Dune: House Atreides

The prequel to dune, The great science fiction Novel

The light Cruiser soared out over a night wasteland unmarked by Giedi Prime's city lights or industrial smoke. Alone in a holding pen in the belly of the aircraft, eight-year-old Duncan Idaho watched through a plaz port as the expanse of Barony prison dropped behind them like a geometrical bubo, festering with trapped and tortured humanity.

The bare metal walls of the cruiser's lower hold were etched with a verdigris of frost. Duncan was numb, his heart leaden, his nerves shocked into silence, his skin an unfeeling blanket around him. Glossu Rabban—nephew of the Baron Harkonnen—had murdered the boy's enslaved parents, just to make him angry and willing to fight in the grotesque "hunt" to come.

The engines throbbed through the floor plates. On the decks above, he could hear the restive hunting party shuffling about in their padded armor. The men carried guns with tracking scopes. They laughed and chatted, ready for that night's game.

Rabban was up there, too.

In order to give young Duncan what they called a sporting chance, the hunting party had armed him with a dull knife (saying they didn't want him to hurt himself), a hand light and a small length of rope—everything a child should need to elude a squadron of professional Harkonnen hunters on their own well-scouted ground.

The cruiser flew far from the prison city, away from the oil-soaked industrial areas, to a wilderness preserve on high ground, a place with dark pines and sandstone bluff faces, caves and rocks and streams. The tailored wilderness even hosted a few examples of genetically enhanced wildlife, vicious predators as eager for a boy's tender flesh as the Harkonnen sportsmen themselves.

The cruiser alighted in a boulder-strewn meadow; the deck canted at a steep angle, then shifted to norm as stabilizers leveled the craft. Rabban sent a signal from the control band at his waist. The hydraulic door in front of the boy hissed open, freeing him from his cage. The chilly night air stung his cheeks. Duncan considered dashing out into the open. He could run fast and take refuge in the thick pines. Once there, he would burrow beneath the dry, brown needles and drift into self-protective slumber.

Rabban, too, wanted the boy to run and hide, and he knew he wouldn't get very far. For now, Duncan's instinct had to be tempered with cleverness. It wasn't the time for an unexpected, reckless action. Not yet.

The upper hatch slid open behind him to reveal two light-haloed forms: a person he recognized as the hunt captain, and Rabban, the broad-shouldered man who had killed Duncan's mother and father. Turning away from the sudden light, the boy kept his dark-adapted eyes focused on the open meadow and the thick shadows of black-needled trees. It was a starlit night. Pain shot through Duncan's ribs from earlier rough handling, but he tried to put it out of his mind.

"Forest Guard Station," the hunt captain said to him. "Like a vacation in the wilderness. Enjoy it! This is a game, boy—we leave you here, give you a head start and then we come hunting." His eyes narrowed. "Make no mistake. If you lose, you'll be killed, and your stuffed head will join Lord Rabban's other trophies on a wall."

Beside him, the Baron's nephew gave Duncan a thick-lipped smile. Rabban was trembling with excitement and anticipation, his sunburned face flushed.

"What if I get away?" Duncan said.

"You won't," Rabban answered.

Duncan didn't press the issue. If he forced an answer, the man would lie to him. If he did manage to escape, he would just have to make up his own rules.

They dumped him out onto the frost-smeared meadow. He had on thin clothes, worn shoes. The cold of the night hit him like a hammer.

"Stay alive as long as you can, boy," Rabban called from the door of the cruiser, ducking back inside as the throb of the engines increased in tempo. "Give me a good hunt. My last one was disappointing."

Duncan stood immobile as the craft lifted into the air and roared off toward a guarded lodge and outpost. From there, after a few drinks, the hunting party would march out and track down their prey.

Maybe the Harkonnens would toy with him awhile, enjoying their sport. Or maybe by the time they caught him they would be chilled to the bone, longing for a hot beverage, and they'd simply cut him to pieces at the first opportunity.

Duncan sprinted toward the shelter of trees.

Even when he departed the meadow, his feet left an obvious trail of bent grass blades in the frost. He brushed against thick evergreen boughs, disturbing the chaff of dead needles as he scrambled upslope toward some rugged sandstone outcroppings.

In the hand-light beam, Duncan saw breath steam bursting like heartbeats from his nostrils and mouth. He toiled up a talus, tending toward the steepest bluff faces. When he struck the rocks, he grasped with his hands, digging into crumbling sedimentary material. Here, at least, he wouldn't leave many footprints, though pockets of old, crystalline snow had drifted like small dunes on the ledges.

The outcroppings protruded from the side of the ridge, sentinels above the carpet of forest. Wind and rain had eaten holes and notches out of the cliffs, some barely large enough for rodents' nests, some sufficient to hide a grown man. Driven by desperation, Duncan climbed until he could barely breathe from the exertion.

When he reached the top of an exposed sandwich of rock, rust and tan in his light beam, he squatted on his heels and looked around, assessing his wilderness surroundings. He wondered if the hunters were coming. They wouldn't be far behind him.

Animals howled in the distance. He flipped off the light to conceal himself. His ribs and back burned with pain, and his upper arm throbbed where the pulsing locator beacon was implanted.

Behind him, more shadowy bluffs rose tall and steep, honeycombed with notches and ledges, adorned with scraggly trees like unsightly whiskers sprouting from a facial blemish. It was a long, long way to the nearest city, the nearest spaceport.

The young boy had spent most of the nearly nine years of his life inside giant buildings, smelling recycled air laden with lubricants, solvents and exhaust chemicals. He had never known how cold this planet could get, or how clear the stars.

Overhead, the sky was a vault of immense blackness, filled with tiny light-splashes, a rainstorm of pinpricks piercing the distances of the galaxy. Far out there, Guild Navigators used their minds to guide city-sized Heighliners between stars.

Duncan had never seen a Guild ship, had never been away from Giedi Prime—and now doubted he ever would. Living inside an industrial city, he'd never had reason to learn the patterns of stars. But even if he had known his compass points or recognized the constellations, he still would have no place to go.

Sitting atop the outcropping, looking out into the sharp coldness, Duncan studied his world. He drew his knees up to his chest to conserve body heat, though he still shivered. Off in the distance, where the high ground dipped into a wooded valley toward the stark silhouette of the guarded lodge building, he saw a train of lights, bobbing glowglobes like a fairy procession. The hunting party itself, warm and well armed, was sniffing him out, taking its time. Enjoying itself.

From his vantage point, Duncan watched and waited, cold and forlorn. He had to decide if he wanted to live at all. What would he do? Where would he go? Who would care for him? He was just a boy with a dull knife, a hand light and a rope. The hunters had Richesian beacon trackers, body armor and powerful weapons. They outnumbered him ten to one. He had no chance.

It might be easier if he just sat and waited for them to come. Eventually the trackers would find him, inexorably following his implanted signal, but he could deny them their sport, spoil their fun. By surrendering, by showing his contempt for their barbaric amusements, he could gain a small victory at least—the only one he was likely to have.

Or he could fight back, try to hurt the Harkonnens even as they hunted him down. His mother and father hadn't had an opportunity to fight for their lives, but Rabban was giving him that chance.

He stood up on stiff legs, brushed his clothes and stopped shivering. I won't go down like that, he decided, just to show them. Yes, he would fight—for all he was worth.

He doubted the hunters would be wearing personal shields. They wouldn't think they'd need such protection, not against a helpless boy. The knife handle felt hard and rough in his pocket, useless against armor. But he could do something else with the blade, something painfully necessary.

Crawling up the slope, climbing from rock to fallen tree, maintaining his balance on the scree, Duncan made his way to a small hollowed-out hole in the lumpy sandstone. He avoided the patches of remaining snow, keeping to the iron-frozen dirt so as to leave no obvious tracks.

The tracer implant would bring them directly to him, no matter where he ran.

Above the cave hollow an overhang in the near-vertical bluff wall provided (continued on page 142)Dune(continued from page 86) his second opportunity: loose, lichen-covered sandstone chunks, heavy boulders. Perhaps he could move them.

Duncan crawled inside the shelter of the cave hollow, where he found it no warmer. Just darker. The opening was so low that a grown man would have to belly-crawl inside; there was no other way out. This cave wouldn't offer him much protection. He'd have to hurry.

Squatting, he switched on the small hand light, pulled off his stained shirt and brought out the knife. He felt the lump of the tracer implant in the meat of his upper left arm, the back of the triceps at his shoulder.

His skin was already numb from the cold, his mind dulled by the shock of his circumstances. But when he jabbed with the knife, he felt the point dig into his muscle, lighting the nerves on fire. Closing his eyes against reflexive resistance, he cut deeply, prodding and poking with the tip of the blade.

He stared at the dark wall of the cave, saw skeletal shadows cast by the wan light. His right hand moved mechanically, like a probe, excavating the tiny tracer. The pain shrank to a dim corner of his awareness.

At last the beacon fell out, a bloody piece of microconstructed metal clinking to the dirty floor of the cave. Sophisticated technology from Richese. Reeling with pain, Duncan picked up a rock to smash the tracer. Then, thinking better of it, he set the rock down again and moved the tiny device deep into the shadows where no one could see it.

Better to leave the tracer here. As bait.

Crawling outside, Duncan scooped up a handful of grainy snow. Red droplets spattered on the pale sandstone ledge. He packed the snow against the blood streaming from his shoulder, and the sharp cold deadened the pain of his self-inflicted cut. He pressed the ice hard against the wound until pink-tinged snow melted between his fingers. He grabbed another handful, no longer caring about the obvious marks he left in the drift. The Harkonnens would come to this place anyway.

At least the snow had stanched the flow of blood.

Duncan scrambled up and away from the cave, being careful to leave no sign of where he was going. He saw the bobbing lights down in the valley split up; members of the hunting party had chosen different routes as they climbed the bluff. A darkened ornithopter whirred overhead.

Duncan moved as quickly as he could but took care not to splash fresh blood again. He tore strips from his shirt to dab the oozing wound, leaving his chest naked and cold, then he pulled the ragged garment back over his shoulders. Perhaps the forest predators would smell the iron blood scent and hunt him down for food rather than for sport. That was a problem he didn't want to consider right now.

With loose pebbles pattering around him, he circled back until he reached the overhang above his former shelter. His instinct was to run blindly, as far as he could go, but he made himself stop. This would be better. He squatted behind the loose, heavy chunks of rock, tested them to be sure of his strength, and dropped back to wait.

Before long, the first hunter came up the slope to the cave hollow. Clad in suspensor-augmented armor, the hunter slung a lasgun in front of him. He glanced down at a handheld device, counterpart to the Richesian tracer.

Duncan held his breath, making no move, disturbing no pebbles or debris. Blood sketched a hot red line down his left arm.

The hunter paused in front of the hollow, noting the disturbed snow, the bloodstains, the targeting blip on his tracer. Though Duncan couldn't see the man's face, he knew the hunter wore a grin of scornful triumph.

Thrusting the lasgun into the hollow ahead of him, the hunter ducked low, bending stiffly in his protective chest padding. On his belly, he crawled partway into the darkness. "Found you, little boy!"

Using his feet and the strength of his leg muscles, Duncan shoved a lichen-smeared boulder over the edge. Then he moved to a second one and kicked it hard, pushing it to the abrupt drop-off. Both heavy stones fell, tumbling in the air. He heard the sounds of impact and a crack. A sickening crunch. Then the gasp and gurgle of the man below.

Duncan scrambled to the edge, saw that one of the boulders had struck to one side, bouncing off and rolling down the steep slope, gathering momentum and taking scree along with it. The other boulder had landed on the small of the hunter's back, crushing his spine even through the padding, pinning him to the ground like a needle through an insect specimen.

Duncan climbed down, gasping, slipping. The hunter was still alive, paralyzed. His legs twitched, thumping the toes of his boots against the frost-hard ground. Squeezing past the man's bulky, armored body into the hollow, Duncan shone his hand light down into the man's glazed, astonished eyes. The dying hunter croaked something unintelligible at him.

Duncan did not hesitate. His eyes narrowed, no longer the eyes of a child, as he bent forward. The knife slipped in under the man's jawbone. The hunter squirmed, raising his chin as if in acceptance rather than defiance—and the dull blade cut through skin and sinew. Jugular blood spurted out with enough force to splash and spatter before forming a dark, sticky pool on the floor of the cave.

Duncan rummaged through the items on the man's belt, found a small medpak and a ration bar. Then he tugged the lasgun free from the clenching grip. Using its butt, he smashed the blood-smeared Richesian tracer, grinding it into metal debris. He no longer needed it as a decoy. His pursuers could hunt him with their own wits now. They might even enjoy the challenge.

Duncan crawled out of the hollow. The lasgun, almost as tall as he was, clattered as he dragged it behind him. Below, the hunting party's trail of glow-globes came closer.

Armed, and nourished by his improbable success, Duncan ran into the night.

•

Hidden by the thick pines, Duncan Idaho knelt in the soft needles on the ground, feeling little warmth. The cold night air deadened the resinous evergreen scent, but at least here he was sheltered from the razor breezes. He had gone far enough from the cave that he could pause and catch his breath. For just a moment.

Duncan opened the medpak and brought out a small package of newskin ointment, which he slathered over the incision on his shoulder where it hardened to an organic bond. Then he wolfed down the ration bar and stuffed the wrappings into his pockets.

Using the glow of his hand light, he turned to study the lasgun. He'd never fired such a weapon before, but he had watched the guards and the hunters operate their rifles. He cradled the weapon and fiddled with its mechanisms and controls. Pointing the barrel upward, he attempted to understand what he was supposed to do. He would have to learn if he meant to fight.

With a surge of power, a white-hot beam lanced out toward the upper boughs of the pine trees. They burst into flames, crackling and snapping. Smoldering clumps of evergreen needles fell around him like red-hot snow.

Yelping, he dropped the gun to scramble backward—then snatched it up again before he could forget which combination of buttons he had pushed. The flames overhead flared like a bonfire beacon, exuding curls of sharp smoke. With nothing to lose now, Duncan fired again, aiming this time, just to make sure he could use the lasgun. The cumbersome weapon was not built for a small boy, especially not one with a throbbing shoulder and sore ribs, but he could use it. He had to.

Knowing the Harkonnens would run toward the blaze, Duncan scampered away from the trees, searching for another place to hide. Once again he made for higher ground, keeping to the ridge-line so he could see the scattered glow-globes. He knew exactly where the men were, exactly how close.

But how can they be so stupid, he wondered, making themselves so obvious? Over-confidence ... was that their flaw? If so, it might help him.

The Harkonnens expected him to play their game, then cower and die when he was supposed to. Duncan might just disappoint them.

Maybe this time we'll play my game instead.

As he dashed, he avoided patches of snow and noisy underbrush. But then he heard a snap of dried twigs Dehind and above him, the rustle of bushes, then the click of claws on bare rock accompanied by heavy, hoarse panting.

Skidding to a halt, Duncan looked up, searching for gleaming eyes in the shadows. But he didn't turn to the stark outcropping over his head until he heard a wet-sounding growl. In the starlight, he discerned the muscular, crouching form of a wild gaze hound, its back fur bristling like quills, its lips curled to expose flesh-tearing fangs. Its huge eyes focused on its prey: a young boy with tender skin.

Duncan scrambled backward, firing off a shot with the lasgun. Poorly aimed, the beam came nowhere close to the stalking creature, but powdered rock spewed from the outcropping below the gazehound. The predator yelped and snarled, backing off. Duncan fired again, this time sizzling a blackened hole through its right haunch. With a brassy roar, the creature bounded off into the darkness, howling and baying.

The gaze hound's racket, as well as the flashes from his lasgun fire, would draw the Harkonnen trackers. Duncan set off into the starlight, running.

•

Hands on his hips, Rabban stared down at the body of his ambushed hunter by the cave hollow. Rage burned through him—as well as cruel satisfaction. The devious child had lured the man into a trap. Very resourceful. All of the tracker's armor hadn't saved him from a dropped boulder and the thrust of a dull dagger. The coup de grâce.

Rabban simmered for a few moments as he attempted to assess the challenge. Death smelled sour even in the cold night. This was what he wanted, wasn't it—a challenge?

One of the other trackers crawled into the low hollow and played the beam of his hand light around the cave. It lighted the smears of blood and the smashed Richesian tracer. "Here is the reason, m'lord. The cub cut out his own tracking device." The hunter swallowed, as if uncertain whether he should continue. "A smart one, this boy. Good prey."

Rabban glowered at the carnage for a few moments, then grinned slowly and finally burst out into loud guffaws. "An eight-year-old child with only his imagination and a couple of clumsy weapons bested one of my troops!" He laughed again. Outside, the others in the party stood uncertainly, bathed in the light of their bobbing glowglobes.

"Such a boy was made for the hunt," Rabban declared, then he nudged the dead tracker's body with the toe of his boot. "And this clod did not deserve to be part of my crew. Leave his body here to rot. Let the scavengers get him."

They looked up to see flames in the trees, and Rabban pointed. "There! The cub is probably trying to warm his hands." He laughed again, and finally the rest of the hunting crew snickered along with him. "This is turning into an exciting night."

•

From his high vantage Duncan gazed into the distance, away from the guarded lodge. A bright light blinked on and off, paused, then 15 seconds later flashed on and off again. Some kind of signal, not from the Harkonnen hunters, far from the lodge or the station. Who else is out here?

Forest Guard Station was a preserve for the sole use of Harkonnen family members. Anyone discovered out here would be killed outright, or used as prey in a future hunt. Duncan watched the tantalizing light flickering on and off. It was clearly a message. Who's sending it?

He took a deep breath, felt small but defiant in a large and hostile world. He had no place else to go, no other chance. So far, he had eluded the hunters, but that couldn't last forever. Soon the Harkonnens would bring in additional forces, ornithopters, life-tracers, perhaps even hunting animals to follow the smell of blood on his shirt, as the wild gaze hound had done.

Duncan decided to make his way to the signal and hope for the best. Maybe he could find a means of escape, perhaps as a stowaway on a vehicle.

First, though, he would lay another trap for the hunters. He had an idea, something to surprise them, and it seemed simple enough. If he could kill a few more of the enemy, he'd have a better chance of getting away.

He studied the rocks, the patches of snow, the trees, and selected the best point for an ambush. He switched on his hand light, directing the beam at the ground so that no sensitive eyes would spot a telltale gleam in the distance. The pursuers weren't far behind him. Occasionally, he heard a muffled shout in the deep silence, saw the hunting party's firefly glowglobes illuminating their way through the trackless forest, as the trackers tried to anticipate the path their quarry would take.

Duncan wanted them to anticipate where he would go ... they would never guess what he meant to do. Kneeling beside a particularly light and fluffy snowdrift, he inserted the hand light into the snow and pushed it down through the cold as far as he could. Then he withdrew his hand.

The glow reflected from the white snow like water diffusing into a sponge. Tiny crystals of ice refracted the light, magnifying it; the drift shone like a phosphorescent island in the dark clearing.

Slinging the lasgun in front of him, ready to fire, he trotted back to the sheltering trees. He lay on a cushion of pine needles flat against the ground, careful to present no visible target, then rested the barrel of the lasgun on a small rock, propping it in position. Waiting.

•

The hunters came, predictably, and Duncan felt that their roles had reversed: Now he was the hunter, and they were his game. He aimed the weapon, fingers tense on the firing stud. At last the group entered the clearing. Startled by the shining snowdrift, they milled about, trying to figure out what it was that their prey had done. Two of them faced outward, suspicious of an attack from the forest. Others stood silhouetted in the ghostly light, perfect targets—exactly as Duncan had hoped.

At the rear of the party, he recognized one burly man with a commanding presence. Rabban! Duncan thought of how his parents had fallen, remembered the smell of their burning flesh—and then squeezed the firing stud.

But at that moment, a scout stepped in front of Rabban to give a report. The beam scored through his armor, burning and smoking. The man flung out his arms and gave a wild shriek.

Reacting with lightning speed for so burly a body, Rabban hurled himself to one side as the beam melted all the way through the hunter's padded chest and sizzled into the snowdrift. Duncan cut loose another blast, shooting a second tracker who stood outlined against the glowing snow. The remaining guards began firing wildly into the trees, into the darkness.

Duncan targeted the drifting glow-globes. Bursting one after another, he left his pursuers alone in flame-haunted darkness. He picked off two more men, while the rest of the party scrambled for cover.

With the charge in his lasgun running low, the boy scrabbled back behind the ridge where he had set up his attack, and headed out at top speed toward the blinking signal light. Whatever the beacon might be, it was his best chance. Knowing he had one last opportunity, Duncan threw caution to the wind. He ran, slipping, down the hillside, smashing against rocks, ignoring the pain of scrapes and bruises. He could not cover his tracks in time, did not attempt to hide.

Somewhere behind him, as he increased the distance, he heard muffled growls and snarls, and shouts from the hunters. A pack of wild gaze hounds had converged on them, seeking wounded prey. Duncan grinned and continued toward the intermittently blinking light up ahead near the edge of the forest.

He approached, treading lightly to a shallow clearing. He came upon a silent flitter thopter, a high-speed aircraft that could take several passengers. The flashing beacon signaled from the top of the craft, but Duncan saw no one.

He waited in silence for a few moments, then cautiously left the shadows of the trees and moved forward. Was the craft abandoned? Left here for him? Some kind of trap the Harkonnens had laid? But why would they do that? They were already hunting him. He was only eight years old and could never pilot this flitter, even if it was his only way to escape. Still, he might find supplies inside, more food, another weapon.

He leaned against the hull, surveying the area, making no sound. The hatch stood open like an invitation, but the mysterious flitter was dark inside. Wishing he still had his hand light, he moved forward cautiously and probed the shadows ahead of him with the barrel of the lasgun.

Then hands snatched out from the shadows of the craft to yank the gun from his grip before he could even flinch. Fingers stinging, flesh torn, Duncan staggered backward, biting back an outcry.

The person inside the flitter tossed the lasgun with a clatter onto the deck plates and lunged out to grab the boy's arms. Rough hands squeezed the wound in his shoulder and made him gasp in pain.

Duncan kicked and struggled, then looked up to see a wiry, bitter-faced woman with chocolate-colored hair and dusky skin. He recognized her instantly: Janess Milam.

This woman had betrayed him to the Harkonnens.

She pressed a hand over his mouth before he could cry out and clamped his head in a firm armlock.

"Got you," she said, her voice a harsh whisper.

She had betrayed him again.