the same expressions on the faces of his parents and on his poor sister Bheth, who was eventually raped and murdered, an offhand casualty of Beast Rabban’s cruelty.
Gurney would try to summon the energy and compassion to inspire these people, to have them turn their world around, replant it, reenergize it. But he wasn’t sure they had the heart for it. “You are free now!” Simply telling that to a broken and weary populace did not undo generations of damage. The idea was a good one, in a logical sense, but did Paul honestly believe that a gift of freedom and self-determination would change the psyche of an entire planet?
Yet that was Gurney’s new mission, and he intended to accomplish it — for Paul.
With his own men, mostly drawn from Caladan, Gurney took residence in the city of Barony, the former seat of Harkonnen government. He had a lot of fixing and political housecleaning to do. The gigantic mansion had blocky walls and imposing columns, everything based on squares and angles instead of soft curves. Gurney felt
The giant building made him uncomfortable, as if he might find something dangerous around every corner, and he didn’t trust that the Harkonnens had not left unpleasant surprises for any new and unwelcome occupants.
He ordered the great home of Baron Harkonnen to be searched, room by room, every chamber unlocked and scanned. His teams discovered numerous rooms that had obviously been used for torture, booby-trapped chambers that held nothing of obvious value, and several sealed vaults filled with solari coins, preserved melange, and incalculably expensive gems. The fact that none of these rooms had been looted, or even opened, in the five years since the fall of House Harkonnen demonstrated just how much fear the Baron must have inspired.
Gurney had all the treasures liquidated and the profits distributed to the people in the form of public works, as a gesture of goodwill.
He called his government together and summoned the administrators who had been left in de facto control of Giedi Prime for five years since Baron Harkonnen’s death. In an empire so vast and sprawling, no ruler, not even Muad’Dib, could meticulously manage every planet.
The old Harkonnen administrators had been conspicuously absent since Gurney’s arrival on Giedi Prime, but they could no longer avoid him. Having learned of Gurney’s past here, they tried not to meet his gaze; some of them seemed fixated on his inkvine scar; others became simpering toadies trying to ooze their way into his good graces in order to keep their positions. Gurney didn’t much care for any of them; their leadership might have been effective under the old regime, but the harsh methods were ingrained. Just as the people didn’t know how to be free, these administrators did not understand what it meant to be compassionate. He would have to apply all his force of will to ensure that momentum did not drag Giedi Prime back to its former dark and repressive ways.
He needed to make his new philosophy clear to this group of cautious and nervous administrators. He had put this off long enough. “I need to see familiar places. I will go to the slave pits, and to my old village of Dmitri. And you will accompany me.”
Though Gurney had showed very little emotion toward the former leaders, he was sure they expected him to take out his ire on them, and Gurney did not disabuse them of that notion.
First, he made a visit of state to the slave pits where he had been sentenced because he’d dared to sing songs that mocked the Baron. Here, he had mined and processed absurdly expensive blue obsidian, and Rabban had struck him with his inkvine whip. Here, he had been tied down and forced to watch in helpless horror as Rabban and his men sexually assaulted poor Bheth, then strangled her to death. Here, Gurney had found a way to escape by stowing away aboard a cargo ship that carried a load of blue obsidian bound for Duke Leto Atreides.
Looking around the site, Gurney turned white with anger. How little had changed in all the years! He would much rather have faced rebel fanatics than confront the searing memories inspired by this sight. But if he did not heal these places, then no one would.
His voice was quiet, but it may as well have been a shout. “I order these slave pits shut down immediately. Free these people and let them make their own lives. I hereby strip the slave masters of their authority.”
“My Lord Halleck, you will disrupt everything! Our entire economy —”
“I don’t give a damn. Let the slave masters work among the other people as equals.” His lips curled in a small smile. “Then we’ll see how well
Deciding to get the worst over with, he traveled next to the shadow of Mount Ebony and the cluster of pleasure houses that had once serviced the Harkonnen troops. Giedi Prime had many such establishments, but he intended to go to a specific one.
Gurney felt nauseated when he arrived at the doorstep. Memories of one night long ago howled inside his head. The administrators accompanying him were clearly frightened by his expression. “Who is the proprietor that runs these houses?” He remembered an old man who had wired himself into a chair, keeping careful business records but paying no attention to what went on behind the doors of his establishment.
“Rulien Scheck has done an efficient job of managing in the absence of other leadership, my Lord Halleck. He has worked here for years, decades probably.”
“Bring him to me. Now.”
The old man came out, nearly stumbling, yet trying to smile as though proud of what he had accomplished. Prosthetic lines ran down his legs, keeping him from being otherwise crippled, but at least he was free from his chair now. A paunch hung over his waist, and soft rounded buttocks showed that he ate too well and sat down too much. His gray hair was heavy and oiled, as if he considered it to be stylish. Gurney recognized him immediately, but Rulien Scheck showed no sign that he remembered one particular desperate brother from one particular night….
“I am honored that Giedi Prime’s new Lord would come to see my humble establishment. All of my financial records are open to you, sir. I run a clean and honest business, with the most beautiful women. I have banked the expected share of profits in a sealed account, formerly designated to the Harkonnens and now available to you. You will find no evidence of impropriety, I promise you that, my Lord.” He bowed.
“This very house is evidence of impropriety.” Gurney pushed his way inside, but needed to see very little. He remembered the rooms, the pallets, the stains on the walls, the endless lines of sweaty Harkonnen soldiers who had come here seeking pleasure slaves like his sister Bheth, taking more delight in inflicting abuse on the unfortunate women than in the sex itself. By cauterizing her larynx, they had prevented Bheth even from screaming.
He closed his eyes and did not turn to face the old proprietor. “I want this man garroted.”
The administrators remained silent. Scheck squawked, began to argue, and Gurney pointed a blunt finger at him. “Be thankful that I do not first command a hundred soldiers to sodomize you — some of them with spiked clubs. But even though that is what you deserve, I am not a Harkonnen. Your death will be swift enough.”
Gurney pushed past the astonished group and rushed back outside, breathing hard, anxious to get away. “And when they are done, see that all the women are freed, given a place to live — and burn this place to the ground. Burn all the pleasure houses across Giedi Prime.”
Finally, he returned to the village of Dmitri, a poor and hopeless place that had not changed at all. His mother and father were gone. Because lives meant so little, the town kept no records of its people. Gurney could find no marker in the rundown and overcrowded graveyard, no sign that his parents had ever existed.
Someday, he supposed Paul would offer to erect a monument for the victims. Gurney didn’t want that. His parents had not changed this world for the better. The people in the village had not stood up against tyranny. They had not defended him when the Harkonnen raiders had taken him away. They had refused to speak out against the injustice they encountered every single day.
Gurney felt sadness, but no need to mourn. “Enough of this. Take me back to Barony….”
Even there, though, every day brought a foul taste to his mouth. I
But human pain went deep into the strata of the grimy planet. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could bear to stay on Giedi Prime.
