Dune_ House Atreides - Brian Herbert [84]
For weeks, troublesome reports of a curious outsider had reached Heinar’s ears. Now the man, Pardot Kynes, was being led to the sietch by a different route, through rock passageways. The stranger’s actions were mind-boggling—an Imperial servant who killed Harkonnens?
Ommun, the Fremen youth who had brought bleeding Stilgar back to the sietch, waited anxiously beside his injured friend in the cave shadows. Heinar turned his monocular gaze to the young man, letting the women continue to tend their patient. “Why is it that Turok brings an outsider to our sietch?”
“What were we to do, Heinar?” Ommun looked surprised. “I needed his vehicle to bring Stilgar here.”
“You could have taken this man’s groundcar and all his possessions and given his water to the tribe,” the Naib said, his voice low.
“We can still do that,” one of the women rasped, “as soon as Turok gets here with him.”
“But the stranger fought and killed Harkonnens! We three would have died, had he not arrived when he did,” Ommun insisted. “Is it not said that the enemy of my enemy is my friend?”
“I do not trust or even understand the loyalties of this one,” Heinar said, crossing his sinewy arms over his chest. “We know who he is, of course. The stranger comes from the Imperium—a Planetologist, they say. He remains on Dune because the Harkonnens are forced to let him do his work, but this man Kynes answers only to the Emperor himself . . . if that. There are unanswered questions about him.”
Wearily, Heinar sat down on a stone bench carved in the side of the wall. A colorful tapestry of spun spice fibers hung across the cave opening, offering a limited sort of privacy. Sietch inhabitants learned early that privacy was in the mind, not in the environment.
“I will speak with this Kynes and learn what he wants of us, why he has defended three stupid and careless youths against an enemy he had no cause to make. Then I will take this matter to the Council of Elders and let them decide. We must make the choice that is best for the sietch.”
Ommun swallowed hard, recalling how valiantly the man Kynes had fought against the ruthless soldiers. But his fingers strayed to the pouch in his pocket, counting the water rings there—metal markers that tallied the accumulated wealth he had in the tribe.
If the elders did decide to kill the Planetologist after all, then he, Turok, and Stilgar would divide the water treasure equally among them, along with the bounty from the six slain Harkonnens.
When Turok finally led him through the guarded openings, past a doorseal, and into the sietch proper, Kynes saw the place as a cave of infinite wonders. The aromas were dense, rich, and redolent with humanity: smells of life, of a confined population . . . of manufacturing, cooking, carefully concealed wastes, and even chemically exploited death. In a detached way, he confirmed his suspicion that the Fremen youths had not stolen the Harkonnen corpses for some sort of superstitious mutilation, but for the water in their bodies. Otherwise, it would have gone to waste. . . .
Kynes had assumed that when he finally found a hidden Fremen settlement, it would be primitive, almost shameful in its lack of amenities. But here, in this walled-off grotto with side caves and lava tubes and tunnels extending like a warren throughout the mountain, Kynes saw that the desert people lived in an austere yet comfortable style. Quarters rivaled anything Harkonnen functionaries enjoyed in the city of Carthag. And they were much more natural.
As Kynes followed his young guide, he found his attention riveted on one fascinating sight after another. Luxurious woven carpets covered portions of the floor. Side rooms were strewn with cushions and low tables made of metal and polished stone. Articles of precious off-planet wood were few and seemingly ancient: a carved sandworm and a board game that he couldn’t identify, its ornate pieces made of ivory or bone.
Ancient machinery recirculated the sietch air, letting no breath of moisture