“They’ve followed me this far, but most are Caladan-born. Arrakis isn’t what they thought it’d be. Here, they’ve lost everything except their lives. I’d prefer they decided for themselves now.”
“Now is no time for you to falter,” Tuek said. “They’ve followed you this far.”
“You need them, is that it?”
“We can always use experienced fighting men … in these times more than ever.”
“You’ve accepted my sword. Do you wish me to persuade them?”
“I think they’ll follow you, Gurney Halleck.”
“’Tis to be hoped.”
“Indeed.”
“I may make my own decision in this, then?”
“Your own decision.”
Halleck pushed himself up from the bucket seat, feeling how much of his reserve strength even that small effort required. “For now, I’ll see to their quarters and well-being,” he said.
“Consult my quartermaster,” Tuek said. “Drisq is his name. Tell him it’s my wish that you receive every courtesy. I’ll join you myself presently. I’ve some off-shipments of spice to see to first.”
“Fortune passes everywhere,” Halleck said.
“Everywhere,” Tuek said. “A time of upset is a rare opportunity for our business.”
Halleck nodded, heard the faint sussuration and felt the air shift as a lockport swung open beside him. He turned, ducked through it and out of the office.
He found himself in the assembly hall through which he and his men had been led by Tuek’s aides. It was a long, fairly narrow area chewed out of the native rock, it’s smooth surface betraying the use of cutteray burners for the job. The ceiling stretched away high enough to continue the natural supporting curve of the rock and to permit internal air-convection currents. Weapons racks and lockers lined the walls.
Halleck noted with a touch of pride that those of his men still able to stand were standing—no relaxation in weariness and defeat for them. Smuggler medics were moving among them tending the wounded. Litter cases were assembled in one area down to the left, each wounded man with an Atreides companion.
The Atreides training—“We care for our own!”—it held like a core of native rock in them, Halleck noted.
One of his lieutenants stepped forward carrying Halleck’s nine-string baliset out of its case. The man snapped a salute, said: “Sir, the medics here say there’s no hope for Mattai. They have no bone and organ banks here—only outpost medicine. Mattai can’t last, they say, and he has a request of you.”
“What is it?”
The lieutenant thrust the baliset forward. “Mattai wants a song to ease his going, sir. He says you’ll know the one … he’s asked it of you often enough.” The lieutenant swallowed. “It’s the one called ‘My Woman,’ sir. If you—”
“I know.” Halleck took the baliset, flicked the multipick out of its catch on the fingerboard. He drew a soft chord from the instrument, found that someone had already tuned it. There was a burning in his eyes, but he drove that out of his thoughts as he strolled forward, strumming the tune, forcing himself to smile casually.
Several of his men and a smuggler medic were bent over one of the litters. One of the men began singing softly as Halleck approached, catching the counter-beat with the ease of long familiarity:
“My woman stands at her window,
Curved lines ‘gainst square glass.
Uprais’d arms … bent … downfolded.
’Gainst sunset red and golded—
Come to me …
Come to me, warm arms of my lass.
For me …
For me, the warm arms of my lass.”
The singer stopped, reached out a bandaged arm and closed the eyelids of the man on the litter.
Halleck drew a final soft chord from the baliset, thinking: Now we are seventy-three.
***
Family life of the Royal Creche is difficult for many people to understand, but I shall try to give you a capsule view of it. My father had only one real friend, I think. That was Count Hasimir Fenring, the genetic-eunuch and one of the deadliest fighters in the Imperium. The Count, a dapper and ugly little man, brought a new slave-concubine to my father one day and I was dispatched by my mother to spy on the proceedings. All of us spied on my father as a matter of self-protection. One of the slave-concubines permitted my father under the Bene Gesserit-Guild agreement could not, of course, bear a Royal Successor, but the intrigues were constant and oppressive in their similarity. We became adept, my mother and sisters and I, at avoiding subtle instruments of death. It may seem a dreadful thing to say, but I’m not at all sure my father was innocent in all these attempts. A Royal Family is not like