Tormsa squatted beside him. 'Very old city,' he said. 'Harkonnen place. Look.' He passed a small monoscope to Duncan. 'That is where we go tonight.'
Duncan put the monoscope to his left eye and tried to focus the oil lens. The controls felt unfamiliar, not at all like those he had learned as a pre-ghola youth or had been taught at the Keep. He removed it from his eye and examined it.
'Ixian?' he asked.
'No. We made it.' Tormsa reached over and pointed out two tiny buttons raised above the black tube. 'Slow, fast. Push left to cycle out, right to cycle back.'
Again, Duncan lifted the scope to his eye.
Who were the we who had made this thing?
A touch of the fast button and the view leaped into his gaze. Tiny dots moved in the city. People! He increased the amplification. The people became small dolls. With them to give him scale, Duncan realized that the city at the valley's edge was immense... and farther away than he had thought. A single rectangular structure stood in the center of the city, its top lost in the clouds. Gigantic.
Duncan knew this place now. The surroundings had changed but that central structure lay fixed in his memory.
How many of us vanished into that black hellhole and never returned?
'Nine hundred and fifty stories,' Tormsa said, seeing where Duncan's gaze was directed. 'Forty-five kilometers long, thirty kilometers wide. Plasteel and armor-plaz, all of it.'
'I know.' Duncan lowered the scope and returned it to Tormsa. 'It was called Barony.'
'Ysai,' Tormsa said.
'That's what they call it now,' Duncan said. 'I have some different names for it.'
Duncan took a deep breath to put down the old hatreds. Those people were all dead. Only the building remained. And the memories. He scanned the city around that enormous structure. The place was a sprawling mass of warrens. Green spaces lay scattered throughout, each of them behind high walls. Single residences with private parks, Teg had said. The monoscope had revealed guards walking the wall tops.
Tormsa spat on the ground in front of him. 'Harkonnen place.'
'They built to make people feel small,' Duncan said.
Tormsa nodded. 'Small, no power in you.'
The guide had become almost loquacious, Duncan thought.
Occasionally during the night, Duncan had defied the order for silence and tried to make conversation.
'What animals made these passages?'
It had seemed a logical question for people trotting along an obvious animal track, even the musty smell of beasts in it.
'Do not talk!' Tormsa snapped.
Later, Duncan asked why they could not get a vehicle of some sort and escape in that. Even a groundcar would be preferable to this painful march across country where one route felt much like another.
Tormsa stopped them in a patch of moonlight and looked at Duncan as though he suspected his charge had suddenly become bereft of sense.
'Vehicles can follow!'
'No one can follow us when we're on foot?'
'Followers also must be on foot. Here, they will be killed. They know.'
What a weird place! What a primitive place.
In the shelter of the Bene Gesserit Keep, Duncan had not realized the nature of the planet around him. Later, in the no-globe, he had been removed from contact with the outside. He had pre-ghola and ghola memories, but how inadequate those were! When he thought about it now, he realized there had been clues. It was obvious that Gammu possessed rudimentary weather control. And Teg had said that the orbiting monitors that guarded the planet from attack were of the best.
Everything for protection, damned little for comfort! It was like Arrakis in that respect.
Rakis, he corrected himself.
Teg. Did the old man survive? A captive? What did it mean to be captured here in this age? It had meant brutal slavery in the old Harkonnen days. Burzmali and Lucilla... He glanced at Tormsa.
'Will we find Burzmali and Lucilla in the city?'
'If they get through.'
Duncan glanced down at his clothing. Was it a sufficient disguise? A Tleilaxu Master and companion? People would think the companion a Face Dancer, of course. Face Dancers were dangerous.
The baggy trousers were of some material Duncan had never before seen. It felt like wool to the hand, but he sensed that it was artificial. When he spat on it, spittle did not adhere and the smell was not of wool. His fingers detected a uniformity of texture that no natural material could present. The long soft boots and watchcap were of the same fabric. The garments were loose and puffy except at the ankles. Not quilted, though. Insulated by some trick of manufacture that trapped dead air between the layers. The color was a mottled green and gray - excellent camouflage here.
Tormsa was dressed in similar garments.
'How long do we wait here?' Duncan asked.
Tormsa shook his head for silence. The guide was seated now, knees up, arms wrapped around his legs, head cradled against his knees, eyes looking outward over the valley.
During the night's trip, Duncan had found the clothing remarkably comfortable. Except for that once in the water, his feet stayed warm but not too warm. There was plenty of room in trousers, shirt, and jacket for his body to move easily. Nothing abraded his flesh.
'Who makes clothing such as this?' Duncan asked.
'We made it,' Tormsa growled. 'Be silent.'
This was no different than the pre-awakening days at the Sisterhood's Keep, Duncan thought. Tormsa was saying: 'No need for you to know.'
Presently, Tormsa stretched out his legs and straightened. He appeared to relax. He glanced at Duncan. 'Friends in the city signal that there are searchers overhead.'
' 'Thopters?'
'Yes.'
'Then what do we do?'
'You must do what I do and nothing else.'
'You're just sitting there.'
'For now. We will go down into the valley soon.'
'But how -'
'When you traverse such country as this you become one of the animals that live here. Look at the tracks and see how they walk and how they lie down for a rest.'
'But can't the searchers tell the difference between...'
'If the animals browse, you make the motions of browsing. If searchers come, you continue to do what it was you were doing, what any animal would do. Searchers will be high in the air. That is lucky for us. They cannot tell animal from human unless they come down.'
'But won't they -'
'They trust their machines and the motions they see. They are lazy. They fly high. That way, the search goes faster. They trust their own intelligence to read their instruments and tell which is animal and which is human.'
'So they'll just go by us if they think we're wild animals.'
'If they doubt, they will scan us a second time. We must not change the pattern of movements after being scanned.'
It was a long speech for the usually taciturn Tormsa. He studied Duncan carefully now. 'You understand?'
'How will I know when we're being scanned?'
'Your gut will tingle. You will feel in your stomach the fizz of a drink that no man should swallow.'
Duncan nodded. 'Ixian scanners.'
