"I am not Fremen," Margot responded sharply, not yet ready to strike out with the paralyzing command of Bene Gesserit Voice.  She had deadly weapons at her disposal that were unimagined by these primitives.  "What do you want with me?"

 

"You have seen me before," the man said.

 

"You are a priest."

 

"I am an Acolyte, one of the Sayyadina's assistants," he answered without taking a step closer.

 

Sayyadina, Margot thought.  Her pulse quickened.  That was a title she'd heard before, signifying a woman who seemed eerily like a Reverend Mother.  Such a name was taught by the Missionaria Protectiva.

 

Suddenly all became clear.  But she had spoken her request to the Fremen so long ago, she had given up hope.  "You heard my communication, my whispered message."

 

The priest lowered his head.  "You say that you have information about the Lisan al-Gaib."  The appellation was pronounced with a deep resonance and respect.

 

"And so I do.  I must speak with your Reverend Mother."  Calmly, stalling for time to settle her thoughts, Margot scooped up the plant she had dropped.  Leaving the pot's shards and dirt on the floor, she placed the philarose into a fresh container, hoping it would survive.

 

"Sayyadina of another world, you must come with us," Mapes said.

 

Margot brushed dirt from her hands.  Though she allowed no flicker of emotion on her face, her heart pounded with anticipation.  Perhaps, finally, she would have hard information to report to Mother Superior Harishka.  Maybe she would learn what had happened to the missing Sisters who, a century ago, had vanished into the deserts of Arrakis.

 

She followed the two Fremen out into the night.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To know what one ought to do is not enough.

 

-PRINCE RHOMBUR VERNIUS

 

 

THE WAVES PLAYED a slow lullaby beneath the wickerwood coracle, fostering a false sense of peace over troubled thoughts.

 

Duke Leto reached over the side and grabbed a floating sphere in the thick mesh of leaves drifting along with them.  He drew out a jeweled knife from its golden sheath at his side and cut the ripe paradan melon from its underwater plant structure.  "Here, Rhombur, have a melon."

 

He blinked in surprise.  "Uh, isn't that the Emperor's knife?  The one Shaddam gave to you after the Trial by Forfeiture?"

 

Leto shrugged.  "I prefer practicality over showiness.  I'm sure my cousin won't mind."

 

Rhombur took the dripping melon and turned it in his hands, inspecting the rough husk in the hazy sunshine.  "Kailea would be horrified, you know.  She'd rather you placed the Emperor's knife on a suspensor plaque inside an ornamental shield."

 

"Well, she doesn't go out fishing with me much."

 

When Rhombur made no move to shuck the melon, Leto took it back, used the tip of Shaddam's jeweled blade to peel off the tough covering, then cracked the rind.  "At least this won't burst into flames if you let it sit out in the sun," Leto chided, remembering the coral-gem debacle that had destroyed one of his favorite boats and stranded the two young men on a distant reef.

 

"Not funny," Rhombur said, for he had been to blame.

 

Leto held up the knife, watching how the light glinted on the edge.  "You know, I wore this as part of my formal uniform when I went to meet with Viscount Moritani.  I think it got his attention."

 

"He's a hard man to impress," Rhombur said.  "The Emperor has finally withdrawn his Sardaukar, and everything's quiet.  Uh, do you think the Moritani-Ecazi feud is over now?"

 

"No, I don't think it is.  The entire time I was on Grumman, I felt my nerves tingling.  I think the Viscount is just biding his time."

 

"And you've put yourself in the middle of it."  With his own knife, Rhombur cut away a section of the melon and took a bite.  He winced, spat it over the side.  "Still a little sour."

 

Leto laughed at his facial expression, then grabbed a small towel from a cubby.  Wiping his hands and the ceremonial knife, he stepped inside the cabin, out of the bright sun, and started the engines.  "At least all my duties aren't so unpleasant.  We'd better get moving down to the delta.  I promised I'd be at the barge port by noon to greet the first loads of this season's pundi-rice harvest."

 

"Ah, the perils and demands of leadership," Rhombur said, following him down into the cabin.  "Look in the coolpack -- I brought along a surprise for you.  You know that dark beer you like so much?"

 

"You don't mean the Harkonnen ale?"

 

"You'll have to drink it out here, where no one can see us.  Got it from a smuggler.  Without using your name, of course."

 

"Rhombur Vernius of Ix, I am shocked to find you consorting with smugglers and black marketeers."

 

"How else do you think I manage to infiltrate supplies to the rebels on Ix?  I haven't been terribly effective so far, but I have indeed contacted some highly unsavory folk."  He unsealed the coolpack and rummaged around for the unlabeled bottles.  "And a few of them have proven, uh, quite resourceful."

 

The Duke guided the coracle into the current, following the lush shoreline.  Thufir Hawat would probably lecture him for going so far without an Atreides honor guard.  "I guess I could drink a bottle or two, then.  As long as there's no Harkonnen profit in it."

 

Rhombur removed two containers from the coolpack and squeezed the tops to extrude spice-straws.  "None whatsoever.  Apparently, it was stolen during a raid on the brewery.  A power outage caused a stir in the bottling plant, and, uh, somehow a pair of small Giedi cattle got loose inside the factory.  There was substantial confusion, and a great deal of lost beer.  A tragic waste.  So many smashed bottles it would have been impossible to account for them all."

 

Standing at the coracle's engine controls, Leto sniffed at the dark liquid, stopped himself from taking a gulp.  "How do we know it isn't tainted?  I'm not in the habit of carrying a poison snooper onboard my own boat."

 

"This batch was bottled for the Baron himself.  One look at his fat body, and you can well imagine how much of the stuff he must consume."

 

"Well, if it's good enough for Baron Harkonnen -- salud."  Leto took a sip of the bitter porter, filtered through melange crystals to enhance its flavor.

 

Slipping onto the bench behind Leto, Rhombur watched the Duke take them around a rocky point and then head toward a broad delta where barges laden with pundi rice converged.  The Ixian Prince didn't sip from his beer yet.  "This is a bribe," he admitted.  "I need a favor.  In fact, how about two favors?"

 

The Duke chuckled.  "For one bottle of beer?"

 

"Uh, there's more in the coolpack.  Look, I just want to be up-front with you.  Leto, I consider you my closest friend.  Even if you say no, I'll understand."

 

"You'll still be my friend if I say no to both favors?"  Leto continued drinking through the straw.

 

Rhombur slid his bottle around on the table in front of him, from hand to hand.  "I want to do something more significant for Ix, something more serious."

 

"You need more money?  How else can I help?"

 

"Not money, well not exactly.  I've been sending C'tair Pilru funding and encouragement ever since he contacted me four years ago."  He looked up, his forehead furrowed.  "Word has reached me that the freedom fighters have been decimated, with only a few survivors.  I think it's worse than even he lets on.  It's time for me to stop playing around."  Rhombur's eyes hardened, taking on a look Leto had last seen on Dominic Vernius during the revolt.  "Let's give them some serious firepower so they can make a difference."

 

Leto took another long sip of beer.  "I'll do anything within reason to help you regain your birthright, and I've always made that clear to you.  What exactly do you have in mind?"

 

"I'd like to send explosives, some of the plat-wafers in your armory.  They're small and lightweight, so they're easily concealed and shipped."

 

"How many wafers?"

 

Rhombur didn't hesitate.  "A thousand."

 

Leto whistled.  "That'll cause a lot of destruction."

 

"Uh, that's the point, Leto."

 

He continued to steer the boat over a choppy intersection of currents toward the mouth of the river.  Up ahead they could see the pilot boats and colorful seakites flown over the barge docks.  "And how do you propose to get supplies onto Ix?  Can your smuggler friends get the shipment to where C'tair can intercept it?"

 

"The Tleilaxu took control sixteen years ago.  They're making regular shipments again, using their own transports and special Guild dispensations.  They've had to loosen restrictions because they depend on outside suppliers for raw materials and special items.  All the ships land on the rock shelves along the port-of-entry canyon.  The hollowed-out grottoes there are big enough to accommodate warehouse frigates, and the tunnels intersect with the underground cities.  Some of the frigate captains served under my father a long time ago, and they have, uh, offered to help."

 

Leto thought of the Earl of Ix, bald and boisterous, who had fought beside Paulus Atreides in the Ecazi Revolt.  Based on his father's reputation as a war hero, Rhombur probably had more secret allies than even he realized.

 

"We can make special marked containers and get the word to C'tair.  I think . . . I think we can pass all of the appropriate checkpoints."  Suddenly angry, he pounded his fist on the wooden bench beside him.  "Vermilion hells, Leto, I've got to do something!  I haven't been able to set foot on my own home planet for nearly half my life!"

 

"If it were anyone else asking me this . . ."  Leto caught himself, and said, "Possibly -- so long as you conceal the involvement of House Atreides."  He sighed.  "Before I decide, what's the second favor?"

 

Now the Prince seemed truly nervous.  "I've pondered how I should ask this, yet I couldn't come up with the right words.  Everything seemed, uh, false and manipulative . . . but I need to tell you."  He took a deep breath.  "It's about my sister."

 

Leto, about to open a second beer, stopped short.  His face darkened.  "Some things are private matters, even from you, Rhombur."

 

The Prince gave him a commiserating smile.  Since he had taken a Bene Gesserit as his concubine and fast friend, he had grown wiser.  "The two of you have gotten off track, through no one's fault.  It just happened.  I know you still care deeply for Kailea -- and don't try to deny it.  She's done a lot for House Atreides, helping with the accounts and commercial matters.  My father always said she had the best instinct for business in our family."

 

With a sad shake of his head, Leto said, "She used to be full of good advice.  But since Chiara came, she's demanded more and more trappings and fineries.  Even when I give them to her, Kailea seems dissatisfied.  She's . . . she's not the same woman I fell in love with."

 

Rhombur drank from his own beer, smacked his lips at the bitterness.  "Maybe that's because you've stopped giving her a chance, stopped letting her use her business skills.  Put her in charge of one of your industries -- paradan melons, pundi rice, coral gems -- and watch the production increase.  I can't imagine how far she might have gone if, uh, the revolt hadn't happened on Ix."

 

Leto pushed his bottle aside.  "Did she put you up to this?"

 

"Leto, my sister is a rare woman.  I'm asking this as your friend, and as her brother."  Rhombur passed a hand through his tousled blond hair.  "Give Kailea the opportunity to be more than a concubine."

 

Gazing at the exiled Prince, Leto became as cold and stiff as a statue.  "So you want me to marry her?"  Rhombur had never used their friendship to force an issue, and Leto had never dreamed he could deny his friend anything.  But this . . .

 

Biting his lower lip, Rhombur nodded.  "Yes, uh, I suppose that's what I'm asking."

 

They both remained silent for a long, long moment as the coracle swayed.  A huge barge lumbered across the delta toward the docks.

 

Leto's thoughts churned, and he finally reached a difficult decision.  He drew a deep breath, flaring his nostrils.  "I'll say yes to one of your favors -- but you must choose which one."

 

Rhombur swallowed hard, noted the anguished expression on Leto's face.  After a long moment he looked away.  When he squared his shoulders, Leto was uneasy about what he would say.  He had put everything on the line.

 

Finally, the exiled Prince of Ix answered in a wavering voice, "Then I choose the future of my people.  You have taught me the importance of this.  I need those explosives.  I just hope C'tair Pilru can put them to good use."

 

He leaned forward and took a long drink of the smuggled Harkonnen beer, then reached out to clasp Leto's forearm.  "If there's one thing I've learned from the Atreides, it's to put the people foremost, and personal wishes second.  Kailea will just have to understand that."

 

The Duke took their coracle around sandbars into the river channel, toward the mounded barges bedecked with green ribbons fluttering in the breezes.  People were gathered at the docks, loading sack after sack of Caladan's primary grain export.  Wagons rolled up along the riverbank, while low-riding boats drifted in from flooded fields.  Someone shot homemade fireworks into the air, which banged and sizzled with color in the cloudy skies.

 

Leto brought their boat up against the main docks near a fully loaded barge preparing to launch.  A large ornamental podium, surrounded by green-and-white streamers, waited for him.

 

Pushing his difficult discussion with Rhombur to the back of his mind, Leto put on a noble face and enjoyed the festivities.  It was one of his traditional duties as Duke Atreides.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Facts mean nothing when they are preempted by appearances.  Do not underestimate the power of impression over reality.

 

-CROWN PRINCE RAPHAEL CORRINO, The Rudiments of Power

 

 

BARON HARKONNEN HOBBLED to the highest tower balcony of the family Keep overlooking the morass of Harko City.  He leaned on his sandworm-head cane -- and hated it.

 

Without the cane, though, he couldn't move.

 

Damn the witches and what they've done to me!  He had never ceased brooding on how he might get his revenge, but since both the Sisterhood and House Harkonnen held mutual blackmail information, neither could move openly against the other.

 

I must find a more subtle way.

 

"Piter de Vries!" he bellowed to anyone who could hear him.  "Send in my Mentat!"

 

De Vries lurked near him at all times, hovering there, spying and scheming.  The Baron needed only to shout, and the twisted Mentat could hear.  If only everyone else obeyed him as well -- Rabban, the Mother Superior, even that smug Suk doctor Yueh. . . .

 

As expected, the feral man danced in on tiptoes, moving with rubbery limbs.  He carried a sealed parcel in his arms, right on time.  The Baron's engineers had promised results, and every one of them knew he would flay them alive if they failed him.

 

"Your new suspensors, my Baron."  De Vries bowed and extended the container toward his master's lumbering hulk.  "If you strap them about your waist, they will decrease your body weight and allow you to move with unaccustomed freedom."

 

Reaching out with pudgy hands, the Baron tore open the package.  "The freedom I used to have."  Inside, linked together on a chain belt, were small globes of self-contained suspensors, each with its own power pack.  While he didn't think he would fool anyone, at least the suspensor belt would help hide the depth of his infirmity.  And make others wonder . . .

 

"They may require a bit of practice to use --"

 

"They'll make me feel fit and healthy again."  The Baron grinned as he held the suspensor globes in front of him, then fastened the belt around his grotesquely swollen waist -- how had his belly grown so large?  He toggled on the suspensor globes, one by one.  With each additional hum, he felt the weight lessening from his feet, his joints, his shoulders.  "Ahhh!"

 

The Baron took a long step and bounded across the room like an explorer on a low-gravity world.  "Piter, look at me!  Ha, ha!"  He landed on one foot, then sprang into the air again, leaping nearly to the ceiling.  Laughing, he bounced once more, then spun on his left foot like an acrobat.  "This is so much better."

 

The twisted Mentat hovered by the door, wearing a self-satisfied smile.

 

The Baron landed again and swept his cane from side to side with a whistling sound like an athletic fencer.  "Exactly as I had hoped."  He smacked the cane hard on the unyielding desk surface.

 

"The parameters may take some getting used to, my Baron.  Don't overextend yourself," the Mentat cautioned, knowing the Baron would do exactly the opposite.

 

With the footwork of a gross ballet dancer, Baron Harkonnen crossed the room and clapped an astonished Piter de Vries paternally on the cheeks, then moved toward the high, open balcony.

 

As de Vries watched the big man's foolishly overconfident movements, he imagined that the Baron would misjudge his bounding strides and sail off the edge of the Keep tower and into open sky.  I can only hope.

 

The suspensors would hinder his descent somewhat, but they could only lessen the immense weight.  The Baron would strike the distant pavement at a slightly decreased velocity -- but he would splatter across the streets, nonetheless.  An unexpected bonus.

 

Since de Vries was responsible for watching over the family's various assets, including hidden spice stockpiles such as the one on Lankiveil, the Baron's demise would enable him to shift ownership to himself.  Dimwitted Rabban wouldn't know what was happening.

 

Perhaps a nudge in the right direction --

 

But the big man caught himself on the balcony rail and rebounded, settling into an enthusiastic pause.  He stared across the smoky streets and sprawling buildings.  The metropolis looked black and grimy, industrial buildings and administrative towers that had sunk their roots into Giedi Prime.  Beyond the city lay even dirtier agricultural and mining villages, squalid places that were barely worth the trouble of keeping in line.  Far below, like lice crawling the streets, workers milled about between labor shifts.

 

The Baron hefted his cane.  "I don't need this anymore."  He took one last look at the silver maw of the symbolic sandworm on its head, ran his swollen fingers along the smooth wood of the shaft -- then hurled the walking stick out into open space.

 

He leaned over the railing to watch it drop, spinning and dwindling, toward the streets below. He held out a childish hope that it might strike someone on the head.

 

Buoyed by the globes on his belt, the Baron returned to the main room, where a disappointed Piter de Vries looked toward the abrupt edge of the balcony.  The Mentat knew he could never scheme against the Baron, for he would be discovered and executed.  The Baron could always obtain another Mentat from the Bene Tleilax, perhaps even a new de Vries ghola grown from his own dead cells.  His only hope lay in a fortuitous accident . . . or an acceleration of the effects of the Bene Gesserit disease.

 

"Now nothing can stop me, Piter," the Baron said, delighted.  "The Imperium had better watch out for Baron Vladimir Harkonnen."

 

"Yes, I suppose so," the Mentat said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you surrender, you have already lost.  If you refuse to give up, though, no matter the odds against you, at least you have succeeded in trying.

 

-DUKE PAULUS ATREIDES

 

 

IF HE WAS TO RESCUE HIS SISTER, Gurney Halleck knew he had to act alone.

 

He planned carefully for two months, aching to move, knowing Bheth was suffering every moment, every night.  But his scheme would be doomed to fail if he didn't take every possibility into account.  He obtained crude maps of Giedi Prime and laid out his route to Mount Ebony.  It seemed very far away, farther than he had ever traveled in his life.

 

He was tense, fearing the villagers would notice his activities, but they staggered through their days with gazes downcast.  Even his parents said little to him, noticing nothing of his moods, as if their son had disappeared along with their daughter.

 

Finally, as prepared as he was ever going to be, Gurney waited until darkness.  And then he simply . . . left.

 

With a sack of krall tubers and vegetables slung over one shoulder and a harvesting knife tucked into his belt, he made his way across the patchwork fields.  He hid from roads and patrols, sleeping during the day, traveling under the wan moonlight.  He doubted searchers would come after him.  The Dmitri villagers would assume that the trouble maker had been snatched away in the middle of the night by Harkonnen torturers; with any luck, they'd be afraid to report his disappearance at all.

 

Several nights, Gurney managed to slip aboard unmanned cargo transports that crawled westward across the landscape, heading in the correct direction.  Their hulking forms levitated along without stopping, all through the night.  The transports took him hundreds of kilometers, allowing him to rest and brood and wait until he could find the military compound.

 

During long hours, he listened to the throb of suspensor engines that dragged produce or minerals to processing centers.  He longed for his baliset, which he'd been forced to abandon back at home, for it was too bulky to carry on his mission.  When he had the instrument, no matter how much the overlords took from his family, he could still make his own music.  He missed those days.  Now he just hummed to himself, all alone.

 

Finally, he saw the looming cone of Mount Ebony, the stark and blackened remnant of a volcano whose cliffs had broken off at sharp angles.  The rock itself was black, as if covered with tar.

 

The military compound was a jigsaw puzzle of evenly spaced buildings, all square, all undecorated.  It looked like an insect warren established uphill and upwind from the slave pits and obsidian mines.  Between the fenced-in slave pits and the regimented military encampment lay a hodgepodge of buildings, support facilities, inns . . . and a small pleasure house to entertain the Harkonnen troops.

 

So far Gurney had made his way undetected.  The Harkonnen masters could not conceive that a downtrodden laborer with little education and few resources would dare to strike out across Giedi Prime on his own, would venture to spy upon the troops with a personal goal in mind.

 

But he had to make his way into the place where Bheth must be imprisoned.  Gurney hid and waited, observing the military compound and trying to formulate his plan.  He came up with few alternatives.

 

Still, he wouldn't let that stop him.

 

 

A LOWBORN, UNEDUCATED MAN could never hope to pass himself off as someone who belonged there, so Gurney could not infiltrate the pleasure house.  Instead he chose a daring raid. He grasped a metal pipe taken from a refuse pile and held his harvesting knife in the other hand.  Stealth would be sacrificed for speed.

 

He charged through a side door of the pleasure house and ran to the administrator, a crippled old man wired into a chair at the front table.  "Where's Bheth?" the intruder yelled, surprised to hear his own voice after so long.  He thrust the point of his blade under the old man's sinewy chin.  "Bheth Halleck, where is she?"

 

Gurney reeled for a moment.  What if Harkonnen pleasure houses never bothered with the names of their women?  Trembling, the old man saw death in Gurney's blazing eyes and the scars on his face.  "Chamber twenty-one," he said in a croak.

 

Gurney dragged the administrator, chair and all, into a closet and locked him in.  Then he raced up the hall.

 

A few surly customers stared at him, some half-dressed in Harkonnen uniforms.  He heard screams and thumps from behind closed doors, but he had no time to investigate the atrocities.  His concentration focused only on one thing.  Chamber twenty-one.  Bheth.

 

His vision tunneled down to a pinpoint until he located the door.  His audacity had bought him a little time, but it would be only moments before Harkonnen soldiers were called.  He didn't know how fast he could get Bheth out and into hiding.  Together, they could race across the landscape, vanish into the wilderness.  After that, he didn't know where they would go.

 

He couldn't think.  He only knew that he had to try.

 

The number was scribed on the lintel in Imperial Galach.  He heard a scuffle inside.  Using his muscular shoulder, Gurney battered the door.  It splintered at the jamb and caved in with a heavy thud.

 

"Bheth!"  Letting out a wild roar, he rushed into the dimly lit chamber, knife in one hand, metal club in the other.

 

From the bed she gave a muffled cry, and he turned to see her tied up with thin metal cables.  Thick grease had been smeared over her breasts and lower body like war paint, and two naked Harkonnen Soldiers lurched back from their activities like startled snakes.  Both men held strangely shaped tools, one of which sparked and sizzled.

 

Gurney didn't want to imagine what they'd been doing, had forced himself not to contemplate the sadistic tortures that Bheth endured daily.  His roar became a strangled cry in his throat as he saw her -- and froze in shock.  The vision of his sister's humiliation, the tragic sight of what had happened to her in the intervening four years, doomed his rescue attempt to failure.

 

He hesitated only an instant, his jaw dropping.  Bheth had changed so much, her face drawn and aged, her body wiry and bruised . . . so different from the silken seventeen-year-old he had known.  During the fraction of a second that Gurney stood motionless, his angry momentum stalled.

 

It took the Harkonnen soldiers only a heartbeat to leap from the bed and fall upon him.

 

Even without their gauntlets, boots, or body armor, the men pummeled him to the floor.  They knew exactly where to strike.  One of the men jabbed a sparking device against his throat, and his entire left side went numb.  He thrashed uncontrollably.

 

Bheth could only make wordless, breathy sounds as she struggled against the wires that held her to the bed.  Oddly, he noticed a long, thin scar tracing a white line along her throat.  She had no larynx.

 

Gurney couldn't see her anymore as his vision turned crimson.  He heard heavy footsteps and shouts thundering down the halls.  Reinforcements.  He couldn't get up.

 

With a sagging heart, he realized he had failed.  They would kill him and probably murder Bheth, too.  If only I hadn't hesitated.  That instant of uncertainty had defeated him.

 

One of the men looked down, lips drawn in a rictus of fury.  Spittle ran from the left corner of his mouth, and his blue eyes, which might have been handsome at another time, on another person, glared at him.  The guard snatched the harvesting knife and the metal pipe from Gurney's limp hands and held them both up.  Grinning, the Harkonnen soldier tossed the knife aside -- but kept the pipe.

 

"We know where to send you, lad," he said.

 

He heard Bheth's odd whispering again, but she could form no words.

 

Then the guard swung the metal pipe down on Gurney's head.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dreams are as simple or as complicated as the dreamer.

 

-LIET-KYNES, In the Footsteps of My Father

 

 

AS ARMED MEN led the two young Fremen deeper into a warren within the glacial mountainside, Liet-Kynes held his tongue.  He studied details, trying to understand who these fugitives were.  Their threadbare purple-and-copper uniforms seemed to have been modeled after military fashion.

 

The tunnels had been chewed into walls of permafrost-cemented dust and lined with a clear polymer.  The air remained cold enough that Liet could see his own breath, a dramatic reminder of how much moisture left his lungs each time he exhaled.

 

"So, are you smugglers?" Warrick asked.  At first his eyes remained downcast with embarrassment to have been caught so easily, but soon he was intrigued and looked around.

 

Dominic Vernius glanced back at them as they kept pace.  "Smugglers . . . and more, lads.  Our mission goes beyond mere profit and self-interest."  He did not seem angry.  Beneath the mustache, bright white teeth flashed in a sincere grin.  His face possessed an open quality, and his bald pate shone like polished wood.  His eyes contained hints of sparkle, but what might have been a good-natured personality now held an emptiness, as if a large part of the man had been stolen and replaced with something far inferior.

 

"Aren't you showing them too much, Dom?" said a pock-faced man whose right eyebrow was a waxy burn scar.  "It's always been just us, who've proved our loyalty with blood -- no outsiders.  Right, Asuyo?"

 

"Can't say I trust the Fremen any less than that Tuek man, and we do business with him, eh?" said one of the other men -- a lean veteran with a shock of bristly gray-white hair.  On his worn overalls and uniform, he had painstakingly added old insignia of rank and a few scraps of medals.  "Tuek sells water, but he has an . . . oily quality to him."

 

The bald smuggler continued deeper into the complex without pausing.  "Johdam, these lads found us without me showing them a thing.  We've been sloppy -- just be glad it was Fremen, instead of Sardaukar.  Fremen don't have any more love for the Emperor than we do, right, lads?"

 

Liet and Warrick looked at each other.  "Emperor Shaddam is far away, and he knows nothing of Dune."

 

"He knows nothing of honor, either."  A storm crossed Dominic's face, but he calmed himself by changing the subject.  "I've heard that the Imperial Planetologist has gone native, that he's become a Fremen himself and talks about remaking the planet.  Is this true?  Does Shaddam support these activities?"

 

"The Emperor is not aware of any ecological plans."  Liet withheld his true Fremen identity, said nothing about his father, and introduced himself by his other appellation, "My name is . . . Weichih."

 

"Well, it's good to have grandiose, impossible dreams."  Dominic looked distant for a moment.  "We all have them."

 

Liet was not certain what the big man meant.  "So why are you hiding here?  Who are you?"

 

The others deferred to Dominic.  "We've been here fifteen years now, and this is only one of our bases.  We have a more important one off-world, but I still have a soft spot for our first hiding hole on Arrakis."

 

Warrick nodded.  "You have created your own sietch here."

 

Dominic stopped at an opening where broad plaz windows looked down into a deep chasm between the towering cliffs.  On the flat, gravelly bottom of the fissure, a fleet of mismatched ships sat parked in regimented order.  Around one of the lighters, small figures hurried to load cases of cargo, preparing for lift-off.

 

"We have a few more amenities than a sietch, lad, and a more cosmopolitan outlook."  He studied the two Fremen.  "But we must retain our secrets.  What tipped you off, lads?  Why did you come here?  How did you see through our camouflage?"

 

When Warrick started to speak, Liet cut him off to say, "And what do we receive in exchange for telling you this?"

 

"Your lives, eh?" Asuyo said gruffly.  His gray-white hair bristled.

 

Liet shook his head, standing firm.  "You could kill us even after we pointed out all the mistakes you've made.  You're outlaws, not Fremen -- why should I trust your word?"

 

"Outlaws?"  Dominic gave a bitter laugh.  "The laws of the Imperium have caused more damage than any single person's treachery . . . except perhaps that of the Emperor himself.  Old Elrood and now Shaddam."  His haunted eyes held their distant, unfocused look.  "Damned Corrinos . . ."  Taking one step away from the cliff-wall windows, he paused again.  "You lads aren't thinking of turning me in to the Sardaukar, are you?  I'm sure there's still an incredible bounty on my head."

 

Warrick looked at his friend.  Both wore puzzled expressions.  "We don't even know who you are, Sir."

 

Some of the smugglers chuckled.  Dominic let out a sigh of relief, then showed a flash of disappointment.  He puffed up his chest.  "I was a hero of the Ecazi Revolt, married one of the Emperor's concubines.  I was overthrown when invaders took over my world."

 

The politics and the vastness of the Imperium were far beyond Liet's Fremen experience.  Occasionally, he longed to journey off-planet, though he doubted he would ever have the opportunity.

 

The bald man stroked the polymer-lined walls.  "Being inside these tunnels always reminds me of Ix . . ."  His voice, wistful and empty, trailed off.  "That's why I chose this place, why I keep coming back here from our other base."

 

Dominic emerged from his reverie, as if surprised to see his fellow smugglers still there.  "Asuyo, Johdam -- we'll take these lads to my private office."  With a wry smile, he looked back at the two young men.  "It's modeled after a chamber in the Grand Palais, as close as I could remember it.  I didn't have time to take blueprints when we packed up and fled."

 

The bald man marched ahead, reciting the story of his life, as if it were dry text from a history filmbook.  "My wife was murdered by Sardaukar.  My son and daughter now live in exile on Caladan.  Early on, I made one raid against Ix and almost died in the process.  Lost a lot of my men, and Johdam barely pulled me out alive.  Since then I've been in hiding, doing what I could to hurt those sligs, the Padishah Emperors and the Landsraad turncoats who betrayed me."

 

They passed storage hangars where equipment hid under tarpaulins, workbenches and mechanical bays where machines lay strewn about in various stages of disassembly or repair.  "But my work hasn't amounted to much more than vandalism, wrecking Corrino monuments, defacing statues, staging embarrassing stunts . . . being a general nuisance to Shaddam.  Of course, with his new daughter Josifa -- that's four girls and no son, no heir -- he's got more problems than I can make for him."

 

Behind him, pock-faced Johdam growled, "Causing trouble for the Corrinos has become our way of life."

 

Asuyo scratched his bristly hair and spoke in a harsh voice, "We all owe Earl Vernius our lives many times over -- and we're not about to let any harm come to him.  I gave up my commission, my benefits, even a decent rank in the Imperial military to join this motley group.  We won't let any Fremen pups give away our secrets, eh?"

 

"You can trust the word of a Fremen," Warrick said, indignantly.

 

"But we haven't given our word," Liet pointed out, his eyes narrow and hard.  "Yet."

 

They reached a room appointed clumsily with fine trappings, as if a man with no cultural finesse had gathered items he could remember, but which didn't entirely fit together.  Faux-gold coins overflowed from chests, making the room look like a pirate's treasure house.  The casual treatment of the commemorative pieces -- struck with Shaddam's face on one side and the Golden Lion Throne on the other -- gave the impression that the bald man did not know what else to do with all the money he had stolen.

 

Dominic ran a callused hand through a bowl of shimmering emerald spheres, each the size of his small fingernail.  "Moss pearls from Harmonthep.  Shando always loved these, said the color was a perfect shade of green."  Unlike Rondo Tuek, the bald man did not appear to revel in his private trappings for their own sake, but he drew comfort from the memories they brought him.

 

After sending Johdam and Asuyo away, Dominic Vernius sat down in a padded purple chair, indicating cushions on the opposite side of a low table for his visitors.  Colors ranging from scarlet to crimson flowed like puddles across the sleek wood surface.

 

"Polished bloodwood."  Dominic rapped the low table with his knuckles, causing a burst of color to spread out across the grain.  "The sap still flows when heated by warm lights, even years after the tree was cut down."  He stared at the walls and hangings.  Several crude sketches of people hung there in expensive frames, as if Dominic had drawn them from too-clear memories but with too little artistic training.

 

"My men fought with me in the bloodwood forests on Ecaz.  We killed many rebels there, torched their base deep in the forest.  You saw Johdam and Asuyo -- they were two of my captains.  Johdam lost his brother there, in the forests. . . ."  He took a long, shuddering breath.  "That was back when I willingly shed blood for the Emperor, when I swore my allegiance to Elrood IX and expected a reward in return.  He offered me anything I wanted, and I took the one thing that angered him."

 

Beside him, Dominic reached into a glazed pot filled with golden commemorative coins.  "Now I do everything I can against the Emperor."

 

Liet frowned.  "But Elrood has been dead for many years, since I was a baby.  Shaddam IV now sits on the Golden Lion Throne."

 

Warrick sat next to his friend.  "We don't hear much news of the Imperium, but even I know that."

 

"Alas, Shaddam is as bad as his father."  In his hands, Dominic played with several of the faux-gold coins, jingling them together.  He sat up straight, as if he suddenly realized how many years had passed, how long he'd been hiding.  "Very well, then, listen to me.  We are of course indignant and offended that you have trespassed here.  Two lads . . . what are you, sixteen?"  A smile wrinkled the leathery skin on Dominic's cheeks.  "My men are embarrassed that you found us out.  I would very much like for you to go outside and show us what you noticed.  Name your price, and I'll meet it."

 

Liet's mind whirled as he considered the resources and skills this group had.  Treasure lay all around, but neither of them could use baubles like the green pearls.  Some of the tools and equipment might be useful. . . .

 

Being cautious and thinking through the consequences, Liet did a very Fremen thing.  "We will agree, Dominic Vernius -- but I stipulate that we hold your obligation in abeyance.  When I wish to receive a boon from you, I will ask -- as will Warrick.  For now, we will instruct your men in how to make your hideout invisible."  Liet smiled.  "Even to Fremen."

 

 

BUNDLED UP, the smugglers followed as the two young men indicated the imperfectly covered tracks, the discoloration in the glacial cliffside wall, the too-obvious paths that led up the rock slope.  Even when the Fremen pointed out these things, some of the smugglers still couldn't see what should have been plain to them.  Still, Johdam scowled and promised to make the suggested changes.

 

Dominic Vernius stood breathing cold air and shaking his head in amazement.  "No matter how much security one adds to a home, there are always ways to breach it."  His lips drew downward in a frown.  "Generations of planners tried to develop perfect isolation on Ix.  Only our royal family understood the whole system.  What a monumental waste of effort and solaris!  Our underground cities were supposed to be impregnable, and we grew lax in our security.  Just like these men here."

 

He clapped Johdam on the back.  The pock-faced veteran frowned and went back to his work.

 

The big bald man sighed once more.  "At least my children got away."  His face screwed up in an expression of disgust.  "Damn the filthy Tleilaxu and damn House Corrino!"  He spat on the ground, startling Liet.  Among the Fremen, spitting -- offering the body's water -- was a gesture of respect given only to an honored few.  But Dominic Vernius had used it as a curse.

 

Strange ways, Liet thought.

 

The bald man looked at the two young Fremen.  "My main base off-planet probably suffers from similar flaws, too."  He leaned closer.  "Should either of you ever wish to come with me, you could inspect our other facilities.  We make regular runs to Salusa Secundus."

 

Liet perked up.  "Salusa?"  He recalled his father's stories of growing up there.  "I've heard it is a fascinating world."

 

From where he worked off to one side, Johdam let out a disbelieving laugh.  He rubbed a sweat-itch at his scarred eyebrow.  "It sure doesn't look like the capital of the Imperium anymore."  Asuyo shook his head in agreement.

 

Dominic shrugged.  "I am the leader of a renegade House, and I vowed to strike against the Imperium.  Salusa Secundus seemed a good place to hide.  Who would think to look for me on a prison planet, under the Emperor's closest security?"

 

Pardot Kynes had spoken of the terrible Salusan disaster caused by the rebellion of an unnamed noble family.  They had gone renegade and unleashed forbidden atomics on the capital planet.  A few members of House Corrino survived, including Hassik III, who had rebuilt the dynasty and restored Imperial government on a new world, Kaitain.

 

Pardot Kynes had been less interested in history or politics than in the natural order of things, how the world had been changed from paradise to hell by the holocaust.  The Planetologist claimed that with sufficient investment and hard work, Salusa Secundus could be restored to its former climate and glory.

 

"Someday, perhaps, I would like to behold such an . . . interesting place."  A world that so affected my father.

 

With a loud, booming laugh, Dominic pounded Liet on the back.  It was a gesture of camaraderie, though Fremen rarely touched each other except during knife fights.  "Pray you never have to, boy," the smuggler leader said.  "Pray you never have to."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Water is the image of life.  We came from water, adapted from its all-encompassing presence . . . and we continue to adapt.

 

-IMPERIAL PLANETOLOGIST PARDOT KYNES

 

 

OUT HERE, we Fremen have none of your comforts, Lady Fenring," the Shadout Mapes said as she scurried ahead on short legs.  Her steps were so precise and careful that she did not even kick up dust on the moonlit hardpan.  In contrast with the humid conservatory, the bone-dry night retained very little of the day's heat.  "You are cold?"

 

She glanced back at willowy, blonde-haired Margot, who walked proudly in front of the Rutii priest.  Mapes wore her jubba hood.  Stillsuit filters dangled beside her face, and her dark eyes reflected the light of Second Moon.

 

"I am not cold," Margot said, simply.  Wearing only her glitterslick housedress, she adjusted her metabolism to compensate.

 

"And those thin-soled slippers you wear," the priest scolded from behind her.  "Unsuited for desert travel."

 

"You did not give me time to dress for our journey."  Like all Reverend Mothers, she maintained thick calluses on her feet from the fighting exercises they were required to perform each day.  "If the shoes wear out, I will go barefoot."

 

Both Fremen smiled at her calm audacity.  "She does maintain a good pace," Mapes admitted.  "Not like other water-fat Imperials."

 

"I can go faster," Margot offered, "if you like."

 

Taking this as a challenge, the Shadout Mapes trotted along at a military cadence, not breathing hard at all.  Margot followed every footstep, barely perspiring.  A nightbird streaked overhead with a piercing cry.

 

The unpaved road led out of Arrakeen toward the village of Rutii in the distance, nestled within knuckled foothills of the Shield Wall.  Avoiding the town lights, Mapes turned onto a faint path that climbed into the rocky elevations.

 

Rimwall West loomed before them, a craggy megalith that marked this boundary of the Shield Wall.  The small party began to climb, at first over a gentle slope of rock, then up a steep, narrow path that skirted an immense slide area.

 

The Fremen moved with speed and surefootedness in the shadows.  Despite her training in balance and endurance, Margot tripped twice on the unfamiliar terrain and had to be steadied by the others.  This seemed to please the guides.

 

More than two hours had passed since leaving the comfort and safety of the Residency at Arrakeen.  Margot began to tap her bodily reserves, but still showed no sign of weakness.  Did our lost Sisters travel this way?

 

Mapes and the priest spoke strange words in a language that Margot's deep memories told her was Chakobsa, a tongue spoken by Fremen for dozens of centuries, since their arrival on Arrakis.  As she recognized one of the Shadout's phrases, Margot responded, "The power of God is indeed great."

 

Her remark agitated the priest, but his short-statured companion smiled wisely.  "The Sayyadina will speak with her."

 

The path forked several times, and the Fremen woman led the way up, then down, or laterally in tight switchbacks, before ascending again.  Margot identified the same places in the frosty moonlight, and realized they were guiding her back and forth in an effort to confuse and disorient her.  With her Bene Gesserit mental skills, Margot would remember the way back, in exact detail.

 

Impatient and curious, she wanted to scold the Fremen for taking her on such an unnecessarily tedious route, but decided not to reveal her ability.  After years of waiting, she was being led into their secret world, into a place where no outsiders were ever taken.  Mother Superior Harishka would want her to observe every detail.  Perhaps Margot would finally acquire the information she had sought for so long.

 

On a ledge, Mapes pressed her chest against the cliff and inched along a narrow path over a sheer dropoff, clinging with fingertips.  Without hesitation, Margot did the same.  The lights of Arrakeen twinkled in the distance, and the village of Rutii huddled far below.

 

Several meters ahead now, Mapes suddenly disappeared into the rock face.  Margot discovered a small cave entrance, barely large enough for a person to enter.  Inside, the space grew broader to the left, and in the dim light she saw tool marks on the walls where Fremen had widened the cavern.  The dense odors of unwashed bodies touched her nostrils.  Ahead, the Shadout beckoned.

 

When the priest caught up, Mapes unfastened a doorseal and swung a camouflaged door inward.  Now, unmuffled by seals and doors, voices could be heard, mixed with the hum of machinery and the rustle of many people.  Glowglobes tuned to dim yellow bobbed in the air currents.

 

Mapes passed through a fabric-covered doorway into a room where women worked power looms, weaving long strands of hair and desert cotton into fabrics.  The warm air held a heavy human musk and waftings of melange-incense.  All eyes watched the regal, blonde visitor.

 

The weaving room opened into another chamber, where a man tended a metal pot suspended over a cooking fire.  Firelight danced on the Shadout's wrinkled face and imparted a feral look to her deep blue eyes.  Margot observed everything, storing details for her later report.  She had never imagined the Fremen could hide such a population, such a settlement.

 

Finally, they emerged into a larger, dirt-floored chamber filled with desert plants, sectioned off by paths.  She recognized saguaro, wild alfalfa, creosote, and poverty grasses.  An entire botanical testing ground!

 

"Wait here, Lady Fenring."  Mapes strode ahead, accompanied by the priest.  Alone, Margot bent to examine the cacti, saw glossy ears, firm flesh, pale new growth.  Somewhere in another cavern she heard voices and resonating chants.

 

At a slight sound she looked up to see an ancient woman in a black robe.  Standing by herself on one of the garden pathways, arms folded over her chest, the strange woman was withered and wiry, as tough as shigawire.  She wore a necklace of sparkling metal rings, and her dark eyes looked like shadowed pits gouged into her face.

 

Something about her demeanor, her presence, reminded Margot of a Bene Gesserit.  On Wallach IX, Mother Superior Harishka was approaching the two-century mark, but this woman looked even older, her body saturated with spice, her skin aged by climate more than years.  Even her voice was dry.  "I am Sayyadina Ramallo.  We are about to begin the Ceremony of the Seed.  Join us, if you are truly who you say you are."

 

Ramallo!  I know that name.  Margot stepped forward, ready to cite the secret code phrases to identify her awareness of the Missionaria Protective work.  A woman named Ramallo had disappeared into the dunes a full century ago . . . the last of a series of Reverend Mothers to vanish.

 

"No time for that now, child," the old woman interrupted her.  "Everyone is waiting.  With you among us, they are as curious as I am."

 

Margot followed the Sayyadina into a vast cavern that thronged with thousands upon thousands of people.  She had never imagined such a huge enclosure within the high rocks -- how had they eluded detection from the constant Harkonnen patrols?  This wasn't just a squalid settlement, but an entire hidden city.  The Fremen had far more secrets, and far greater plans, than even Hasimir Fenring suspected.

 

A wall of unpleasant scents assailed her.  Crowded close, some of the Fremen wore dusty cloaks; others were in stillsuits, open at the collars within the body-humid cave.  Off to one side stood the priest who had brought her from Arrakeen.

 

I'm certain they left no sign of our departure from the conservatory.  If they mean to kill me now, no one will ever know what happened -- just like the other Sisters.  Then Margot smiled to herself.  No, if I am harmed, Hasimir will find them.  The Fremen might think their secrets were safe, but even they could be no match for her Count, should he focus his efforts and intellect on tracking them down.

 

The Fremen might doubt that, but Margot did not.

 

As the last of the desert people streamed into the cavern from several entrances, Ramallo took Margot's hand in her sinewy grip.  "Come with me."  The withered Sayyadina led the way up stone steps to a rock platform, where she faced the crowd.

 

The cavern fell silent except for a rustle of clothes, like bat wings.

 

With some trepidation, Margot took a position beside the old woman.  I feel like a sacrifice.  She used breathing exercises to calm herself.  Wave upon wave of impenetrable Fremen eyes stared at her.

 

"Shai-Hulud watches over us," Ramallo said.  "Let the watermasters come forward."

 

Four men made their way through the crowd.  Each pair carried a small skin sack between them.  They placed the sloshing containers at the feet of the Sayyadina.

 

"Is there seed?" Ramallo asked.

 

"There is seed," the men announced, in unison.  They turned and departed.

 

Opening the top of one of the sacks, Ramallo splashed liquid onto both hands.  "Blessed is the water and its seed."  She brought her hands out, trickling blue fluid as if the droplets were liquid sapphires.

 

The words and the ceremony startled Margot, for they resembled the Bene Gesserit poison ordeal through which a Sister was transformed into a Reverend Mother.  A few chemicals -- all deadly poisons -- could be used to induce the terrible agony and mental crisis upon a Sister.  Adapted from the Missionaria Protectiva?  Had the vanished Bene Gesserit brought even this secret to the Fremen?  If so, what else did the desert people know about the Sisterhood's plans?

 

Ramallo unfastened the sack's coiled spout and pointed its end toward Margot.  Showing no glimmer of doubt, Margot dropped to her knees and took the tube in her hands, then hesitated.

 

"If you are truly a Reverend Mother," Ramallo whispered, "you will drink this exhalation of Shai-Hulud without harm to yourself."

 

"I am a Reverend Mother," Margot said.  "I have done this before."

 

The Fremen maintained their deep, reverent silence.

 

"You have never done this before, child," the old woman said.  "Shai-Hulud will judge you."

 

The sack reeked of familiar spice odor, but with an underlying bitterness.  The acrid blue liquid seemed to roil with death.  Though she had passed the Agony to become a Reverend Mother, Margot had nearly died in the process.

 

But she could do it again.

 

Beside her, the Sayyadina uncoiled the drinking tube on the second sack.  She took a sip from the tube, and her eyes rolled back in her head.

 

I must not fear, Margot thought.  Fear is the mind-killer . . .  In her mind she recited the entire Litany Against Fear, then sucked on the straw, drawing in just a drop.  The barest bit of moisture, touching the tip of her tongue.

 

It struck her with a shockingly vile taste, like a hammer, all the way to the back of her skull.  Poison!  Her body recoiled, but she forced herself to concentrate on her own chemistry, altered a molecule here, added or subtracted a radical there.  It required all of her skills.

 

Margot released the tube.  Her consciousness floated, and time stopped its eternal, cosmic progression.  She let her body, her trained Bene Gesserit abilities take over and begin to alter the chemistry of the deadly poison.  Margot understood what she had to do, breaking the chemical down into something useful, creating a catalyst that would transform the rest of the liquid in the sacks. . . .

 

The taste changed to sweetness in her mouth.

 

Every action she had taken up to that point in her life lay spread like a tapestry for her to observe.  Sister Margot Rashino-Zea, now Lady Margot Fenring, examined herself in minute detail, every cell of her body, every nerve fiber . . . every thought she'd ever experienced.  Deep in her core, Margot found that terrible dark place she could never see, the place that fascinated and terrified all of her kind.  Only the long-anticipated Kwisatz Haderach could look there.  The Lisan al-Gaib.

 

I will survive this, she told herself.

 

Margot's head reverberated as if a gong had been struck inside it.  She saw a distorted image of Sayyadina Ramallo wavering in front of her.  Then one of the watermasters came forward and pressed the tip of the tube into Margot's mouth, collecting the drop of transformed liquid, which he then dipped into the contents of the sack.  Beside her, the ancient woman released her grip on the second tube, and other watermasters spread the transformed poison from one container to another like firestarters touching flaming brands to a field of dry grass.

 

People thronged to the sacks to receive droplets of the catalyzed drug, brushing the moistness against their tips.  Ramallo said, somewhere in Margot's consciousness, "You have helped make it possible for them."

 

Strange.  This was so different from anything in her experience . . . but not so different after all.

 

Slowly, like a dreamer dancing inside her own consciousness, Margot felt herself return to the stone-walled chamber, with the drug-induced vision only a flickering memory.  Fremen continued to touch their fingers to the hanging droplets, tasting, moving to the side so that others could partake.  Euphoria spread like dawnlight in the cavern.

 

"Yes, once I was a Reverend Mother," Ramallo told her, at long last.  "Many years ago I knew your Mother Superior."

 

Still fogged by reverberations of the powerful drug, Margot couldn't even act shocked, and the old woman nodded.  "Sister Harishka and I were classmates . . . long, long ago.  I joined the Missionaria Protectiva and was sent here with nine other Reverend Mothers.  Many of our order had been lost before, absorbed into the Fremen tribes.  Others simply died in the desert.  I am the last.  It is a harsh life on Dune, even for a trained Bene Gesserit.  Even with melange, which we have come to understand, and appreciate, in new ways."

 

Margot looked deeply into Ramallo's eyes and saw understanding there.

 

"Your message spoke of the Lisan al-Gaib," Ramallo said, her voice quavering.  "He is close, is he not?  After these thousands of years."

 

Margot kept her voice low as the Fremen became wilder with the ecstasy of their ritual.  "We hope within two generations."

 

"These people have waited a long time."  The Sayyadina surveyed the euphoria in the room.  "I can reveal Bene Gesserit matters to you, child, but I have a dual allegiance.  I am also a Fremen now, sworn to uphold the values of the desert tribes.  Certain confidences cannot be revealed to any outworlder.  One day I must choose a successor -- one of the women here, no doubt."

 

Ramallo bowed her head.  "The sietch tau orgy is a merging point of Bene Gesserit and Fremen.  Long before the Missionaria Protectiva arrived here, these people had discovered how to partake of the awareness-spectrum narcotic in primitive, simple ways."

 

In the shadows of the great chamber the Fremen moved apart, and together, fogged with the drug, some raised to an inner peace and ecstasy, some driven to members of the opposite sex in frenzied coupling.  A sloppily painted canvas of reality settled over them, turning their harsh lives into a dream image.

 

"Over the centuries, Sisters like myself guided them to follow new ceremonies, and we adapted the old Fremen ways to our own."

 

"You've accomplished a great deal here, Mother.  Wallach IX will be eager to learn of it."

 

While the Fremen orgy continued, Margot felt as if she were floating, numb and separate from it all.  The ancient woman raised a clawlike hand in benediction, to release her back into the outside world.  "Go and report to Harishka."  Ramallo displayed a wispy smile.  "And give her this gift."  She removed a small boundbook from a pocket of her robe.

 

Opening the volume, Margot read the title page:  Manual of the Friendly Desert.  Beneath that, in smaller letters, it read, "The place full of life.  Here are the ayat and burhan of Life.  Believe, and al-Lat shall never burn you."

 

"This is like the Azhar Book," Margot exclaimed, surprised to see an edition adapted to Fremen ways.  "Our Book of Great Secrets."

 

"Give my sacred copy to Harishka.  It will please her."

 

 

AWED NOW BY HER PRESENCE, the Rutii priest took Margot back to the Residency at Arrakeen.  She arrived shortly before dawn, just as the sky began to pale into soft orange pastels, and slipped into her bed.  No one in the household -- other than the Shadout Mapes -- knew she had ever gone.  Excited, she lay awake for hours. . . .

 

Several days later, her head full of questions, Margot climbed the trail back to the cave, following her crystal-clear memory map.  In bright sunlight she traversed the steep trail into Rimwall West, made her way across the narrow ledge to the opening of the sietch.  The heat slowed her.

 

Slipping inside the cool cave shadows, she found that the doorseal had been removed.  She walked through the chambers, finding them empty.  No machinery, no furnishings, no people.  No proof.  Only odors lingered. . . .

 

"So, you don't entirely trust me after all, Sayyadina," she said aloud.

 

For a long while Margot remained in the cavern where the tau orgy had taken place.  She knelt where she had consumed the Water of Life, feeling the echoes of long habitation there.  All gone now. . . .

 

The next day Count Hasimir Fenring returned from his desert inspections with the Baron Harkonnen.  At dinner, basking in her presence, he asked his lovely wife what she had done in his absence.

 

"Oh nothing, my love," she responded with a carefree toss of her honey-gold hair.  She brushed her lips across his cheek in a tender kiss.  "I just tended my garden."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I stand in the sacred human presence.  As I do now, so should you stand some day.  I pray to your presence that this be so.  Let the future remain uncertain for that is the canvas to receive our desires.  Thus the human condition faces its perpetual tabula rasa.  We possess no more than this moment where we dedicate ourselves continuously to the sacred presence we share and create.

 

-Bene Gesserit Benediction

 

 

THIS IS HOW we test humans, girl.

 

Behind the barrier of her desk, Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam looked like a stranger, her face stony, her eyes black and merciless.  "It is a death-alternative challenge."

 

Instantly tense, Jessica stood before the Proctor Superior.  A skinny girl with long, bronze hair, her face bore the seeds of genuine beauty that would soon flower.  In back of her, the Acolyte who had delivered the Reverend Mother's summons closed the heavy door.  It locked with an ominous click.

 

What kind of test does she have in mind for me?

 

"Yes, Reverend Mother?"  Summoning all of her strength, Jessica kept her voice calm and still, envisioning a shallow pool of sound.

 

With a recent promotion, Mohiam had acquired her additional title as Proctor Superior of the Mother School on Wallach IX.  Mohiam had her own private office, with antique books sealed in a clearplaz humidity case.  On her wide desk sat three silver trays, each containing a geometric object:  a green metal cube, a brilliant red pyramid, a golden sphere.  Streaks of light shot from the surfaces of the objects, bouncing between them.  For a long moment, Jessica stared at the hypnotic dance.

 

"You must listen to me carefully, girl, to every word, every inflection, every nuance.  Your very life depends on this."

 

Jessica lowered her eyebrows.  Her green-eyed gaze shifted to the older woman's tiny, birdlike eyes.  Mohiam seemed nervous and fearful, but why?

 

"What are those?"  Jessica pointed at the unusual articles on the desk.

 

"You're curious, are you?"

 

Jessica nodded.

 

"They are whatever you think they are."  Mohiam's voice was as dry as a desert wind.

 

Synchronized, the objects rotated, so that each one revealed a dark, dark hole in its surface -- a hole that corresponded in shape with the object itself.  Jessica focused on the red pyramid, with its triangle-shaped opening.

 

The pyramid began to float toward her.  Is this real, or all illusion?  Startled, she opened her eyes wide and stared, transfixed.

 

The other two geometric shapes followed, until all three floated in front of Jessica's face.  Brilliant beams darted and arced, spectral streaks of color that made barely audible snappings and flowings.

 

Jessica's curiosity mingled with fear.

 

Mohiam made her wait for many seconds, then said in an iron voice, "What is the first lesson?  What have you been taught since you were a little girl?"

 

"Humans must never submit to animals, of course."  Jessica allowed a thread of anger and impatience to infiltrate her voice; Mohiam would know it was intentional.  "After all you have trained in me, Proctor Superior, how can you suspect I am not human?  When have I ever given you cause --"

 

"Silence.  People are not always humans."  She came around the desk with the grace of a hunting cat and peered at Jessica through the sparkling light between the cube and the pyramid.

 

The girl felt a nervous tickle in her throat, but didn't cough or speak.  From experience with this instructor, Jessica knew something more was coming.  And it did.

 

"Ages ago, during the Butlerian Jihad, most people were merely organic automatons, following the commands of thinking machines.  Beaten down, they never questioned, never resisted, never thought.  They were people, but had lost the spark that made them human.  Still, a core of their kind resisted.  They fought back, refused to give up, and ultimately prevailed.  They alone remembered what it was to be human.  We must never forget the lessons of those perilous times."

 

The Reverend Mother's robes rustled as she moved to one side, and suddenly her arm moved with an astonishing flash of speed, a blur of motion.  Jessica saw a fingertip needle poised at her cheek, just below her right eye.

 

The girl did not flinch.  Mohiam's papery lips formed a smile.  "You know of the gom jabbar, the high-handed enemy that kills only animals -- those who behave out of instinct instead of discipline.  This point is coated with meta-cyanide.  The tiniest prick, and you die."

 

The needle remained motionless, as if frozen in air.  Mohiam leaned closer to her ear.  "Of the three objects before you, one is pain, another is pleasure, and the third is eternity.  The Sisterhood uses these things in a variety of ways and combinations.  For this test, you are to select the one that is most profound to you and experience it, if you dare.  There will be no other questions.  This is the entire test."

 

Without moving her head, Jessica shifted her gaze to study each item.  Utilizing her Bene Gesserit powers of observation -- and something more, the source of which she did not know -- she sensed pleasure in the pyramid, pain in the box, eternity in the sphere.  She had never undergone a test like this before, and had never heard of it, though she knew of the gom jabbar, the legendary needle developed in ancient times.

 

"This is the test," Reverend Mother Mohiam said.  "If you fail, I will scratch you."

 

Jessica steeled herself.  "And I will die."

 

 

 

 

 

LIKE A VULTURE, the leathery proctor hovered beside the girl, watching every flicker of eye movement, every twitch.  Mohiam could not let Jessica see her own anguish and dread, but she knew she had to carry out the test.

 

You must not fail, my daughter.

 

Gaius Helen Mohiam had trained Jessica since her youth, but the girl did not know her heritage, did not know her importance to the Sisterhood's breeding program.  She did not know that Mohiam was her mother.

 

Beside her, Jessica had turned ashen with concentration.  Sweat sparkled on her smooth forehead.  Mohiam studied the patterns on the geometric shapes, saw that the girl still had several levels to go within her mind. . . .

 

Please, child, you must survive.  I cannot do this again.  I am too old.

 

Her first daughter by the Baron had been weak and defective; following a terrible prophetic dream, Mohiam had killed the infant herself.  It had been a true vision, Mohiam was certain; she saw her place at the culmination of the Sisterhood's millennia-long breeding program.  But she also learned through startling prescience that the Imperium would suffer great pain and death, with planets burned, a near-total genocide . . . if the breeding scheme were to go awry.  If the wrong child were born in the next generation.

 

Mohiam had already murdered one of her daughters, and she was willing to sacrifice Jessica, too.  If necessary.  Better to kill her than to allow another terrible jihad to occur.

 

The poisoned silver needle hovered a hairbreadth from Jessica's creamy skin.  The girl trembled.

 

 

JESSICA CONCENTRATED with all her might, staring ahead but seeing only words in her mind, the Litany Against Fear.  I must not fear.  Fear is the mind-killer.  Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.

 

As she took a calming breath, she wondered, Which do I choose?  The wrong decision and I die.  She realized she had to go deeper, and in an epiphany, saw how the three geometric objects were positioned in the human journey:  the pain of birth, the pleasure of a life well lived, the eternity of death.  She was to select the most profound, Mohiam had said.  But only one?  How could she start anywhere but the beginning?

 

Pain first.

 

"I see you have chosen," Mohiam said, watching the girl's right hand lift.

 

Cautiously, Jessica inserted her hand into the green cube, through the hole in one side of it.  Instantly, she felt her skin burning, scorching, her bones filling with lava.  Her fingernails were flaking off one by one, peeled away by the ferocious heat.  She had never in her life even imagined such agony.  And it continued to build.

 

I will face my fear, and allow it to pass over me and through me.

 

With a supreme effort, she resigned herself to living without her hand, blocked off the nerves.  She would do it, if she must.  But then logic imposed itself, even with the agony.  She could not recall seeing stump-wristed Sisters in the halls of the Mother School.  And if all Acolytes were required to face tests such as this . . .

 

When the fear has passed, there will be nothing.

 

A distant, analytical part of her brain realized that she did not smell cooking flesh, either, did not see wisps of gray smoke, did not hear the crackle and pop of sizzling fat in the meat of her hand.

 

Only I will remain.

 

Fighting for control of her nerves, Jessica shut off the pain.  From her wrist to her elbow, she felt only cold numbness.  Her hand no longer existed; the agony no longer existed.  Deeper, deeper.  Moments later, she had no physical form whatsoever, having separated herself entirely from her body.

 

Out of the hole in the green box came a mist.  Like incense.

 

"Good, good," Mohiam whispered.

 

The mist -- a manifestation of Jessica's awareness -- floated into a hole of a different shape, the entrance to the red pyramid.  Now a jolt of pleasure suffused her, intensely stimulating but so shocking that she could hardly bear it.  She had gone from one extreme to another.  She trembled, then flowed and surged, like the ascension of a tsunami on a vast sea.  Higher and higher the great wave mounted, crested. . . .

 

But the mist of her awareness, after riding the top of a powerful wave, suddenly cascaded down it, tumbling away . . . falling. . . .

 

The images vanished, and Jessica felt the thin fabric shoes on her feet, a clammy, sweating sensation of skin against material, and the hardness of the floor beneath.  Her right hand . . . She still couldn't feel it, and couldn't see it, either, or even a stump at the wrist, for only her eyes were able to move.

 

Glancing to the right, she saw the poisoned needle hovering at her cheek, the deadly gom jabbar with the golden sphere of eternity visible beyond.  Mohiam held firm, and Jessica centered her vision on the sharp silver tip, the glinting central point of the universe poised like a distant star.  A prick of the needle and Jessica would enter the sphere of eternity, in mind and body.  There would be no return.  The girl felt no pain or pleasure now, only a numbed stillness as she hovered on the precipice of a decision.

 

A realization came to her:  I am nothing.

 

"Pain, pleasure, eternity . . . all interest me," Jessica murmured at last, as if from a great distance, "for what is one without the others?"

 

Mohiam saw that the girl had passed the crisis, survived the test.  An animal would not have been able to comprehend such intangibles.  Jessica sagged, visibly shaken.  The poisoned needle withdrew.

 

For Jessica, the ordeal was over quite suddenly.  All of it had been imagined, the pain, the pleasure, the nothingness.  All accomplished through Bene Gesserit mind-control, the tremendous ability of the Sisterhood to direct another person's thoughts and actions.  A test.

 

Had her hand really gone into the green cube?  Had she become a mist?  Intellectually, she didn't think so.  But when she flexed the fingers of her hand, they were stiff and sore.

 

Her robes smelling of musty perspiration, Mohiam trembled, then regained her composure.  She gave Jessica the briefest hug, and then her demeanor became formal again.

 

"Welcome to the Sisterhood, human."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I fought in great wars to defend the Imperium and slew many men in the Emperor's name.  I attended Landsraad functions.  I toured the continents of Caladan.  I managed all the tedious business matters required to run a Great House.  And still the best of times were those I spent with my son.

 

-DUKE PAULUS ATREIDES

 

 

WHEN THE DUCAL WING BOAT castoff from the docks and moved out into the sea, Leto stood at the bow and turned back to gaze at the ancient edifice of Castle Caladan, where House Atreides had ruled for twenty-six generations.

 

He could not recognize faces in the high windows, but he saw a small silhouette on a high balcony.  Kailea.  Despite her resistance to him taking young Victor, not yet two-and-a-half, on this trip, she had indeed come to see them off in her silent way.  Leto took heart from that.

 

"Could I take the helm?"  Rhombur's rounded face wore a hopeful smile.  His unruly, straw-colored hair blew in the freshening breeze.  "I've never piloted a big wingboat before."

 

"Wait until we reach open sea."  Leto looked at the exiled Prince with a mischievous smile.  "That might be safest.  I seem to remember you crashing us against the reefs once."

 

Rhombur flushed.  "I've learned a lot since that time.  Uh, common sense, especially."

 

"Indeed you have.  Tessia has been a good influence on you."  When the mousy-haired Bene Gesserit concubine had accompanied Rhombur to the docks, her arm in his, she had passionately kissed him farewell.

 

In contrast, Kailea had refused to leave the Castle for Leto.

 

At the rear of the vee-shaped craft, little Victor giggled, running his hands through the cold spray while the ever-attentive guard captain, Swain Goire, kept watch.  Goire kept the boy amused while remaining alert to protect him.

 

Eight men accompanied Leto and Victor on this happy-go-lucky voyage.  In addition to Rhombur and Goire, he also brought with him Thufir Hawat, a pair of guards, a boat captain, and two fishermen, Gianni and Dom, friends of Leto's from the docks with whom he'd played as a boy.  They would go fishing; they would see the seaweed forests and kelp islands.  Leto would show his son the wonders of Caladan.

 

Kailea had wanted to keep her boy locked within the Castle, where Victor would be exposed to nothing worse than a common cold or a draft.  Leto had listened to her complaints in silence, knowing that the boat trip was not the root of her objection, merely the current manifestation.  It was the same old problem. . . .

 

Perhaps Chiara's muttered comments had finally convinced Kailea that Leto was to blame for her unacceptable situation.  "I want to be more than an exile!" she had shouted during their last evening together (as if that had something to do with the fishing trip).

 

Leto stifled the urge to remind Kailea that her mother had been murdered, her father remained a hunted fugitive, and her people were still enslaved by the Tleilaxu -- while she herself was a Duke's lady, living in a castle with a fine, healthy son and all the wealth and trappings of a Great House.  "You should not complain, Kailea," he said, his voice dark with anger.

 

Though he could not placate her, Leto did want the best for their son.

 

Now, under cloud-studded skies, they breathed fresh ocean air and cruised far from land.  The wingboat cut through the water like a knife blade through jellied pundi rice.

 

Thufir Hawat stood attentive inside the deckhouse; he scanned the signal-ranging systems and weather patterns, always concerned that some danger might befall his beloved Duke.  The Master of Assassins kept himself in powerful shape, his skin leathery, his muscles like cables.  His sharp Mentat mind could see the wheels within wheels of enemy plots.  He studied third- and fourth-order consequences that Leto, or even Kailea with her shrewd business mind, could not comprehend.

 

In early afternoon the men cast nets.  Though he was a lifelong fisherman, Gianni made it no secret that he preferred a nice big steak for dinner along with good Caladan wine.  But out here, they had to eat what the sea provided.

 

As the nets came up full of flopping, squirming creatures, Victor raced to inspect the beautiful fish with their multicolored scales.  Ever watchful, Goire stood conscientiously next to the child, steering him away from the ones with poisonous spines.

 

Leto selected four fat butterfish, and Gianni and Dom took them to the galley to clean them.  Then he knelt beside his son, helping the curious boy to gather the leftover struggling fish.  Together, they tossed them overboard, and Victor clapped his hands as they watched the sleek shapes dart into the water.

 

Their course took them into floating continents of interlinked sargasso weed, a greenish-brown desert that extended as far as the eye could see.  Broad rivers flowed through breaks in the weed.  Flies buzzed about, laying eggs in glistening water droplets; black-and-white birds hopped from leaf to leaf, devouring shrimps that wriggled through the warm surface layers.  The pungent smell of rotting vegetation filled the air.

 

When the men anchored in the seaweed, they talked and sang songs.  Swain Goire helped Victor cast a fishing line over the side, and though his hooks tangled in the seaweed, the delighted boy managed to pull up several silvery fingerfish.  Victor ran into the cabin with the slippery fish to show his father, who applauded his son's fishing prowess.  After such an exhausting day, the boy crawled into his bunk shortly after sunset and fell asleep.

 

Leto played a few gambling games with the two fishermen; though he was their Duke, Gianni and Dom did nothing to help Leto win.  They considered him a friend . . . exactly as Leto wished.  Later, when they told sad stories or sang tragic songs, Gianni wept at the slightest hint of sentiment.

 

Then, far into the night, Leto and Rhombur sat on deck in the darkness, just talking.  Rhombur had recently gotten a terse, coded message that C'tair Pilru had received the explosives, but no word as to how they would be put to use.  The Prince longed to see what the rebels were doing in the Ixian caverns, though he could not go there.  He didn't know what his father would have done in the situation.

 

They spoke of Leto's continuing diplomatic efforts in the Moritani-Ecazi standoff.  It was slow, difficult going.  They were faced not only with resistance from the feuding parties but from Emperor Shaddam himself, who seemed to resent the Atreides intrusion.  Shaddam believed that by stationing a legion of Sardaukar on Grumman for a few years he had already solved the problem.  In reality it had only delayed the hostilities.  With the Imperial troops gone now, tensions were mounting again. . . .

 

During a long moment of silence, Leto watched Captain Goire, which brought to mind another one of his friends and fighters.  "Duncan Idaho has been on Ginaz for four years now."

 

"He'll become a great Swordmaster."  Rhombur stared across the seaweed desert, where furry murmons set up a bubbly chorus, singing challenges to each other across the darkness.  "And after so many years of tough training, he'll be a thousand times more valuable to you.  You'll see."

 

"Still, I miss having him around."

 

 

THE NEXT MORNING LETO AWOKE into a dewy gray dawn.  Breathing deeply, he felt refreshed and full of energy.  He found Victor still sleeping, the corner of a blanket wrapped around one clenched hand.  In his own bunk Rhombur yawned and stretched, but gave no sign that he meant to follow Leto out onto the deck.  Even on Ix, the Prince had never been an early riser.

 

The wingboat captain had already pulled up anchor.  At Hawat's direction -- did the Mentat ever sleep? -- they coasted down a wide channel through the seaweed toward open water again.  Leto stood on the foredeck enjoying a silence broken only by the hum of the wingboat's engines.  Even the weed-hopping birds were still. . . .

 

Leto noted strange colorations in the clouds out at sea, a moving clump of flickering lights unlike anything he had seen before.  From his seat in the midships deckhouse, the captain increased engine power and the wingboat raced along, picking up speed.

 

Leto sniffed, detected a metallic scent of ozone, but with an added sourness.  He narrowed his gray eyes, ready to call the boat captain.  The dense cluster of electrical activity moved against the breezes, darting along low to the water . . . as if alive.

 

Approaching us.

 

With a thrill of concern, he stepped backward into the deckhouse.  "Do you see it, Captain?"

 

The older man did not take his eyes from the steering column or the phenomenon racing toward them.  "I've been watching it for ten minutes, my Lord -- and in that time it's closed half the distance."

 

"I've never seen anything like that before."  Leto stood beside the captain's chair.  "What is it?"

 

"I've got my suspicions."  The captain's expression betrayed concern and fear; he yanked the throttle lever and the engines roared louder than ever.  "I'm thinking we should run."  He pointed to the right, away from the approaching lights.

 

Leto brought an edge of ducal command to his voice, stripping away the friendliness he had built over the past day.  "Captain, explain yourself."

 

"It's an elecran, Sire.  If you ask me."

 

Leto laughed once, then stopped.  "An elecran?  Isn't that just a myth?"  His father, the Old Duke, had liked to tell stories as the two of them sat by an open beach fire, with the night illuminated only by flickering flames.  "You'd be amazed at what's in that sea, boy," Paulus had said, pointing toward the dark water.  "Your mother wouldn't want me to tell you this, but I think you should know."  He would take a long, thoughtful puff on his pipe and begin his tale. . . .

 

Now the wingboat captain shook his head.  "They're rare, my Lord, but they do exist."

 

And if such an elemental creature was indeed real, Leto knew what destruction and death it could bring.  "Turn the boat, then.  Set a course away from the thing.  Maximum speed."

 

The captain slewed them to starboard, churning a white wake in the still water, tilting the deck at an angle steep enough to tumble the men from their bunks below.  Leto gripped a cabin rail until his knuckles turned white.

 

Thufir Hawat and Swain Goire hurried into the deckhouse, demanding to know the reason for the emergency.  As Leto pointed aft, the men stared through the mist-specked plaz of the windows.  Goire cursed with colorful language he never used around Victor.  Hawat's brow furrowed as his complex Mentat mind analyzed the situation and plucked the information he needed from his storehouse of knowledge.  "We are in trouble, my Duke."

 

The flashing lights and stormy appearance of the strange creature came closer on their stern, picking up speed, causing steam to boil off the water.  The boat captain's forehead glistened with sweat.  "It's seen us, Sire."  He jammed the engine throttle down so hard it nearly broke off in his hand.  "Even in this wingboat we can't outrun it.  Better prepare for an attack."

 

Leto sounded the alarm.  Within seconds, the other guards appeared, followed by the two fishermen.  Rhombur carried Victor, who, frightened by the commotion, clung to his uncle.

 

Hawat stared aft, narrowing his eyes.  "I don't know how to fight a myth."  He looked at his Duke, as if he had failed in some way.  "Nevertheless, we will try."

 

Goire rapped on a bulkhead of the deckhouse.  "This boat won't shelter us, will it?"  The guard appeared ready to fight anything the Duke identified as an enemy.

 

"An elecran is a cluster of ghosts from men who died in storms at sea," said the fisherman Dom, his voice uncertain as he leaned out of the deckhouse while the others went out onto the aft deck to face the creature.

 

His brother Gianni shook his head.  "Our grandmother said it's the living vengeance of a woman scorned.  A long time ago, a woman went out during a thunderstorm and screamed curses at the man who had left her.  She was struck by lightning, and that's how the elecran was born."

 

It hurt Leto's eyes to look at the towering elecran, a squid of electricity formed by vertical bolts of power and tendrils of gas.  Lightning skittered across its surface; mist, steam, and ozone surrounded it like a shield.  As the creature approached the wingboat, it swelled in volume, absorbing seawater like a great geyser.

 

"I've also heard it can only keep its shape, keep itself alive, so long as it stays in contact with the water," the boat captain added.

 

"That information is more useful," Hawat said.

 

"Vermilion hells!  We're not getting that bloody thing out of the water," Rhombur said.  "I hope there's another way to kill it."

 

Hawat barked a quick order, and the two Atreides guards drew their lasrifles, weaponry brought aboard at the warrior Mentat's insistence.  At the time, Leto had wondered how they could possibly need such firepower on a simple fishing trip; now he was glad.  Dom and Gianni took one look at the threatening knot of energy and scrambled belowdecks.

 

Swain Goire, with a glance behind him to make sure Victor was with Rhombur, raised his own weapon.  He was the first to open fire off the stern of the speeding boat, sending out a hot, pulsing blast of light.  The energy struck the elecran and dissipated, causing no harm.  Thufir Hawat fired, as did the second Atreides guard.

 

"No effect!" the Mentat bellowed into the rising buzz.  "My Duke -- remain in the safety of the cabin."

 

Even inside, Leto could feel the heat in the air, smell the burned salt and crisped seaweed.  Bolts of primal power crackled through the elecran's fluid body, and it loomed closer to the wingboat, a cyclone of raw power.  With a single strike, it could shatter the vessel and electrocute every person aboard.

 

"There is no safety, Thufir," Leto shouted back.  "I will not let that thing have my son!"  He glanced at the boy, who grasped Rhombur around the neck.

 

As if to flaunt its power, one crackling tendril bent down and touched the wooden side of the boat like a priest giving a blessing.  Part of the craft's metal trim blasted free as hot sparks danced along every conductive contact.  The boat's engines sputtered and died.

 

The captain tried to restart the engines, was rewarded with only rasping, metallic sounds.

 

Goire appeared ready to hurl himself bodily into the crackling mass, if it would do anything to help.  As the boat stopped running, the men continued to fire their lasguns at the core of the elecran, though with no more effect than a thrown table knife.  But Leto realized they were targeting the wrong place.  The boat, with no power, was turning, the bow coming around toward the monster.

 

Spotting his opportunity, Leto left the deckhouse and ran toward the wingboat's pointed bow.  Hawat cried out to restrain his Duke, but Leto raised a hand to forestall his intervention.  Audacity had always been an Atreides hallmark.  He had to pray the boat captain's folk wisdom was not composed entirely of ridiculous stories.

 

"Leto!  Don't do it!" Rhombur said, clutching Victor tightly to his chest.  The boy screamed and squirmed, trying to pummel his way free of his uncle's grasp so he could run to his father.

 

Leto shouted at the monster and waved his hands, hoping to distract the thing, act as bait.  "Here!  To me!"  He had to save his son as well as his men.  The captain was still trying to start the engines, but they wouldn't switch on.  Thufir, Goire, and the two guards hurried to join Leto on the foredeck.

 

The Duke watched the elecran swell.  As it towered like an oncoming tsunami in the air, the creature maintained only a tenuous contact with the salt water that gave it corporeal existence.  A lingering static charge made Leto's hair rise, as if a million tiny insects were crawling on his skin.

 

The timing would have to be precise.  "Thufir, Swain -- point your lasguns at the water below it.  Turn the ocean to steam."  Leto raised both arms, offering himself.  He had no weapon, nothing with which to threaten the creature.

 

The fearsome elecran glowed brighter, a crackling mass of primal energy that rose high above the water.  It had no face, no eyes, no fangs -- its entire body was composed of death.

 

Hawat barked the order just as Leto dove facefirst to the wooden deck.  Two lasguns blasted the water into froth and steam at the base of the crackling ribbon of lightning.  Clouds of white mist boiled up all around.

 

Leto rolled aside, trying to reach the shelter of a high gunwale.  The two Atreides guards also opened fire, vaporizing the waves around the flickering creature.

 

The elecran thrashed, as if surprised, trying to draw itself back down to the seawater that boiled away underneath it.  It gave an unearthly cry and struck the boat twice more with spasmic lightning bolts.  Finally, when its connection had been completely severed, the elecran lost all integrity.

 

In a brilliant flashing and sparking explosion, it dissipated into nothing, returning to the realms of myth.  A shower of water splattered the deck, tingling and effervescent as if it still contained a shred of the elecran's presence.  Hot droplets pelted Leto.  The stench of ozone made breathing difficult.

 

The ocean became peaceful again, calm and quiet. . . .

 

 

DURING THE WINGBOAT'S SUBDUED RETURN to the docks, Leto felt exhausted, yet content that he had solved the problem and saved his men -- and, most of all, his son -- without a single casualty.  Gianni and Dom were already formulating the stories they would tell on stormy nights.

 

Lulled by the drone of the engines, Victor fell asleep on his father's lap.  Leto stared out at the water curling past them.  He stroked the boy's dark hair and smiled at the innocent face.  In Victor's features he could see the Imperial bloodlines that had been passed to Leto through his mother -- the narrow chin, the intense, pale gray eyes, the aquiline nose.

 

As he studied the dozing boy, he wondered if he loved Victor more than he loved his concubine.  At times, he wondered if he still loved Kailea at all -- especially during the past difficult year, as their life together had grown sour . . . slowly, inexorably.

 

Had his father felt the same about his wife Helena, trapped as he was in a relationship with a woman whose expectations were so different from his own?  And how had their marriage degenerated so far, to the lowest possible level?  Few people knew that Lady Helena Atreides had fostered the death of the Old Duke, arranging to have him killed by a Salusan bull.

 

Caressing his son gently so that he did not wake, Leto vowed never to let Victor be exposed to such great danger again.  His heart swelled as if it would burst with love for the boy.  Perhaps Kailea had been right.  He shouldn't have taken their child out on this fishing trip.

 

Then the Duke narrowed his eyes and rediscovered the steel of leadership.  Realizing the cowardice in his thoughts, Leto reversed himself.  I cannot be overly protective of him.  It would be a serious mistake to coddle this child.  Only by facing perils and challenges -- as Paulus Atreides had made Leto do -- could the young man become strong and intelligent, the leader he needed to be.

 

He looked down and smiled at Victor again.  After all, Leto thought, this boy may be Duke someday.

 

He saw the dim gray coastline emerge from the morning shore mist, then Castle Caladan and its docks.  It would feel good to be home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Body and mind are two phenomena, observed under different conditions, but of one and the same ultimate reality.  Body and mind are aspects of the living being.  They operate within a peculiar principle of synchronicity wherein things happen together and behave as if they are the same . . . yet can be conceived of as separate.

 

-Staff Medical Manual, Ginaz School

 

 

IN THE RAINY LATE MORNING Duncan Idaho waited with his classmates on yet another training ground, yet another island in the sprawling chain of isolated classrooms.  Warm droplets poured down on them from the oppressive tropical clouds.  It always seemed to be raining here.

 

The Swordmaster was sweaty and fat, dressed in voluminous khakis.  A red bandanna cinched around his enormous head made his mahogany-red hair spike upward in rain-dampened points.  His eyes were hard little darts, a brown so dark the irises were difficult to distinguish from the pupils.  He spoke in a high, thin voice that squeaked out of a voicebox buried beneath enormous jowls.

 

When he moved, though, Swordmaster Rivvy Dinari did so with the grace and speed of a raptor in the final arc of a killing blow.  Duncan saw nothing jovial about the man and knew not to underestimate him.  The roly-poly appearance was a carefully cultivated feint.  "I am a legend here," the huge instructor had said, "and you will come to know it."

 

In the second four years of the Ginaz curriculum, the trainees numbered less than half of those from the first day when Duncan had been forced to wear a heavy suit of armor.  A handful of students had already died in the merciless training; many more had resigned and departed.  "Only the best can be Swordmasters," the teachers said, as if that explained all the hardships.

 

Duncan defeated other students in combat or in the thinking exercises that were so essential to battle and strategy.  Before leaving Caladan he had been one of the best young fighters for House Atreides -- but had never imagined he knew so little.

 

"Fighting men are not molded by coddling," Swordmaster Mord Cour had droned, one afternoon long ago.  "In real combat situations, men are molded through extreme challenges that push them to their limits."

 

Some of the scholarly Swordmasters had spent days lecturing on military tactics, the history of warfare, even philosophy and politics.  They engaged in battles of rhetoric rather than blades.  Some were engineers and equipment specialists who had trained Duncan how to assemble and disassemble any kind of weapon, how to create his own killing devices out of the most meager supplies.  He learned about shield use and repair, the design of large-scale defensive facilities, and battle plans for large- and small-scale conflicts.

 

Now, the drumming rain beat its inescapable cadence on the beach, the rocks, the students.  Rivvy Dinari didn't seem to notice a single droplet.  "For the next six months you will memorize the samurai warrior code and its integral philosophy of bushido.  If you insist on being oil-slick rocks, I will be rushing water.  I will wear away your resistance until you learn everything I am able to teach you."  He shifted his piercing gaze like staccato weapons fire so that he seemed to address every student individually.  A raindrop hung on the end of his nose, then fell away to be replaced by another one.

 

"You must learn honor, or you deserve to learn nothing at all."

 

Unintimidated, the ill-humored lordling Trin Kronos interrupted the rotund man.  "Honor will win no battles for you unless every combatant agrees to abide by the same terms.  If you bind yourself with nonsensical strictures, Master, you can be beaten by any opponent willing to bend the rules."

 

After hearing that, Duncan Idaho thought he understood some of the brash, provocative actions Viscount Moritani had taken during his conflict with Ecaz.  The Grummans didn't play by the same rules.

 

Dinari's face flushed dark red.  "A victory without honor is no victory."

 

Kronos shook his head, flinging rainwater away.  "Tell that to the dead soldiers on the losing side."  His friends standing next to him muttered their congratulations at his riposte.  Though soaked and bedraggled, somehow they all maintained their haughty pride.

 

Dinari's voice grew more strident.  "Would you give up all human civilization?  Would you rather become wild animals?"  The enormous man stepped closer to Kronos, who hesitated, then backed away into a puddle.  "Warriors of the Ginaz School are respected across the Imperium.  We produce the finest fighters and the greatest tacticians, better even than the Emperor's Sardaukar.  And yet do we need a military fleet in orbit?  Do we need a standing army to drive off invaders?  Do we need a stockpile of weapons so that we can sleep well at night?  No!  Because we follow a code of honor and all the Imperium respects us."

 

Kronos either ignored or failed to notice the murderous edge in the Swordmaster's eyes.  "Then you have a blind spot:  your overconfidence."

 

Silence hung for a long moment, broken only by the constant tattoo of pattering rain.  Dinari put a ponderous weight into his words.  "But we have our honor.  Learn to value it."

 

 

IT WAS POURING AGAIN, as it had been for months.  Rivvy Dinari ambled between the ranks of trainees; despite his bulk, the Sword, master moved like a breeze across the muddy ground.  "If you are eager to fight, you must rid yourself of anxiety.  If you are angry at your enemy, you must rid yourself of anger.  Animals fight like animals.  Humans fight with finesse."  He impaled Duncan with his dart-sharp gaze.  "Clear your mind."

 

Duncan did not breathe, did not blink.  Every cell in his body had frozen to a standstill, every nerve locked in stasis.  A wet breeze caressed his face, but he allowed it to blow past him; the constant downpour drenched his clothes, his skin, his bones -- but he imagined that it flowed through him.

 

"Stand without any movement -- not the blink of an eye, nor any swelling of your chest, nor the tiniest twitch of a single muscle.  Be a stone.  Remove yourself from the conscious universe."

 

After months of Dinari's rigorous instruction, Duncan knew how to slow his metabolism to a deathlike state known as funestus.  The Swordmaster called it a purification process to prepare their minds and bodies for the introduction of new fighting disciplines.  Once achieved, funestus gave him a sensation of peace unlike any previous experience, reminding him of his mother's arms, of her sweet, whispering voice.

 

Wrapped in the trance, Duncan focused his thoughts, his imagination, his drive.  An intense brilliance filled his eyes, but he maintained his hold and refused to blink.

 

Duncan felt a sharp pain in his neck, the prick of a needle.  "Ah!  You still bleed," Dinari exclaimed, as if it were his job to destroy as many candidates as possible.  "So, too, will you bleed in battle.  You are not in a perfect state of funestus, Duncan Idaho."

 

He struggled to achieve the meditative state in which the mind commanded its chi energy, remaining in a state of rest while totally prepared for battle.  He sought the highest level of concentration, without the contamination of unnecessary and confusing thoughts.  He felt himself going deeper, heard Rivvy Dinari's continuing verbal onslaught.

 

"You carry one of the finest blades in the Imperium, the sword of Duke Paulus Atreides."  He loomed over the candidate, who struggled to maintain his focus, his serenity.  "But you must earn the right to use it in battle.  You have acquired fighting skills, yet you have not demonstrated mastery over your own thoughts.  Overintellectualizing slows and dulls reactions, dampens a warrior's instincts.  Mind and body are one -- and you must fight with both."

 

The corpulent Swordmaster glided around him, slowly circling.  Duncan fixed his gaze ahead.

 

"I see every tiny crack of which even you are not aware.  If a Swordmaster fails, he doesn't just let himself down -- he imperils his comrades, disgraces his House, and brings dishonor upon himself."

 

Duncan felt another needle prick his neck, heard a satisfied grunt.  "Better."  Dinari's voice faded as he moved along to inspect the others in turn. . . .

 

As the relentless rain streamed down on him, Duncan maintained funestus.  Around him the world grew silent, like the quiet before a storm.  Time ceased to hold any meaning for him.

 

"Ay-eee . . . Huhh!"

 

At Dinari's call, Duncan's consciousness began to float, as if he were a boat in a fast-moving river, and the bulky Swordmaster had him in tow.  He submerged and continued forward, pushing through metaphorical water toward a destination that lay far beyond his mind.  He had been in this mental stream many times . . . the journey of partus as he went to the second step in the sequence of meditation. He washed away all that was old so he could begin anew, like a child.  The water was fresh and clean and warm all around him, a womb.

 

Duncan accelerated through the liquid, and the boat that was his soul tilted upward.  The darkness diminished, and presently he saw a glow above him, becoming brighter.  The sparkling light became a watery brilliance, and he saw himself as a tiny mote swimming upward.

 

"Ay-eee . . . Huhh!"

 

At Dinari's second cry, Duncan surged out of the metaphorical water back into tropical rain and sweet air.  He gasped for breath, and coughed along with the other students -- only to find himself entirely dry, his clothes, his skin, his hair.  Before he could express his astonishment, the rain began to soak his clothes again.

 

With clasped hands, the obese Swordmaster gazed at the gray heavens, letting raindrops pour over his face like a cleansing baptism.  Then he tilted his head down and gazed from face to face, showing supreme pleasure.  His students had reached novellus -- the final stage of organic rebirth required before they could begin a complex new teaching.

 

"To conquer a fighting system you must let it conquer you.  You must give yourself to it totally."  The loose, wet ends of Swordmaster Dinari's red bandanna, tied behind his head, drooped down his neck.  "Your minds are like soft clay upon which impressions may be made."

 

"We will learn now, Master," the class intoned.

 

The Swordmaster said solemnly, "Bushido.  Where does honor begin?  Ancient samurai masters hung mirrors in each of their Shinto temples and asked adherents to look deeply into them to see their own hearts, the variegated reflections of their God.  It is in the heart where honor is nurtured and flourishes."

 

With a meaningful glance over at Trin Kronos and the other Grumman students, he continued.  "Remember this always:  Dishonor is like a gash on a tree trunk -- instead of disappearing with age, it enlarges."

 

He made the class repeat this three times before he went on.  "The code of honor was more valuable to a samurai than any treasure.  A samurai's word -- his bushi no ichi-gon -- was never doubted, nor is the word of any Swordmaster of Ginaz."

 

Dinari finally smiled at them, showing pride at last.  "Young samurai, first you will learn basic moves with empty hands.  When you have perfected these techniques, weapons will be added to your routines."  With his black-dart eyes, he looked at them all sharply enough to make them afraid.

 

"The weapon is an extension of the hand."

 

 

A WEEK LATER, the exhausted students retired to cots inside their tents on the rugged north shore.  Rain spattered their shelters, and trade winds gusted all night long.  Fatigued from the rigorous fighting, Duncan settled down to sleep.  Tent fittings rattled, metal eyelets clanked against rope ties in a steady rhythm that made him drowsy.  At times, he thought he would never be completely dry again.

 

A booming voice startled him.  "Everyone out!"  He recognized the timbre of Dinari's voice, but the big man's tone conveyed something new, something ominous.  Another surprise training exercise?

 

The students scrambled out of the tents into the downpour, some clad in shorts, some wearing nothing at all.  Without hesitation, they lined up in their usual formations.  By now they didn't even feel the rain.  Glowglobes bobbed in the wind, swaying at the ends of suspensor tethers.

 

Still dressed in khakis, an agitated Swordmaster Dinari paced in front of the class like a stalking animal.  His footsteps were heavy and angry; he didn't care that he splashed in the muddy puddles.  Behind him, the engine of a landed ornithopter whined as its articulated wings thumped in the air.

 

A red strobelight on top of the aircraft illuminated the figure of the slender, bald woman Karsty Toper, who had met Duncan upon his first arrival on Ginaz.  Wearing her usual black martial-arts pajama, now rain-soaked, she clutched a glistening diplomatic plaque that was impervious to moisture.  Her expression looked hard and troubled, as if she were barely able to contain disgust or outrage.

 

"Four years ago, a Grumman ambassador murdered an Ecazi diplomat after being accused of sabotaging Ecazi fogwood trees, and then Grumman troops engaged in a criminal carpet-bombing of Ecaz.  These heinous and illegal aggressions violated the Great Convention, and the Emperor stationed a legion of Sardaukar on Grumman to prevent further atrocities."  Toper paused, waiting for the implications to sink in.

 

"The forms must be obeyed!" Dinari said, sounding greatly offended.

 

Karsty Toper stepped forward, holding up her crystal document like a cudgel.  Rain streamed down her scalp, her temples.  "Before removing his Sardaukar from Grumman, the Emperor received promises from both sides agreeing to cease all aggressions against one another."

 

Duncan looked around at the other students, seeking an answer.  No one seemed to know what the woman was talking about or why the Swordmaster seemed so angry.

 

"Now, House Moritani has struck again.  The Viscount reneged on the pact," Toper said, "and Grumman --"

 

"They have broken their word!"  Swordmaster Dinari interrupted.

 

"And Grumman agents have kidnapped the brother and eldest daughter of Archduke Armand Ecaz and publicly executed them."

 

The gathered students muttered their dismay.  Duncan could tell, though, that this was no mere lesson in inter-House politics for them to learn.  He dreaded what was about to come.

 

On Duncan's right, Hiih Resser shifted uneasily on his feet.  He wore shorts, no shirt.  Two rows back, Trin Kronos appeared to be smugly satisfied at what his House had done.

 

"Seven members of this class are from Grumman.  Three are from Ecaz.  Though these Houses are sworn enemies, you students have not permitted such enmity to affect the work of our school.  This is to your credit."  Toper pocketed her diplomatic plaque.

 

The wind whipped the tails of Dinari's bandanna around his head, but he stood as sturdy as an enormous oak tree.  "Though we have not been part of this dispute, and we avoid Imperial politics altogether, the Ginaz School cannot tolerate such dishonor.  It shames me even to spit the name of your House.  All Grummans, step forward.  Front and center!"

 

The seven students did as they were told.  Two (including Trin Kronos) were nude, but stood at attention with their companions as if they were fully dressed.  Resser looked alarmed and ashamed; Kronos actually raised his chin in indignation.

 

"You are faced with a decision," Toper said.  "Your House has violated Imperial law and dishonored itself.  After your years here on Ginaz, you understand the appalling seriousness of this offense.  No one has ever been kicked out of this school for purely political reasons.  Therefore, you may either denounce the insane policies of Viscount Moritani, here and now -- or be expelled immediately and permanently from the academy."  She pointed toward the waiting ornithopter.

 

Trin Kronos scowled.  "So, after all your words about honor, you ask us to give up loyalty to our House, our families?  Just like that?"  He glared at the fat Swordmaster.  "There can be no honor without loyalty.  My eternal allegiance is to Grumman and to House Moritani."

 

"Loyalty to an unjust cause is a perversion of honor."

 

"Unjust cause?"  Kronos stood flushed and indignant in his nakedness.  "It is not my place to challenge the decisions of my Lord, sir -- nor is it yours."

 

Resser looked straight forward, did not glance at his fellows.  "I choose to be a Swordmaster, Sir.  I will stay here."  The redhead fell back into line beside Duncan, while the other Grummans glared at him as if he were a traitor.

 

Prompted by Kronos, the remaining six refused to yield.  The Moritani lordling growled, "You insult Grumman at your own peril.  The Viscount will never forget your meddling."  His words were full of bluster, but neither Swordmaster Dinari nor Karsty Toper seemed impressed.

 

The Grummans stood proud and arrogant, though obviously disturbed to be put in such a position.  Duncan sympathized with them, realizing that they, too, had selected a course of honor -- a different form of honor -- since they refused to abandon their House, regardless of the accusations.  If he were thrust into a choice between the Ginaz School and loyalty to House Atreides, he would have chosen Duke Leto without hesitation. . . .

 

Given only minutes to dress and gather their possessions, the Grumman students boarded the 'thopter.  The wings went to full extension, then began a powerful flapping rhythm as the craft flew through the rain over the dark water until its red strobe faded like a dying star.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Universe is a place inaccessible, unintelligible, completely absurd . . . from which life -- especially rational life -- is estranged.  There is no place of safety, or basic principle upon which the Universe depends.  There are only transitory, masked relationships, confined within limited dimensions, and bound for inevitable change.

 

-Meditations from Bifrost Eyrie, Buddislamic Text

 

 

RABBAN'S SLAUGHTER of the fur whales in Tula Fjord was only the first in a chain of disasters to strike Abulurd Harkonnen.

 

On a sunny day when the ice and snow had begun to thaw after a long, hard winter, a terrible avalanche buried Bifrost Eyrie, the greatest of the mountain retreats built by reclusive Buddislamic monks.  It was also the ancestral home of House Rabban.

 

The snow came down like a white hammer, sweeping away everything in its path.  It crushed buildings, buried thousands of religious devotees.  Emmi's father, Onir Rautha-Rabban, sent a plea for help directly to Abulurd's main lodge.

 

With knotted stomachs, Abulurd and Emmi took an ornithopter, leading larger transports filled with local volunteers.  He piloted with one hand, while clutching her fingers with his other.  For a lingering moment, he studied the strong profile of his wife's wide face, and her long black hair.  Though she wasn't beautiful in any classic sense, he never tired of looking at her, or of being with her.

 

They traveled along the folded coastline, then deep into the rugged mountain ranges.  Many of the isolated retreats had no roads leading to the crags in which they nestled.  All raw materials were extracted from the mountains; all supplies and people came via 'thopter.

 

Four generations ago, a weak House Rabban had surrendered planetary industrial and financial rights to the Harkonnens, on the condition that they be allowed to live in peace.  The religious orders built monasteries and focused their energies on scriptures and sutras in an attempt to understand the subtlest nuances of theology.  House Harkonnen couldn't have cared less.

 

Bifrost Eyrie had been one of the first cities built like a dream of Shangri-La in the backbone ranges.  Chiseled stone buildings were situated on cliffs so high that they remained above Lankiveil's perpetual cloud level.  Viewed from meditation balconies, the peaks floated like islands on a sea of white cumulus.  The towers and minarets were covered with gold painstakingly extracted from distant mines; every flat wall surface was etched with friezes or intaglios depicting ancient sagas and metaphors for moral choices.

 

Abulurd and Emmi had been to Bifrost Eyrie many times, to visit her father or just to go on retreats when they needed relaxation.  Upon returning to Lankiveil after seven years on dusty Arrakis, he and his wife had required a month at Bifrost Eyrie just to cleanse their minds.

 

And now an avalanche had nearly destroyed that great monument.  Abulurd didn't know how he could bear to see it.

 

They sat together tensely as he flew the ornithopter high, holding the vehicle steady in bucking air currents.  Since there were few landmarks and no roads, he relied on coordinates for the 'thopter's navsystems.  The craft came over one razorback range and into a glacier-filled bowl, then up a rugged black slope to where the city should have been.  The sunlight was dazzling.

 

With her jasper-brown eyes Emmi looked ahead, counting peaks and orienting herself, before she pointed, still not releasing his hand from her tightening grip.  Abulurd recognized a few glittering gold spires, the milky-white stones that held up the magnificent buildings.  Fully a third of Bifrost Eyrie had been erased, as if a giant broom of snow had smoothed everything over, obliterating any obstruction, whether cliff or building or praying monk.

 

The 'thopter landed in what had been the town square, now cleared as a staging area for rescue and salvage parties.  The surviving monks and visitors had swarmed out onto the snowfield:  The robed figures used makeshift tools and even bare hands to rescue survivors, but mostly to recover frozen bodies.

 

Abulurd climbed out of the 'thopter and reached up to help his wife down; he was afraid her legs might be shaking as much as his were.  Although cold gusts cast ice crystals like gritty sand in their faces, the tears that sprang to Abulurd's pale eyes were not caused by the wind.

 

Seeing them arrive, the barrel-chested burgomaster, Onir Rautha-Rabban, came forward.  His mouth opened and closed above a bearded chin, but he remained speechless.  Finally he just threw his thick arms around his daughter and gave Emmi a long hug.  Abulurd embraced his father-in-law.

 

Bifrost Eyrie had been famed for its architecture, for prismatic crystal windows that reflected rainbows back into the mountain.  The people who dwelled there were artisans who crafted precious items sold off-world to affluent, discriminating customers.  Most famed of all were the irreplaceable books of delicate calligraphy and illuminated manuscripts of the enormous Orange Catholic Bible.  Only the wealthiest Great Houses in the Landsraad could afford a Bible hand-lettered and embellished by the monks of Lankiveil.

 

Of particular interest had been the singing crystal sculptures, harmonic quartz formations taken from cave grottoes, arranged carefully and tuned to proper wavelengths, so that the resonance of one crystal, when tapped, would set up a vibration in the next, and the next, in a harmonic wave, a music unlike any other in all the Imperium. . . .

 

"More work crews and transports are on their way," Abulurd said to Onir Rautha-Rabban.  "They're bringing equipment and emergency supplies."

 

"All we can see is grief and tragedy," Emmi said.  "I know it's too soon for you to think clearly now, Father, but if there's anything else we can do --"

 

The square-shouldered man with the gray beard nodded.  "Yes, there is, my daughter."  Onir looked Abulurd straight in the eye.  "Our tithe to House Harkonnen is due next month.  We'd sold enough crystals, tapestries, and calligraphy, and we had the proper amount of solaris set aside.  But now --"  He gestured to the ruins from the avalanche.  "It's all buried in there somewhere, and what money we have we'll need in order to pay for . . ."

 

In the original agreement between Houses Rabban and Harkonnen, all of the religious cities on Lankiveil agreed to pay a specified sum each year.  As a result they were free of other obligations and left alone.  Abulurd held up his hand.  "Not to worry."

 

Despite his family's tradition of harshness, Abulurd had always done his best to live well, to treat others with the respect they deserved.  But ever since his son's whale hunt had ruined the breeding grounds in Tula Fjord, he found himself slipping into a dark, deep hole.  Only the love he shared with Emmi maintained him, providing him with strength and optimism.

 

"You can have all the time you need.  What's important now is to find any survivors, and to help you rebuild."

 

Onir Rautha-Rabban looked too devastated even to weep.  He stared at the people working on the mountainside.  The sun was bright overhead, and the sky a clear blue.  The avalanche had painted his world a pristine white, covering the depth of misery it brought.

 

 

ON GIEDI PRIME, in the private chamber where he often went to brood with his nephew and his Mentat, Baron Harkonnen reacted to the news with appropriate indignation.  In the midst of clutter, he bounced in his suspensor mechanism, while the others sat in chairdogs.  A new, mostly ornamental walking stick rested against the chair, close at hand in case he needed to snatch it up and strike someone.  This stick featured a Harkonnen griffin on its head, unlike the sandworm head of the one he had thrown off the balcony.

 

Decorative pillars rose in each corner of the room, squared off in a jumbled architectural style.  A dry fountain sat in one corner.  There were no windows -- the Baron rarely bothered looking at the view anyway -- and the polished tile felt cold against his bare feet, which touched the floor like a whisper, thanks to his suspensors.  In one corner of the room, a pole bearing the drooping banner of House Harkonnen lay tilted against the wall, tossed there casually and never righted.

 

The Baron glowered over at Glossu Rabban.  "Your father's showing his soft heart and his soft head again."

 

Rabban flinched, afraid he might be sent back to talk sense into Abulurd.  He wore a padded sleeveless jacket of maroon leather that left his muscular arms bare.  His close-cropped reddish hair had been smashed into a cowlick from the helmet he often wore.  "I wish you wouldn't keep reminding me that he's my father," he said, trying to deflect the Baron's anger.

 

"For four generations the income stream from Lankiveil's monasteries has been unbroken.  That was our agreement with House Rabban.  They always pay.  They know the terms.  And now, because of a little" -- the Baron snorted -- "snowfall, they're going to shirk their tithe?  How can Abulurd blithely wave his hands and excuse his subjects from their tax obligations?  He is the planetary governor, and he has responsibilities."

 

"We can always make the other cities pay more," Piter de Vries suggested.  He twitched as additional possibilities occurred to him.  He got up from the chairdog and moved across the chamber toward the Baron; the loose-fitting robe curled around him as he glided with the grace and silence of a vengeful ghost.

 

"I don't agree with setting a precedent like this," the Baron said.  "I prefer our finances all neat and tidy -- and Lankiveil has managed to remain clean until now."  He reached over to a side table and poured himself a snifter of kirana brandy.  He sipped it, hoping the smoky-tasting liquid would burn the ache from his joints.  Since being fitted with his belt-mechanism the Baron had gained even more weight from reduced activity.  His physical body felt like a burden hanging on his bones.

 

The Baron's skin bore an aroma of eucalyptus and cloves from the oils he added to his daily bath.  The massage boys had rubbed ointments deep into his skin, but his deteriorating body still felt miserable.

 

"If we go easy on one city, it'll lead to an epidemic of manufactured disasters and excuses."  He pursed his generous lips in a pout, and his spider-black eyes flicked over to Rabban.

 

"I can understand why you're displeased, Uncle.  My father's a fool."

 

De Vries raised a long, bony finger.  "If I may make a point, my Baron.  Lankiveil is lucrative because of its whale fur trade.  Virtually all of our profit comes from that one industry.  The few trinkets and souvenirs from these monasteries bring a nice price, yes . . . but overall, the income is insignificant.  On general principle, we require them all to pay, but we don't need them."  The Mentat paused.

 

"Your point being?"

 

He raised his bushy eyebrows.  "The point being, my Baron, that in this particular instance we can afford to . . . shall we say, make a point of the matter."

 

Rabban began to laugh, a booming chuckle similar to his uncle's.  His exile on Lankiveil still rankled.

 

"House Harkonnen controls the fief of Rabban-Lankiveil," the Baron said.  "With fluctuations in the spice market, we need to ensure our absolute control in every moneymaking enterprise.  Perhaps we've been lax in watching over my half-brother's activities.  He may feel he can be as lenient as he wishes, and that we'll ignore him.  This sort of thinking needs to stop."

 

"What are you going to do, Uncle?"  Rabban leaned forward, and his thick-lidded eyes narrowed.

 

"It's what you are going to do.  I need someone familiar with Lankiveil, and someone who understands the requirements of power."

 

Rabban swallowed with anticipation, knowing what was coming.

 

"You're going back there," the Baron ordered.  "But this time not in disgrace.  This time you have a job to do."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Bene Gesserit tell no casual lies.  Truth serves us better.

 

-BENE GESSERIT CODA

 

 

ON AN OVERCAST MORNING, Duke Leto sat alone in the courtyard of Castle Caladan, staring at an untouched breakfast of smoked fish and eggs.  A magnaboard containing metal-impregnated paper documents rested by his right hand.  Kailea seemed to be attending to fewer of the daily business matters.  So much to do, and none of it interesting.

 

Across the table lay the remains of Thufir Hawat's meal; the Mentat had eaten hurriedly and departed to tend to the security details required for the day's affair of state.  Leto's thoughts kept wandering to the Heighliner that had entered orbit and the shuttle that would soon come down to the surface.

 

What do the Bene Gesserit want of me?  Why are they sending a delegation to Caladan?  He'd had nothing further to do with the Sisterhood since Rhombur had taken Tessia as his bound-concubine.  Their representative wanted to speak to him about an "extremely important matter," yet refused to reveal anything further.

 

His stomach knotted, and he hadn't slept well the night before.  The insanity of the Moritani-Ecazi conflict weighed constantly on his mind.  While he had gained stature in the Landsraad for his determined diplomatic efforts, he was sickened by the recent kidnapping and execution of the Archduke's family members.  Leto had met Armand Ecaz's daughter Sanya, found her attractive, had even considered her a good marriage prospect.  But Grumman thugs had killed Sanya and her uncle.

 

He knew this would not be solved without further bloodshed.

 

Leto watched a bright orange-and-yellow butterfly flutter above a vase of flowers at the center of the table.  For an instant the pretty insect made him forget his troubles, but the questions seeped back into his awareness.

 

Years ago, at his Trial by Forfeiture, the Bene Gesserit had offered him assistance, though he knew better than to expect unfettered generosity.  Thufir Hawat had given Leto a warning he already knew too well:  "The Bene Gesserit aren't errand girls for anyone.  They made this offer because they wanted to, because it benefits them somehow."

 

Hawat was right, of course.  The Sisterhood was adept at securing information, power, and position.  A Bene Gesserit of Hidden Rank was married to the Emperor; Shaddam IV kept an ancient Truthsayer at his side at all times; another Sister had wed Shaddam's Spice Minister, Count Hasimir Fenring.

 

Why have they always been so interested in me? he wondered.

 

The butterfly landed on the magnaboard beside his hand, showing off its beautiful patterned wings.

 

Even with advanced Mentat abilities, Hawat could provide no useful projections regarding the Sisterhood's motives.  Perhaps Leto should ask Tessia -- Rhombur's concubine usually gave straightforward answers.  But even though Tessia was now part of the Atreides household, the young woman remained loyal to the Sisterhood.  And no organization kept its secrets better than the Bene Gesserit.

 

With a flash of color, the butterfly danced in the air in front of his eyes.  He extended a hand, palm up -- and to his surprise the creature landed on it, perching so lightly that he barely felt a thing.

 

"Do you have the answers I'm looking for?  Is that what you're trying to tell me?"  The butterfly had placed its complete faith in him, trusting that Leto wouldn't harm it.  So it was, too, with the sacred trust the good people of Caladan placed in him.  The butterfly darted off and dropped to the ground, seeking dew in the shade of the breakfast table.

 

Suddenly a house servant appeared, stepping into the courtyard.

 

"My Duke, the delegation has arrived early.  They are already at the spaceport!"

 

Leto stood abruptly, knocking the magnaboard off the table.  It tumbled onto the cool flagstones.  The servant hurried to pick it up, but Leto brushed him aside when he saw that the butterfly had been crushed beneath it.  His own carelessness had killed the delicate creature.  Disturbed, he knelt beside it for several seconds.

 

"Are you all right, my Lord?" the servant asked.

 

Leto straightened, brushed off the magnaboard, and assumed a stoic expression.  "Inform the delegation that I will meet them in my study, instead of at the spaceport."

 

As the servant hurried off, Leto lifted the dead butterfly and laid it between two magnaboard sheets.  Though the insect's body had been crushed, the exquisite wings remained intact.  He would have the creature encased in clearplaz, so that he could always remember how easily beauty could be destroyed in a moment of carelessness. . . .

 

 

WITH HIS BLACK UNIFORM, green cape, and ducal badge of office in place, Leto rose from his elacca wood desk.  He bowed as five black-robed Sisters entered, led by a severe-faced, gray-haired woman with hollow cheeks and bright eyes.  His gaze shifted to a bronze-haired young beauty beside her, then focused back on the leader.

 

"I am Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam."  The woman's face showed no hostility, nor did it ease into a smile.  "Thank you for allowing us to speak with you, Duke Leto Atreides."

 

"Normally I do not grant visits on such short notice," he said with a cool nod.  Hawat had advised him to keep the women off-balance, if possible.  "However, since the Sisterhood does not often ask for my indulgence, I can make an exception."  A household servant closed the doors of the private study as Leto gestured to his warrior Mentat.  "Reverend Mother, may I present Thufir Hawat, my Security Commander?"

 

"Ah, the famous Master of Assassins," she said, meeting his gaze.

 

"An informal title only."  Rigid with suspicion, Hawat bowed slightly.  Tension hung thick in the air, and Leto did not know how to cut it.

 

As the women took seats in deep-cushioned chairs, Leto found himself captivated by the young girl with bronze hair, who remained standing.  Perhaps seventeen years old, her intelligent green eyes were widely set on an oval face that had a slightly upturned nose and generous lips.  She carried herself with a regal bearing.  Had he seen her before?  He wasn't certain.

 

When Mohiam looked at the young girl, who stood straight and rigid, they exchanged hard stares, as if some strain existed between them.  "This is Sister Jessica, a very talented Acolyte, trained in many areas.  We would like to present her to your household, with our compliments."

 

"Present her to us?" Hawat said with a hard edge in his voice.  "As a servant, or as your spy?"

 

The girl looked at him sharply, but quickly covered her indignation.

 

"As a consort, or just a sounding board for ideas.  That is for the Duke to decide."  Mohiam calmly ignored the Mentat's accusatory tone.  "Bene Gesserit Sisters have proven their value as advisors to many Houses, including House Corrino."  She kept her attention firmly on Leto, though it was clear she remained aware of every movement Hawat made.  "A Sister may observe, and draw her own conclusions . . . but that does not make her a spy.  Many nobles find our women to be fine companions, beautiful, skilled in the arts of --"

 

Leto cut her off.  "I already have a concubine, who is the mother of my son."  He glanced at Hawat, saw the Mentat analyzing the new data.

 

Mohiam gave him a knowing smile.  "An important man such as yourself may have more than one woman, Duke Atreides.  You have not yet chosen a wife."

 

"Unlike the Emperor, I do not maintain a harem."

 

The other Sisters looked impatient, and the Reverend Mother let out a long sigh.  "The traditional meaning of the word 'harem,' Duke Atreides, included all the women for whom a man bore responsibility, including his sisters and mother as well as concubines and wives.  There was no implied sexual connotation."

 

"Word games," Leto growled.

 

"Do you wish to play word games, Duke Leto, or strike a bargain?"  The Reverend Mother glanced over at Hawat as if considering how much to say in front of the Mentat.  "A matter involving House Atreides has come to our attention.  It concerns a certain plot perpetrated against you years ago."

 

With a barely perceptible jerk, Hawat focused his attention.  Leto leaned forward.  "What plot, Reverend Mother?"

 

"Before we reveal this vital information to you, we must arrive at an understanding."  Leto wasn't the slightest bit surprised.  "Is it so much we ask in return?"  Because of the urgency of the situation, Mohiam thought it might be necessary to use Voice on him, but the Mentat would surely recognize it.  Jessica remained standing to one side, on display.  "Any other nobleman would be glad to have this lovely child as part of his retinue . . . in any capacity."

 

Leto's thoughts whirled.  It's clear they want to have someone here on Caladan.  For what purpose?  Just to exert influence?  Why would they bother?  Tessia is already here, if they need a spy so badly.  House Atreides has respect and influence, but is not particularly powerful in the Landsraad.

 

Why have I come to their notice?

 

And why are they so insistent upon this particular girl?

 

Leto came around in front of the desk and gestured to Jessica, "Come here."  The young woman glided across the small study.  A head shorter than the Duke, with unblemished and radiant skin, she gave him a long, importunate look.

 

"I've heard that all Bene Gesserit are witches," he said, as he ran a finger through the bronze silkiness of her hair.

 

She met his gaze and responded in a soft voice.  "But we have hearts and bodies."  Her lips were softly sensual, inviting.

 

"Ah, but what have your heart and body been trained to do?"

 

She fended off his question in a tranquil tone.  "Trained to be loyal, to offer the comforts of love . . . to have children."

 

Leto glanced at Thufir Hawat.  No longer in a Mentat trance, the leathery warrior nodded, indicating that he did not object to the bargain.  In their private discussions, however, the two had planned an aggressive tack with the delegation, to see how the Bene Gesserit would respond under pressure, to keep them off-balance so the Mentat could observe.  This appeared to be the opportunity they had discussed.

 

"I don't believe the Bene Gesserit ever give without taking," Leto snapped, in sudden fury.

 

"But, my Lord --"  Jessica could not complete the sentence, because he snatched a jewel-handled knife from a sheath at his waist and held the blade to her throat, pulling her tightly against him in a hostage position.

 

Her Bene Gesserit companions did not move.  They gazed at Leto with unnerving serenity, as if they thought Jessica could kill him herself if she so chose.  Mohiam watched with impenetrable birdlike eyes.

 

Jessica tilted her head back, exposing more of her soft, smooth throat.  It was the way of D-wolves, as she had been taught in the Mother School:  Bare your throat in total submission, and the aggressor backs away.

 

The tip of Leto's blade pressed into her skin ever so slightly, but not enough to draw blood.  "I don't trust what you offer."

 

Jessica remembered the command Mohiam had whispered in her ear just before they stepped off the shuttle in the Cala Municipal Spaceport.  "Let the chain be unbroken," her stern mentor had said.  "You must give us the female child we require."

 

Jessica hadn't been told where she fitted into the Sisterhood's breeding programs, and it was not her position to ask.  Many young girls were assigned as concubines for various Great Houses, and she had no reason to believe she was any different from the others.  She respected her superiors and worked hard to show this, but sometimes Mohiam's unbending ways chafed her.  They'd had an argument on the way here, and the remnants of it still hung in the air.

 

Leto whispered in her ear:  "I could kill you now."  But he could not hide from her, or any of the Sisters, that his anger was feigned.  Years ago, as a test, she had studied this dark-haired man as she hid in balcony shadows on Wallach IX.

 

She pressed her neck against the blade.  "You are not a casual killer, Leto Atreides."  He withdrew the edge, but kept his arm around her waist as she said, "You have nothing to fear from me."

 

"Do we have a deal, Duke Leto?"  Mohiam asked, unruffled by his behavior.  "I assure you, our information is quite . . . revealing."

 

Leto didn't like being cornered, but he stepped away from Jessica.  "You say a plot has been perpetrated against me?"

 

A smile worked at the wrinkled corners of the Reverend Mother's mouth.  "First you must agree to the contract.  Jessica stays here and is to be treated with due respect."

 

Leto and his warrior Mentat exchanged glances.  "She can live in Castle Caladan," he said finally, "but I do not agree to take her into my bed."

 

Mohiam shrugged.  "Use her as you wish.  Jessica is a valuable and useful resource, but do not waste her talents."  Biology will take its course.

 

"Reverend Mother, what is your vital information?" Hawat demanded.

 

Clearing her throat, Mohiam replied, "I speak of an incident some years back, in which you were falsely accused of attacking two Tleilaxu ships.  We have learned that Harkonnens were involved."

 

Both Leto and Hawat stiffened.  The Mentat's brows furrowed in deep concentration as he awaited further data.

 

"You have proof of this?" Leto asked.

 

"They used an invisible warship to fire upon the Tleilaxu vessels, implicating you, in an attempt to start an Atreides-Tleilaxu war.  We have the wreckage of the craft in our possession."

 

"An invisible ship?  I've never heard of such a thing."

 

"Nonetheless it exists.  We have the prototype, the only one of its kind.  Fortunately, the Harkonnens experienced technical problems, which contributed to its . . . crash . . . near our Mother School.  We have also determined that the Harkonnens are unable to manufacture another such ship."

 

The Mentat studied her.  "Have you analyzed the technology?"

 

"The nature of what we discovered cannot be revealed.  Such a fearsome weapon could wreak tremendous havoc in the Imperium."

 

Leto barked a short laugh, elated that he finally had an answer to the question that had nagged him for fifteen years.  "Thufir, we'll take this information to the Landsraad, and clear my name once and for all.  Reverend Mother, provide us with all of your evidence and documentation --"

 

Mohiam shook her head.  "That is not part of our bargain.  The tempest has abated, Duke Leto.  Your Trial by Forfeiture is over, and you have been acquitted of the charges."

 

"But not cleared.  Some of the Great Houses still suspect I was involved.  You could provide conclusive proof of my innocence."

 

"Does that mean so much to you, Duke Leto?"  Her eyebrows rose.  "Perhaps you could find a more effective way to spend this coin.  The Sisterhood will not support such an endeavor simply to bolster your pride or salve your conscience."

 

Leto felt helpless and very young in the face of Mohiam's intense stare.  "How can you come to me with information like that and expect me not to act on it?  If I have no proof of what you say, then your information is meaningless."

 

Mohiam frowned, and her dark eyes glittered.  "Come now, Duke Leto.  Is House Atreides interested only in trappings and documents?  I thought you valued the truth for itself.  I have given you the truth."

 

"So you say," Hawat answered coldly.

 

"The wise leader understands patience."  Ready to depart, Mohiam signaled to her companions.  "One day you will discover the best way to use the knowledge.  But take heart.  Simply understanding what truly occurred in that Heighliner should be worth a great price to you, Duke Leto Atreides."

 

Hawat was about to object, but Leto held up his hand.  "She's right, Thufir.  Those answers are quite valuable to me."  He looked over at the bronze-haired girl.  "Jessica can stay here."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The man who gives in to adrenaline addiction turns against all humanity.  He turns against himself.  He runs away from the workable issues of life and admits a defeat which his own violent actions help to create.

 

-CAMMAR PILRU, Ixian Ambassador in Exile:  Treatise on the Downfall of Unjust Governments

 

 

 

THE SECRET SHIPMENT of explosives arrived intact, passed by bribed off-world delivery crews, hidden among crates, delivered to a specific loading dock in the cave openings in the cliffs of the port-of-entry canyon.

 

Working with the loaders, C'tair spotted the subtle markings and diverted the innocuous-looking container, as he had done many times before.  When he uncovered the cleverly packaged explosive wafers, though, he was astounded.  There must be a thousand of them!  Other than handling instructions for the charges, there was no message, coded or otherwise, and no source information, but C'tair knew the identity of the sender anyway.  This was far more than Prince Rhombur had ever sent before.  C'tair felt renewed hope, and the burden of tremendous responsibility.

 

Only a few other wary, independent rebels remained underground, and they kept to themselves, trusting no one.  C'tair was that way himself.  Other than Miral Alechem, he felt all alone in his fight, even though Rhombur -- and the Tleilaxu -- apparently thought there was a much larger, more organized resistance.

 

These explosives would make up for that.

 

During his youth, Prince Rhombur Vernius had been a pudgy boy; C'tair remembered him as something of a good-natured buffoon, who spent more time collecting geological specimens than learning statecraft or Ixian industrial processes.  There had always seemed to be time.

 

But everything had changed when the Tleilaxu came.  Everything.

 

Even in exile, Rhombur still had pass-codes and connections with the shipping administration by which raw materials came into the manufacturing city.  He had been able to smuggle vital supplies underground, and now these explosive wafers.  C'tair vowed to make each one count.  Now, his primary concern was to hide the demolitions material before sluggish Ixian suboids discovered the package's true contents.

 

Wearing the stolen uniform of an upper-level worker, he transported the shipment of explosives into the stalactite city on a suspensor cart with other everyday deliveries.  He did not hurry toward his hiding place.  At all times he kept his expression bland and passive, making no conversation, barely responding to comments or insults made by the Tleilaxu Masters.

 

When he finally reached the appropriate level and ducked through the camouflaged entrance into his sensor-shielded room, C'tair piled the black, rough-textured wafers, then lay back on his cot, breathing heavily.

 

This would be his first major strike in years.

 

He closed his eyes.  Moments later he heard a click at the door, footsteps, and a rustling noise.  He didn't move or look because the sounds were familiar, a small bit of comfort for him in an uncomfortable world.  He smelled her faint, sweet scent.

 

For months he had been living with Miral Alechem.  They had clung to each other's companionship after making love in a darkened tunnel, hushed and nervous, while hiding from a Sardaukar patrol.  In his years as an Ixian patriot, C'tair had resisted the urge for any sort of a personal relationship, spurning close contact with other human beings.  It was too dangerous, too distracting.  But Miral had the same burning goals, the same needs. And she was so beautiful. . . .

 

Now he heard her set something down on the floor with a soft thump.  She kissed his cheek.  "I got a few things, some high-energy wire, a laser pack, a --"  He heard her indrawn gasp of breath.

 

C'tair smiled, kept his eyes closed.  She'd spotted the piles of wafers.

 

"I got a few things, too."  Abruptly, he sat up and explained how he'd come by the explosives, and how they worked.  Each black wafer, the size of a small coin and honeycombed with compressed detonation beads, packed enough power to blow up a small building.  With just a handful of them, placed correctly, they could cause tremendous, large-scale damage.

 

Her fingers moved close to the pile, hesitated.  She looked at him with her large, dark eyes, and as she did, he thought about her, as he often did.  Miral was the best person he'd ever met.  It was admirable the way she took risks comparable to his own.  She hadn't seduced him, hadn't enticed him at all.  Their relationship had just happened.  They were right for each other.

 

He thought briefly of his youthful crush on Kailea, the daughter of Earl Vernius.  That had been a fantasy, a game, which might have become real if Ix had not fallen.  Miral, though, was all the reality he could endure.

 

"Don't worry," he assured her.  "It takes a detonator to set them off."  He pointed to a small red box filled with needle-set timing devices.

 

She took one of the wafers in each hand, inspecting it like a Hagal jeweler with a new firegem.  C'tair could imagine the possibilities streaming through her mind, stress points in the city, places where the explosives would cause the most pain and damage to the invaders.

 

"I've already chosen a few targets," he said.  "I was hoping you'd help out."

 

She replaced the wafers carefully, then dropped with him onto the cot in an embrace.  "You know I will."  Her breath was hot in his ear.  They could hardly wait to get their clothes off.

 

After making love with an intensity fanned by their great plans, C'tair slept for more hours than he usually allowed himself.  When he was rested and ready, he and Miral went through the motions repeatedly in order to ensure that every connection was made, all procedures and safeguards set.  After they had rigged several charges in the shielded room, they took the remaining explosives and stepped to the sealed doorway, checking the scanners to make certain the outer corridor was empty.

 

With sadness, C'tair and Miral bade a silent farewell to the shielded chamber that had been C'tair's desperate hiding place for so long.  Now it would serve one last purpose, enabling them to deliver a stinging blow to the invaders.

 

The Bene Tleilax would never know what hit them.

 

 

C'TAIR STACKED THE BOXES one at a time with other crates necessary for whatever experiments the Tleilaxu conducted inside their high-security research pavilion.  One of the boxes was rigged with explosive wafers, a shipment that looked just like the others being loaded onto the automated rail system.  The package would be delivered right into the heart of their secret lair.

 

He did not waste a glance on the booby-trapped crate.  He simply stacked it with all the others, then surreptitiously set the timer, and hurried to add another container.  One of the suboid laborers stumbled, and C'tair picked up the man's designated crate and lifted it onto the railcar bed to avoid a delayed departure.  He had given himself a sufficient window of opportunity, but still found it hard not to let his nervousness show.  Miral Alechem was in the passageway beneath another building.  She would be setting charges at the base of the immense structure that had Tleilaxu offices on upper levels; by now she should have made good her escape.

 

With a humming sound, the loaded pallet shuddered into motion and cruised along the rail, picking up speed toward the laboratory complex.  C'tair longed to know what went on behind those blind windows; Miral had not been able to find out, and neither had he.  But he would be satisfied just to cause damage.

 

The Tleilaxu, for all their bloody repressions, had grown lax over sixteen years.  Their security measures were laughable . . . and he would now show them the error of their ways.  This strike had to be significant enough to make them reel, because the next attempt would not be so easy.

 

Staring after the railcar, C'tair suppressed a smile of anticipation.  Behind him, workers prepped a new, empty pallet car with more supplies.  He glanced up at the grotto ceiling, at the gossamer buildings protruding like inverted islands through the projected sky.

 

Timing was crucial.  All four bombs had to go off close together.

 

This would be as much a psychological victory as a material one.  The Tleilaxu invaders must come to the conclusion that a large and coordinated resistance movement was responsible for these attacks, that the rebels had a widespread membership and an organized plan.

 

They must never guess that there are only two of us.

 

In the wake of an outrageous success, others might begin their own struggles.  If enough people took action, it would make the large-scale rebellion a self-fulfilling prophecy.

 

He drew a deep breath and turned back to the other waiting crates.  He dared not show any out-of-the-ordinary behavior.  Overhead, surveillance pods moved about constantly, lights blinking, transeye cameras imaging every movement.

 

He did not glance at his chronometer, but he knew the time was close.

 

When the first explosion shuddered through the cavern floor deep underground, the dull-brained workers paused in their tasks and looked at each other in confusion.  C'tair knew that the detonation at the disposal pits should have been sufficient to collapse the rooms, to twist and destroy the conveyor belts.  Perhaps the rubble would even seal the tops of the deep magma shafts.

 

Before anyone could notice the smug expression on his face, the stalactite buildings in the ceiling exploded.

 

Inside his sensor-shielded bolt-hole within the administrative levels, a cluster of explosive wafers tore out entire levels of the bureaucratic complex.  One wing of the Grand Palais was wrecked, left hanging by long girders and broken reinforced strands.

 

Debris rained into the center of the cavern, and workers fled in panic.  A bright light and swirling cloud of rock powder spread from the torn ceiling chambers.

 

Blaring alarms echoed against the stone walls like thunder.  He hadn't heard such a racket since the initial suboid uprising years ago.  Everything was working perfectly.

 

In feigned horror, he backed away with the rest of the Ixian laborers, standing among them for implied protection, lost in the crowd.  He smelled the dust of building materials and the stench of fear around him.

 

He heard a distant explosion, from the direction of the building where Miral worked, and knew she was clever enough to have gotten away before setting it off.  Then at last, precisely as he had hoped, the loaded pallet car arrived inside the loading dock of the secret research pavilion.  The final set of explosive wafers erupted in streaks of fire and black clouds of smoke.  The sounds of the detonation rang out like a space battle within the thick walls.

 

Fires began to spread.  Armed Sardaukar troops rushed about like heat-maddened beetles, trying to find the source of the concerted attack.  They fired at the sky ceiling, just to express their anger.  Alarms rattled the walls.  Over the PA system, Tleilaxu Masters screamed incomprehensible orders in their private language, while the work crews muttered in subdued fear.

 

But even in the chaos C'tair recognized a strange look on some of the Ixian faces:  a sort of satisfaction, a sense of wonder that such a victory could have occurred.  They had long ago lost their heart for fighting.

 

Now, perhaps they could regain it.

 

At last, C'tair thought as he blinked in dull-eyed shock, trying to cover his smile.  He squared his shoulders, but quickly let them sag as he sought to recapture the demeanor of a defeated and cooperative prisoner.

 

At last a true blow had been struck against the invaders.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments.

 

-Bene Gesserit Axiom

 

 

FROM THE BALCONY of her private apartment, Jessica observed her frumpy, apple-cheeked lady-in-waiting in the practice yard near the west guardhouse.  She watched as the breathless woman chattered with Thufir Hawat, using too many hand gestures as she spoke.  Both of them glanced up at her window.

 

Does the Mentat think I am stupid?

 

In the month that Jessica had lived on Caladan, her every need had been met with cold precision, as a respected guest but no more.  Thufir Hawat had personally seen to her comforts, placing her in the former apartments of the Lady Helena Atreides.  After being sealed for so many years, the chambers had needed to be aired out, but the fine furniture, the pool-bath and sunroom, the complete wardrobe were all more than she required.  A Bene Gesserit needed very little in the way of comfort and luxury.

 

The Mentat had also arranged for Jessica's busybody lady-in-waiting, who flitted around her like a moth, finding little tasks that kept her close to Jessica at all times.  Obviously, one of Hawat's spies.

 

Abruptly, Jessica had dismissed the woman from service that very morning, giving her no reason.  Now she sat back to await the repercussions.  Would the Master of Assassins come himself, or would he send a representative?  Would he even understand her intended message?  Don't underestimate me, Thufir Hawat.

 

From the balcony, she saw him break from his discussion with the disgraced woman.  Moving with confidence and strength, he strode away from the west guardhouse toward the Castle proper.

 

A strange man, that Mentat.  While still at the Mother School, Jessica had memorized Hawat's background, how he'd spent half his life at a Mentat training center, first as a student and later as a philosopher and theoretical tactician, before being purchased for the newly titled Duke Paulus Atreides, Leto's father.

 

Using her Bene Gesserit powers of observation, Jessica studied the leathery, confident man.  Hawat wasn't like other graduates of the Mentat Schools, the introverted types who shied away from personal contact.  Instead, the deadly man was aggressive and crafty, with a fanatic loyalty to House Atreides.  In some ways his deadly nature resembled that of the Tleilaxu-twisted Piter de Vries, but Hawat was the ethical opposite of the Harkonnen Mentat.  It was all very curious. . . .

 

Similarly, she had noticed the old Master of Assassins scrutinizing her through his Mentat logic filter, processing bits of data about her and arriving at unsubstantiated conclusions.  Hawat could be very dangerous indeed.

 

They all wanted to know why she was here, why the Bene Gesserit had chosen to send her, and what she meant to do.

 

Jessica heard a heavy-knuckled rap on the door, and answered it herself.  Now we shall see what he has to say.  Enough games.

 

Hawat's lips were moist with sapho juice, and the deep-set brown eyes showed concern and agitation.  "Please explain why you were dissatisfied with the servant I chose for you, my Lady."

 

Jessica wore a lavender soosatin singlesuit, which showed off the curves of her slender body.  Her makeup was minimal, only a bit of lavender around the eyes and lip tint to match.  Her expression had no softness at all.  "Given your legendary prowess, I'd thought you would be a man of greater subtlety, Thufir Hawat.  If you are going to spy on me, choose someone a little more competent in the wiles of espionage."

 

The bold comment surprised him, and he looked at the young woman with heightened respect.  "I am in charge of the Duke's security, my Lady, tending to his personal safety.  I must take whatever actions I feel are required."

 

Jessica closed the door, and they stood in the entry, close enough for a killing blow -- by either of them.  "Mentat, what do you know of the Bene Gesserit?"

 

A slight smile etched his leathery face.  "Only what the Sisterhood permits outsiders to know."

 

With raised voice, she snapped, "When the Reverend Mothers brought me here, Leto became my sworn master as well.  Do you think I pose a danger to him?  That the Sisterhood would take direct action against a Duke of the Landsraad?  In the history of the Imperium, are you aware of a single instance in which such a thing has happened?  It would be suicide for the Bene Gesserit."  She flared her nostrils.  "Think, Mentat!  What is your projection?"

 

After a heavy moment, Hawat said, "I am unaware of any such instance, my Lady."

 

"And yet you stationed that clumsy wench to keep me under surveillance.  Why do you fear me?  What do you suspect?"  She stopped herself from using Voice, which Hawat would never forgive.  Instead, she added a quieter threat.  "I caution you, do not attempt to lie to me."  There, let him think I am a Truthsayer.

 

"I apologize for the indiscretion, my Lady.  Perhaps I am a bit . . . overzealous in protecting my Duke."  This is a strong young woman, Hawat thought.  The Duke could do much worse.

 

"I admire your devotion to him."  Jessica noticed that his eyes had grown softer, but without evidence of fear, merely a bit more respect.  "I have been here only a short time, while you have served three generations of Atreides.  You bear a scar on your leg from a Salusan bull, from one of the Old Duke's early encounters, do you not?  It is not easy for you to accommodate something new."  She took the faintest step away from him, letting a trickle of regret enter her voice.  "So far your Duke has treated me more like a distant relative, but I hope he will not find me displeasing in the future."

 

"He does not find you displeasing at all, my Lady.  But he has already chosen Kailea Vernius as a partner.  She is the mother of his son."

 

It had not taken Jessica long to learn that there were fractures in the relationship.  "Come now, Mentat, she is not his bound-concubine, and not his wife.  Either way, he has given the boy no birthright.  What message are we to derive from that?"

 

Hawat stood rigid, as if offended.  "Leto's father taught him to use marriage only to gain political advantage for House Atreides.  He has many prospects in the Landsraad.  He has not yet calculated the best match . . . though he is considering."

 

"Let him consider, then."  Jessica signaled that the conversation was over.  She waited for him to turn, and then she added, "Henceforth, Thufir Hawat, I prefer to choose my own ladies-in-waiting."

 

"As you wish."

 

After the Mentat had departed, Jessica assessed her situation, thinking of long-term plans rather than her mission for the Sisterhood.  Her beauty could be enhanced by Bene Gesserit seduction techniques.  But Leto was proud and individualistic; the Duke might guess her intentions and would resent being manipulated.  Even so, Jessica had a job to do.