Mentats of Dune

Chapter 58 (I prefer to celebrate my decisions)

News of Manford Torondo’s death traveled slowly across the Imperium, especially with so many interdicted worlds and rerouted spaceship schedules. For weeks now, the Butlerians had been oddly quiet about their loss.

After assassinating the leader, Taref was treated better than a Naib at the Kolhar space complex. He was considered a hero, and he told the story repeatedly, describing how he’d seen the opportunity and taken the successful shot.

At night, though, he felt qualms as he remembered the whizz-clack of the Maula pistol projectile, the splash of blood as the man’s skull shattered, and his body tumbling to the streets. A powerful leader of a terrible movement, killed so easily … and so much more personally than all those who had died when Taref sabotaged EsconTran ships. With his own eyes, he had seen the blood, the falling body.…

Reports from other operatives on Arrakis verified the news of the kill. As a reward, Directeur Venport offered Taref a large bonus, but the desert man asked for nothing more than a chance to meet with his friends and wish them well whenever they came back to Kolhar. If he could get them all together again, maybe they would travel to Caladan, as Venport had promised them.

Then Taref learned that one more of his desert friends, Waddoch, had also been killed, caught committing sabotage on an EsconTran ship. Other engineers had discovered his false identity, and seized him, but Waddoch took his own life before he could be turned over for questioning. As a matter of honor, the young man had done the only correct thing.

The loss opened another deep wound in Taref.…

Lillis was the most like Taref, the person who most closely shared his dreams and imaginings. She had spent her youth fancying what lay beyond the stars and cultures other than her own. She even seemed interested in finding Zensunni remnants who still lived on distant planets — ancestors of the desert people of Arrakis. Like him, Lillis had always thought about more than going on desert raids to sabotage spice harvesters, or playing tricks on offworlders. Few young women turned their backs on sietch life, and he knew she had grand dreams.

Taref could not deny that their imaginings were far different from the missions Directeur Venport had assigned them. He and his companions weren’t being sent out to find the roots of their culture, nor were they exploring exotic places that would make wonderful tales back on Arrakis. Instead, they were destroying a rival’s ships and killing everyone aboard without regard to guilt or innocence. And Venport rewarded them well for doing it.

That wasn’t how any of them had expected it to be, certainly not what he had promised them when he pressured them to follow him on a grand adventure.…

When Lillis returned to Kolhar from another mission, Taref hurried to greet her. He felt joy in his heart again to know she was back. The weather was gray and windy. Cold raindrops and hail pellets whipped across the sky, spattering their faces as they stood outside the main barracks. When he saw her face, though, he could see she was miserable and shivering, her eyes downcast.

“It’s so cold here, Taref,” she said. “So cold everywhere compared with home. And the moisture in the air makes it hard to breathe. So much water.” Her dark eyes still showed the deep blue of a lifetime of melange consumption. “They have a word for it—drowning—when one is submerged in the water until the lungs fill.”

Taref tried to summon excitement in his voice, for her sake. “But remember, we’re on another world. I thought you wanted to get away from Arrakis, just as I did. One day we’ll go to Caladan together and see the oceans.”

She extended her hand, palm up, and it trembled as the drizzle came down. “I don’t want to see those places, not anymore. I’d rather be … home.”

Taref’s heart went out to her. “I’ll arrange it so you can return to Arrakis, if that’s what you really want. Directeur Venport told me to ask for any favor I wish. Go back to our sietch — will that make you happy?”

Lillis sighed. “I feel like a hatchling taken out of a hawk’s nest. Even when it’s put back, the other birds never accept it. They kill it.”

He didn’t know how to help her. “I have been back there,” he said. “You will see the desert differently.”

“I see the whole universe differently, Taref.” Her voice sounded so empty. “My dreams are gone. And my home is gone. All I have is this.…” She looked up at the gray skies, held out her palms to the cold sleet. “And I don’t want it.”

AT DAWN THE next morning, Taref emerged from the barracks and found Lillis lying on the pebbled ground outside the building, face up, arms spread at her sides. Not moving.

Taref rushed to her, picked up her shoulders, and cradled her head. With tears streaming down his cheeks, he whispered her name. Lillis’s eyes were open, but she was covered with a light dusting of snow. She had no body warmth left. Sometime during the night, she had lain down on the ground, and just died.

Taref groaned, holding her stiff, cold body, rocking her back and forth. Lillis would never go back to the dunes now. She had perished far from home, far from the sunshine and golden sands, the pungent smell of melange, and the majesty of the giant sandworms.

Both Shurko and Waddoch had died on their missions, and now Lillis had simply surrendered. He would have joined her in a trip back to Arrakis, would have accompanied her to the sietch, or wherever she wanted to go — but it was too late for that now. He pulled her body closer as a hard sleet began to fall, and he felt the impenetrable cold.

He would go to Directeur Venport and demand passage back to Arrakis, would take Lillis’s water and deliver it to the sietch, as he should have delivered the water of Shurko and Waddoch. It was the way of the desert.

In that small matter at least, he would help Lillis go home. Home…

LATER THAT DAY, astonishing news came in on a spacefolder from Salusa Secundus: Manford Torondo was alive and well, and had just appeared at the Imperial Court. Worse, he had convinced the Emperor to seize all spice operations on Arrakis.

Directeur Venport didn’t know which piece of information disturbed him the most.

The Half-Manford had somehow survived the assassination in Arrakis City, and emerged without a scratch. Young Taref had been easily fooled, and Venport’s other observers, too.

Josef wondered why he had not heard the news sooner. His operatives had long been in place on Lampadas, some quietly observing for years. He should have received a message.

Then the Butlerian leader sent one of Josef’s carefully infiltrated spies back to Kolhar — an innocuous old household servant named Ellonda. She’d been cut up in small pieces and sent in seventeen separate packages, each one personally addressed to Directeur Josef Venport.

It was shock on top of shock.

But the greatest outrage was the Emperor’s acquiescence. Cowardly Salvador had let the barbarian leader bully him into making his ridiculous power grab for Arrakis. According to a sweeping Imperial decree, the spice from the desert world was a “treasure for all humankind,” not for the profit of one man. By signing the order, Salvador annexed Combined Mercantiles, the spice fields, storage silos, processing plants, factories, and even the cargoes already aboard VenHold ships.

Filled with fury, Josef and his wife and his Mentat walked out to the templelike structure that surrounded Norma Cenva’s spice tank. “If the Emperor thinks he can do that, we’ll topple his throne and show him where the real power lies. Norma’s spice supplies will not be cut off or restricted!”

VenHold’s demand for spice production had increased month after month as the Navigator conversion program expanded. Even after the mutated humans finished their transformation, they required extensive amounts of melange to maintain proper saturation levels. Josef refused to tolerate any disruption in the flow of melange — neither by the barbarians, nor by the Emperor.

It had been more than eighty years since Faykan Butler, a great hero of the Jihad, renamed his family House Corrino and established the new Imperium. But in those years, the throne had lost effectiveness. “Perhaps it’s time for a major change,” Josef muttered. “If Salvador means to declare war, then we will be forced to fight back.”

“The Imperium is already crumbling,” Draigo said. “I have run projections, and it matters surprisingly little who sits on the throne. The strands that bind the government are laid down by transportation and communication. Interaction among the worlds is what knits a multiplanet civilization together.”

“We need someone better than Salvador Corrino,” Josef said.

As they arrived at Norma Cenva’s tank, Cioba was troubled. “That is a very ambitious plan, husband. An overthrow of the Imperial government would create as much havoc as the Butlerian mobs do now. Maybe there is a less extreme way, a more focused way?” She raised her eyes and looked into Josef’s.

Draigo seemed distant, running calculations through his head. “Norma Cenva told us the conflict will be wide-reaching, and now is the time to draw lines, take sides — we need powerful allies.” He paused, gathering courage. “We need my mentor Gilbertus Albans more than ever. I know he is torn. Let me speak to him again, and plead with him as a Mentat — he needs to choose the side of reason. If Mentats would all fight on the side of civilization, we could not lose.”

Josef nodded. If he had hundreds more like Draigo Roget, the opportunities would be incalculable. “Very well, return to Lampadas and get that alliance. I hope you have a better result this time, for we are more desperate than ever. Go immediately — before it is too late.”

Inside the swirls of thick mist, Norma drifted close to the curved observation plates. Even with her distorted face, she looked troubled. Before Josef could explain anything to her, she said, “Our supply of spice is threatened. Politics and turmoil must not be allowed to disrupt our great tapestry.”

“What do you foresee this time?”

“I foresee patterns — the large plan, not precise details. The ripples of my prescience are very strong now. We face great peril.” She blinked, and Josef looked into her face, trying to read her emotions.

“Salvador is the problem,” Josef said. “He is weak and indecisive, a poor leader. We all know that Roderick would make a far better Emperor, a rational person who wouldn’t be so afraid of the barbarians.”

“His daughter was killed in a Butlerian riot,” Cioba said. “He holds no love for Manford Torondo.”

Norma continued, “Nothing can be allowed to stop the delivery of spice.”

“I won’t let it happen. Emperor Salvador announced he will go to Arrakis and take formal control of all spice operations. I will pretend to welcome him and invite him to see the harvesting operations in person. In fact, I’ll escort him into the desert myself.”

Cioba seemed discouraged. “I doubt you can convince the Emperor to change his mind, husband.”

“Nevertheless, I’ll try to make him see reason. And if not … I’ll deal with the problem some other way.”