Dune_ House Atreides - Brian Herbert [143]
As Duncan stared with hungry eyes at the passing farmers, one kindly old man gave him a small, overripe paradan melon, which the boy ate voraciously. Sweet moisture dripped between his fingers. It was the most delicious meal he’d ever had.
Seeing the boy’s energy as well as his desperation, the farmer asked him if he would like to return and work in the rice paddies for a few days. The old fellow offered no pay, only a place to sleep and some food. Duncan readily agreed.
On the long walk back, the boy told him the story of his battles with the Harkonnens, how his parents had been arrested and killed, how he had been chosen for Rabban’s hunt, and how he had eventually escaped. “Now I must present myself to Duke Atreides,” he said with complete faith. “But I don’t know where he is, or how to find him.”
The old farmer listened attentively, then gave a grave nod. Caladanians knew the legends of their Duke, had witnessed the greatest of his bullfights at the departure of his son Leto to Ix. The people here honored their leader, and to them it seemed fundamentally reasonable that any citizen could request an audience with the Atreides.
“I can tell you the city where the Duke lives,” the old man said. “My sister’s husband even has a map of the whole world, and I can show you. But I don’t know how you could get there. It’s very far away.”
“I’m young and strong. I can make it.”
The farmer nodded and led his visitor back to the rice paddies.
Duncan stayed four days with the man’s family, working up to his waist in flooded fields. He waded through the water, clearing channels, inserting small but hardy seedlings into the loose mud. He learned the songs and chants of the pundi rice planters.
One afternoon spotters in the low-hanging trees banged on pans, sounding an alarm. Moments later, ripples in the peaty water signaled the approach of a school of panther-fish, bog dwellers that swam in packs searching for prey. They could strip the flesh off a farmer’s bones in moments.
Duncan scrambled up one of the tangled tree trunks to join the other panicked rice farmers. He hung in the low branches, pushing Spanish moss aside as he looked down and watched the ripples approach. Beneath the water he could see large, many-fanged creatures armored with broad scales. Several of the panther-fish circled around the trunk of the swamp tree in which Duncan had taken refuge.
Some of the creatures rose up on scaled elbows, rudimentary arms with front fins that had developed into clumsy claws. With most of their bodies out of the water, the carnivorous fish stretched upward, large and deadly. They blinked wet, slitted eyes at the young man who hung just out of reach in the branches above. After a long moment of staring them down, Duncan climbed one branch higher. The panther-fish submerged again, swirling away out of sight in the sprawling rice paddies.
The following day Duncan took a spare meal the farmer’s family had packed for him and trudged off toward the coast, where he eventually found work as a net-rigger on a fishing boat that plied the waters of the warm southern seas. At least the boat would take him to port on the continent where Castle Caladan lay.
For weeks he worked the nets, gutted the fish, and ate his fill in the galley. The cook used a lot of spices that were unfamiliar to Duncan—hot Caladanian peppers and mustards that made his eyes water and his nose run. The men laughed at his discomfiture, and told him he would never be a man until he could eat food like that. To their surprise young Duncan took this as a challenge, and soon he began asking for extra seasoning. Before long he could endure meals hotter than any other crew member. The fishermen stopped teasing him and began to praise him instead.
Before the end of the voyage, a cabin boy in the next bunk did a calculation for Duncan that showed him that he was