Mentats of Dune

Chapter 15 (Anyone who searches for the meaning)

On a side street in Arrakis City, Vorian Atreides remained with Captain Phillips in the crowded, noisy gaming den for the better part of an hour. They watched the gamblers, the drug consumers, and those who imbibed potent spice beer or expensive offworld liquors. The dingy place smelled of dust, melange, and a faint background odor of urine from a poorly sealed reclamation chamber. Vor frowned; no true desert worker would be so careless as to let that moisture go to waste. He shuffled his boots to find a more comfortable position for his sore infected toe.

Griffin Harkonnen had frequented places like this, spreading bribes, endangering himself, desperate to find any information about where Vorian Atreides had hidden on the desert world.…

Captain Phillips wanted to eavesdrop on conversations, hoping to find a supplier who could offer a cargo of melange for a better price than Qimmit’s. So far, Phillips had remained silent, but now he caught Vor’s gaze, then nodded over his shoulder. Vor took a careful, casual sip of his spice beer while glancing where the captain had indicated. He spotted Qimmit in the crowd, chatting with miners and Combined Mercantiles businessmen.

“He’s moving in our direction … and not by accident,” Phillips said. “I’ve been watching him inch his way toward us.”

With his dusty stillsuit hood down to reveal his matted, unruly hair, Qimmit glided through the throng, pretending not to look at the two men.

“We won’t need to find an alternate supplier if he decides to lower his price,” the captain continued. “Qimmit is a crafty one, but he’s the least crooked of the possible suppliers. At least he never sells me diluted product.”

“Should we turn our backs on him?” Vor asked. He guessed that Qimmit had never expected them to walk away in the first place, and he wouldn’t want to lose their business to a rival. “To show him he’ll have to work to get us back?”

Phillips clicked his glass against his companion’s, nodded. “A good negotiating ploy, Vorian Kepler.”

Kepler. The alternate surname still jarred Vor. He wished he could tell the captain the full truth, but Vor preferred to remain anonymous.

They were trying to catch the bartender’s attention to order refills when a disingenuous voice said from behind, “If you two are here, then you haven’t found another supplier. Still need a load of spice?”

Vor and the captain turned to face the grinning spice merchant, with their schooners still empty. Phillips appraised the merchant with cool reserve. “We haven’t selected another supplier yet.”

Qimmit patted the captain’s back and looked at him with unfocused blue eyes. “You’re in luck, old friend. I’ve been talking with one of my associates, and his crew just returned after excavating a large spice deposit in the deep desert. The melange is earmarked for Combined Mercantiles, of course, but he is allowed a certain percentage for, ah, discretionary use. He delivered the haul to a warehouse here in town, and he’ll be putting his percentage up for auction. But if that happens, it goes through inspectors, packagers, shipping administrators, all of whom expect bribes. Rather than bother with all that, I convinced him to offer you the load under a revised pricing structure — if we can come to a quick agreement. I am in a volatile business.”

The captain responded in a terse tone, as if holding a grudge, and Vor didn’t think it was an act. “Revised pricing structure? Exactly what price do you propose?”

Qimmit rattled on about profit margins, equipment losses, and storage fees, and grinned again as he offered a purported discount, which brought the price down to only slightly more than Captain Phillips had offered in the first place. The deal was struck, and Qimmit saved face, while Phillips got the load for an acceptable cost. The two men finally got the bartender to provide another round of spice beer for all three of them — and the merchant paid.

Captain Phillips finished his drink, seemingly unaffected by the potency, and turned to Vor. “We’d better load the cargo right away and get back to the ship. Weathersats show a sandstorm rolling in tomorrow morning, and I don’t want to be trapped on this rock.”

AS THEY HURRIED out through the dusty city, making their way along convoluted alleys that had an aversion to straight lines, Vorian and Captain Phillips encountered dusty-robed desert people gathered around a battered transport vehicle that had landed in an open square near a collapsed warehouse.

The desert people came forward with a quick efficiency of movement, like ants working together on a silent mission. Walking shoulder to shoulder, they entered the cargo bay, then returned down the ramp, each pair carrying a body loosely wrapped in a polymer tarpaulin.

Phillips stopped, his expression a mixture of fear and disgust. Vor knew what the people were doing. “Casualties, Captain — retrieved from a spice crew, judging by the orange dust swirling around. Frequent accidents occur.”

“I know,” Phillips said, “but I thought sandworms caused most of the deaths.”

“Worms aren’t the only hazard in the desert,” Vor said. “I remember one accident that involved an airtight evac compartment hauled away from a spice factory. It became a death trap with poisonous exhaust sealed inside.” He nodded toward the wrapped bodies the desert people were whisking away. “That hauler flies around Arrakis City, looking for bodies in the streets, whether knifed or shot, or simply dead from lack of hope.”

After each body was removed from the hold, workers quickly ran their hands over the garments, but found few treasures to retrieve. Obviously, the victims had already been robbed.

Phillips shook his head. “What a waste of life.”

“Nothing goes to waste in this place,” Vor said. He lowered his voice. “You might think the bodies are just discarded out in the desert, dumped in a mass grave of some kind. Few will speak of what I am about to tell you, but there are rumors that the desert people are so desperate for water that they render down the bodies for whatever moisture is found within the flesh.”

Phillips looked decidedly queasy, but Vor recognized the necessities in such a harsh place. “We have the option to leave here, Captain. Many of these people don’t. When they die on Arrakis, they vanish.” He felt a heaviness in his chest.

Not wanting the body of Griffin Harkonnen to suffer a similar fate, Vor had sent it home so that the young man could be buried on family ground.

Griffin had been a young man out of his depth who sought unwise and unchanneled revenge. Vor understood why Griffin blamed him for the disgrace of House Harkonnen, but the young man hadn’t needed to die.

I couldn’t save him, Vor thought. And the Harkonnens continued to hate him. Was that all Vor had accomplished with his life? Was that his legacy now, the shadow that would cling to his family name?

He was the son of the hated cymek Titan Agamemnon, but Vor had overcome that to become the greatest Hero of the Jihad. He had won the Battle of Corrin and defeated the thinking machines forever. But he was also responsible for the disgrace of his protégé Abulurd Harkonnen, which had effectively brought down that entire noble house and sent them into exile.…

He wished he could have traveled to Lankiveil with Griffin’s body, faced the family, explained what had happened rather than writing a brief, cryptic note. But the Harkonnens already hated him too much and would have killed him on the spot. His peace overture would have been seen as pouring salt on an open wound. He had shirked his responsibility, though, and there was no excuse for that, no matter how painful it might have been.

Uneasy, Captain Phillips turned away from the wrapped bodies. “I can’t get off this planet soon enough.”

AS THE CARGO ship lifted off from Arrakis and headed for the Nalgan Shipping spacefolder waiting in orbit, Vor sat in the copilot seat. He instinctively watched the instruments and everything the captain did, though he had other things on his mind.

In his long, long life, Vor had always tried to do the moral thing, taking actions he would not later regret. But in living for more than two centuries, he’d done too many things that he wished had turned out differently … things that hung in his memory, incomplete. At the end of the Jihad, he had retired and tried to vanish into history, but history would not let him go. His own memories would not let him go.

No matter which planet he visited, he saw reminders of the past, and things he wanted to change about the future. Thoughts of Griffin Harkonnen, and memories of how Vorian had harmed the Harkonnens — whether intentionally or accidentally — moved to the forefront of his awareness and whispered like ghosts around him.

Vor didn’t know what his legacy would be if he vanished entirely from the Imperium. How would he define the purpose of his life? For decades he’d been a warrior — a hero to most, but a villain to others. He had left a trail of death, destruction, and broken dreams. In all that time, he especially regretted losing two much-loved women — Leronica, who died on Salusa Secundus at age ninety-three even before the end of the Jihad, and most recently his dear Mariella, whom he’d married on Kepler and then stayed with as she, too, grew old … until Emperor Salvador forced him to leave Kepler and vanish again. Given the choice, Mariella had opted not to go with him, and instead remained with their children and grandchildren.

His heart ached from missing both of those women, and his children, and his grandchildren. Many decades ago, he’d been estranged from his twin sons by Leronica, and had left all of them behind. He probably had many other grandchildren he didn’t know about, even great-great-grandchildren, and more.

Since Griffin’s death, he had simply been going nowhere, wandering without a destination, keeping his head down … but why shouldn’t he at least try to do some good? He had not been born to be a passive bystander — and he could not remain invisible indefinitely. He longed to accomplish something that really mattered.

As the spice-loaded shuttle approached the Nalgan spacefolder in orbit, he gazed out at the stars. Since signing aboard as a footloose crewman, he had continued to feel the guilt gnawing at him, and this return to Arrakis only made the sting more painful.

Vor decided he had to heal the wounds. For the sake of all his descendants, regardless of where they were, the name of Atreides was bigger than he was.

When the cargo ship settled into its docking hold aboard the spacefolder, Vor said to Captain Phillips, “I’m sorry, but I have … another calling. I’ll need to leave the ship as soon as I can arrange alternate passage.”

The captain looked shocked, even dismayed. “But I’ve come to depend on you! Do you need a raise?” He smiled awkwardly. “Do you want my job? I’d be happy to switch places — I’d never offer that deal to anyone else, but you’re the most qualified pilot and worker I’ve ever had.”

“No, it’s not about money or position.” In fact, Vor had great wealth distributed across numerous planetary banks, a fortune he had acquired over his long life. “There are … certain issues I need to resolve from my past. I regret the damned short notice. I’m sorry to do this to you.”

Phillips waited for further details, but Vor kept them to himself. Finally the captain sighed. “It’s obvious to anyone that you’re overqualified for your job — I should have guessed you were carrying a book of secrets in your brain.”

Vor gave a mysterious nod. Actually, my secrets would fill many volumes, not just one book. “Maybe our paths will cross in the future.”

Phillips placed a muscular arm over his shoulder. “No need to arrange for alternate transportation. I’ll get you wherever you want to go, and Nalgan Shipping will pay for it. What is our destination?”

After a moment of intense thought, Vor said, “Lankiveil.”