Part 13 (2/2)
The old woman paced, ignoring the other four Sisters, ignoring Marie. The girl stood perfectly still, watching intently, listening to everything. ”You are an intriguing combination of motives and methods, Margot. Intriguing, indeed. You defy our ways and jab at our mistakes, while trying to involve us in a dangerous plot.”
”The Sisterhood must adapt and survive. It is a simple, rational conclusion. Through my husband's experience and unique abilities, he has worked out a scenario that benefits all of us.”
Fenring bobbed his head. ”There are ways we can get close to Muad'Dib, ways to make him let his guard down.”
Mohiam's dark eyes regarded the Count with new interest. ”True enough, there is a need to adapt. There is also a need for balance - that too, is one of our precepts. I would hear your proposal, but I insist that the girl be as prepared as possible. As part of any agreement, the girl must remain here for training in the Mother School.”
”Out of the question.” Margot put an arm around her daughter, and the child snuggled against her.
Fenring also put an arm around the little girl. ”The old ways of the Sisterhood have failed in spectacular fas.h.i.+on, hmmm? Now let us try ours.”
”You would risk Marie's life in this enterprise?” Mohiam asked.
Lady Margot smiled. ”Hardly. Our plan is perfect, as is our method of escape afterward.”
The Reverend Mother's eyes flashed. ”And the details?”
”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.”
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 amba.s.sador arrived at his doorway wearing c.u.mbersome 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 h.e.l.ls 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, s.h.i.+elding 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 doc.u.ment 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 t.i.tle of d.u.c.h.ess, 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 compa.s.sion 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. 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. 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, b.o.o.by-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 leaders.h.i.+p 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 compa.s.sionate. 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 s.e.xually a.s.saulted poor Bheth, then strangled her to death. Here, Gurney had found a way to escape by stowing away aboard a cargo s.h.i.+p 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 d.a.m.n. 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 they survive.” survive.”
Deciding to get the worst over with, he traveled next to the shadow of Mount Ebony and the cl.u.s.ter 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 leaders.h.i.+p, 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 b.u.t.tocks 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 s.e.x 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.”
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