— saying of the desert
When Draigo Roget returned to Arrakis City and breathed the crackling dry air, he viewed the details around him with the catalog focus of a trained Mentat. He also drew upon his own experiences. He had been to this planet many times.
Among Draigo’s other duties, Directeur Venport had delegated oversight of the spice-harvesting operations to him. With his Mentat focus and loyalty to VenHold, he had already improved the efficiency and profitability of the work.
Since leaving the Lampadas school, Draigo had trained several Mentat candidates of his own. Given the volatility of the Butlerian fanatics, Directeur Venport knew it was too dangerous to infiltrate more operatives into the Mentat academy right now. If he did, the paranoid Manford Torondo might discover them — and kill them. Better that Draigo teach the candidates himself.
Through VenHold intermediaries, he had obtained a supply of a promising new thought-focusing drug, sapho, and had begun administering it in small doses to some of his students as an experiment; Headmaster Albans kept a supply in the Lampadas school, but had not used it. Draigo’s early results looked promising, but he intended to proceed slowly.
Several of Draigo’s trainees worked in Arrakis City as Combined Mercantiles employees, and two of his new Mentats met him at the spaceport. Needing no pleasantries, Draigo asked for a report as they made their way to company headquarters. The first Mentat, a small man with a high voice, delivered a crisp summary of their activities. “We’ve been studying weather patterns on Arrakis, analyzing images from our new proprietary meteorological satellites. The weather is capricious, but we are developing general models. The more efficiently we predict storms, the better we can plan our harvesting operations.”
“And reduce equipment losses,” said the second Mentat, a taller, slightly older man.
“Any progress on coping with the giant sandworms?” Draigo asked. “Can we detect them earlier or drive them away when they attack our spice-harvesting operations?”
“No progress, sir,” said the first Mentat. “The sandworms cannot be stopped.”
Draigo paused to think about that for a moment, then gave a curt nod. He accepted their conclusion. “Unfortunate.”
The Combined Mercantiles building was cool inside, and the air remained dry. There were no real windows in the sealed facility, but on the wall of the conference room was a fake picture window showing a rugged shoreline and crashing waves under a sky filled with thick rain clouds, a place the Arrakis natives had never seen.
“We brought several Freemen candidates, as you requested. Some refused, but one was curious enough to convince the others.”
“A curious Freeman?” Draigo said. “That is a good sign.”
Six dusty, tanned young men sat in the room around a long table. Draigo Roget studied them in silence, and they did the same to him. All had blue-within-blue eyes, indicating a lifetime of exposure to melange — which would need to be disguised, so as not to rouse suspicions offworld. That problem could be resolved.
Some of the desert people were uneasy, and regarded the wall image of the ocean with awe and intimidation. One of the young men was more fascinated than the others, and his intensity seemed to encourage them to pay attention. Because they were wrapped in spice-fiber robes covered with grit, and their bodies encased in the distillation suits necessary for desert survival, it took Draigo a moment to realize that one of the group was a female.
After a long pause of mutual assessment, the Mentat said, “I have been wanting to speak with you. You are the free people of the desert?”
A young man, with a lean face and pointed chin, glanced at his companions, then rose to his feet. “We are not free people, if we are prisoners of the enticing offer your men made to us.”
“And you want to hear it, or you wouldn’t be here.”
“We should go back out to the sietch,” said a scowling Freeman with creased, weathered skin. “We do not belong here.”
“I don’t belong out there either,” said the young man with the pointed chin. “We discussed this. I thought you wanted to learn about the other worlds.”
“I have the whole desert to see,” grumbled the scowling Freeman. He slumped back into his chair.
The lone woman among them looked at Draigo and pressed, “How do we know we can trust you?” She was so lean and leathery that her beauty had been leached out by the heat and the arid climate. Her body had no spare moisture whatsoever to fill out her breasts in a normal manner, and her distilling suit concealed even the hint of a curve.
Draigo chuckled. “We have done nothing to make you doubt us. We showed you hospitality, offered you water, and you drank it. You may leave if you don’t wish to be here, but first take a look at the world featured on the wall. We can take you there.” He pointed. “And to many other planets. Do none of the Freemen dream of the rest of the universe? If you don’t like it, you can go back to your squalid desert.”
“Why did you ask us to come here?” said another of the young men.
“Because you have been sabotaging our spice-harvesting equipment,” Draigo said, stating a fact, not accusing them. “You ruined some of our flyers, contaminated their energy packs with sand and breached their airtight seals.”
The young man with the pointed chin scowled. “We know nothing of such crimes. You cannot prove we had any part of that.”
“I don’t care whether it was you,” Draigo said. “And even if I were to punish you, someone else would come, and someone else after that. It would be like using one hand to block sand from entering a home while leaving the door wide open.”
“Then why are we here?” demanded the young woman.
“First, tell me your names,” Draigo said.
“A name is a private thing, not given lightly,” she said. “Have you earned it?”
Draigo smiled. “I offered you water. Is it so much to ask for your names in return?”
The woman smiled stiffly and said, “I am Lillis. The others can give you their names if they like. I am not afraid.”
Draigo chuckled again. “At least one is without fear.”
“I am Taref,” said the one with the pointed chin, who seemed to be the leader. The other four, with varying degrees of reluctance, introduced themselves as Shurko (the gruff one), Bentur, Chumel, and Waddoch.
Draigo paced the room. He had been out in the desert aboard the spice factories himself; twice he had even watched huge worms destroy harvesting equipment that could not be whisked away in time. He tended to agree with his Mentats’ assessment that no obvious defenses existed against such leviathans. He had even heard through reliable sources that the Freemen knew how to ride sandworms across great distances. Draigo wasn’t sure he believed that incredible story, but there were so many reports.…
“Your people have been sabotaging our equipment. I doubt you do it because you hate the offworlders who harvest spice. Combined Mercantiles provides necessary materials here in Arrakis City, if you choose to purchase them, but otherwise we leave tribes alone out in your desert. I think young people like yourselves vandalize our equipment because you are bored and restless. It is entertainment and a challenge. You wish to make a mark.”
Draigo watched their expressions. These young Freemen were guarded, but not well practiced in concealing their emotions. He saw a hunger in their brown and leathery faces, their dark, intensely blue eyes.
“Let me offer you an opportunity, a way to channel your abilities. You know the desert … and you know that the desert is not everything in the universe.” He gestured toward the projection wall. “Wouldn’t you like to go somewhere different, perhaps to a planet with so much water you could immerse yourself in it, or look up in the sky and see droplets falling through the air, like sand whipped up by a storm?” He listened to their muttering, nodded again at the oceanscape. “Caladan isn’t even a special world. No one else in the Imperium finds it remarkable at all.”