Piter de Vries – Literary Art and Illustration

Analog, February, 1964: “Dune”, part three…

John Schoenherr’s cover art depicts a space harvester. The design, reminiscent of the progeny of a beetle and an oil derrick, does have a sense of massiveness about it.

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Baron Vladimir Harkonnen’s mentat, Piter de Vries, encounters a gagged Lady Jesscia after the fall of Arrakeen to Harkonnen forces. (Is there a family resemblance with Lord Voldemort?)

Analog, February 1964, p. 62 (text p. 55) [Ace 1963, p. 171-172]

The Baron glanced behind him at the door.
“Come in, Piter.”

She had never before seen the man who entered and stood beside the Baron,
but the face was vaguely familiar – narrow and with hark features.
The blue-ink eyes suggested that he was a native of Arrakis,
but subtleties of movement and stance told her otherwise.
And his flesh was too well formed with water.
He was tall, though, and slender, and something about him suggested effeminance.

“Such a pity we cannot have our conversation, my dear Lady Jessica,” the Baron said.
“However, we’re aware of your abilities.”
He glanced at the other man.
“Aren’t we, Piter?”

“As you say, Baron,” the man said.

The voice was tenor, and it touched her spine with a wash of coldness.
She had never heard such a chill voice.
To one with the Bene Gesserit training, that voice screamed: Killer!

“For Piter, I have a surprise,” the Baron said.
“He thinks he has come here merely to collect his reward – you, Lady Jessica.
But I wish to demonstrate a thing – that he does not really want you.”

“You play with me, Baron?” Piter asked, and he smiled.

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Alia Atriedes (Saint Alia of the Knife)

Analog, February 1964, pp. 40-41

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Paul Atriedes and Lady Jessica flee into the desert of Arrakis, after the fall of Arrakeen and the Harkonnen’s failed assassination attempt.

Analog, February 1964, pp. 69-70 [Ace 1963, pp. 251-255]

“Run for those rocks the instant we’ve stopped, Paul said.
“I’ll take the pack.”

“Run for … ” She fell silent, nodded. “Worms.”

“Our friends, the woms,” he corrected her.
“They’ll get the ‘thopter.
There’ll be no evidence of where we landed.”

How direct his thinking, she thought.

They glided lower … lower …

There came a rushing sense of motion to their passage –
blurred shadows of dunes, rocks lifting like islands.
The ‘thopter touched a dune top with a soft lurch,
skipped a sand valley,
touched another dune.

He’s killing our speed against the sand, Jessica thought,
and permitted herself to admire his competence.

“Brace yourself!” Paul warned.

He pulled back on the wing brakes,
gently at first,
then harder and harder.
He felt them cup the air, their aspect ratio dropping faster and faster.
Wind screamed through the lapped coverts and primaries of the wing’s leaves.

Abruptly, with only the faintest lurch of warning,
the left wing, weakened by the storm, twisted upward and in,
slamming across the side of the ‘thopter.
The craft skidded across a dune top, twisting to the left.
It tumbled down the opposite face to bury its nose in the next dune amid a cascade of sand.
They lay stopped on the broken wing side, the right wing projecting toward the stars.

Paul jerked off his safety harness,
hurled himself upward across his mother,
wrenching the door open.
Sand poured around them into the cabin, bringing a dry smell of burned flint.
He grabbed the pack from the rear,
saw that his mother was free of her harness.
She stepped up onto the side of the right-hand seat
and out onto the ‘thopter’s metal skin.
Paul followed, dragging the pack by its straps.