Anari and a group of wild-eyed fighters reached the control deck. Two human pilots gave up without a fight, but she refused to accept their surrender, and slashed them to pieces herself.
When the bodies of the VenHold pilots were dragged away from the controls, she realized to her horror that computers were part of the navigation systems. It was like discovering a nest of scorpions. Even though she had advised the others not to cause further damage, she told them to smash the navigation calculators anyway. No sane person could have any use for those.
She heard a shrill yell. “Swordmaster! It’s a monster!”
Two of her followers gestured toward a lift platform. When she reached the higher deck, she found a plaz chamber filled with orange-brown gas and a creature inside with an enlarged head, amphibious eyes, and webbed fingers. Its arms and legs hinted that it might once have been human. It had to be one of VenHold’s mysterious Navigators, the prescient things that guided the ships.
“You must stop!” said a voice through the speakers. “You have caused enough damage. You do not understand.”
Anari did not wish to hear any of this, had no tolerance for computers or monsters. She found the tank’s hatch and released it, thinking she would climb inside and slay the twisted Navigator. But the internal pressure was explosive, and rich melange gas boiled out. The creature in the tank flailed, and his words were filled with alarm. “Stop! You will never comprehend the secrets!”
He spoke more words, but she stopped herself from hearing them by smashing the speakerpatch. Together with the others, she hammered at the tank until the plaz wall shattered. More gas spilled out, reeking of spice. Spice …
She watched the creature inside gasping, weakening. This VenHold ship had been loaded with melange, a gift for the weak people of Baridge. The Navigator thrived on spice, and now it seemed to suffocate without it.
She knew that Venport Holdings had been heavily involved with spice production on Arrakis. The clue felt like an irritating pebble in her shoe. Did Josef Venport depend on spice to create these horrendous monsters? The humanoid thing gasped, sucking in useless breaths, but its words were incomprehensible. It seemed to be pleading, trying to explain something.
Anari turned away. “Pull that creature out and drag it through the streets so all can see what sort of monstrosity allies itself with Josef Venport.”
Coughing, her eyes stinging from the pungent spice gas, Anari watched them draw the slippery-skinned figure out of the tank, not caring that the jagged edges tore through its flesh. The creature would not live long, but its body would serve a purpose.
Manford would be pleased at what Anari had accomplished — and what she had discovered. The existence of this deformed thing changed everything. If Josef Venport’s Spacing Fleet required great supplies of melange to keep functioning, then maybe she would have to take a trip to Arrakis.…
Chapter 46 (Sometimes the best way to see the familiar is to go far from it)
Sometimes the best way to see the familiar is to go far from it.
— wisdom of the desert
When he returned to Arrakis City under orders from Directeur Venport, Taref felt as if a dust storm had passed from his mind, and he saw the city clearly for the first time. Though he was sure it had not changed, this wasn’t the same place he had left.
While growing up in the sietch, he’d thought of the city as a huge metropolis filled with strange noises and smells. In those days, he and his friends could journey for days across open featureless dunes and still find their way home, yet they could get lost in the city’s tangled streets. There were so many tall buildings, confusing alleys, crowds of strangers, and unexpected perils.
Now, however, Taref realized that Arrakis City was small in comparison to other offworld population centers. Buildings that had once seemed magnificent were rather low and weather-beaten. The streets were dirty, the people huddled. Though large numbers of VenHold spice haulers lifted off daily, the Arrakis spaceport operations didn’t compare with those on Kolhar, or even Junction Alpha.
He’d been gone from the desert for only a few months, but he’d grown accustomed to bathing and feeling clean. His flesh had gained an unsettling soft flexibility; he could now pinch it between his fingers instead of feeling the stiff tautness of a desert-adapted body. Naib Rurik would consider that a weakness.
Poor Shurko would have felt that way as well, Taref knew. Even on planets with an abundance of moisture, his stern young friend had rationed his water intake, afraid that he would forget the basics of simple existence, that he would grow soft and weak. Taref would never forget the core of the desert within him — nor would he ever forget his dead friend — but he was open to learning and experiencing new things as well.
Yet the wondrous new places had not been so wondrous after all, and his work had been little different from what he had done when sabotaging spice-harvesting equipment — except that it cost a great many lives. And now Shurko would not be returning to the desert, would never need his desert knowledge again.
No, this had not been what Taref expected when he joyously convinced his friends to join him on a great adventure.
Taref’s sietch brothers and sisters felt they already knew everything they needed to know, but now that he had been to other places far away — and he still had so much more to see — he could tell his people that so much more awaited them out there. He would extend Directeur Venport’s offer, inviting them to see the things he had seen. Some might feel the same pull of dreams, though he’d always been a misfit in his own sietch.…
Before Taref set out on the new mission to Arrakis, Draigo Roget had given him a brand-new distilling suit, claiming that the old one wasn’t worth repairing, even though Taref had meticulously maintained it for years. The young man checked over the new suit, noting the improvements that had been implemented, how the seams were double-sealed, the inner lining reinforced, the filter pads made more efficient. This stillsuit was finer than anything he had seen in his old sietch, better even than the one worn by a Naib. Taref would claim that this was just a hint of the rewards volunteers might receive if they joined him in working for Venport Holdings.
He wished his fellow saboteurs could come back with him, but Draigo had shaken his head. “They have their own assignments for VenHold, dispatched to deal with various EsconTran operations.” His friends missed the dunes, especially Lillis, and the loss of Shurko had hit them all hard.
Taref’s heart ached to know that his friend would never return to the desert, that he had vanished somewhere out in space where his body’s water would not be recovered. Offworlders did not think about such things; water meant nothing to them, and sometimes their lives were cheap, as well…
HE TRAVELED DOWN to Arrakis City, where he mingled with surly workers who’d come to join the Combined Mercantiles spice-harvesting operations. Taref was going home, but these workers saw the desert planet as their last chance. Most of them would never leave here.
Pretending to be one of the spice crew volunteers, he left the spaceport for the Combined Mercantiles headquarters. Most of these new workers had no experience at all in desert operations, and some wouldn’t survive the first year. They reminded him of himself, and his friends, leaving what they knew for what they imagined would be a better life elsewhere, far away. He’d never thought much about the offworld workers before, and now he felt sorry for them.