Brian Herbert - House Harkonnen

Dune: House Harkonnen

Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson

October 2000

To our mutual friend Ed Kramer, without whom this project would never have come to fruition. He provided the spark that brought us together.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Jan Herbert, with appreciation for her unflagging devotion and constant creative support.

Penny Merritt, for helping manage the literary legacy of her father, Frank Herbert.

Rebecca Moesta Anderson's tireless support and enthusiasm for this project, her ideas, imagination, and sharp eyes truly enhanced this project.

Robert Gottlieb and Matt Bialer of the WilliamMorrisAgency, Mary Alice Kier and Anna Cottle of Cine/Lit Representation -- all of whom never wavered in their faith and dedication, seeing the potential of the entire project.

Irwyn Applebaum and Nita Taublib at Bantam Books gave their support and attention to such an enormous undertaking.

Pat LoBrutto's excitement and dedication to this project -- from the very start -- helped to keep us on track. He made us consider possibilities and plot threads that made Dune: House Harkonnen even stronger and more complex.

Picking up the editorial reins, Anne Lesley Groell and Mike Shohl offered excellent advice and suggestions, even at the eleventh hour.

Our U.K. editor, Carolyn Caughey, for continuing to find things that everyone else missed, and for her suggestions on details, large and small.

Anne Gregory, for editorial work on an export edition of Dune: House Atreides that occurred too late to list her in the credits.

As always, Catherine Sidor at WordFire, Inc., worked tirelessly to transcribe dozens of microcassettes and type many hundreds of pages to keep up with our manic work pace. Her assistance in all steps of this project has helped to keep us sane, and she even fools other people into thinking we're organized.

Diane E. Jones and Diane Davis Herdt worked hard as test readers and guinea pigs, giving us honest reactions and suggesting additional scenes that helped make this a stronger book.

The Herbert Limited Partnership, including Ron Merritt, David Merritt, Byron Merritt, Julie Herbert, Robert Merritt, Kimberly Herbert, Margaux Herbert, and Theresa Shackelford, all of whom have provided us with their enthusiastic support, entrusting us with the continuation of Frank Herbert's magnificent vision.

Beverly Herbert, for almost four decades of support and devotion to her husband, Frank Herbert.

And, most of all, thanks to Frank Herbert, whose genius created such a wondrous universe for all of us to explore.

Discovery is dangerous... but so is life. A man unwilling to take risk is doomed never to learn, never to grow, never to live.

-PLANETOLOGIST PARDOT KYNES, An Arrakis Primer, written for his son Liet

WHEN THE SANDSTORM came howling up from the south, Pardot Kynes was more interested in taking meteorological readings than in seeking safety. His son Liet -- only twelve years old, but raised in the harsh ways of the desert -- ran an appraising eye over the ancient weather pod they had found in the abandoned botanical testing station. He was not confident the machine would function at all.

Then Liet gazed back across the sea of dunes toward the approaching tempest. "The wind of the demon in the open desert. Hulasikali Wala." Almost instinctively, he checked his stillsuit fittings.

"Coriolis storm," Kynes corrected, using a scientific term instead of the Fremen one his son had selected. "Winds across the open flatlands are amplified by the planet's revolutionary motion. Gusts can reach speeds up to seven hundred kilometers per hour."

As his father talked, the young man busied himself sealing the egg-shaped weather pod, checking the vent closures, the heavy doorway hatch, the stored emergency supplies. He ignored their signal generator and distress beacon; the static from the sandstorm would rip any transmissions to electromagnetic shreds.

In pampered societies Liet would have been considered just a boy, but life among the hard-edged Fremen had given him a tightly coiled adulthood that few others achieved even at twice his age. He was better equipped to handle an emergency than his father.

The elder Kynes scratched his sandy-gray beard. "A good storm like this can stretch across four degrees of latitude." He powered up the dim screens of the pod's analytical devices. "It lifts particles to an altitude of two thousand meters and suspends them in the atmosphere, so that long after the storm passes, dust continues to fall from the sky."

Liet gave the hatch lock a final tug, satisfied that it would hold against the storm. "The Fremen call that El-Sayal, the 'rain of sand.' "

"One day when you become Planetologist, you'll need to use more technical language," Pardot Kynes said in a professorial tone. "I still send the Emperor occasional reports, though not as often as I should. I doubt he ever reads them." He tapped one of the instruments. "Ah, I believe the atmospheric front is almost upon us."

Liet removed a porthole cover to see the oncoming wall of white, tan, and static. "A Planetologist must use his eyes, as well as scientific language. Just look out the window, Father."

Kynes grinned at his son. "It's time to raise the pod." Operating long-dormant controls, he managed to get the dual bank of suspensor engines functioning. The pod tugged against gravity, heaving itself off the ground.

The mouth of the storm lunged toward them, and Liet closed the cover plate, hoping the ancient meteorological apparatus would hold together. He trusted his father's intuition to a certain extent, but not his practicality.

The egg-shaped pod rose smoothly on suspensors, buffeted by precursor breezes. "Ah, there we are," Kynes said. "Now our work begins --"

The storm hit them like a blunt club, and vaulted them high into the maelstrom.

DAYS EARLIER, on a trip into the deep desert, Pardot Kynes and his son had discovered the familiar markings of a botanical testing station, abandoned thousands of years before. Fremen had ransacked most of the research outposts, scavenging valuable items, but this isolated station in an armpit of rock had gone undiscovered until Kynes spotted the signs.

He and Liet had cracked open the dust-encrusted hatch to peer inside like ghouls about to enter a crypt. They were forced to wait in the hot sun for atmospheric exchange to clear out the deadly stale air. Pardot Kynes paced in the loose sand, holding his breath and poking his head into the darkness, waiting until they could enter and investigate.

These botanical testing stations had been built in the golden age of the old Empire. Back then, Kynes knew, this desert planet had been nothing special, with no resources of note, no reason to colonize. When the Zensunni Wanderers had come here after generations of slavery, they'd hoped to build a world where they could be free.

But that had been before the discovery of the spice melange, the precious substance found nowhere else in the universe. And then everything had changed.

Kynes no longer referred to this world as Arrakis, the name listed in Imperial records, but instead used the Fremen name: Dune. Though he was, by nature, Fremen, he remained a servant of the Padishah Emperors. Elrood IX had assigned him to unravel the mystery of the spice: where it came from, how it was formed, where it could be found. For thirteen years Kynes had lived with the desert dwellers; he had taken a Fremen wife, and he'd raised a half-Fremen son to follow in his footsteps, to become the next Planetologist on Dune.

Kynes's enthusiasm for this planet had never dimmed. He thrilled at the chance to learn something new, even if he had to thrust himself into the middle of a storm....

THE POD'S ANCIENT SUSPENSORS hummed against the Coriolis howl like a nest of angry wasps. The meteorological vessel bounced on swirling currents of air, a steel-walled balloon. Wind-borne dust scoured the hull.