Dune: House Atreides (4 page)

Though he was Emperor, his position of power rested in a careful and uneasy balance of alliances with numerous forces, including the Great and Minor Houses of the Landsraad, the Spacing Guild, and the all-encompassing commercial combines such as CHOAM. Other forces were even more difficult to deal with, forces that preferred to remain behind the scenes.

I need to disrupt the balance, Elrood thought. This business of Arrakis has gone on too long.

The Emperor leaned forward, seeing that Kynes was fairly bursting with joy and enthusiasm. He actually wanted to go to the desert world -- all the better!

"Find out everything you can about Arrakis and send me regular reports, Planetologist. House Harkonnen will be instructed to give you all the support and cooperation you need." Though they certainly won't like an Imperial Observer snooping around.

Newly installed in the planetary governorship, Baron Harkonnen was wrapped around the Emperor's fingertip, for now. "We will provide the items necessary for your journey. Compile your lists and give them to my Chamberlain. Once you reach Arrakis, the Harkonnens will be instructed to give you whatever else you require."

"My needs are few," Kynes said. "All I require are my eyes and my mind."

"Yes, but see if you can make the Baron offer a few more amenities than that."

Elrood smiled again, then dismissed the Planetologist. The Emperor noticed a pronounced spring in Kynes's step as he was led out of the Imperial audience chamber.

Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.

-Chief commandment resulting from the Butlerian Jihad, found in the Orange Catholic Bible

Suffering is the great teacher of men," the chorus of old actors said as they stood on the stage, their voices in perfect unison. Though the performers were simple villagers from the town below Castle Caladan, they had rehearsed well for the annual performance of the official House Play. Their costumes were colorful, if not entirely authentic. The props -- the facade of Agamemnon's palace, the flagstoned courtyard -- showed a realism based only on enthusiasm and a few filmbook snapshots of ancient Greece.

The long play by Aeschylus had already gone on for some time, and the gathered audience in the theatre was warm and the air was close. Glowglobes lit the stage and rows of seating, but the torches and braziers around the performers added aromatic smoke to the building.

Though the background noises were loud enough, the Old Duke's snores threatened to carry all the way forward to the performers.

"Father, wake up!" Leto Atreides whispered, nudging Duke Paulus in the ribs.

"The play isn't even half-over."

In the chair of his private box, Paulus stirred and straightened, brushing imaginary crumbs from his broad chest. Shadows played across the creased, narrow face and the voluminous salt-and-pepper beard. He wore a black Atreides uniform with a red hawk crest on the left breast. "It's all just talking and standing anyway, lad." He blinked toward the stage, where the old men still hadn't moved much. "And we've seen it every year."

"That is not the point, Paulus, dear. People are watching." It was Leto's mother, sitting on the other side of the Duke. The dark-skinned Lady Helena, dressed in her fine gown, took seriously the ponderous words of the Greek chorus. "Pay attention to the context. It's your family history, after all.

Not mine." Leto looked from one parent to the other, knowing that the family history of his mother's House Richese carried just as much grandeur and loss as that of Atreides. Richese had sunk from a highly profitable "golden age" to its current economic weakness.

House Atreides claimed to trace its roots more than twelve thousand years, back to the ancient sons of Atreus on Old Terra. Now the family embraced its long history, despite the numerous tragic and dishonorable incidents it contained.

The Dukes had made an annual tradition of performing the classic tragedy of Agamemnon, the most famous son of Atreus and one of the generals who had conquered Troy.

With black-black hair and a narrow face, Leto Atreides strongly resembled his mother, though he had his father's aquiline nose and hawkish profile. The young man watched, dressed in uncomfortable finery, vaguely aware of the off-world background of the story. The author of the ancient play had counted on his audience understanding the esoteric references. General Agamemnon had been a great military commander in one of human history's legendary wars, long before the creation of thinking machines that had enslaved mankind, long before the Butlerian Jihad had freed humanity.

For the first time in his fourteen years, Leto felt the weight of legends on his shoulders; he sensed a connection with the faces and personalities of his star-crossed family's past. One day he would succeed his father, and would become a part of Atreides history as well. Events were chipping away at his childhood, transforming him into a man. He saw it clearly.

"The unenvied fortune is best," the old men chimed together to say their lines.

"Preferable to sacking cities, better than following the commands of others."

Before sailing to Troy, Agamemnon had sacrificed his own daughter to guarantee favorable winds from the gods. His distraught wife, Clytemnestra, had spent the ten years of her husband's absence plotting revenge. Now, after the final battle of the Trojan War, a chain of signal fires had been lit along the coast, sending back home word of the victory.

"All of the action occurs offstage," Paulus muttered, though he had never been much of a reader or literary critic. He lived life for the moment, squeezing every drop of experience and accomplishment. He preferred spending time with his son, or his soldiers. "Everybody just stands in front of the sets, waiting for Agamemnon to arrive."

Paulus abhorred inaction, always telling his son that even the wrong decision was better than no decision at all. In the play, Leto thought the Old Duke sympathized most with the great general, a man after his own heart.

The chorus of old men droned on, Clytemnestra stepped out of the palace to deliver a speech, and the chorus continued again. A herald, pretending to have disembarked from a ship, came onto the stage, kissed the ground, and recited a long soliloquy.

"Agamemnon, glorious king! How you deserve our joyous welcome, for annihilating Troy and the Trojan homeland. Our enemy's shrines lie in ruins, nevermore comforting their gods, and their soils are barren."

Warfare and mayhem -- it made Leto think of his father's younger days, when he had charged out to fight battles for the Emperor, crushing a bloody rebellion on Ecaz, adventuring with his friend Dominic, who was now the Earl of House Vernius on Ix. In private times with Leto, the Old Duke often talked about those days with great fondness.

In the shadows of their box, Paulus heaved a too-loud sigh, not concealing his boredom. Lady Helena shot him a daggered glare, then returned her attention to the play, reconstructing her face to form a more placid smile in case anyone should look at her. Leto gave his father a crooked and sympathetic grin, and Paulus winked back at him. The Duke and his wife played their parts and fit their own comfortable roles.

Finally, on the stage below, the victorious Agamemnon arrived in a chariot, accompanied by his spoils-of-war mistress, the half-insane prophetess Cassandra.

Meanwhile, Clytemnestra made preparations for her hated husband's appearance, feigning devotion and love.

Old Paulus started to loosen the collar of his uniform, but Helena reached over quickly to pull his hand away. Her smile didn't waver.

Seeing this ritual his parents often went through, Leto smiled to himself. His mother constantly struggled to maintain what she called "a sense of decorum,"

while the old man behaved with far less formality. Though his father had taught him much about statecraft and leadership, Lady Helena had taught her son protocol and religious studies.

A daughter of Richese, Lady Helena Atreides had been born into a House Major that had lost most of its power and prestige through failed economic competitions and political intrigues. After being ousted from the planetary governorship of Arrakis, Helena's family had salvaged some of its respectability through an arranged marital alliance with the Atreides; several of her sisters had been married off to other Houses.

Despite their obvious differences, the Old Duke had once told Leto he had truly loved Helena in the first years of their union. Over time, that had eroded, and he'd dabbled with many mistresses, possibly producing illegitimate children, though Leto was his sole official heir. As decades passed, an enmity built up between husband and wife, causing a deep rift. Now their marriage was strictly political.

"I married for politics in the first place, lad," he had said. "Never should have tried to make it otherwise. At our station, marriage is a tool. Don't muck everything up by trying to throw love into the mix."

Leto sometimes wondered if Helena herself had ever loved his father, or if it had only been his title and station that she loved. Of late, she seemed to have assumed the role of Paulus's royal caretaker; she constantly strove to keep him groomed and presentable. It bore as much on her own reputation as on his.

On the stage, Clytemnestra greeted her husband, strewing purple tapestries on the ground so he could walk on them rather than on the dirt. Amidst great pomp and fanfare, Agamemnon marched into his palace, while the oracle Cassandra, speechless in terror, refused to enter. She foretold her own death and the murder of the general; of course, no one listened to her.

Through carefully cultivated political channels, Leto's mother maintained contacts with other powerful Houses, while Duke Paulus developed strong bonds with the common people of Caladan. The Atreides Dukes led their subjects by serving them and by paying themselves only what was fair from family business enterprises. This was a family of wealth, but not to excess -- not at the expense of its citizens.

In the play, when the returning general went to his bath, his treacherous wife tangled him in purple robes and stabbed both him and his oracular mistress to death. "My gods! A deadly blow has befallen me!" Agamemnon wailed from offstage, out of sight.

Old Paulus smirked and bent over to his son. "I've killed many a man on the battlefield, and I have yet to hear one say that as he died!"

Helena hushed him.

"Gods protect me, another blow! I shall die!" cried the voice of Agamemnon.

While the audience was engrossed in the tragedy, Leto tried to sort through his thoughts of the situation, how it related to his own life. This was supposedly his family's heritage, after all.

Clytemnestra admitted the murder, claiming vengeance against her husband for his bloody sacrifice of their daughter, for his whoring in Troy, and for blatantly bringing his mistress Cassandra into her own home.

"Glorious king," wailed the chorus, "our affection is boundless, our tears unending. The spider has ensnared you in its ghostly web of death."

Leto's stomach churned. House Atreides had committed horrible deeds in the distant past. But the family had changed, perhaps driven by the ghosts of history. The Old Duke was an honorable man, well respected by the Landsraad and beloved by his people. Leto hoped he could do as well when it came his turn to rule House Atreides.

The final lines of the play were spoken, and the company of actors marched across the stage, bowing to the assembled political and business leaders, all of whom were dressed in finery befitting their stations.

"Well, I'm glad that's over," Paulus sighed as the main glowglobes went on in the performance hall. The Old Duke rose to his feet and kissed his wife's hand as they filed out of the royal box. "On your way now, my dear. I have something to say to Leto. Wait for us in the reception room."

Helena glanced once at her son and went down the corridor of the ancient stone-and-wood theatre. Her look said she knew exactly what Paulus intended to say, but she bowed to his archaic tradition of having the men speak of "important matters" while the women busied themselves elsewhere.

Merchants, important businessmen, and other well-respected locals began filling the corridor, sipping Caladanian wine and munching hors d'oeuvres. "This way, lad," the Old Duke said, taking a backstage passage. He and Leto strode past two Atreides guards, who saluted. Then they took a lift tube up four levels to a gilded dressing room. Balut crystal glowglobes floated in the air, flickering a warm orange. Formerly the living quarters of a legendary Caladanian actor, this chamber was now used exclusively by the Atreides and their closest advisors for times requiring privacy.

Leto wondered why his father had taken him here.

After closing the door behind him, Paulus slipped into a green-and-black suspensor chair and motioned for Leto to take one opposite him. The young man did so and adjusted the controls to lift the floating chair higher in the air, so that his eye level was equal to that of his father. Leto only did this in private, not even in the presence of his mother, who would consider such behavior unseemly and disrespectful. By contrast, the Old Duke found his son's brashness and high spirits to be an amusing reflection of the way he himself had been as a young man.

"You are of age now, Leto," Paulus began, removing an ornate wooden pipe from a compartment in the arm of his chair. He did not waste time with chitchat. "And you must learn more than your own backyard. So I'm sending you to Ix to study."

He examined the black-haired youth who looked so similar to his mother, but with lighter, more olive-toned skin than hers. He had a narrow face with sharp angles and deep gray eyes.

Ix! Leto's pulse accelerated. The machine planet. A strange and alien place.

Everyone in the Imperium knew of that mysterious world's incredible technology and innovations, but few outsiders had ever been there. Leto felt disoriented, as if on the deck of a boat in a storm. His father loved to pull surprises like this, to see how well Leto could react to a changed situation.