did Wanna never give me children? he asked himself. I know as a doctor there was no physical reason against it. Was there some Bene Gesserit reason? Was she, perhaps, instructed to serve a different purpose? What could it have been? She loved me, certainly.

For the first time, he was caught up in the thought that he might be part of a pattern more involuted and complicated than his mind could grasp.

Jessica stopped beside him, said: “What delicious abandon in the sleep of a child.”

He spoke mechanically: “If only adults could relax like that.”

“Yes.”

“Where do we lose it?” he murmured.

She glanced at him, catching the odd tone, but her mind was still on Paul, thinking of the new rigors in his training here, thinking of the differences in his life now—so very different from the life they once had planned for him.

“We do, indeed, lose something,” she said.

She glanced out to the right at a slope humped with a wind-troubled gray-green of bushes—dusty leaves and dry claw branches. The too-dark sky hung over the slope like a blot, and the milky light of the Arrakeen sun gave the scene a silver cast—light like the crysknife concealed in her bodice.

“The sky’s so dark,” she said.

“That’s partly the lack of moisture,” he said.

“Water!” she snapped. “Everywhere you turn here, you’re involved with the lack of water!”

“It’s the precious mystery of Arrakis,” he said.

“Why is there so little of it? There’s volcanic rock here. There’re a dozen power sources I could name. There’s polar ice. They say you can’t drill in the desert—storms and sandtides destroy equipment faster than it can be installed, if the worms don’t get you first. They’ve never found water traces there, anyway. But the mystery, Wellington, the real mystery is the wells that’ve been drilled up here in the sinks and basins. Have you read about those?”

“First a trickle, then nothing,” he said.

“But, Wellington, that’s the mystery. The water was there. It dries up. And never again is there water. Yet another hole nearby produces the same result: a trickle that stops. Has no one ever been curious about this?”

“It is curious,” he said. “You suspect some living agency? Wouldn’t that have shown in core samples?”

“What would have shown? Alien plant matter…or animal? Who could recognize it?” She turned back to the slope. “The water is stopped. Something plugs it. That’s my suspicion.”

“Perhaps the reason’s known,” he said. “The Harkonnens sealed off many sources of information about Arrakis. Perhaps there was reason to suppress this.”

“What reason?” she asked. “And then there’s the atmospheric moisture. Little enough of it, certainly, but there’s some. It’s the major source of water here, caught in windtraps and precipitators. Where does that come from?”

“The polar caps?”

“Cold air takes up little moisture, Wellington. There are things here behind the Harkonnen veil that bear close investigation, and not all of those things are directly involved with the spice.”

“We are indeed behind the Harkonnen veil,” he said. “Perhaps we’ll….” He broke off, noting the sudden intense way she was looking at him. “Is something wrong?”

“The way you say ‘Harkonnen,’” she said. “Even my Duke’s voice doesn’t carry that weight of venom when he uses the hated name. I didn’t know you had personal reasons to hate them, Wellington.”

Great Mother! he thought. I’ve aroused her suspicions! Now I must use every trick my Wanna taught me. There’s only one solution: tell the truth as far as I can.

He said: “You didn’t know that my wife, my Wanna….” He shrugged, unable to speak past a sudden constriction in his throat. Then: “They….” The words would not come out. He felt panic, closed his eyes tightly, experiencing the agony in his chest and little else until a hand touched his arm gently.

“Forgive me,” Jessica said. “I did not mean to open an old wound.” And she thought: Those animals! His wife was Bene Gesserit—the signs are all over him. And it’s obvious the Harkonnens killed her. Here’s another poor victim bound to the Atreides by a cherem of hate.

“I am sorry,” he said. “I’m unable to talk about it.” He opened his eyes, giving himself up to the internal awareness of grief. That, at least, was truth.

Jessica studied him, seeing the up-angled cheeks, the dark sequins of almond eyes, the butter complexion, and stringy mustache hanging like a curved frame around purpled lips and narrow chin. The creases of his cheeks and forehead, she saw, were as much lines of sorrow as of age. A deep affection for him came over her.

“Wellington, I’m sorry we brought you into this dangerous place,” she said.

“I came willingly,” he said. And that, too, was true.

“But this whole planet’s a Harkonnen trap. You must know that.”

“It will take more than a trap to catch the Duke Leto,” he said. And that, too, was true.

“Perhaps I should be more confident of him,” she said. “He is a brilliant tactician.”

“We’ve been uprooted,” he said. “That’s why we’re uneasy.”

“And how easy it is to kill the uprooted plant,” she said. “Especially when you put it down in hostile soil.”

“Are we certain the soil’s hostile?”

“There were water riots when it was learned how many people the Duke was adding to the population,” she said. “They stopped only when the people learned we were installing new windtraps and condensers to take care of the load.”

“There is only so much water to support human life here,” he said. “The people know if more come to drink a limited amount of water, the price goes up and the very poor die. But the Duke has solved this. It doesn’t follow that the riots mean permanent hostility toward him.”

“And guards,” she said. “Guards everywhere. And shields. You see the blurring of them everywhere you look. We did not live this way on Caladan.”

“Give this planet a chance,” he said.

But Jessica continued to stare hard-eyed out the window. “I can smell death in this place,” she said. “Hawat sent advance agents in here by the battalion. Those guards outside are his men. The cargo handlers are his men. There’ve been unexplained withdrawals of large sums from the treasury. The amounts mean only one thing: bribes in high places.” She shook her head. “Where Thufir Hawat goes, death and deceit follow.”

“You malign him.”

“Malign? I praise him. Death and deceit are our only hopes now. I just do not fool myself about Thufir’s methods.”

“You should…keep busy,” he said. “Give yourself no time for such morbid—”

“Busy! What is it that takes most of my time, Wellington? I am the Duke’s secretary—so busy that each day I learn new things to fear…things even he doesn’t suspect I know.” She compressed her lips, spoke thinly: “Sometimes I wonder how much my Bene Gesserit business training figured in his choice of me.”

“What do you mean?” He found himself caught by the cynical tone, the bitterness that he had never seen her expose.

“Don’t you think, Wellington,” she asked, “that a secretary bound to one by love is so much safer?”

“That is not a worthy thought, Jessica.”

The rebuke came naturally to his lips. There was no doubt how the Duke felt about his concubine. One had only to watch him as he followed her with his eyes.

She sighed. “You’re right. It’s not worthy.”

Again, she hugged herself, pressing the sheathed crysknife against her flesh and thinking of the unfinished business it represented.

“There’ll be much bloodshed soon,” she said. “The Harkonnens won’t rest until they’re dead or my Duke destroyed. The Baron cannot forget that Leto is a cousin of the royal blood—no matter what the distance—while the Harkonnen titles came out of the CHOAM pocketbook. But the poison in him, deep in his mind, is the knowledge that an Atreides had a Harkonnen banished for cowardice after the Battle of Corrin.”

“The old feud,” Yueh muttered. And for a moment he felt an acid touch of hate. The old feud had trapped him in its web, killed his Wanna or—worse—left her for Harkonnen tortures until her husband did their bidding. The old feud had trapped him and these people were part of that poisonous thing. The irony was that such deadliness should come to flower here on Arrakis, the one source in the universe of melange, the prolonger of life, the giver of health.

“What are you thinking?” she asked.

“I am thinking that the spice brings six hundred and twenty thousand solaris the decagram on the open market right now. That is wealth to buy many things.”

“Does greed touch even you, Wellington?”

“Not greed.”

“What then?”

He shrugged. “Futility.” He glanced at her. “Can you remember your first taste of spice?”

“It tasted like cinnamon.”

“But never twice the same,” he said. “It’s like life—it presents a different face each time you take it. Some hold that the spice produces a learned-flavor reaction. The body, learning a thing is good for it, interprets the flavor as pleasurable—slightly euphoric. And, like life, never to be truly synthesized.”

“I think it would’ve been wiser for us to go renegade, to take ourselves beyond the Imperial reach,” she said.

He saw that she hadn’t been listening to him, focused on her words, wondering: Yes—why didn’t she make him do this? She could make him do virtually anything.

He spoke quickly because here was truth and a change of subject: “Would you think it bold of me…Jessica, if I asked a personal question?”

She pressed against the window ledge in an unexplainable pang of disquiet. “Of course not. You’re…my friend.”

“Why haven’t you made the Duke marry you?”

She whirled, head up, glaring. “Made him marry me? But—”

“I should not have asked,” he said.

“No.” She shrugged. “There’s good political reason—as long as my Duke remains unmarried some of the Great Houses can still hope for alliance. And….” She sighed. “…motivating people, forcing them to your will, gives you a cynical attitude toward humanity. It degrades everything it touches. If I made him do…this, then it would not be his doing.”

“It’s a thing my Wanna might have said,” he murmured. And this, too, was truth. He put a hand to his mouth, swallowing convulsively. He had never been closer to speaking out, confessing his secret role.

Jessica spoke, shattering the moment. “Besides, Wellington, the Duke is really two men. One of them I love very much. He’s charming, witty, considerate…tender—everything a woman could desire. But the other man is…cold, callous, demanding, selfish—as harsh and cruel as a winter wind. That’s the man shaped by the father.” Her face contorted. “If only that old man had died when my Duke was born!”

In the silence that came between them, a breeze from a ventilator could be heard fingering the blinds.

Presently, she took a deep breath, said, “Leto’s right—these rooms are nicer than the ones in the other sections of the house.” She turned, sweeping the room with her gaze. “If you’ll excuse me, Wellington, I want another look through this wing before I assign quarters.”

He nodded. “Of course.” And he thought: If only there were some way not to do this thing that I must do.

Jessica dropped her arms, crossed to the hall door and stood there a moment, hesitating, then let herself out. All the time we talked he was hiding something, holding something back, she thought. To save my feelings, no doubt. He’s a good man. Again, she hesitated, almost turned back to confront Yueh and drag the hidden thing from him. But that would only shame him, frighten him to learn he’s so easily read. I should place more trust in my friends.