Stories of Dune (Jerry eBooks) by Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson

Author:Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson [Herbert, Brian & Anderson, Kevin J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jerry eBooks
Published: 2018-01-24T05:00:00+00:00

21

The purpose of night is to prune the limbs of yesterday.

—GURNEY HALLECK, unfinished poetry

As weeks passed with the sandminers sequestered in hastily erected barracks, far from Carthage’s few amenities, House Linkam amassed a significant hoard of melange. Out in the western mountains Gurney established natural warehouses inside rock caves and in camouflaged silos, then posted his most trusted men to guard the treasure.

After each successful worm-stun operation, the isolated workers tallied the spice yield, which translated into bonuses. In less than a month, they had earned as much as they would have banked in half a year under the Hoskanners. Many freedmen sat in amazed disbelief as they realized they finally had a chance to earn passage off this planet.

Some unhappy workers, however, cursed the spice foreman and complained about their quarantine. After several of these disgruntled sandminers tried to escape from a temporary camp and were revealed to be Hoskanner spies, Gurney threw them into a makeshift brig, seized their spice shares, and distributed them among the remaining men.

Meanwhile in Carthage, Jesse used various excuses along with modest increases in the spice he delivered to keep Counselor Bauers at bay. Although Tuek’s cordon of soldiers still contained the inspection ship’s crew (despite their protests), the Grand Emperor’s man could come and go as he pleased. Even so, Bauers learned little and grew increasingly displeased.

No one knew where all the missing spice-harvesting crews had gone. Rumors of underhanded treatment of the men began to spread, and Jesse declined to provide any acceptable explanations.

As he stood in his ship looking out on the city, Counselor Bauers couldn’t help smiling to himself, a feral slash that cut across his face. To survive, Jesse Linkam had begun to think like the Hoskanners . . .

Jesse lay in bed beside Dorothy. Sworn to secrecy about the shock-canister method, she kept an unofficial accounting of how much melange had been gathered. To boost morale, she suggested that Jesse begin quietly providing the exiled spice crews with additional comforts and entertainment, even female companionship, if they wanted it. Jesse also decided to donate his personal chef from the mansion, though Piero Zonn would have even more problems out in a dusty base camp than in the questionable civilization of Carthage. Still, he would be commanded to do what he could for the sandminers; without them, the Hoskanners could never be defeated.

Meanwhile, back in the city, the water reserves of House Linkam had been exhausted. While the people appreciated the generosity, as soon as they began to be turned away their grumbling started once again. Jesse thought of their hardships, feeling guilt because finally his teams were hauling in huge melange harvests, yet he had to pretend to be poor.

With the tighter markets and the higher demand for melange across the Empire, Jesse had Tuek snoop out a few black-market connections. The old veteran was easily able to bring in extra water shipments, using a portion of the never-reported spice hoard to pay for the precious liquid. Thus, Jesse soon reinstituted the water benefits for all supplicants.

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