Dune_ House Atreides - Brian Herbert [91]
The fact that he got lost probably saved him. The suboids continued to block his retreat, attempting to intercept him in corridors that led to the surface. But Leto didn’t know where he was going and took blind turns, sometimes hiding in empty alcoves, until finally he reached a small maintenance door that spilled out into the dusty air under the glaring lights of industrial glowglobes.
Several suboids, seeing his silhouette in the doorway, shouted from deep below, but Leto raced out to an emergency lift tube. He swept his bioscram card through the reader and gained access to the upper levels.
Shaking in the aftermath of a burned-out adrenaline rush, Leto couldn’t believe what he had just heard and didn’t know what the suboids would have done had they caught him. He had been astonished enough to see their outrage and their reactions. Intellectually, he couldn’t believe they would have killed him—not the son of Duke Atreides, an honored guest of House Vernius. He had offered to help them, after all.
But the suboids clearly held a deep potential for violence, a frightening darkness that they had managed to hide from their oblivious rulers above.
Leto wondered with dread if perhaps there might be other enclaves of dissent, other groups with similarly charismatic speakers who could manage to tap into the low-level dissatisfaction of the vast worker population.
As he rode up in the lift chamber, Leto looked down and saw the workers below, innocently acting out their roles, carrying out their daily routines. He knew he had to report what he had overheard. But would anyone believe him?
He realized with a tightness in his stomach that he was learning far more about Ix than he had ever meant to know.
Hope can be the greatest weapon of a downtrodden people, or the greatest enemy of those who are about to fail. We must remain aware of its advantages and its limitations.
—LADY HELENA ATREIDES,
her personal journals
After weeks of aimless journeying, the cargo ship dropped out of the orbiting Heighliner and sped down toward the cloud-swirled atmosphere of Caladan.
For Duncan Idaho, the end of his long ordeal seemed at hand.
From his stowaway spot in the cluttered cargo bay, Duncan shifted a heavy box. Its metal corners grated across the deckplates, but he finally got the burden out of the way so he could remove the cover flange on a small windowport. Leaning close to the protective plaz, Duncan stared down at the ocean-rich world. Finally, he began to believe.
Caladan. My new home.
Even from high orbit, Giedi Prime had looked dark and forbidding, like an infected sore. But Caladan, home of the legendary Duke Atreides—mortal enemy of the Harkonnens—seemed like a sapphire sparkling with a blaze of sunlight.
After everything that had happened to him, it still seemed impossible that the surly and treacherous woman Janess Milam had actually been true to her word. She had rescued him for her own petty reasons, her own spiteful revenge, but that did not matter to Duncan. He was here.
It had been worse than a nightmare, which he relived in the brooding days as the Heighliner journeyed from system to system in a roundabout way to Caladan:
In the darkness of Forest Guard Station, as he had approached the mysterious flitter ’thopter, the woman had snatched Duncan, gripping tightly before he could defend himself. The young boy had reacted with fear and frantic struggles, but Janess yanked his arm, breaking open the hardened newskin he’d placed over the deep cut in his shoulder.
With surprising strength the dusky-skinned woman hauled him inside the small flitter and sealed the entry hatch. Yowling like a wild animal, Duncan thrashed and clawed, trying to writhe away from her grip. He pounded on the curved hatch, desperate to get out, to run once again into the night filled with armed hunters.