her personal journals

After his childhood years of repression on Giedi Prime, young Duncan Idaho found the lush world of Caladan a paradise. He’d been landed without a map in a city on the opposite side of the world from Castle Caladan. Janess’s friend, the second mate Renno, had discharged his obligations to the boy, then kicked the stowaway out onto the streets of a lowland spaceport.

Paying no further attention to him, the crew off-loaded their cargo of recyclables and industrial scraps and took on a fresh load of pundi rice wrapped in bags made from grain fibers. Without saying goodbye, without offering advice or even wishing Duncan well, the second mate had climbed back aboard his cargo hauler and returned to the Heighliner in orbit.

Duncan couldn’t complain: At least he had escaped from the Harkonnens. Now all he had to do was find Duke Atreides.

The boy stood there among strangers, on a strange world, watching the ship ascend into the cloudy sky. Caladan was a planet of rich and compelling smells, the air moist and laden with the salt of the sea, the sourness of fish, and the spice of wildflowers. In all his life on Giedi Prime, he had never encountered anything like it.

On the Southern Continent, the hills were steep and covered with intensely green grasses and terraced gardens hacked into the slopes like drunken stairsteps. Teams of hardworking farmers moved about under the misty yellow sun, not wealthy but still happy. Wearing old clothes, they transported fresh fruits and vegetables on suspensor-borne pallets to the marketplace.

As Duncan stared with hungry eyes at the passing farmers, one kindly old man gave him a small, overripe paradan melon, which the boy ate voraciously. Sweet moisture dripped between his fingers. It was the most delicious meal he’d ever had.

Seeing the boy’s energy as well as his desperation, the farmer asked him if he would like to return and work in the rice paddies for a few days. The old fellow offered no pay, only a place to sleep and some food. Duncan readily agreed.

On the long walk back, the boy told him the story of his battles with the Harkonnens, how his parents had been arrested and killed, how he had been chosen for Rabban’s hunt, and how he had eventually escaped. “Now I must present myself to Duke Atreides,” he said with complete faith. “But I don’t know where he is, or how to find him.”

The old farmer listened attentively, then gave a grave nod. Caladanians knew the legends of their Duke, had witnessed the greatest of his bullfights at the departure of his son Leto to Ix. The people here honored their leader, and to them it seemed fundamentally reasonable that any citizen could request an audience with the Atreides.

“I can tell you the city where the Duke lives,” the old man said. “My sister’s husband even has a map of the whole world, and I can show you. But I don’t know how you could get there. It’s very far away.”

“I’m young and strong. I can make it.”

The farmer nodded and led his visitor back to the rice paddies.

Duncan stayed four days with the man’s family, working up to his waist in flooded fields. He waded through the water, clearing channels, inserting small but hardy seedlings into the loose mud. He learned the songs and chants of the pundi rice planters.

One afternoon spotters in the low-hanging trees banged on pans, sounding an alarm. Moments later, ripples in the peaty water signaled the approach of a school of panther-fish, bog dwellers that swam in packs searching for prey. They could strip the flesh off a farmer’s bones in moments.

Duncan scrambled up one of the tangled tree trunks to join the other panicked rice farmers. He hung in the low branches, pushing Spanish moss aside as he looked down and watched the ripples approach. Beneath the water he could see large, many-fanged creatures armored with broad scales. Several of the panther-fish circled around the trunk of the swamp tree in which Duncan had taken refuge.

Some of the creatures rose up on scaled elbows, rudimentary arms with front fins that had developed into clumsy claws. With most of their bodies out of the water, the carnivorous fish stretched upward, large and deadly. They blinked wet, slitted eyes at the young man who hung just out of reach in the branches above. After a long moment of staring them down, Duncan climbed one branch higher. The panther-fish submerged again, swirling away out of sight in the sprawling rice paddies.

The following day Duncan took a spare meal the farmer’s family had packed for him and trudged off toward the coast, where he eventually found work as a net-rigger on a fishing boat that plied the waters of the warm southern seas. At least the boat would take him to port on the continent where Castle Caladan lay.

For weeks he worked the nets, gutted the fish, and ate his fill in the galley. The cook used a lot of spices that were unfamiliar to Duncan — hot Caladanian peppers and mustards that made his eyes water and his nose run. The men laughed at his discomfiture, and told him he would never be a man until he could eat food like that. To their surprise young Duncan took this as a challenge, and soon he began asking for extra seasoning. Before long he could endure meals hotter than any other crew member. The fishermen stopped teasing him and began to praise him instead.

Before the end of the voyage, a cabin boy in the next bunk did a calculation for Duncan that showed him that he was nine now, by almost six weeks. “I feel a lot older than that,” Duncan responded.

He hadn’t expected to take so long to reach his destination, but his life was better now, despite the incredibly hard work he’d taken on. He felt safe, freer in a way than he had ever felt before. The men on the crew were his new family.

Under cloudy skies the fishing boat finally reached port, and Duncan left the sea behind. He didn’t ask for pay, didn’t take his leave of the captain — he simply departed. The oceangoing sojourn was just a step along the way. Never once during his long journey did he ever deviate from his main goal of reaching the Old Duke. He took advantage of no one and worked hard for the hospitality he received.

In a dockside alley a sailor from another ship once tried to molest him, but Duncan fought back with iron-hard muscles and whip-fast reflexes. The bruised and battered predator retreated, finding this wild boy too much for him.

Duncan began hitching rides on groundtrucks and cars, and sneaked aboard tube trains and short-haul cargo ‘thopters. Inexorably, he moved north on the continent, toward Castle Caladan, getting closer and closer as the months passed.

During the frequent rains, he found trees under which he could huddle. But even wet and hungry, he didn’t feel so bad, for he recalled the terrible night at Forest Guard Station, how cold he had been, how he had used a knife to cut open his own shoulder. After that, he could certainly handle these brief discomforts.

Sometimes he struck up conversations with other travelers and heard stories of their popular Duke, bits of Atreides history. Back on Giedi Prime, no one had spoken of such matters. People held their opinions to themselves and gave up no information except under duress. Here, however, the locals were happy to talk about their situation. Duncan realized with a shock one afternoon as he traveled with three entertainers that the people on Caladan actually loved their leader.

In sharp contrast, Duncan had heard only terrible stories of the Harkonnens. He knew the fear of the populace and the brutal consequences of any real or imagined defiance. On this planet, though, the people respected rather than feared their ruler. The Old Duke, Duncan was told, walked with only a small honor guard through villages and markets, visiting the people without wearing any armor, without shields or fear of attack.

Baron Harkonnen or Glossu Rabban would never dare such a thing.

I may like this Duke, Duncan thought one night, curled up under a blanket one of the entertainers had loaned him … .

Finally, after months of travel, he stood in the village at the foot of the promontory that held Castle Caladan. The magnificent structure stood like a sentinel gazing out across the calm seas. Somewhere inside it lived Duke Paulus Atreides, by now a legendary figure to the boy.

Duncan shivered from the chill of morning and took a deep breath. The fog lifted above the seacoast, turning the rising sun into a deep orange ball. He marched away from the village and started up the long, steep road to the Castle. This was where he must go.

As he walked, he did what he could to make himself presentable, brushing the dust from his clothes and tucking his wrinkled pullover shirt into his trousers. But he felt confident about himself, regardless of his appearance, and this Duke would accept him or throw him out. Either way, Duncan Idaho would survive.

When he reached the gates that led into the great courtyard, the Atreides guards tried to bar his way, thinking him a panhandler.

“I’m not a beggar,” Duncan announced with his head held high. “I have come across the galaxy to see the Duke, and I must tell him my story.”

The guards just laughed. “We can find you some scraps from the kitchen, but no more.”

“That would be very kind of you, sirs,” Duncan agreed, his stomach grumbling with hunger, “but that isn’t why I’m here. Please send a message into the Castle that” — he tried to remember the phrasing one of the traveling singers had taught him — “that Master Duncan Idaho requests an audience with Duke Paulus Atreides.”

The guards laughed again, but the boy saw grudging respect seep into their expressions. One went away and came back with some breakfast, tiny roasted eggs for Duncan. After thanking the guard, he wolfed down the eggs, licked his fingers, and sat on the ground to wait. Hours passed.

The guards kept looking at him and shaking their heads. One asked him if he carried any weapons, or any money, both of which Duncan denied. As a steady stream of petitioners came and went, the guards chatted with each other. Duncan heard talk about a revolt that had occurred on Ix, and the Duke’s concerns over House Vernius, especially because of the Emperor’s acceptance of a bounty on Dominic and Shando Vernius. Apparently, the Duke’s son Leto had just returned from war-torn Ix to Caladan with two royal refugees. Everything in the Castle was in quite a turmoil.

Nevertheless, Duncan waited.

The sun passed overhead and slipped below the horizon of the great sea. The young man spent the night curled up in a corner of the courtyard, and with the next morning and a change of guards, he repeated his story and his request for an audience. This time, he mentioned that he had escaped from a Harkonnen world and wished to offer his services to House Atreides. The Harkonnen name seemed to catch their attention. Once again the guards checked him for weapons, but more thoroughly.

By early afternoon, after being frisked and probed — first by an electronic scanner to root out hidden lethal devices, then by a poisonsnooper — Duncan was finally ushered inside the Castle. An ancient stone structure whose interior corridors and rooms were draped with rich tapestries, the place bore a patina of history and worn elegance. Wooden floors creaked underfoot.

At a wide stone archway, two Atreides guards passed him through even more elaborate scanning devices, which again found nothing suspicious. He was just a boy, with nothing to hide, but they wore their paranoia as if it were a strange and uncomfortable garment, as if new procedures had just been instituted. Satisfied, they waved Duncan into a large room with vaulted ceilings supported by heavy, dark beams.

At the center of the room the Old Duke sat back and surveyed his visitor. A strong, bearlike man with a full beard and bright green eyes, Paulus relaxed in a comfortable wooden chair, not an ostentatious throne. It was a place where he could be at ease for hours as he conducted the business of state. Atop the chairback, just above the old patriarch’s head, a hawk crest had been carved into the dark Elaccan wood.

Beside him sat his olive-skinned son Leto, thin and tired-looking, as if he hadn’t fully recovered from his ordeal. Duncan met Leto’s gray eyes, and sensed that both of them had much to tell, much to share.

“We have here a very persistent boy, Leto,” the Old Duke said, glancing at his son.

“From the looks of him, he wants something different from all the other petitioners we’ve heard today.” Leto raised his eyebrows. He was only five or six years older than Duncan — a large gulf at their ages — but it seemed they had both been thrust headlong into adulthood. “He doesn’t look greedy.”

Paulus’s expression softened as he leaned forward in his great chair. “How long have you been waiting out there, boy?”

“Oh, that doesn’t matter, m ‘Lord Duke,” Duncan answered, hoping he used the right words. “I’m here now.” Nervously, he scratched a mole on his chin.

The Old Duke flashed a quick scowl at the guard who had escorted him in. “Have you fed this young man?”

“They gave me plenty, sir. Thank you. And I also had a good night’s sleep in your comfortable courtyard.”

“In the courtyard?” Another scowl at the guard. “So why are you here, young man? Did you come from one of the fishing villages?”

“No, m’Lord — I am from Giedi Prime.”

The guards tensed hands around their weapons. The Old Duke and his son flashed a glance at each other, disbelief at first. “Then you’d better tell us what’s happened to you,” Paulus said. Their expressions changed to grim disgust as Duncan told his story, omitting no detail.

The Duke’s eyes widened. He saw the guileless expression on this young man’s face and looked at his son, thinking that this was no made-up tale. Leto nodded. No boy of nine years could have concocted such a story, however much he might have been coached.

“And so I came here, sir,” Duncan said, “to see you.”

“You landed in which city on Caladan?” the Duke asked again. “Describe it for us.”

Duncan couldn’t remember its name but recounted what he had seen, and the Old Duke agreed that he must have indeed made his way from across the world.

“I was told to come to you, m’Lord, and ask if you might have something for me to do. I hate the Harkonnens, sir, and I’d willingly pledge my loyalty forever to House Atreides if only I can stay here.”

“I think I believe him, Father,” Leto said quietly, studying the boy’s deep-set blue-green eyes. “Or is this a lesson you’re trying to teach me?”

Paulus sat back, hands folded on his lap, and his chest wrenched with spasms. After a moment Duncan realized that the big man was holding in great rumbles of laughter. When the Old Duke could no longer restrain himself, he burst out with a deep chuckle and slapped his knees. “Boy, I admire what you’ve done. Any young man with balls as big as yours is a man I must have as part of my household!”

“Thank you, sir,” Duncan said.

“I’m sure we can find some urgent work for him to do, Father,” Leto said with a tired smile. He found this brave and persistent boy to be a hopeful change from everything he had seen recently.

The Old Duke rose from the comfort of his chair and bellowed for retainers, insisting that they supply the boy with clothes and a bath and more food. “On second thought” — he held up a hand — “bring an entire banquet table. My son and I wish to share lunch with young Master Idaho.”

They entered an adjacent dining room, where workers scurried and clattered about, setting up everything their Duke had commanded. One servant brushed flat the boy’s dark and curly hair, and ran a static cleaner over his dusty clothes. At the head of the table, with Duncan seated on his right and gray-eyed Leto on the left, Paulus Atreides sank his chin into a large fist.

“I’ve got an idea, boy. Since you proved you could handle those monstrous Harkonnens, do you think a mere Salusan bull is beyond your capabilities?”

“No, sir,” Duncan said. He had heard about the Duke’s grand spectacles. “If you want me to fight them for you, I’ll be happy to do it.”

“Fight them?” Paulus laughed. “That isn’t exactly what I have in mind.” The Duke sat back with a huge grin, looking over at Leto.

Leto said, “I think we’ve discovered a position for you here at Castle Caladan, young man. You can work in the stables, under the guidance of Stablemaster Yresk. You’ll help tend my father’s bulls: feed them and, if you can get close enough, groom them, too. I’ve done it myself. I’ll introduce you to the stablemaster.” He looked over at his father. “Remember, Yresk used to let me pet the bulls when I was Duncan’s age?”

“Oh, this boy will do a lot more than pet the beasts,” the Old Duke said. Paulus cocked a gray eyebrow as platters and platters of magnificent food were brought to the table. He noted the enchanted look on Duncan’s face. “And if you do a good enough job in the stables,” he added, “maybe we can find some more glamorous tasks for you.”

History has seldom been good to those who must be punished. Bene Gesserit punishments cannot be forgotten.

-Bene Gesserit Dictum

A new Bene Gesserit delegation bearing Gaius Helen Mohiam arrived on Giedi Prime. Freshly delivered of her sickly Harkonnen daughter, Mohiam found herself in the Baron’s Keep for the second time in the space of a year.

She arrived in daylight this time, though the greasy cloud cover and pillars of smoke from unfiltered factories gave the sky a bruised appearance that strangled any hint of sunshine.

The Reverend Mother’s shuttle touched down at the same spaceport as before, with the same demand for “special services.” But this time Baron Harkonnen had secretly vowed to do things differently.

Stepping in perfect rhythm, a stony-faced regiment of the Baron’s household troops marched up to surround the Bene Gesserit shuttle — more than sufficient to intimidate the witches.

The Burseg Kryubi, formerly a pilot on Arrakis and now head of Harkonnen house security, stood in front of the shuttle-debarkation ramp, two steps ahead of his nearest troops. All were dressed in formal blue.

Mohiam appeared at the top of the ramp, engulfed in her Bene Gesserit robes and flanked by acolyte retainers, personal guards, and other Sisters. She frowned with disdain at the Burseg and his men. “What is the meaning of this reception? Where is the Baron?”

Burseg Kryubi looked up at her. “Do not attempt your manipulative Voice on me or there will be a … dangerous … reaction from the troops. My orders state that you alone are allowed to see the Baron. No guards, no retainers, no companions. He awaits you in the formal hall of the Keep.” He nodded toward the attendants behind her in the shuttle. “None of these others may enter.”

“Unthinkable,” Mohiam said. “I request formal diplomatic courtesy. All of my party must be received with the respect they are due.”

Kryubi did not flinch. “I know what the witch wants,” the Baron had said. “And if she thinks she can show up here to rut with me on a regular basis, she’s sadly mistaken!” — whatever that meant.

The Burseg stared her down, eye to eye. “Your request is denied.” He was far more frightened of the Baron’s punishments than of anything this woman could do to him. “You are free to leave if this does not meet with your approval.”

With a snort, Mohiam started down the ramp, flashing a glance at those who remained in the ship. “For all his perversions, the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen is somewhat prudish,” she said mockingly, more for the benefit of the Harkonnen troops than for her own people. “Especially when it comes to matters of sexuality.”

Kryubi, who had not been apprised of the situation, was intrigued by this reference. But he decided that certain things were best left unknown.

“Tell me, Burseg,” the witch said to him in an irritating tone, “how would you even know if I was using Voice on you?”

“A soldier never reveals his full arsenal of defenses.”

“I see.” Her tone was soothing, sensual. Kryubi didn’t feel threatened by it, but wondered if his bluff had worked.

Unknown to this foolish soldier, Mohiam was a Truthsayer capable of recognizing nuances of falsehood and deception. She allowed the pompous Burseg to lead her across an overpass on a walkway tunnel. Once inside Harkonnen Keep, the Reverend Mother put on her best air of aloof confidence, gliding along with feigned nonchalance.

But every one of her heightened senses was attuned to the slightest anomaly. The Baron made her extremely suspicious. She knew he was up to something.

PACING RESTLESSLY IN the Great Hall, Baron Harkonnen looked around, his black eyes flashing and intent. The room was large and cold, the harsh light too bright from unfiltered glowglobes clustered in the corners and along the ceiling. As he walked in pointed black boots, his footsteps echoed, making the entire hall sound hollow, empty — a good place for an ambush.

Though the residential portion of the Keep might appear vacant, the Baron had stationed guards and electronic spy-eyes in various alcoves. He knew he couldn’t fool the Bene Gesserit whore for long, but it didn’t matter. Even if she learned they were being watched, it might give her pause and prevent her from pulling her insidious tricks. The caution might at least gain him a few seconds.

Since he planned to be in control this time, the Baron wanted his people to watch. He’d give them a very good show, something they’d talk about in their barracks and troop ships for years to come. Best of all, it would put the witches in their place. Blackmail me, indeed!

Piter de Vries came up behind him, moving so swiftly and silently that he startled the Baron, who snapped, “Don’t do that, Piter!”

“I’ve brought what you asked, my Baron.” The twisted Mentat extended his hand, offering two small plugs, white-noise transmitters. “Insert these deeply into your ear canals. They’re designed to distort any Voice she might try to use. You can still hear normal conversation, but the plugs will scramble the unwanted, preventing it from reaching your ears.”

The Baron heaved a deep breath and flexed his muscles. The preparations had to be perfect.

“You just take care of your part, Piter. I know what I’m doing.” He went to a small alcove, snatched up the decanter of kirana brandy, and took a long deep swig directly from the bottle. Feeling the brandy burn in his chest, he wiped his mouth and the top of the bottle.

The Baron had already imbibed more alcohol than was usual for him, perhaps more than was wise considering the ordeal he was about to face. De Vries, who recognized the Baron’s anxiety, looked at his master as if laughing at him. With a scowl, the Baron took another deep swallow, just to spite the Mentat.

De Vries scuttled about, relishing their joint plan, eager to participate. “Perhaps, Baron, the witch is returning here because she enjoyed her first encounter with you so much.” He cackled. “Do you think she’s been lusting after you ever since?”

The Baron scowled at him again — this time sharply enough that the Mentat wondered if he had pushed too far. But de Vries always managed to talk his way out of reprisals.

“Is that the best prime projection my Mentat can offer? Think, damn you! Why would the Bene Gesserit want another child from me? Are they just trying to twist the knife deeper, to make me hate them even more than I already do?” He snorted, wondered if that could be possible.

Maybe they needed two daughters for some reason. Or maybe something was wrong with the first one … . The Baron’s generous lips curved upward in a slight smile. This child would certainly be the last.

No evidence remained for the Bene Gesserit to use as blackmail.

Lankiveil now hid the largest treasure of Harkonnen melange right under Abulurd’s nose. The fool had no inkling of how he was being used to cover the Baron’s secret activities. But though softhearted and softheaded, Abulurd was still a Harkonnen. Even if he discovered the deception, he wouldn’t dare expose it for fear of destroying his own family holdings.

Abulurd revered the memory of their father too much for that.

The Baron walked away from the kirana brandy, and the sweet burning taste turned sour in the back of his mouth. He wore a loose maroon-and-black pajama top tightly sashed across his flat stomach. The pale blue griffin crest of House Harkonnen emblazoned the left breast. He’d left his arms bare to show off his biceps. His reddish hair was cut short, tousled for a rakish look.

He looked hard at de Vries. The Mentat gulped from a small bottle of deep red sapho juice. “Are we ready, my Baron? She’s waiting outside.”

“Yes, Piter.” He lounged back in a chair. His silky pants were loose, and the prying eyes of the Reverend Mother would be able to detect no bulge of a weapon — no expected weapon. He smiled. “Go and send her in.”

WHEN MOHIAM PASSED into the main hall of the Keep, Burseg Kryubi and his troops closed the doors behind her, remaining outside. The locks sealed with a click. Immediately on her guard, she noted that the Baron had orchestrated every detail of this encounter.

The two of them seemed to be alone in the long room, which was austere and cold, awash in glaring light. The entire Keep conveyed the impression of square corners and unsoftened harshness the Harkonnens loved so well; this place was more an industrial conference room than a sumptuous palace hall.

“Greetings again, Baron Harkonnen,” Mohiam said with a smile that overlaid politeness on top of her scorn. “I see you’ve been anticipating our meeting. Perhaps you’re even eager?” She looked away, glancing at her fingertips. “It’s possible I shall allow you a bit more pleasure this time.”

“Maybe so,” the Baron said, affably.

She didn’t like the answer. What is his game? Mohiam looked around, sensing the air currents, peering into shadows, trying to hear the heartbeat of some other person lying in wait. Someone was there … but where? Did they plan to murder her? Would they dare? She monitored her pulse, prevented it from accelerating.

The Baron definitely had more in mind than simple cooperation. She had never expected an easy victory over him, especially not this second time. The heads of some Minor Houses could be crushed or manipulated — the Bene Gesserit certainly knew how to do it — but this wouldn’t be the fate of House Harkonnen.

She looked at the Baron’s stygian eyes, straining with her Truthsayer abilities, but unable to see what he was thinking, unable to unravel his plans. Mohiam felt a twinge of fear deep inside, barely recognized. Just how much would the Harkonnens dare? This Baron couldn’t afford to refuse the Sisterhood’s demand, knowing what information the Bene Gesserit held against him. Or would he risk the possibility of heavy Imperial penalties?

Of equal import, would he risk a Bene Gesserit punishment? That, too, was no small matter.

At another time she might have enjoyed playing games with him, mental and physical sparring with a strong opponent. He was slippery and could bend and twist far more easily than he could break. But right now the Baron fell beneath her contempt, serving as a stud whose genes were required by the Sisterhood. She didn’t know why, or what importance this daughter might hold, but if Mohiam returned to Wallach IX with her mission unfulfilled, she would receive a severe reprimand from her superiors.

She decided not to waste any additional time. Summoning the full Voice talents the Bene Gesserit had taught her, word and tone manipulations that no untrained human could resist, she said curtly, “Cooperate with me.” It was a command she expected him to obey.

The Baron just smiled. He didn’t move, but his eyes flicked to one side. Mohiam was so startled at the ineffectiveness of Voice that she realized too late the Baron had set a different trap for her.

The Mentat Piter de Vries had already launched himself out of a hidden alcove. She turned, battle-ready, but the Mentat moved as swiftly as any Bene Gesserit could.

The Baron took it all in, and enjoyed what he was seeing.

De Vries held a crude but effective weapon in his hands. The old-fashioned neural scrambler would serve as a brutal high-powered stunning device. He fired a volley before she could move. The crackling waves slammed into her, short-circuiting her mind/muscle control.

Mohiam fell backward, twitching and wrenching with painful spasms, every square centimeter of her skin alive with imaginary biting ants.

Such a delightful effect, the Baron thought as he watched.

She dropped to the polished-stone floor, arms and legs akimbo, as if she had been squashed by a giant foot. Her head struck the hard tiles, and her ears rang from the blow. Unblinking, her eyes stared up at the vaulted ceiling. Even with extreme prana-bindu muscular control, she couldn’t move.

Finally the mocking face of the Baron loomed over her, pushing itself into her limited field of view. Her arms and legs jittered with random nerve impulses. She felt warm wetness and realized that her bladder had let go. A thin line of spittle trickled from the corner of her lip down her cheek, weaving a path to the base of her ear.

“Now then, witch,” the Baron said, “that stunner will do no permanent damage. In fact, you’ll have bodily control again in about twenty minutes. Time enough for us to get to know one another.” He walked around her, smiling, passing in and out of her peripheral vision.

Raising his voice so that electronic pickups would transmit everything to the hidden observers, he continued. “I know what false blackmail material you have fabricated against House Harkonnen, and my lawyers are prepared to deal with it in any court of the Imperium. You have threatened to use it if I don’t grant you another child, but that is a toothless threat from toothless witches.”

He paused, then smiled as if an idea had just occurred to him. “Still, I don’t mind giving you the additional daughter you desire. Really, I don’t. But know this, witch, and take my message back to your Sisterhood: You cannot twist Baron Vladimir Harkonnen to your purpose without suffering the consequences.”

Using all of her training to focus on the output of certain nerves and muscles, Mohiam reconnected her eyes so that she could at least move them to look around. The neural scrambler had been incredibly effective, though, and the rest of her body lay helpless.

Fighting his revulsion, the Baron reached down and tore at her skirts. What a disgusting form she had, without the male muscle patterns he so admired and desired. “My, it looks like you’ve had a little accident here,” he said, frowning at the urine-wet fabric.

Piter de Vries stood over her from behind, looking down at her broad, slack face. She saw the red-stained lips and the half-mad glint in the Mentat’s eyes. Below, the Baron knocked her legs apart and then fumbled at his loose-fitting black pants.

She couldn’t see what he was doing, didn’t want to.

Giddy with the success of his plan, the Baron had no difficulty maintaining an erection this time. Flushed in the afterglow of the brandy he had drunk, he stared down at the unattractive woman, imagined her as a withered old crone that he had just sentenced to the most brutal of the Harkonnen slave pits. This woman, who fancied herself so great and powerful, now lay completely helpless … at his mercy!

The Baron took enormous pleasure in raping her — the first time he could ever recall enjoying himself with a woman, though she was just a limp piece of meat.

During the violence of the attack, Mohiam lay supine on the cold floor, furious and impotent. She could feel every movement, every touch, every painful thrust, but she still had no control over her voluntary muscles. Her eyes remained open, although she thought she might have been able to blink if she worked hard enough at it.

Instead of wasting that energy, the Reverend Mother concentrated internally, feeling her biochemistry, changing it. The Mentat’s stunner weapon hadn’t done a complete job on her. Muscles were one thing, but internal body chemistry was quite another. The Baron Vladimir Harkonnen would regret this.

Previously she had manipulated her ovulation to achieve the peak of fertility in this exact hour. Even raped, she would have no trouble conceiving a new daughter with the Baron’s sperm. That was the most important consideration.

Technically, she required nothing more from the vile man. But the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam intended to give him something back, a slow-acting revenge he would never forget for the rest of his life.

No one was ever allowed to forget a Bene Gesserit punishment.

Though she remained paralyzed, Mohiam was an accomplished Reverend Mother. Her body itself contained unorthodox weapons that remained at her disposal even now, even as helpless as she appeared to be.

With the sensitivities and remarkable functions of their bodies, Bene Gesserit Sisters could create antidotes for poisons introduced into their systems. They were able to neutralize the most hideous strains of diseases to which they had been exposed, and either destroy the virulent pathogens … or render them latent in their bodies, keeping the diseases themselves as resources for later use. Mohiam carried several such latencies within her, and she could activate those diseases by controlling her own biochemistry.

Now the Baron lay on top of her, grunting like an animal, his jaw clenched, his lips curled back in a sneer. Beadlets of stinking sweat covered his reddened face. She stared up. Their eyes met, and he thrust harder, grinning.

That was when Mohiam selected the particular disease, an oh-so-gradual vengeance, a neurological disorder that would destroy his beautiful body. The Baron’s physique obviously brought him much pleasure, was a source of great pride. She could have infected him with any number of fatal, suppurating plagues — but this affliction would be a deeper blow to him, much slower in its course. She would make the Baron face his own appearance every day as he grew fatter and weaker. His muscles would degenerate, his metabolism would go haywire. In a few years, he wouldn’t even be able to walk by himself.

It was such a simple thing for her to do … but its effects would last for years. For the rest of his life. Mohiam envisioned the Baron pain-wracked, so obese he couldn’t even stand erect unassisted, screaming out in agony.

Finished, smug in the belief that he had shown the witch who was the more powerful, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen withdrew and stood up, frowning at her in disgust now. “Piter, get me a towel, so I can wipe the whore’s slime off of me.”

The Mentat scuttled out of the room, chuckling. The hall doors were opened again. Uniformed house guards marched in to watch as Mohiam regained the use of her muscles, bit by bit.

Baron Harkonnen admonished the Reverend Mother with a cruel smile. “Tell the Bene Gesserit never to annoy me again with their genetic schemes.”

She raised herself to one arm, then gradually gathered her torn clothes and climbed to her feet with nearly full coordination. Mohiam raised her chin proudly, but could not hide her humiliation. And the Baron could not hide his pleasure at watching her.

You think you have won, she thought. We shall see about that.

Satisfied with what she had done, and the inevitability of her terrible revenge, the Reverend Mother strode out of Harkonnen Keep. The Baron’s Burseg followed her for part of the way, then let her return alone and unescorted to the shuttle like a chastened dog. Other guards remained rigid and at attention, guarding the foot of the ramp.

Mohiam calmed herself as she approached the craft and finally allowed herself a slight smile. No matter what had occurred back there, she now carried another Harkonnen daughter inside her. And that, of course, was what the Bene Gesserit had wanted all along … .

How simple things were when our Messiah was only a dream.

-STILGAR, Naib of Sietch Tabr

For Pardot Kynes, life would never be the same now that he had been accepted into the sietch.

His wedding day to Frieth approached, requiring that he spend hours on preparation and meditation, learning Fremen marriage rituals, especially the ahal, the ceremony of a woman choosing a mate — and Frieth had certainly been the initiator in this relationship. Many other fascinations distracted him, but he knew he could not make any mistakes in such a delicate matter.

For the sietch leaders, this was a grand occasion, more spectacular than any normal Fremen wedding. Never before had an outsider married one of their women, though Naib Heinar had heard of it happening occasionally in other sietches.

After the would-be assassin Uliet had sacrificed himself, the tale told throughout the sietch (and no doubt spread among other hidden Fremen communities) was that Uliet had received a true vision from God, that he had been directed in his actions. Old one-eyed Heinar, as well as sietch elders Jerath, Aliid, and Garnah, were suitably chagrined for having questioned the impassioned words of the Planetologist in the first place.

Though Heinar gravely offered to step down as Naib, bowing to the man he now believed to be a prophet from beyond the stars, Kynes had no interest in becoming the leader of the sietch. He had too much work to do — challenges on a scale grander than mere local politics. He was perfectly happy to be left alone to concentrate on his terraforming plan and study the data collected from instruments scattered all around the desert. He needed to understand the great sandy expanse and its subtleties before he could know precisely how to change things for the better.

The Fremen worked hard to comply with anything Kynes suggested, no matter how absurd it might seem. They believed everything he said now. So preoccupied was Kynes, however, that he barely noticed their devotion. If the Planetologist said he needed certain measurements, Fremen scrambled across the desert, setting up collection points in remote regions, reopening the botanical testing stations that had been long abandoned by the Imperium. Some devoted assistants even traveled to the forbidden territories in the south, using a mode of transportation they had kept secret from him.

During those frantic first weeks of information gathering, two Fremen men were lost — though Kynes never learned of it. He reveled in the glorious data flooding to him. This was more than he had ever dreamed of accomplishing in years of working alone as the Imperial Planetologist. He was in a scientific paradise.

The day before his wedding, he wrote up his first carefully edited report since joining the sietch, culminating weeks of work. A Fremen messenger delivered it to Arrakeen, where it was then transmitted to the Emperor. Kynes’s work with the Fremen threatened to put him in a conflict of interest as Imperial Planetologist, but he had to keep up appearances. Nowhere in his report did he mention, or even hint at, his newfound relationship with the desert people. Kaitain must never suspect that he had “gone native.”

In his mind, Arrakis no longer existed. This planet was now, and forever would be, Dune; after living in the sietch he could not think of it by anything other than its Fremen name. The more he discovered, the more Pardot Kynes realized that this strangely dry and barren planet held far deeper secrets than even the Emperor realized.

Dune was a treasure box waiting to be opened.

Brash young Stilgar had recovered completely from his Harkonnen sword wound and insisted on helping Kynes with chores and tedious duties. The ambitious Fremen youth claimed it was the only way to decrease a heavy water burden upon his clan. The Planetologist did not feel he was owed such an obligation, but he bent against pressure from the sietch, like a willow before the wind. The Fremen would not overlook or forget a thing like that.

Stilgar’s unwed sister Frieth was offered to him as a wife. Almost without the Planetologist noticing, she seemed to have adopted him, mending his clothes, offering him food before he realized he was hungry. Her hands were quick, her blue eyes alive with a lightning intelligence, and she had saved him from many faux pas even before he could react. He had considered her attentions little more than appreciation for saving the life of her brother, and had accepted her without further consideration.

Kynes had never before thought about marriage, for he was too solitary a man, too driven in his work. Yet after being graciously welcomed into the community, he began to understand how quickly the Fremen took offense. Kynes knew he dared not refuse. He also realized that, given the many Harkonnen political restrictions against Fremen on this world, perhaps his marriage to Frieth would smooth the way for future researchers.

And so, with the rising of both full moons, Pardot Kynes joined the other Fremen for the marriage ritual. Before this night was over, he would be a husband. He had a sparse beard now, the first of his life. Frieth, though hesitant to speak her mind about anything, seemed to like it.

Led by pirate-eyed Heinar, as well as the Sayyadina of the sietch — a female religious leader much like a Reverend Mother — the wedding party came down from the mountains after a long and careful journey and out onto the open sands rippled with dunes. The moons shone down, bathing the sandscape with a pearly, glistening luster.

Staring at the sinuous dunes, Kynes thought for the first time that they reminded him of the gentle, sensuous curves of a woman’s flesh. Perhaps I have my mind on the marriage more than I’d thought.

They walked single file onto the dunes, climbing the packed windward side and then breaking a trail along the soft crest. Alert for wormsign or Harkonnen spycraft, spotters from the sietch had climbed to lookout points. With his fellow tribesmen keeping watch, Kynes felt entirely safe. He was one of them now, and he knew the Fremen would give their lives for him.

He gazed at lovely young Frieth standing in the moonlight, with her long, long hair and her large blue-within-blue eyes focused on him, assessing, perhaps even loving. She wore the black robe that signified she was a woman betrothed.

For hours back in the caves, other Fremen wives had braided Frieth’s hair with her metal water rings, together with those belonging to her future husband, to symbolize the commingling of their existence. Many months ago, the sietch had taken all of the supplies from Kynes’s groundcar and added his containers of water to the main stores. Once he had been accepted among them, he received payment in water rings for what he had contributed, and Kynes thus entered the community as a relatively wealthy man.

As Frieth looked at her betrothed, Kynes realized for the first time how beautiful and desirable she was — and then chastised himself for not having noticed before. Now the unmarried Fremen women rushed out onto the dunefield, their long, unbound hair flying in the night breeze. Kynes watched as they began the traditional wedding dance and chant.

Rarely did members of the sietch explain their customs to him, where the rituals had come from, or what they signified. To the Fremen, everything simply was. Long in the past, ways of life had been developed out of necessity during the Zensunni wanderings from planet to planet, and the ways had remained unchanged ever since. No one here bothered to question them, so why should Kynes? Besides, if he truly was the prophet they considered him to be, then he should understand such things intuitively.

He could easily decipher the custom of binding water rings into the braid of the woman to be married, while the unbetrothed daughters kept their hair loose and free. The troupe of unmarried women flitted across the sands in their bare feet, their footsteps floating. Some were mere girls, while others had ripened to full marriageable age. The dancers whipped and whirled, spinning about so that their hair streamed in all directions like halos around their heads.

Symbolic of a desert sandstorm, he thought. Coriolis whirlwinds. From his studies he knew that such winds could exceed eight hundred kilometers per hour, bearing dust and sand particles with enough force to scour the flesh off a man’s bones.

With sudden concern Kynes looked up. To his relief, the sky of the desert night was clear and scattered with stars; a precursor fog of dust would be carried up in advance of any storm. The Fremen spotters would see impending weather with sufficient warning to take immediate precautions.

The young girls’ dancing and chanting continued. Kynes stood beside his wife-to-be, but he looked up at the twin moons, thinking of their tidal effects, how the gentle flexings of gravity might have affected the geology and climate of this world. Perhaps deep core soundings would tell him more of what he needed to know … .

In future months, he wished to take extensive samples from the ice cap at the northern pole. By measuring the strata and analyzing isotopic content, Kynes would be able to draw a precise weather history of Arrakis. He could map the heating and melting cycles, as well as ancient precipitation patterns, using this information to determine where all the water must have gone.

So far this planet’s aridity made no sense. Could a world’s supply of water somehow be hydrated into rock layers beneath the sands, locking it into the planetary crust itself? An astronomical impact? Volcanic explosions? None of the options seemed viable.

The complex marriage dance finished, and the one-eyed Naib came forward with the old Sayyadina. The holy woman looked at the wedding couple and fixed Kynes with the gaze of her eyes, so dark in the moonlight that they resembled the predatory orbs of a raven: the total blue-within-blue of spice addiction.

After eating Fremen food for months, each taste laced with the richness of melange, Kynes had looked in a reflecting glass one morning and noticed that the whites of his own eyes had begun to take on a sky-blue tinge. The change startled him.

Still, he did feel more alive, his mind sharper and his body suffused with energy. Some of this could be a consequence of the enthusiasm for his research activities, but he knew the spice must also have something to do with it.

Here the spice was everywhere: in the air, food, garments, wall hangings, and rugs. Melange was intertwined with sietch life as much as water.

That day Turok, who still came to take him out on daily explorations, had noticed Kynes’s eyes, the new blue tint. “You are becoming one of us, Planetologist. That blue we call the Eyes of Ibad. You are part of Dune now. Our world has changed you forever.”

Kynes had offered a smile, but it was only tentative, because he felt some fear. “That it has,” he said.

And now he was about to be married — another important change.

Standing before him, the mysterious Sayyadina uttered a series of words in Chakobsa, a language Kynes did not understand, but he gave the appropriate responses he had memorized. The sietch elders had taken extreme care to prepare him. Perhaps one day, with more research, he would understand the rituals surrounding him, the ancient language, the mysterious traditions. But for now he could only make reasoned guesses.

During the ceremony he remained preoccupied, devising various tests he could run in sandy and rocky areas of the planet, dreaming of new experimental stations he would erect, considering which test gardens to plant. He had vast plans to implement and, at last, all the manpower he could possibly desire. It would take an incredible amount of work to reawaken this world — but now that the Fremen shared his dream, Pardot Kynes knew it could be done.

It could be done!

He smiled, and Frieth gazed up at him, smiling in her own right, though almost certainly her thoughts diverged widely from his. Nearly oblivious to the activities around him and paying little mind to their import, Kynes found himself married in the Fremen way, almost before he realized it.

The haughty do but build castle walls behind which they seek to hide their doubts and fears.

-Bene Gesserit Axiom

The dawn mists carried an iodine tang from the sea, rising from the wet black cliffs that supported the spires of Castle Caladan. Normally, Paulus Atreides found it peaceful and refreshing, but today it made him uneasy.

The Old Duke stood out on one of the tower balconies, drawing a deep breath of fresh air. He loved his planet, especially the early mornings; the fresh, pure kind of silence gave him more energy than a good night’s sleep ever could.

Even in troubled times such as these.

To ward off the chill he wrapped himself in a thick robe trimmed with green Canidar wool. His wife paused behind him in the bedchamber, hanging on every breath as she always did after they had been fighting. It was a matter of form. When Paulus didn’t object, she came closer to stand next to him to gaze out upon their world. Her eyes were tired, and she looked hurt, but unconvinced; he would hold her, and she would warm to him, and then she would try to press the issue again. She still insisted that House Atreides was in grave danger because of what he had done.

From below, shouts and muted laughter and the sounds of exercise drifted upward. The Duke looked down to the sheltered courtyard, pleased to see his son Leto already out doing his training routines with the exiled Prince of Ix. Both wore bodyshields that hummed and flickered in the orange early-morning light. The young men carried blunted stun-daggers in their left hands and training swords in their right.

In the weeks they had lived on Caladan, Rhombur had recovered quickly and completely from the concussion he’d received during their escape from Ix. The exercise and fresh air had improved his health, his muscle tone, his complexion. But the stocky young man’s heart and his mood would take much longer to heal. He seemed all at sea yet from what had happened to him.

The two circled and parried, slashing down, trying to judge just how fast they could move their blades without having them deflected by the protective fields. They challenged and pounced, striking with a flurry of attacks that had no hope of penetrating the other’s defenses. Blades sang and ricocheted from the shimmering shields.

“The boys have so much energy for such an hour,” Helena said, rubbing her red-rimmed eyes. A safe comment, not likely to raise any objections. She took half a step closer. “Rhombur’s even lost weight.”

The Old Duke looked over at her, noting the age-sharpened porcelain of her features, a few strands of gray in her dark hair. “This is the best time for training. Gets the blood flowing for the entire day. I taught Leto that when he was just a boy.”

From far out at sea he heard the clang of a reef-marking buoy and the putter of a fishing coracle, one of the local wickerwood boats with waterproofed hulls. He saw the hazy fog lights of a trawler farther out, cutting through the lowlying banks of sea mist as it harvested melon-kelp.

“Yes … the boys are exercising,” Helena said, “but have you noticed Kailea sitting there? Why do you think she’s up so early?” The lilt at the end of her question made him think twice.

The Duke looked down, for the first time marking the lovely daughter of House Vernius. Kailea lounged on a polished-coral bench in the sunshine, daintily eating from a plate of assorted fruits. She had her padded copy of the Orange Catholic Bible beside her on the bench — Helena’s gift — but she wasn’t reading it.

Puzzled, Paulus scratched his beard. “Does the girl always get up this early? I suspect she’s not adjusted to our Caladan days yet.”

Helena watched as Leto pressed with fury against Rhombur’s shield and slipped his stun-dagger in, jolting the Ixian Prince with an electric shock. Rhombur howled, then chuckled as he backed off. Leto raised his training sword as if scoring a point. He flashed a gray-eyed glance at Kailea, touching the tip of his sword to his forehead in a salute.

“Have you never seen the way your son looks at her, Paulus?” Helena’s voice was stern and disapproving.

“No, I hadn’t much noticed.” The Old Duke looked from Leto to the young woman again. In his mind Kailea, daughter of Dominic Vernius, was just a child. He had last seen her in infancy. Perhaps his sluggish old mind hadn’t seen her adulthood coming so fast. Nor Leto’s.

Considering this, he said, “That boy’s hormones are reaching their peak. Let me speak to Thufir. We’ll find some appropriate wenches for him.”

“Mistresses like yours?” Helena turned away from her husband, looking hurt.

“Nothing wrong with it.” He prayed with all his heart she wouldn’t pursue that subject again. “As long as it never becomes anything serious.”

Like any Lord in the Imperium, Paulus had his dalliances. His marriage to Helena, one of the daughters of House Richese, had been arranged for strictly political reasons after much consideration and bargaining. He’d done his best, had even loved her for a time — which had come as a genuine surprise to him. But then Helena had drifted away, becoming absorbed in religion and lost dreams instead of current realities.

Discreetly, quietly, Paulus had eventually gone back to his mistresses, treating them well, enjoying himself, and careful not to produce any bastards from them. He never spoke of it, but Helena knew. She always knew.

And she had to live with the fact.

“Never becomes serious?” Helena leaned over the balcony to see Kailea better. “I’m afraid Leto feels something for this girl, that he’s falling in love with her. I told you not to send him to Ix.”

“It isn’t love,” Paulus said, pretending to pay attention to the movements of the sword-and-shield duel below. The boys had more energy than skill; they needed to work on finesse. The clumsiest of Harkonnen guards would be able to wade in and dispatch both of them in an eyeblink.

“You’re sure about that?” Helena asked in a worried tone. “A great deal is at stake here. Leto is the heir to House Atreides, the son of a Duke. He has to take care and choose his romantic assignations with forethought. Consult with us, negotiate for terms, get the most he can —”

“I know that,” Paulus muttered.

“You know it all too well.” His wife’s voice became cold and brittle. “Maybe one of your wenches isn’t such a bad idea after all. At least it’ll keep him away from Kailea.”

Down below, the young woman nibbled on fruit, eyed Leto with coy admiration, and laughed at a particularly outrageous maneuver he had pulled off. Rhombur countered him, their shields clashing and sparking against each other. When Leto turned to smile back at her, Kailea looked at her breakfast plate with feigned aloofness.

Helena recognized the movements of the courtship dance, as intricate as any swordplay. “See how they look at each other?”

The Old Duke shook his head sadly. “At one time the daughter of House Vernius might have been an excellent match for Leto.”

It saddened him to know how his friend Dominic Vernius was being hunted down by Imperial decree. Emperor Elrood, seemingly irrational, had branded Vernius not only a renegade and an exile, but also a traitor. Neither Earl Dominic nor Lady Shando had sent any word to Caladan, but Paulus hoped they remained alive; both were fair game for ambitious fortune seekers.

House Atreides had risked a great deal by accepting the two children into sanctuary on Caladan. Dominic Vernius had called in all his remaining favors among the Houses of the Landsraad, which had confirmed the young exiles in their protected status, so long as they did not aspire to regain the former title of their House.

“I’d never agree to a marriage between our son and… her,” Helena said. “While you’ve strutted around with bullfights and parades, I’ve had my ear to the ground. House Vernius has been falling into disfavor for years now. I’ve told you that, but you never listen.”

Paulus said in a mild voice, “Ah, Helena, your Richesian bias keeps you from seeing Ix fairly. Vernius has always been your family’s rival, and they roundly defeated you in the trade wars.” Despite their disagreements, he tried to accord her the respect due a Lady of a Great House, even when nobody was listening.

“Clearly, the wrath of God has fallen upon Ix,” she pointed out. “You can’t deny that. You should get rid of Rhombur and Kailea. Send them away, or even kill them — it would be a kindness.”

Duke Paulus smoldered. He’d known she’d get back around to the subject before long. “Helena! Watch your words.” He looked at her in disbelief. “That’s an outrageous suggestion, even from you.”

“Why? Their House brought about its own destruction by scorning the strictures of the Great Revolt. House Vernius taunted God with their hubris. Anyone could see it. I warned you myself before Leto went to Ix.” She held the edge of his robe, trembling with her passion as she tried to make a reasoned plea. “Hasn’t humanity learned its lesson well enough? Think of the horrors we went through, the enslavement, the near extermination. We must never stray from the correct path again. Ix was trying to bring back thinking machines. ‘Thou shalt not make a machine in the —’”

“No need to quote verses to me,” he said, cutting her off. When Helena dropped into her rigid and zealous mind-set, no rebuttal could penetrate her blinders.

“But if you would just listen and read,” Helena pleaded. “I can show you the passages in the Book —”

“Dominic Vernius was my friend, Helena,” Paulus said. “And House Atreides stands by its friends. Rhombur and Kailea are my guests here at Castle Caladan, and I will hear no more of this talk from you.”

Though Helena turned and vanished back into the bedchamber, he knew she would try to convince him again, at some other time. He sighed.

Gripping the balcony railing, Paulus looked back down to where the boys continued their exercises. It was more like a brawl, with Leto and Rhombur battering at each other, laughing and running around and wasting energy.

Despite her self-righteousness, Helena had made some valid points. This was the kind of opening their age-old enemies, the Harkonnens, would use to try and destroy House Atreides. Enemy legal minds were probably already working on it. If House Vernius had in fact violated Butlerian precepts, then House Atreides might be considered guilty by association.

But the die was cast, and Paulus was up to the challenge. Still, he had to make sure nothing terrible happened to his own son.

Below the boys fought on, still playful, though the Old Duke knew Rhombur ached to strike back at the myriad faceless foes who had driven his family from their ancestral home. To do that, however, both young men needed training — not only the required brutal instruction in the use of personal weaponry, but in the skills required to lead men, and the abstractions of large-scale government.

Smiling grimly, the Duke knew what he had to do. Rhombur and Kailea had been placed in his care. He had sworn to keep them safe, had given his blood oath to Dominic Vernius. He must give them the best chance they could possibly have.

He would send Rhombur and Leto to his Master of Assassins, Thufir Hawat.

THE WARRIOR MENTAT stood like an iron pillar, glaring at his two new students. They stood atop a barren sea cliff kilometers north of Castle Caladan. The wind smashed against the slick rocks and blasted upward, rustling clumps of pampas grass. Gray gulls wheeled overhead, shrieking to each other, scanning for edible flotsam on the rocky beach. Stunted cypress trees huddled like hunchbacks, bowed against the constant ocean breeze.

Leto had no idea how old Thufir Hawat was. The sinewy Mentat had trained Duke Paulus when he was much younger, and now the Master of Assassins fended off any appearance of age through brute force. His skin was leathery, having been exposed to harsh environments on many worlds during previous Atreides campaigns, from blistering heat to numbing cold, whipping storms and the hard rigors of open space.

Thufir Hawat stared at the young men in silence. He crossed his arms over his scuffed leather chestplate. His eyes were like weapons, his silence a goad. His unsmiling lips were stained the deep cranberry of sapho juice.

Leto stood next to his friend, fidgeting. His fingers were chilled enough that he wished he had brought gloves. When are we going to begin training? He and Rhombur glanced at each other, impatient, waiting.

“Look at me, I said!” Hawat snapped. “I could have leaped forward and gutted both of you in the instant you exchanged those cute little glances.” He took a menacing step toward them.

Leto and Rhombur wore fine clothes, comfortable yet regal-looking. Their capes snapped about in the breeze. Leto’s was brilliant emerald merh-silk trimmed in black, while the Prince of Ix proudly sported the purple and copper of House Vernius. But Rhombur looked decidedly uneasy to be out under the towering sky. “It’s all so … wide-open,” he whispered.

After interminable silence, Hawat raised his chin, ready to begin. “First of all, remove those ridiculous capes.”

Leto reached up to the clasp at his throat, but Rhombur hesitated just a moment. Within the space of a heartbeat, Hawat had ripped out his short sword and slashed the tiny cord mere millimeters from the Prince’s jugular vein. The wind grasped the purple-on-copper cape and carried it like a lost banner over the cliff. The cloth flew like a kite until it drifted to the churning water below.

“Hey!” Rhombur said. “Why did you —”

Hawat sidestepped the indignant outcry. “You came here to learn weapons training. So why did you dress for a Landsraad ball or an Imperial banquet?” The Mentat snorted, then spat with the wind. “Fighting is dirty work, and unless you intend to conceal weapons in those capes, wearing them is foolish. It’s like carrying your own burial shroud on your shoulders.”

Leto still held his green cape in his hands. Hawat reached forward, grabbed the end of the fabric, snapped it, twirled it around-and in a flash had captured Leto’s right hand, his fighting hand. Hawat yanked hard and thrust out with his foot to catch the young man’s ankle. Leto sprawled on the rocky ground.

Static spun in front of his eyes, and he gasped to catch his breath. Rhombur laughed at his friend, then managed to restrain himself.

Hawat yanked the cape free and tossed it up in the air, where it blew out on the ocean winds to join Rhombur’s. “Anything can be a weapon,” he said. “You’re carrying your swords, and I see daggers at your sides. You have shields, all of which are obvious weapons.

“However, you should also conceal an assortment of other niceties: needles, stun-fields, poison tips. While your enemy can see the obvious weapons” — Hawat took a long training sword and slashed it in the air — “you can use them as a decoy to attack with something even deadlier.”

Leto stood up straight, brushing dirt and debris from himself. “But, sir, it’s not sporting to use hidden weapons. Doesn’t that go against the strictures of —”

Hawat snapped his fingers like a gunshot in front of Leto’s face. “Don’t talk to me about pretty points of assassination.” The Mentat’s rough skin turned more ruddy, as if he barely kept his anger in check. “Is your intention to show off for the ladies, or to eliminate your opponent? This is not a game.”

The grizzled man focused on Rhombur, staring so intently that the young man backed up half a step. “Word has it there’s an Imperial bounty on your head, Prince, if you ever leave the sanctuary of Caladan. You are the exiled son of House Vernius. Your life is not that of a commoner. You never know when the death blow will fall, so you must be prepared at all times. Court intrigues and politics have their own rules, but oft’times the rules are not known to all players.”

Rhombur swallowed hard.

Turning to Leto, Hawat said, “Lad, your life is in danger, too, as heir to House Atreides. All Great Houses must constantly be on the alert against assassination.”

Leto straightened, fixing his gaze on the instructor. “I understand, Thufir, and I want to learn.” He looked over at Rhombur. “We want to learn.”

Hawat’s red-stained lips smiled. “That’s a start,” he said. “There may be clumsy clods working for other families in the Landsraad — but you, my boys, must become shining examples. Not only will you learn shield-and-knife fighting and the subtle arts of killing, you must also learn the weaponry of politics and government. You must know how to defend yourselves through culture and rhetoric, as well as with physical blows.” The warrior Mentat squared his shoulders and stood firm. “From me you will learn all these things.”

He switched on his bodyshield. Behind the shimmering field he held a dagger in one hand, a long sword in the other.

Instinctively, Leto switched on his own shield belt, and the flickering Holtzman field glimmered in front of him. Rhombur fumbled to do the same just as the Mentat feigned an attack, pulling back at the last possible second before drawing blood.

Hawat tossed the weapons from hand to hand — left, right, and left again — proving he could use either for a killing strike. “Watch carefully. Your lives may someday depend on it.

Any path that narrows future possibilities may become a lethal trap. Humans do not thread their way through a maze; they scan a vast horizon filled with unique opportunities.

-The Spacing Guild Handbook

Junction was an austere world of limited geographic variations, unadorned scenery, and strict weather control to remove troublesome inconveniences. A serviceable place, it had been chosen as Spacing Guild headquarters because of its strategic location rather than its landscapes.

Here, candidates learned to become Navigators.

Second-growth forests covered millions of hectares, but they were stunted box trees and dwarf oaks. Certain Old Terran vegetables grew in abundance, cultivated by the locals — potatoes, peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, and a variety of herbs — but the produce tended to become alkaloid, edible only after careful processing.

After his mind-opening examination, stunned by the new vistas opened to him through the melange surge, D’murr Pilru had been brought here without a chance to say his goodbyes to his twin brother or his parents. At first he had been upset, but the requirements of Guild training rapidly filled him with so many wonders that he’d disregarded everything else. He found he could now focus his thoughts much better … and forget much more easily.

The buildings of junction — huge bulging shapes with rounded and angular extrusions — were of standard Guild design, much like the Embassy on Ix: practical in the extreme and awe-inspiring in their immensity. Each structure bore a rounded cartouche containing the mark of infinity. Mechanical infrastructures were both Ixian and Richesian, installed centuries earlier and still functioning.

The Spacing Guild preferred environments that did not interfere with its important work. To a Navigator, any distractions were potentially dangerous. Every Guild student learned this lesson early, as did the young candidate D’murr — far from home and totally engrossed in his studies to the exclusion of any worries about his former planet’s troubles.

On a blakgras field he was immersed in his own container of melange gas — half swimming and half crawling as his body continued to change, his physical systems altering to adapt to the bombardment of spice. Membranes had begun to connect his toes and fingers; his body had grown longer than before and more flaccid, taking on a fish shape. No one had explained the extent of the inevitable changes to him, and he neither chose — nor needed — to ask. It made no difference. So much of the universe had been opened to him, he considered it a modest price to pay.

D’murr’s eyes had grown smaller, without lashes; they were also developing cataracts. He didn’t need them to see anymore, though, since he had other eyes … inner vision. The panorama of the universe unfolded for him. In the process, he felt as if he were leaving everything else behind … and it didn’t bother him.

Through the haze D’murr saw that the blakgras field was covered with neat rows of containerized candidates and their Navigator trainers. One life per container. The tanks vented orange clouds of filtered melange exhaust, swirling around masked humanoid attendants who stood nearby, waiting to move the tanks when told to do so.

The Head Instructor, a Navigator Steersman named Grodin, floated inside a black-framed tank that had been raised high on a platform; the trainees saw him more with their minds than with their eyes. Grodin had just returned from foldspace with a student, whose tank was adjacent to his and connected with flexible tubing, so that their gases merged.

D’murr himself had accomplished short flights on three occasions now. He was considered one of the top trainees. Once he learned to travel through foldspace by himself, he could be licensed as a Pilot, the lowest-ranking Navigator … but still vastly higher than he’d once been as a mere human.

Steersman Grodin’s foldspace treks were legendary quests of discovery through incomprehensible dimensional knots. The Head Instructor’s voice gurgled from a speaker inside D’murr’s tank, using higher-order language. He described a time he had transported dinosaur-like creatures in an old-style Heighliner. Unknown to him, the monsters could stretch their necks to incredible lengths. While the Heighliner was in flight, one had chewed its way into a navigation chamber, so that its face appeared outside Grodin’s tank, peering in with a curious, wide-eyed expression … .

So pleasant in here, D’murr thought without forming words as he absorbed the story. With enlarged nostrils he drew in a deep breath of the sharp, rich melange. Humans with dulled senses compared this pungent scent to strong cinnamon … but melange was so much more than that, so infinitely complex.

D’murr no longer needed to concern himself with the mundane affairs of humans, so trivial were they, so limited and shortsighted: political machinations, populations milling about like ants in a disturbed hill, lives flickering bright and dull like sparks from a campfire. His former life was only a vague and fading memory, without specific names or faces. He saw images, but ignored them. He could never go back to what he had been.

Instead of simply finishing his story about the dinosaur creature, Steersman Grodin spoke on a tangent about the technical aspects of what the chosen student had just accomplished on his interstellar journey, how they had employed high-order mathematics and dimensional changes to peer into the future — much the same way the long-necked monster had looked into his tank.

“A Navigator must do more than observe,” Grodin’s scratchy voice said over the speaker. “A Navigator utilizes what he sees in order to guide spaceships safely through the void. Failure to apply certain basic principles may lead to Heighliner disasters and the loss of all lives and cargo aboard.”

Before any of the new adepts like D’murr could become Pilots into foldspace, they must master how to deal with crises such as partially folded space, faulty prescience, the onset of spice intolerance, malfunctioning Holtzman generators, or even deliberate sabotage.

D’murr tried to envision the fates that had befallen some of his unfortunate predecessors. Contrary to popular belief, Navigators did not themselves fold space; the Holtzman engines did that. Navigators used their limited prescience to choose safe paths to travel. A ship could move through the void without their guidance, but that perilous guessing game invariably led to disaster. A Guild Navigator did not guarantee a safe journey — but he vastly improved the odds. Problems still arose when unforeseen events occurred.

D’murr was being trained to the limit of the Guild’s knowledge … which could not include every eventuality. The universe and its inhabitants were in a state of constant change. All of the old schools understood this, including the Bene Gesserit and the Mentats. Survivors learned how to adjust to change, how to expect the unexpected.

At the edge of his awareness, his melange tank began to move on its suspensor field and fell into line behind the tanks of the other students. He heard an assistant instructor reciting passages from the Spacing Guild Manual; gas circulation mechanisms hummed around him. Every detail seemed so sharp, so clear, so important. He had never felt so alive!

Inhaling deeply of the orange-hued melange, he felt his concerns begin to dissipate. His thoughts drew back into order, sliding smoothly into the neuropathways of his Guild-enhanced brain.

“D’murr … D’murr, my brother…”

The name swirled with the gas, like a whisper in the universe — a name he no longer used now that he had been assigned a Guild navnumber. Names were associated with individuality. Names imposed limitations and preconceptions, family connections and past histories, they imposed individuality — the antithesis of what it meant to be a Navigator. A Guildsman merged with the cosmos and saw safe paths through the wrinkles of fate, prescient visions that enabled him to guide matter from place to place like chesspieces in a cosmic game.

“D’murr, can you hear me? D’murr?” The voice came from the speaker inside his tank, but also from a great distance. He heard something familiar in the timbre, the inflections. Could he have forgotten so much? D’murr. He’d almost erased that name from his thoughts.

D’murr’s mind made connections that were becoming less and less important, and his slack mouth formed gurgling words. “Yes. I hear you.”

Nudged by its attendant, D’murr’s tank glided along a paved path, toward an immense, bulbous building where the Navigators lived. No one else seemed to hear the voice.

“This is C’tair,” the transmission continued. “Your brother. You can hear me? Finally, this thing worked. How are you?”

“C’tair?” The fledgling Navigator felt his mind fold back into itself, compressing to the remnants of its sluggish, pre-Guild state. Trying to be human again, just for a moment. Was that important?

This was painful and limiting, like a man putting blinders on himself, but the information was there: yes, his twin brother. C’tair Pilru. Human. He got flashes of his father in ambassadorial dress, his mother in Guild Bank uniform, his brother (like himself) with dark hair and dark eyes, playing together, exploring. Those images had been shunted out of his thoughts, like most everything of that realm … but not quite gone.

“Yes,” D’murr said. “I know you. I remember.”

ON IX, IN a shadowed alcove where he used his cobbled-together transmission device, C’tair hunched over, desperate to avoid discovery — but this was worth any risk. Tears streaked down his cheeks, and he swallowed hard. The Tleilaxu and the suboids had continued their rampages and purges, destroying any residue of unfamiliar technology that they found.

“They took you away from me, in the Guild testing chamber,” C’tair said, his voice a husky whisper. “They wouldn’t let me see you, wouldn’t let me say goodbye. Now I realize you were the lucky one, D’murr, considering everything that’s happened here on Ix. It would break your heart to see it now.” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “Our city was destroyed not long after the Guild took you away from us. Hundreds of thousands are dead. The Bene Tleilax now rule here.”

D’murr paused, taking time to slide back into the limited manner of person-to-person communication. “I have guided a Heighliner through foldspace, brother. I hold the galaxy in my mind, I see mathematics.” His sluggish words garbled together. “Now I know why … I know … Uhhh, I feel pain from your connection. C’tair, how?”

“This communication hurts you?” He drew back from the transmitter, concerned, and held his breath, fearful that one of the furtive Tleilaxu spies might hear him. “I’m sorry, D’murr. Maybe I should —”

“Not important. Pain shifts, like a headache … but different. Swimming through my mind … and beyond it.” D’murr sounded distracted, his voice distant and ethereal. “What connection is this? What device?”

“D’murr, didn’t you hear me? Ix is destroyed — our world, our city is now a prison camp. Mother was killed in an explosion! I couldn’t save her. I’ve been hiding here, and I’m at great risk while making this communication. Our father is in exile somewhere … on Kaitain, I think. House Vernius has gone renegade. I’m trapped here, alone!”

D’murr remained focused on what he considered the primary question. “Communication directly through foldspace? Impossible. Explain it to me.”

Taken aback at his twin brother’s lack of concern over the horrendous news, C’tair nonetheless chose not to rebuke him. D’murr had, after all, undergone extreme mental changes and couldn’t be blamed for the way he was now. C’tair could never understand what his twin had been through. He himself had failed the Guild’s tests; he had been too fearful and rigid. Otherwise, he, too, might be a Navigator now.

Holding his breath, he listened to a creaking sound in the passageway overhead, distant footsteps that faded. Whispering voices. Then silence returned, and C’tair was able to continue the conversation.

“Explain,” D’murr said again.

Eager for any kind of conversation, C’tair told his brother of the equipment he had salvaged. “Do you remember Davee Rogo? The old inventor who used to take us into his laboratory and show us the things he was working on?”

“Crippled … suspensor crutches. Too decrepit to walk.”

“Yes, he used to talk about communicating in neutrino energy wavelengths? A network of rods wrapped in silicate crystals?”

“Uhhh … pain again.”

“You’re hurting!” C’tair looked around, fearful of the risk he continued to take himself. “I won’t talk much longer.”

The tone was impatient. D’murr wanted to hear more. “Continue explanation. Need to know this device.”

“One day during the fighting, when I really wanted to talk with you, bits and pieces of his conversation came back to me. In the rubble of a ruined building, I thought I saw a hazy image of him next to me. Like a vision. He was talking in that creaky old voice, telling me what to do, what parts I would require and how to put them together. He gave me the ideas I needed.”

“Interesting.” The Navigator’s voice was flat and bloodless.

His brother’s lack of emotion and compassion disturbed him. C’tair tried to ask questions about D’murr’s Spacing Guild experiences, but his twin had no patience for the queries and said that he couldn’t discuss Guild secrets, not even with his brother. He had traveled through foldspace, and it was incredible. That was all D’murr would say.

“When can we talk again?” C’tair asked. The apparatus felt dangerously warm, ready to break down. He would have to shut it off soon. D’murr groaned with distant pain, but gave no definite response.

Still, even knowing his brother’s discomfort, he had a human need to say goodbye, even if D’murr no longer did. “Farewell, for now, then. I miss you.” As he spoke the long-overdue words, he sensed an easing of his own pain — odd, in a way, since he could no longer be sure his brother understood him as he once had.

Feeling guilty, C’tair broke the connection. Then he sat in silence, overwhelmed by conflicting emotions: joy at having spoken to his twin again, but sadness at D’murr’s ambivalent reactions. How much had his brother changed?

D’murr should have cared about the death of their mother and the tragic events that had befallen Ix. A Guild Navigator’s position affected all mankind. Shouldn’t a Navigator be more caring, more protective of humanity?

But instead the young man seemed to have severed all ties, burned all bridges. Was D’murr reflecting Guild philosophy, or had he become so consumed with himself and his new abilities that he’d turned into an egomaniac? Was it necessary for him to behave that way? Had D’murr severed all contact with his humanity? No way to tell yet.

C’tair felt as if he had lost his brother all over again.

He removed the bioneutrino machine contacts that had temporarily expanded his mental powers, amplifying his thoughts and thus enabling him to communicate with distant Junction. Suddenly dizzy, he returned to his shielded bolt-hole and lay down on the narrow cot. Eyes closed, he envisioned the universe behind his lids, wondering what it must be like for his twin. His mind hummed with a strange residue of the contact, a backwash of mental expansion.

D’murr had sounded as if he were speaking underwater, through filters of comprehension. Now, underlying meanings occurred to C’tair — subtleties and refinements. Throughout the evening in the isolation of his hidden room, thoughts percolated through his mind, overwhelming him like a demonic possession. The contact had sparked something unexpected in his own brain, an amazing reaction.

For days he did not leave the enclosure, consumed with his enhanced memories, using the prototype apparatus to focus his thoughts to an obsessive clarity. Hour after hour, the replayed conversation became clearer to him, words and double meanings blossoming like flower petals … as if he traversed his own kind of foldspace of mind and memory. Nuances of D’murr’s dialogue became increasingly apparent, meanings C’tair hadn’t noticed at first. This gave him only an inkling of what his brother had become.

He found it exciting. And terrifying.

Finally, coming back to awareness an unknown number of days later, he noticed that food and beverage packages lay scattered around him. The room stank. He looked in a mirror, shocked to see that he had grown a scratchy dark brown beard. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair wild. C’tair barely recognized himself.

If Kailea Vernius were to set eyes on him now, she would draw back in horror or disdain and send him to work in the dimmest lower levels with the suboids. Somehow, though, after the tragedy of Ix, the rape of his beautiful underground city, his boyish crush on the Earl’s daughter seemed irrelevant. Of all the sacrifices C’tair had made, that was among the smallest.

And he was sure there would be harder ones to come.

Before cleaning himself or the hiding place, though, he began preparations for the next call to his brother.

Perceptions rule the universe.

-Bene Gesserit Saying

A robo-controlled shuttle left its orbiting Heighliner in the Laoujin system and streaked toward the surface of Wallach IX, transmitting appropriate security codes to bypass the Sisterhood’s primary defenses. The Bene Gesserit homeworld was just another stop on its long circuitous route wandering among the stars in the Imperium.

Her thick hair beginning to turn gray, her body starting to hint at its age, Gaius Helen Mohiam thought it would be good to be home after many months of other duties, each separate assignment a thread in the vast Bene Gesserit tapestry. No Sister understood the entire pattern, the entire weaving of events and people, but Mohiam did her part.

With her advancing pregnancy, the Sisterhood had called her home, to remain at the Mother School until such time as Mohiam delivered the much-anticipated daughter. Only Kwisatz Mother Anirul comprehended her true value to the breeding program, how everything hinged on the child she now carried. Mohiam understood that this baby was important, but even the whispers of her Other Memory, which could always be called upon to offer a cacophony of advice, remained deliberately silent on the subject.

The Guild shuttle carried only her. Working under the spectre of the Jihad, the Richesian manufacturers of the robo-pilot had gone out of their way to make a clunky-looking, rivet-covered device that most vehemently neither emulated the human mind nor looked the least bit human … or even sophisticated, for that matter.

The robo-pilot transported passengers and materials from a big ship to the surface of a planet, and back again in a well-rehearsed chain of events. Its functions included barely enough programming flexibility to deal with air-traffic patterns or adverse weather conditions. The robo-pilot took its shuttle in a routine sequence: from Heighliner to planet, from planet to Heighliner …

At a window seat in the shuttle, Mohiam reflected on the delicious revenge she had exacted on the Baron. It had been months already, and no doubt he still suspected nothing, but a Bene Gesserit could wait a long time for the appropriate payment. Over the years, as his precious body weakened and bloated from the disease, an utterly defeated Vladimir Harkonnen might even contemplate suicide.

Mohiam’s vengeful action might have been impulsive, but it was fitting and appropriate after what the Baron had done. Mother Superior Harishka would not have allowed House Harkonnen to go unpunished, and Mohiam thought her spontaneous idea had been cruelly apt. It would save the Sisterhood time and trouble.

As the ship descended into the cloud layer, Mohiam hoped this new child would be perfect, because the Baron would no longer be of any use to them. But if not, the Sisterhood always had other options and other plans. They had many different breeding schemes.

Mohiam was of a type considered optimal for a certain mysterious genetic program. She knew the names of some, but not all, of the other candidates, and knew as well that the Sisterhood didn’t want simultaneous pregnancies in the program, fearing this might muddle the mating index. Mohiam did wonder, though, why she had been selected again, after the first failure. Her superiors hadn’t explained it to her, and she knew better than to ask. And again, the Voices in Other Memory kept their counsel to themselves.

Do the details matter? she wondered. I carry the requested daughter in my womb. A successful birth would elevate Mohiam’s stature, might even result in her eventual election as Mother Superior by the proctors, when she got much older … depending on how important this daughter really was.

She sensed the girl would be very important.

Aboard the robo-piloted shuttle, she felt a sudden change of motion. Looking out the narrow window, she saw the horizon of Wallach IX lurch as the craft flipped over and plunged down, out of control. The safety field around her seat glimmered an unfamiliar, disconcerting yellow. Machine sounds, which had been limited to a smooth whir, now screamed through the cabin, hurting her ears.

Lights blinked wildly on the control module ahead of her. The robo’s movements were jerky and uncertain. She had been trained to handle crises, and her mind worked rapidly. Mohiam knew about occasional malfunctions on these shuttles — statistically unlikely — exacerbated by the lack of pilots with the ability to think and react. When a problem did occur — and Mohiam felt herself in the midst of one now — the potential for disaster was high.

The shuttle plummeted, lurching and bucking. Clothlike scraps of cloud slapped the windows. The robo-pilot went through the same circular motions, unable to try anything new. The engine flared out, went silent.

This can’t be, Mohiam thought. Not now, not when I’m carrying this child. Viscerally, she felt that if she could just survive this, her baby would be healthy and would be the one so badly needed by the Sisterhood.

But dark thoughts assailed her, and she began to tremble. Guild Navigators, such as the one in the Heighliner above her, utilized higher-order dimensional calculations, and they did so in order to see the future, enabling them to maneuver ships safely through the dangerous voids of foldspace. Had the Spacing Guild learned of the secret Bene Gesserit program, and did they fear it?

As the shuttle hurtled toward disaster, an incredible array of possibilities tumbled through Mohiam’s mind. The safety field around her stretched and grew more yellow. Her body pressed against it, threatening to break through. Holding her hands protectively over her womb, she felt a frantic desire to live, and for her unborn child to thrive — and her thoughts went beyond the parochial concerns of a mother and child, to a much larger significance.

She wondered if her suspicions might be totally in error. What if some higher force than either she or her Sisters could possibly imagine was behind this? Were the Bene Gesserit, through their breeding program, playing God? Did a real God — regardless of the Sisterhood’s cynicism and skepticism toward religion — in fact exist?

What a cruel joke that would be.

The deformities of her first child, and now the impending death of this fetus and Mohiam, too … it all seemed to add up to something. But if so, who — or what — was behind this emergency?

The Bene Gesserit did not believe in accidents or coincidences.

” ‘I must not fear,’ ” she intoned, her eyes closed. ” ‘Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.’ “

It was the Litany Against Fear, conceived in ancient times by a Bene Gesserit Sister and passed on to generation after generation.

Mohiam took a deep breath, and felt her trembling subside.

The shuttle held position momentarily, with her window pointed planetward. The engine sputtered again. She saw the continental mass approaching fast, and made out the sprawling Mother School complex, a labyrinthine white-stuccoed city with sienna roof tiles.

Was the shuttle being sent out of control into the main school, with some terrible explosive force aboard? A single crash could wipe out the heart of the Sisterhood.

Mohiam struggled against the safety field, but could not break free. The shuttle shifted, and the land disappeared from view. The window cocked upward to reveal the blue-white sun on the edge of the atmosphere.

Then her safety field grew clear, and Mohiam realized that the shuttle had righted itself. The engine was on again, a sweet flow of machinery. In the front compartment, the robo-pilot moved with apparent efficiency, as if nothing had happened. One of its programmed emergency routines must have worked.

As the shuttle set down smoothly on the ground in front of the grand plaza, Mohiam breathed a long sigh of relief. She rushed to the doorhatch, meaning to flee into the safety of the nearest building … but she paused, took a moment to compose herself, and then strode calmly out. A Reverend Mother had to maintain appearances.

When she glided down the ramp, Sisters and acolytes swarmed protectively around her. Mother Superior demanded that the shuttle be impounded for a complete overhaul and investigation, seeking evidence of sabotage or confirmation of a simple malfunction. A brusque radio transmission from the Heighliner above, however, prevented this.

Reverend Mother Anirul Sadow Tonkin stood waiting to greet Mohiam, beaming with pride, looking very young with her doelike face and short bronze hair. Mohiam had never understood Anirul’s importance, though even the Mother Superior often showed her deference. The two women nodded to each other.

In the midst of her fellow Sisters, Mohiam was escorted to a safe building; a large contingent of armed female guards had been posted to watch her. She would be pampered and observed carefully until the baby was due.

“There will be no more travel for you, Mohiam,” Mother Superior Harishka said. “You must remain safely here — until we have your daughter.”

You of fearful heart, be strong and fear not. Behold, your God will come with a vengeance; He will come and save you from the worshipers of machines.

-The Orange Catholic Bible

In the concubines’ wing of the Imperial Palace, throbbing massage machines slapped and kneaded bare skin, using scented oils to caress every glorious contour of the Emperor’s women. Sophisticated physical-maintenance devices extracted cellulite, improved muscle tone, tautened abdomens and chins, and made tiny injections to soften the skin. Every detail had to be the way old Elrood preferred, though he didn’t seem much interested anymore. Even the eldest of the four women, the septuagenarian Grera Cary, had the figure of a woman half her age, sustained in part through frequent imbibing of spice.

Dawn’s light was tinged amber by passing through the bank of thick armorplaz windows. When Grera’s massage was complete, the machine wrapped her in a warm towel of karthan weave and placed a refreshing cloth soaked with eucalyptus and juniper over her face. The concubine’s bed changed into a sensiform chair that conformed perfectly to her body.

A mechanized manicure station dropped from the ceiling, and Grera whispered through her daily meditations as her fingernails and toenails were trimmed, polished, and painted a lush green. The machine slid back up into its overhead compartment, and the woman stood and dropped her towel. An electric field passed over her face, arms, and legs, removing barely discernible and unwanted hairs.

Perfect. Perfect enough for the Emperor.

Of the current retinue of concubines, only Grera was old enough to remember Shando, a plaything who had left Imperial service to marry a war hero and settle down into a “normal life.” Elrood hadn’t paid Shando much attention when she’d been among his numerous women, but once she’d left, he had railed at the others and moaned about his loss. Most of his favorite concubines chosen in succeeding years looked a great deal like Shando.

As she watched the other concubines go through similar body-toning procedures, Grera Cary thought of how things had changed for all the Emperor’s harem. Less than a year earlier, these women had congregated only rarely, since Elrood was with one of them so often, performing what he called his “royal duty.” One of the concubines, an Elaccan, had secretly given the old goat a nickname that stuck — “Fornicario,” a reference from one of the Old Terran languages to his sexual prowess and appetites. The women only used it among themselves, and snickered.

“Has anyone seen Fornicario?” asked the taller of the two youngest concubines at the other end of the room.

Grera exchanged a smile with her, and the women giggled like schoolgirls. “I’m afraid our Imperial oak has turned into a drooping willow.”

The old man rarely came to the concubines’ wing anymore. Though Elrood spent as much time in bed now as ever, it was for an entirely different reason. His health had declined rapidly, and his libido had already died. His mind was the next thing likely to go.

Suddenly the chattering women grew silent, turning with alarm toward the main entrance of the concubines’ wing. Without announcing himself, Crown Prince Shaddam entered with his ever-present companion, Hasimir Fenring, whom they often called “the Ferret” because of his narrow face and pointed chin. The women covered themselves quickly and stood at attention to show their respect.

“What’s so funny in here, hm-m-m-m-ah?” Fenring demanded. “I heard giggling.”

“The girls were just enjoying a little joke,” Grera said, in a cautious tone. Senior among them, she often spoke for the concubines.

It was rumored that this undersized man had stabbed two of his lovers to death, and from his slithery demeanor Grera believed it. Through her years of experience, she had learned how to recognize a man capable of extreme cruelty. Fenring’s genitals were supposedly malformed and sterile, though sexually functional. She had never slept with him herself, nor did she wish to.

Fenring studied her with overlarge, soulless eyes, then moved past her to the two new blondes. The Crown Prince remained behind him, near the doorway to the solarium. Slim and red-haired, Shaddam wore a gray Sardaukar uniform with silver-and-gold trim. Grera knew the Imperial heir loved to play military games.

“Please share your little joke with us,” Fenring insisted. He addressed the smaller blonde, a petite girl barely beyond her teens who was only slightly shorter than he was. Her eyes resembled Shando’s. “Prince Shaddam and I both enjoy humor.”

“It was just a private conversation,” Grera responded, stepping forward protectively. “Personal things.”

“Can’t she speak for herself?” Fenring snapped, glaring back at the elder woman. He wore a black tunic trimmed in gold, and many rings on his hands. “If this one’s been chosen to entertain the Padishah Emperor, I’m sure she knows how to relay a simple joke, ah-mm-m-m-m?”

“It was as Grera said,” the young blonde insisted. “Just a girl thing. Not worth repeating.”

Fenring took hold of one of the edges of the towel she had been gripping tightly about her curvaceous body. Surprise and fear covered her face. He jerked at the towel, exposing one of her breasts.

Angrily, Grera said, “Cease this nonsense, Fenring. We are royal concubines. No one but the Emperor may touch us.”

“Lucky you.” Fenring gazed across the room at Shaddam.

The Crown Prince nodded stiffly. “She’s right, Hasimir. I’ll share one of my concubines with you, if you like.”

“But I didn’t touch her, my friend-I was only fixing her towel a little.” He let go, and the girl covered herself again. “But has the Emperor been … um-m-m-m-ah, utilizing your services much lately? We hear that a certain part of him is already deceased.” Fenring looked up at Grera Cary, who towered over the Ferret.

Grera glanced over at the Crown Prince, seeking support and safety, but found none. His cold eyes looked past her. For a moment she wondered what this Imperial heir would be like in bed, if he had the sexual prowess his father had once possessed. She doubted it, though. From the cold-cod look of this one, even the withered man on his deathbed would still be a superior lover.

“Old one, you will come with me, and we will talk more of jokes. Perhaps we can even exchange a few,” Fenring commanded. “I can be a funny man.”

“Now, sir?” With the fingers of her free hand she indicated her karthan-weave towel.

His gleaming eyes narrowed dangerously. “A person of my station has no time to wait while a woman dresses. Of course I mean now!” He grabbed a tuft of her towel and pulled her along. She went with him, struggling to keep the towel wrapped around her. “This way. Come, come.” While Shaddam followed passively, amused, Fenring forced her to the door.

“The Emperor will hear of this!” she protested.

“Speak loudly, he has trouble hearing.” Fenring gave a maddening smile. “And who will tell him? Some days he doesn’t even remember his own name — he certainly won’t bother with a crone like you.” His tone sent a chill down Grera’s spine. The other concubines milled about, confused and helpless as their grande dame was unceremoniously hauled out of their presence and into the corridor.

At this early hour no members of the royal Court were in evidence, only Sardaukar guards standing rigidly at attention. And with Crown Prince Shaddam here, the Sardaukar guards saw nothing at all. Grera looked at them, but they stared right through her.

Since her flustered, stuttering voice seemed to irritate Fenring, Grera decided it would be safest to become silent. The Ferret was behaving strangely, but as an Imperial concubine she had nothing to fear from him. The furtive man wouldn’t dare do anything so stupid as to actually hurt her.

Glancing back suddenly, she found that Shaddam had disappeared. He must have scuttled off down another passageway. She was completely alone with this vile man.

Fenring passed through a security barrier and pushed Grera ahead of him into a room. She stumbled onto a black-and-white marbleplaz floor. A large chamber with a stonecrete fireplace dominating one wall, this had once been a visitors’ suite but was now devoid of furnishings. It smelled of fresh paint and long abandonment.

Remaining where she was, proud and fearless though wrapped in only a towel, Grera glanced up at him intermittently. She tried not to show defiance or lack of respect. Over her years of service, she had learned to stand on her own.

The door closed behind them. They were alone now, and Shaddam still hadn’t appeared. What did this little man want with her?

From his tunic Fenring produced a green-jeweled oval. After he pressed a button on its side, a long green blade emerged, glinting in the light of a glowglobe chandelier.

“I didn’t bring you here for questions, crone,” he said in a soft tone. He held the weapon up. “Actually, I need to test this on you. It’s brand-new, you see, and I’ve never really liked some of the Emperor’s walking meat.”

Fenring was no stranger to assassination, and killed with his bare hands at least as often as he engineered accidents or paid for thugs. Sometimes he liked blood work, while on other occasions he preferred subtleties and deceptions. When he was younger, barely nineteen, he had slipped out of the Imperial Palace at night and killed two civil servants at random, just to prove he could do it. He still tried to keep in practice.

Fenring had always known he had the iron will necessary for murder, but he had been surprised at how much he enjoyed it. Killing the previous Crown Prince Fafnir had been his greatest triumph, until now. Once old Elrood finally died, that would be a new feather in his cap. Can’t aim much higher than that.

But he had to keep himself current with new techniques and new inventions. One never knew when they might come in handy. Besides, this neuroknife was so intriguing … .

Grera looked at the shimmering green blade, her eyes wide. “The Emperor loves me! You can’t —”

“He loves you? A long-in-the-tooth concubine? He spends more time moaning about his long-lost Shando. Elrood’s so senile he’ll never even know you’re missing, and all of the other concubines will be happy to move up a rank.”

Before Grera could scramble away, the murderous man was on top of her, showing tremendous speed. “No one will mourn your loss, Grera Cary.” He raised the pulsing green blade and, with a dark fire in his flickering eyes, stabbed her repeatedly in the torso. The karthan towel fell away, and the neuroblade struck her freshly creamed and oiled skin.

The concubine screamed in agony, screamed again, then fell into sucking moans and shudders, and finally became silent … . No lacerations, no blood, only imagined agony. All of the pain, but no incriminating marks — could murder get better than this?

With pleasure suffusing his brain, Fenring knelt over the senior concubine, studying her shapely body crumpled on top of the disheveled towel. Good skin tone, firm muscles, now slack with death. It was hard to believe this woman was as old as they claimed. It must have required a lot of melange, and quite a bit of body conditioning. He felt Grera’s neck for a pulse, then double-checked. None remained. Disappointing … in a way.

There was no blood on the body or on the green knife blade, no deep wounds — but he had stabbed her to death. Or so she had thought.

An interesting weapon, this neuroblade. It was the first time he had ever used one. Fenring always liked to test the important tools of his trade in noncombat situations, since he didn’t want to be surprised in a crisis.

Called a “ponta” by its Richesian inventor, it was one of the few recent innovations Fenring considered worthwhile from that tiresome world. The illusionary green blade slid back into its compartment with a realistic snick. The victim had not only thought she was being stabbed to death, but through intense neurostimulation actually felt an attack powerful enough to kill. In a sense Grera’s own mind had killed her. And now there wasn’t a mark on her skin.

Sometimes real blood added an exhilarating cap to an already-thrilling experience, but the cleanup often caused problems.

He recognized familiar noises behind him: an opening door and deactivated security field. Turning, he saw Shaddam staring down at him. “Was that really necessary, Hasimir? What a waste … . Still, she had outlived her usefulness.”

“Poor old thing had a heart attack, I guess.” From a fold of his tunic Fenring brought forth another ponta, this one ruby-jeweled with a long red blade. “I’d better test this one, too,” he said. “Your father is hanging on longer than we’d hoped, and this would finish him off neatly. No evidence on the corpse, not a mark. Why wait for the n’kee to continue its work?” He grinned.

Shaddam shook his head, as if finally having second thoughts. He looked around, shuddered, and tried to appear stern. “We’ll wait as long as we have to. We agreed not to make any sudden moves.” Fenring hated it when the Crown Prince tried to think too much.

“Hmmm-mm? I thought you were so anxious! He’s been making terrible business decisions, wasting Corrino money every day he stays alive.” His large eyes glittered. “The longer he remains in a state like this, the more history will paint him as a pathetic ruler.”

“I can’t do any more to my father,” Shaddam said. “I’m afraid of what might happen.”

Hasimir Fenring bowed. “As you wish, my Prince.”

They walked away, leaving Grera’s body where it lay. Someone would find it, sooner or later. It wasn’t the first time Fenring had been so blatant, but the other concubines would know not to challenge him. It would be a warning to them, and they would jockey with each other to become the new favorite of the impotent old man, using the situation to their advantage.

By the time word finally got back to the Emperor, he probably wouldn’t even remember Grera Cary’s name.

Man is but a pebble dropped in a pool. And if man is but a pebble, then all his works can be no more.

-Zensunni Saying

Leto and Rhombur trained long and hard every day, in the Atreides way. They dived into the exercise routine with all the enthusiasm and determination they could muster. The stocky Ixian Prince regained his vigor, lost some weight, and tightened up his muscles.

The two young men found themselves quite well matched and therefore good sparring partners. Because they trusted one another completely, Leto and Rhombur were able to push their limits, confident that nothing dangerous would happen to them.

Though they trained vigorously, the Old Duke hoped to accomplish more than just turning the exiled Prince into a competent fighter: He also wanted to keep his friend’s son happy and make him feel at home. Paulus could only imagine what terrors Rhombur’s renegade parents must be enduring out in the wilds of the galaxy.

Thufir Hawat let the two fight with recklessness and abandon, honing their skills. Leto soon noticed remarkable improvement, both in himself and in the heir to what little remained of House Vernius.

Following the Master of Assassins’ advice about the weapons of culture and diplomacy as well as swordplay, Rhombur took an interest in music. He dabbled with several instruments before finally settling on the soothing but complex tones of the nine-string baliset. Leaning against a castle wall, he would strum and play simple songs, fingering melodies by ear that he recalled from childhood or pleasant tunes he made up for himself.

Often, his sister Kailea would listen to him play as she studied her lessons in history and religion that were the traditional fare of young noblewomen. Helena Atreides aided in the teaching, at the insistence of Duke Paulus. Kailea studied with good grace, occupying her mind, resigned to her situation as a political prisoner inside Castle Caladan, but trying to imagine more for herself.

Leto knew that his mother’s resentment ran at depths invisible beneath the still waters of her public face. Helena was a hard taskmaster to Kailea, who responded with even greater determination.

Late one evening, Leto went up to the tower room after his parents had retired for the night. He’d intended to ask his father about taking them on one of the Atreides schooners for a day-trip up and down the coast. But as he approached the wooden door to the ducal chambers, he heard Paulus and Helena engaged in deep discussion.

“What have you done to find a new place for those two?” The way his mother said the words, Leto knew exactly whom she meant. “Surely some Minor House on the fringe will take them in if you pay a large enough bribe.”

“I don’t intend to send those children anywhere, and you know that. They are our guests here, and safe from the loathsome Tleilaxu.” His voice dropped to a grumble. “I don’t understand why Elrood doesn’t just send his Sardaukar in to flush those vermin out of the caves on Ix.”

Lady Helena said crisply, “Despite their unpleasant qualities, the Tleilaxu will undoubtedly bring the factories of Ix back to the path of righteousness and obey the strictures established by the Butlerian Jihad.”

Paulus gave an exasperated snort, but Leto knew his mother was deadly serious, and that frightened him all the more. Her voice grew more fervent as she tried to convince her husband.

“Can’t you see, perhaps all of these events were meant to happen? You never should have sent Leto to Ix-he’s already been corrupted by their ways, their prideful thinking, their high-handed ignorance of the laws of God. But the takeover on Ix brought Leto back to us. Don’t make the same mistake again.”

“Mistake? I’m quite pleased with everything our boy’s learned. He’s going to be a fine Duke someday.” Leto heard the thump of a boot tossed into the corner. “Stop your worrying. Don’t you feel at all sorry for poor Rhombur and Kailea?”

Unswayed, she said, “In their pride, the people of Ix have broken the Law, and they have paid for it. Should I feel sorry for them? I think not.”

Paulus hit a piece of furniture hard with his hand, and Leto heard wood scraping across stone, a chair shoved aside. “And I’m to believe you are familiar enough with the inner workings of Ix to make such a judgment? Or have you already come to a conclusion based on what you want to hear, without being troubled by mere lack of evidence?” He laughed, and his tone turned more gentle.” Besides, you seem to be working well with young Kailea. She enjoys your company. How can you say such things about her to me, and then pretend to be kind to her face?”

Helena sounded eminently reasonable. “The children can’t help who they are, Paulus — they didn’t ask to be born there, raised there, exposed to anything but proper teachings. Do you think they’ve ever held the Orange Catholic Bible? It’s not their fault. They are what they are, and I can’t hate them for it.”

“Then what —”

She lashed out at him with such vehemence that Leto took a silent step backward in surprise out in the shadowy hall. “You’re the one who has made a choice here, Paulus. And you’ve made the wrong one. That choice will cost you and our House dearly.”

He made a rude noise. “There was no choice, Helena. On my honor and my word — there was no choice.”

“Still it was your own decision, despite my warnings and despite my advice. Your decision alone, Paulus Atreides.” Her voice was frighteningly cold. “You must live with the consequences, and be damned by them.”

“Oh, calm down and go to sleep, Helena.”

Unsettled, Leto crept away, his question forgotten, without waiting to see how soon they extinguished the lights.

THE NEXT DAY, a calm and sunny morning, Leto stood next to Rhombur at an open window, admiring the quays at the base of the promontory. The ocean spread out like a blue-green prairie, curving off to the distant horizon. “A perfect day,” Leto said, realizing that his friend was homesick for the lost underground city of Vernii, probably tired of too much weather. “Now it’s my turn to show you around Caladan.”

The two of them descended the narrow cliffside path and staircase, holding on to rails and vaulting weathered steps, avoiding the slippery moss and the white encrustations of salty spray.

The Duke had several boats tied up at the dock, and Leto chose his favorite coracle, a white motorcraft around fifteen meters in length. With a wide, beamy hull, it featured a spacious cutty cabin in the front and sleeping quarters beneath, reached via a spiral staircase. Aft of the cabin were two decks, at midship and aftship, with cargo holds below: a nice setup for fishing or motor cruising. Additional modules stored on shore could be installed to change the functions of the craft: adding more cabin space or converting one or both cargo holds to additional sleeping or habitation areas.

Servants packed them a lunch while three mariner assistants checked all the onboard systems in preparation for a day-long voyage. Rhombur watched Leto treat these people as friends while they loaded the gear. “Is your wife’s leg better, Jerrik? Did you finish the roof on your smoke shed, Dom?”

Finally, as Rhombur looked on with curiosity and trepidation, Leto clapped him on the shoulder. “Remember your rock collection? You and I are going to dive for coral gems.”

These precious stones, found in knobby coral reefs, were popular pieces on Caladan, but perilous to handle. Coral gems were said to hold tiny living creatures that caused their inner fires to dance and simmer. Because of the hazards and expense of containment, the gems did not support much of an off-world export market, given the more viable alternative of soostones from Buzzell. But local coral gems were lovely, nonetheless.

Leto thought he wanted to give one to Kailea as a present. With the wealth of House Atreides, he could afford to buy Rhombur’s sister many greater treasures if he wished, but the gift might mean more if he procured it himself. She would probably appreciate it either way.

After all preparations were completed, he and Rhombur boarded the wickerwood coracle. An Atreides burgee flew from the stern, snapping in the breeze. As the mariner assistants cast off the lines, one asked, “You can handle this yourself, m’Lord?”

Leto laughed and waved the man away. “Jerrik, you know I’ve been handling these boats for years now. The seas are calm, and we have a shore-com aboard. But thank you for your concern. Don’t worry, we won’t go far, just to the reefs.”

Rhombur wandered the deck and tried to help, doing whatever Leto told him to do. He’d never been on an open boat before. The engines carried them away from the cliffs, beyond the shielded harbor, and out into open water. Sunlight glittered like sparkflies on the rippled surface of the sea.

The Prince of Ix stood at the bow while Leto worked the controls. Rhombur soaked up the experience of water and wind and sun, smiling. He took a deep breath. “I feel so alone and so free out here.”

Looking overboard, Rhombur saw rafts of leathery-leafed seaweed and round gourdlike fruits that held up the plants like air bladders. “Paradan melons,” Leto said. “If you want one, just reach over the side and take it. If you’ve never had paradan fresh from the sea, you’re in for a taste treat … though the fruit’s a bit salty for me.”

Far off to starboard a pod of murmons swam like furred logs, large but harmless creatures that drifted with ocean currents, singing to themselves with low, hooting sounds.

Leto sailed the coracle for about an hour, consulting satellite maps and charts, making for a knot of outlying reefs. He handed Rhombur a set of binoculars and indicated a frothy, tumultuous patch on the sea. Isolated black ridges of rock barely poked above the waves like the spine of a sleeping leviathan.

“There’s the reef,” Leto said. “We’ll anchor about half a kilometer away so we don’t risk ripping open the hull. Then we can go diving.” He opened a compartment and withdrew a sack and a small spatulaknife for each of them. “The coral gems don’t grow very deep. We can dive without air tanks.” He slapped Rhombur on the back. “It’s about time you started to earn your keep around here.”

“Just keeping you out of trouble is, uh, effort enough,” Rhombur countered.

After the coracle was secured on its anchor cord, Leto pointed a scanner overboard to map out the contours of the reefs below. “Look at this,” he said, letting his friend view the screen. “See those crannies and tiny caves? That’s where you’ll find the coral gems.”

Rhombur peered at the scanner, nodding.

“Each one is encrusted with a husk, like an organic scab that grows around them. Doesn’t look like much until you crack one open and see the most beautiful pearls in all creation, like molten droplets from a star. You have to keep them wet at all times, because the open air oxidizes them instantly and they become extremely pyrophoric.”

“Oh,” Rhombur said, unsure what the word meant, though he was too proud to ask. Fumbling, he attached his belt, which held the spatulaknife and a small waterlume for probing the darkest caves.

“I’ll show you when we get down there,” Leto said. “How long can you hold your breath?”

“As long as you,” the Prince of Ix said, “naturally.”

Leto stripped off his shirt and pants, while Rhombur hurried to do the same. Simultaneously, both young men dived overboard. Leto stroked downward into the warm water, pulling himself deeper until he felt the pressure around his skull.

The large reef was a convoluted, permanently submerged landscape. Tufts of coralweed waved in the gentle currents, the tiny mouths on their leaves snaring bits of plankton. Jewel-toned fish darted in and out of holes in the layered coral.

Rhombur grabbed his arm and pointed at a long purplish eel that drifted by, streaming a rainbow-hued, feathery tail. The Ixian looked comical with his cheeks swollen, trying to hold in his air.

Grasping the rough coral, Leto pulled himself along and peered into cracks and crevices. He shined the beam of his waterlume all around in his search. With his lungs aching, he finally found a discolored knob and signaled for Rhombur, who swam over. But as Leto pulled out his spatulaknife to pry free the coral gem, Rhombur flailed his arms and swam upward as fast as he could, his air exhausted.

Leto remained beneath the water, though his chest pounded. Finally, he pried loose the nodule, which would likely yield a medium-sized coral gem. With it he swam upward, his chest ready to burst, and finally splashed to the surface where Rhombur clung, panting, to the edge of the coracle.

“Found one,” Leto said. “Look.” Holding the gem underneath the water, he tapped it with the blunt edge of his knife until the outer covering cracked free. Inside, a slightly misshapen ovoid gleamed with self-contained pearly light. Tiny glimmering specks circulated like molten sand trapped within transparent epoxy.

“Exquisite,” Rhombur said.

Dripping wet, Leto climbed out of the water and onto the midship deck, by the lifeboat station. He dipped a bucket overboard, filling it with seawater, and dropped the coral gem inside before it could dry out in his hands. “Now you have to find one of your own.”

With his blond hair plastered to his head by seawater, the Prince nodded, drew several deep gulps of air, then swam downward again. Leto dived after him.

Within an hour the pair had gathered half a bucket of the beautiful gems. “Nice haul,” Leto said, squatting on the deck beside Rhombur, who, fascinated with the treasure, dipped his fingers into the bucket. “You like those?”

Rhombur grunted. His eyes danced with a child’s delight.

“I’ve worked up quite an appetite,” Leto said. “I’ll go prep the foodpaks.”

“I’m starving, too,” Rhombur said. “Uh, need any help?”

Leto drew himself up and raised his aquiline nose haughtily in the air. “Sir, I am the resident ducal heir, with a long resume asserting my competence to prepare a simple foodpak.” He strutted to the sheltered galley as Rhombur sorted through the wet coral stones, like a kid playing with marbles.

Some were perfectly spherical, others misshapen and pitted. Rhombur wondered why certain ones had a blazing inner brilliance while others were dull by comparison. He set the three largest stones on the midship deck and watched the sunlight glitter on them, a pale shadow to the brilliance trapped within. He noted their differences, wondered what he and Leto could do with the treasure.

He missed his own collection of gems and crystals, agates and geodes from Ix. He had wandered through caves and tunnels and shafts to find them. He had learned so much of geology that way — and then the Tleilaxu had driven him and his family from their world. He’d been forced to leave everything behind. Although he left it unsaid, Rhombur decided if he ever saw his mother again, he could make a grand gift for her.

Leto leaned out of the galley door. “Lunch is ready. Come and eat before I feed it to the fishes.”

Rhombur trotted in to sit at the small table while Leto served up two bowls of steaming Caladanian oyster chowder, seasoned with nouveau wine from House Atreides vineyards. “My grandmother came up with this recipe. It’s one of my favorites.”

“Well, not bad. Even if you made it.” Rhombur slurped from his bowl and licked his lips. “It’s a, um, good thing my sister didn’t come along,” he said, trying to hide the joking tone in his voice. “She probably would have tried to wear fancy clothes, and you know she’d never have gone swimming with us.”

“Sure,” Leto said, unconvinced. “You’re right.” It was obvious to anyone how he and Kailea flirted with each other, though Rhombur understood — politically speaking — that a romance between them would be unwise at best, and dangerous at worst.

Out on the midship deck just aft of them, the sun beat down, warming the wooden floorboards, drying the splashed water — and exposing the fragile coral gems to the open, oxidizing air. Simultaneously, the three largest gems burst into incandescent flares, merging into a miniature nova of intense heat, hot enough to burn through a metal starship hull.

Leto leaped to his feet, knocking aside his bowl of chowder. Through the broad plaz windowports he could see blue-orange flames shooting up, setting the deck on fire, including the lifeboat. One of the coral gems shattered, spraying hot fragments in all directions, each of which started secondary fires.

Within seconds, two more gems burned completely through the coracle deck and dropped into the cargo hold below, where they ate through crates. One burned open a spare fuel container, igniting it with an explosive burst, while the second gem seared all the way through the bottom hull until it extinguished itself in the refreshing water again. The wickerwood hull, though treated with a fire-retardant chemical, would not hold up against such heat.

Leto and Rhombur rushed out of the galley, shouting at each other but not knowing what to do. “The fire! We’ve got to get the fire out!”

“They’re coral gems!” Leto looked for something with which to extinguish the blaze. “They burn hot, can’t be put out easily.” Swelling flames licked the deck, and the coracle rocked with an explosion belowdecks. On its davits the lifeboat was a lost cause, completely enveloped in flames.

“We could sink,” Leto said, “and we’re too far from land.” He grabbed a chemical extinguisher, which he sprayed on the flames.

He and his companion took out the hoses and pumps from a front compartment and doused the boat with seawater, but the cargo hold was already engulfed. Greasy black smoke drifted through cracks in the top deck. A warning beep signified that they were taking on large amounts of water.

“We’re going to sink!” Rhombur shouted, reading the instrumentation. He coughed from the acrid smoke.

Leto tossed a flotation vest to his friend as he buckled another one around his waist. “Get on the shore-com. Announce our position and send a distress. You know how to operate it?”

Rhombur yelped an affirmative, while Leto used another chemical extinguisher, but soon exhausted its charge without effect. He and Rhombur would be trapped out here, floating with only the debris of the boat around them. He had to reach land and settle where they could wait.

He remembered his father lecturing him: “When you find yourself in the midst of a seemingly impossible crisis, take care of the solvable parts first. Then, after you’ve narrowed the possibilities, work on the most difficult aspects.”

He heard Rhombur shouting into the shore-com, repeating the distress call. Leto now ignored the fire. The coracle was sinking, and would soon be underwater, leaving them stranded. He looked toward the port side and saw frothing water around the tangle of the reef. He dashed for the cabin.

Before the fire could reach the aft engines, he started the boat, used the emergency cutoff to sever the anchor, and raced toward the reef. The flaming coracle was like a comet on the water.

“What are you doing?” Rhombur cried. “Where are we going?”

“The reef!” he shouted. “I’ll try to run aground there so we don’t sink. Then you and I can work to put out the fire.”

“You’re going to crash us into a reef? That’s crazy!”

“You’d rather sink out here? This boat is going down, one way or another.” As if to emphasize his point another small container of fuel exploded belowdecks, sending a shudder through the floor.

Rhombur grasped the secured galley table to keep his balance. “Whatever you say.”

“Did you get an acknowledgment on the shore-com?”

“No. I, uh, hope they heard us.” Leto told him to keep trying, which he did, still without receiving a response.

The waves curled around them, low to the deck rail. Black smoke poured into the sky. Fire licked at the engine compartment. The coracle dipped lower, dragging, taking on water rapidly. Leto pushed the engines, still charging toward the rocks. He didn’t know if he would win this race. If he could just run them up on the reef, he and Rhombur could stay safely beside the wreckage. He didn’t know how long it would take for rescuers to arrive.

As if driven by a demon, whitecaps rose in front of them, threatening to form a barrier. But Leto held course and did not slacken the acceleration. “Hang on!”

At the last moment, the engines died as fire engulfed them. The coracle cruised forward on sheer momentum and crashed into the jagged reef. The grinding halt threw both Leto and Rhombur to the deck. Rhombur struck his head and stood up, blinking, dazed. Blood trickled down his forehead, very close to the old injury he had received during the orship escape from Ix.

“Let’s go! Overboard!” Leto yelled. He grabbed his friend’s arm and pushed him out of the cabin. From the forward compartment, Leto tossed hoses and portable pumps into the frothing water. “Dip this end of the hose into the deepest water you can reach! And try not to cut yourself on the reef.”

Rhombur scrambled over the rail, while Leto followed, trying to maintain his balance in the churning tide pools and rough surf. The boat was snagged, so for the moment they needn’t worry about drowning — just discomfort.

The pumps started, and seawater sprayed out of two hoses, one held by each boy. The water fell in a thick curtain onto the flames. Rhombur swiped blood out of his eyes and kept directing his hose. They doused the coracle with endless torrents until finally, slowly, the flames began to die back.

Rhombur looked bedraggled and miserable, but Leto felt oddly exhilarated. “Perk up, Rhombur. Think about it. On Ix we had to escape from a revolution that nearly destroyed the whole planet. Makes this little mishap seem like child’s play, wouldn’t you say?”

“Uh, right,” the other said, glumly. “Most fun I’ve had in ages.”

The two of them sat waist deep in the surging water, playing their hoses over the fire. Smoke continued to rise into the clear Caladan sky like a distress beacon.

Soon they heard the distant but increasing roar of powerful engines, and moments later a high-speed wingboat came into view, a double-hulled craft capable of reaching tremendous speeds over the water. It drew near and swung clear of the rocks. On the foredeck stood Thufir Hawat, shaking his head at Leto in disapproval.

Among the responsibilities of command is the necessity to punish … but only when the victim demands it.

-PRINCE RAPHAEL CORRINO, Discourses on Leadership in a Galactic Imperium, 12th Edition

Her chocolate hair in disarray, her clothes torn and inappropriate for the desert, the woman ran across the sands, seeking escape.

Janess Milam looked up over her shoulder, blinking sun-scalded tears from her eyes. Seeing the shadow of the suspensor platform that held Baron Harkonnen and his nephew Rabban, she put on a burst of speed. Her feet dug into the powder-sand, making her lose her balance. She staggered toward the open wasteland, where it was hotter, drier, deadlier.

Buried in the lee of a nearby dune, the thumper throbbed, pulsing … calling.

She tried to find a refuge of rocks, cool caves, even the shadow of a boulder. At the very least, she wanted to die out of sight so they wouldn’t be able to laugh at her. But the Harkonnens had dropped her into a sea of open dunes. Janess slipped and tasted dust.

From their safe vantage on the suspensor platform, the Baron and his nephew watched her struggles, the pitiful flight of a tiny human figure on the sand. The observers wore stillsuits like costumes; their masks hung loose.

They had returned to Arrakis from Giedi Prime only a few weeks before, and Janess had arrived on the previous day’s prison ship. At first, the Baron had thought to execute the treacherous woman back at Barony, but Rabban had wanted her to suffer in front of his eyes out on the scorching sands, in punishment for helping Duncan Idaho escape.

“She seems so insignificant down there, doesn’t she?” the Baron commented, without interest. Sometimes, his nephew did have unique ideas, though he lacked the focus to carry them through. “This is much more satisfying than a simple beheading, and beneficial to the worms. Food for them.”

Rabban made a low sound in his thick throat, remarkably like an animal’s growl. “It shouldn’t be long now. Those thumpers always call a worm. Always.”

The Baron stood tall on the platform, feeling the hot sun, the glistening sweat on his skin. His body ached, a condition he’d been experiencing for several months now. He nudged the suspensor platform forward so they could get a better view of their victim. He mused, “That boy is an Atreides now, from what I hear. Working with the Duke’s Salusan bulls.”

“He’s dead, if I ever see him again.” Rabban wiped salty sweat from his sunburned forehead. “Him, and any other Atreides I catch alone.”

“You’re like an ox, Rabban.” The Baron gripped his nephew’s strong shoulder.” But don’t waste energy on insignificant things. House Atreides is our real enemy — not some insignificant stableboy. Stableboy … hmmm …”

Below, Janess skidded on her face down the slope of a dune and scrambled to her feet again. With a basso laugh the Baron said, “She’ll never get far enough away from the thumper in time.” The resonant vibrations continued to throb into the ground, like the distant drumbeat of a death song.

“It’s too hot out here,” Rabban grumbled. “Couldn’t you have brought a canopy?” Pulling his stillsuit’s water tube to his mouth, he drew in an unsatisfying sip of warm water.

“I like to sweat. It’s good for the health, purges poisons from the system.”

Rabban fidgeted. When he tired of watching the woman’s clumsy run, he looked across the seared landscape, searching for the tracks of an oncoming behemoth. “By the way, whatever happened to that Planetologist the Emperor foisted on us? I took him worm hunting once.

“Kynes? Who knows?” The Baron snorted. “He’s always out in the desert, comes in to Carthag to deliver reports whenever he feels like it, then disappears again. Haven’t heard from him in a while.”

“What happens if he gets hurt? Could we get in trouble for not keeping a better eye on him?”

“I doubt it. Elrood’s mind isn’t what it used to be.” The Baron laughed, a thin, nasal tone of derision. “Not that the Emperor’s mind was much even in its prime.”

The dark-haired woman, coated now with clinging dust, fought her way across the dunes. She kicked up sand, falling and struggling back onto her feet, refusing to give up.

“This bores me,” Rabban said. “No challenge just to stand here and watch.”

“Some punishments are easy,” the Baron observed, “but easy isn’t always sufficient. Erasing this woman does nothing to erase the black mark she made on the honor of House Harkonnen … with the help of House Atreides.”

“Then let’s do more,” Rabban said with a thick-lipped grin, “to the Atreides.”

The Baron felt the heat shimmering on his exposed face, absorbed the thrumming silence of the baked desert. When he smiled, the skin on his cheeks threatened to crack. “Maybe we will.”

“What, Uncle?”

“Perhaps it’s time to get rid of the Old Duke. No more thorns in our side.”

Rabban bubbled with anticipation.

With a calmness designed to agitate his nephew, the Baron focused the oil lenses of his binoculars and scanned the distance at varying magnifications. He hoped to spot the wormsign himself rather than relying on the security ornithopters. Finally he sensed the tremors approaching. He felt his pulse synchronize with the thumper: Lump … Lump … Lump …

Crescent dune tracks spread shadow ripples toward the horizon, an elongated mound-in-motion, a cresting of sand like a big fish swimming just under the surface. In the still, hot air, the Baron heard the rasping, abrasive sound of the slithering beast. Excitedly, he grabbed Rabban’s elbow and pointed.

The com-unit at Rabban’s ear chirped, and a filtered voice spoke so loudly that the Baron could hear the muffled words. Rabban swatted at the device. “We know! We see it.”

The Baron continued his musings as the buried worm approached like a locomotive. “I’ve kept up my contacts with … individuals on Caladan, you know. The Old Duke is a creature of habit. And habits can be dangerous.” He smiled, his lips hard, his eyes squinting against the glare. “We’ve already put operatives in place, and I have a plan.”

Far out in the dunes ahead of them, Janess spun around and ran in blind panic. She had seen the oncoming worm.

The rippling upheaval of sand reached the thumper in the lee of a whaleback dune. In an explosion like a tidal wave engulfing a dock, the thumper vanished into an immense mouth lined with crystal teeth.

“Move the platform,” the Baron urged. “Follow her!” Rabban worked the suspensor controls, floating them up over the desert for a better view of the action.

Following the vibrations of the woman’s footsteps, the worm changed course. The sand rippled again as the behemoth dived underground and prowled like a shark searching for new prey.

Janess collapsed on the top of a dune, shuddering, holding her knees up against her chin as she tried not to make any sound that might attract the great worm. Sand skittered around her. She froze, held her breath.

The monster paused. Janess huddled in terror, praying silently.

Rabban brought the suspensor platform above the trapped woman. Janess glared up at the Harkonnens, her jaw clenched, her eyes like daggers, a cornered animal afraid to move.

Baron Harkonnen reached down to grab an empty bottle of spice liquor, drained during their long hot wait for her execution. He raised the brown glass bottle as if in a toast, grinning.

The sandworm waited underground, alert for even a fractional movement.

The Baron tossed the bottle at the dusky-skinned woman. The glass tumbled in the air, reflecting glints of sunlight, end over end. It struck the sand within meters of Janess’s feet with a loud thunk.

The worm lunged into motion, toward her.

Screaming curses at the Harkonnens, Janess plunged down the hillside, followed by a small avalanche of sand. But the ground dropped out from underneath her, like a gaping trapdoor.

The mouth of the worm rose up, a cavern of glittering teeth in the sunlight to swallow Janess and everything around her. A puff of dust drifted on the wavering air as the huge worm sank back under the sands, like a whale beneath the sea.

Rabban touched his com-unit, demanding to know whether the spotting craft overhead had taken high-resolution holos. “I didn’t even see her blood, didn’t hear her scream.” He sounded disappointed.

“You may strangle one of my servants,” the Baron offered, “if it will make you feel better. But only because I’m in such a good mood.”

From the suspensor platform, he gazed down at the placid dunes, knowing the danger and death that lurked beneath them. He wished his old rival Duke Paulus Atreides had been down there instead of the woman. For that, he would have had every Harkonnen holorecorder in operation, so that he could enjoy it from every angle and savor the experience over and over, each time tasting the morsel of human flesh as the worm did.

No matter, the Baron told himself. I have something just as interesting in mind for the old man.

Speak the truth. That is always much easier, and is often the most powerful argument.

-Bene Gesserit Axiom

Duncan Idaho stared at the monstrous Salusan bull, through the force-field bars of its cage, his child’s gaze meeting the multifaceted eyes of the ferocious creature. The bull had a scaly black hide, multiple horns, and two brains that were capable of only one thought: Destroy anything that moves.

The boy had worked in the stables for weeks now, doing his best at even the most miserable of jobs, feeding and watering the combat bulls, tending them, cleaning their filthy cages while the beasts were pushed back behind force-barricades to keep them from attacking him.

He enjoyed his job, despite what others considered the degrading meniality of the tasks to be performed. Duncan didn’t even think of it as low-level work, though he knew several other stableboys did. These were simply chores to him, and he considered his payment in freedom and happiness more than sufficient. Because of the gracious generosity of his benefactor, Duke Paulus Atreides, he loved the old man dearly.

Duncan ate well now and had a warm place to live and fresh clothes whenever he needed them. Though no one asked him to, he worked hard anyway, driven and dedicated. There was even some time for relaxation, and he and the other workers had their own gymnasium and recreation hall. He could also go splashing in the sea whenever he wished, and a friendly man from the dockside occasionally took him along for a day’s fishing.

At present the Old Duke kept five of the mutated bulls for his games. Duncan had sought to befriend the beasts, trying to tame them with bribes of sweet green grass or fresh fruits, but an exasperated Stablemaster Yresk had caught him at it.

“The Old Duke uses them in his bullfights — do you think he prefers them tame?” His puffy eyes had widened with anger. The white-haired stablemaster had accepted him on the Duke’s orders, but grudgingly, and he gave Duncan no special treatment. “He wants them to attack. He doesn’t want the creatures to purr when he’s on display in the Plaza de Toros. What would the people think?”

Duncan had lowered his eyes and backed off. Always obedient, he never again tried to make these beasts his pets.

He had seen holorecordings of the Duke’s previous spectacles, as well as the performances of other renowned matadors; while he was saddened to witness the slaughter of one of his magnificent charges, he was amazed at the bravery and self-assurance of Duke Atreides.

The last corrida on Caladan had been staged to celebrate the departure of Leto Atreides for his off-planet schooling. Now after many months there would be another, as the Old Duke had recently announced a new grand bullfight, this one to entertain his guests from Ix, who had come to stay as exiles on Caladan. Exiles. In a sense, Duncan was one, too … .

Though he had his own sleeping quarters in a communal outbuilding where many of the Castle workers lived, sometimes Duncan bedded down out in the stables, where he could hear the snorting and simmering beasts. He had put up with far worse conditions in his life. The stables themselves were comfortable, and he enjoyed being alone with the animals.

Whenever he slept out there, he listened to the movements of the bulls in his dreams. He felt himself becoming attuned to their moods and instincts. For days now, though, the creatures had grown increasingly fretful and moody, prone to rampages in their pens … as if they knew their nemesis the Old Duke was planning another bullfight.

Standing outside the cages, young Duncan noticed fresh, deep score marks where the Salusan bulls had rammed their enclosures in an attempt to break free, trying to gore imaginary opponents.

This was not right. Duncan knew it. He’d spent so much time watching the bulls that he felt he understood their instincts. He knew how they should react, knew how to provoke them and how to calm them — but this behavior was out of the ordinary.

When he mentioned it to Stablemaster Yresk, the gaunt man looked suddenly alarmed. He scratched the shock of thinning white hair on his head, but then his expression changed. He fixed his suspicious, puffy eyes on Duncan. “Say, there’s nothing wrong with those bulls. If I didn’t know you better, I’d think you were just another Harkonnen, trying to cause trouble. Now run along.”

“Harkonnens! I hate them.”

“You lived among them, stable-rat. We Atreides are trained to be constantly on the alert.” He gave Duncan a nudge. “Don’t you have chores to complete? Or do I need to find some more?”

He’d heard that Yresk had actually come from Richese many years before, so he was not truly an Atreides. Still, Duncan didn’t contradict the man, though he refused to back down. “I was their slave. They tried to hunt me down like an animal.”

Yresk lowered his bushy eyebrows; with his lanky build and wild, pale hair he looked like a scarecrow. “Even among the common people, the old feud between Houses runs deep. How do I know what you might have up your sleeve?”

“That’s not why I told you about the bulls, sir,” Duncan said. “I’m just worried. I don’t know anything about House feuds.”

Yresk laughed, not taking him seriously. “The Atreides-Harkonnen breach goes back thousands of years. Don’t you know anything about the Battle of Corrin, the great betrayal, the Bridge of Hrethgir? How a cowardly Harkonnen ancestor almost cost the humans our victory against the hated machine-minds? Corrin was our last stand, and we would have fallen to the final onslaught if an Atreides hadn’t saved the day.”

“I never learned much history,” Duncan said. “It was hard enough just finding food to eat.”

Behind folds of wrinkled skin, the stablemaster’s eyes were large and expressive, as if he was trying to appear to be a kindly old man. “Well, well, House Atreides and House Harkonnen were allies once, friends even, but never again after that treachery. The feud has burned hot ever since — and you, boy, came from Giedi Prime. From the Harkonnen homeworld.” Yresk shrugged his bony shoulders. “You don’t expect us to trust you completely, do you? Be thankful the Old Duke trusts you as much as he does.”

“But I had nothing to do with the Battle of Corrin,” Duncan said, still not understanding. “What does that have to do with the bulls? That was a long time ago.”

“And that’s about all the jabber I have time for this afternoon.” Yresk removed a long-handled manure scraper from a prong on the wall. “You just keep your suspicions to yourself from now on. Everyone here knows what he’s supposed to do.”

Though Duncan worked hard and did everything he could to earn his keep, the fact that he had come from the Harkonnens continued to cause him grief. Some of the others working in the stables, not just Yresk, treated him as a barely concealed spy … though what Rabban would have wanted with a nine-year-old infiltrator, Duncan couldn’t guess.

Not until now, however, had he felt so affronted by the prejudice. “There’s something wrong with the bulls, sir,” he insisted. “The Duke needs to know about it before his bullfight.”

Yresk laughed at him again. “When I need the advice of a child in my business, I’ll be sure to ask you, young Idaho.” The stablemaster left, and Duncan returned to the stalls to stare at the agitated, ferocious Salusan bulls. They glared back at him with burning, faceted eyes.

Something was terribly wrong. He knew it, but no one would listen to him.

Imperfections, if viewed in the proper light, can be extremely valuable. The Great Schools, with their incessant questing for perfection, often find this postulate difficult to understand, until it is proven to them that nothing in the universe is random.

-From The Philosophies of Old Terra, one of the recovered manuscripts

In the darkness of her isolated and protected bedroom in the Mother School complex, Mohiam sat straight up, holding her swollen belly. Her skin felt tight and leathery, without the resilience of youth. Her bedclothes were drenched in perspiration, and the nightmare remained fresh in her mind. The back of her skull pounded with visions of blood, and flames.

It had been an omen, a message … a screaming premonition that no Bene Gesserit could ignore.

She wondered how much melange her nurse had given her, and if it might have interacted with some other medication they’d administered. She could still taste the bitter gingery-cinnamon flavor inside her mouth. How much spice was it safe for a pregnant woman to take? Mohiam shuddered. No matter how she tried to rationalize her terror, she could not ignore the power of the sending.

Dreams … nightmares … prescience — foretelling terrible events that would shake the Imperium for millennia. A future that must never come to pass! She dared not ignore the warning … but could she trust herself to interpret it correctly?

Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam was but a tiny pebble at the beginning of an avalanche.

Did the Sisterhood really know what it was doing? And what about the baby growing inside her, still a month from term? The vision’s focus had been centered on her daughter. Something important, something terrible … . The Reverend Mothers had not told her everything, and now even the Sisters in Other Memory were afraid.

The room smelled damp from the rain outside: The old plaster walls were wet and powdery. Though precise heaters kept her private chamber at a comfortable temperature, the homiest warmth came from the embers in the low fire opposite her bed — an inefficient anachronism, but the aroma of woodsmoke and the yellow-orange glow of coals inspired a sort of primal complacency.

The fires of destruction, the blaze of an inferno sweeping from planet to planet across the galaxy. Jihad! Jihad! That was to be the fate of humanity if something went wrong with the Bene Gesserit plans for her daughter.

Mohiam sat up in her bed, composed herself mentally, and ran a quick check through the systems of her body. No emergencies, everything functioning normally, all biochemistry optimal.

Had it only been a nightmare … or something more?

More rationalization. She knew she must not make excuses, but she had to heed what the premonition had shown her. Other Memory knew the truth.

Mohiam remained under close observation by the Sisters — possibly even now. A purple light in the corner of her room was attached to a night-vision comeye, with watchdogs on the other end who reported to Reverend Mother Anirul Sadow Tonkin, the young woman who seemed to carry an importance beyond her years. Finally, though, in Mohiam’s dream the secretive Other Memory Voices had hinted at Anirul’s place in the project. The nightmare had jarred them loose, shocked the reticent recollections into veiled explanations.

Kwisatz Haderach. The Shortening of the Way. The Bene Gesserit’s long-sought-after messiah and superbeing.

The Sisterhood had numerous breeding programs, building upon various characteristics of humanity. Many of them were unimportant, some even served as diversions or shams. None held such prominence as the Kwisatz Haderach program, though.

As an ancient security measure at the beginning of the hundred-generation plan, the Reverend Mothers with knowledge of the scheme had sworn themselves to silence, even in Other Memory, vowing to divulge the full details to none but a rare few each generation.

Anirul was one such, the Kwisatz Mother. She knew everything about the program. That is why even Mother Superior must listen to her!

Mohiam herself had been kept in the dark, though the daughter growing in her womb was to be only three steps away from the culmination. By now the real genetic plan had been set in stone, the end of thousands of years of tinkering and planning. The future would ride on this new child. Her first daughter, the flawed one, had been a misstep, a mistake.

And any mistake could bring about the terrible future she had foreseen.

Mohiam’s nightmare had shown her what could happen to humanity’s destiny if the plan went astray. The premonition had been like a gift, and difficult as the decision was, she could not fail to act on it. She didn’t dare.

Does Anirul know my thoughts, too, the terrible act foretold in my dream? A warning, a promise — or a command?

Thoughts … Other Memory … the multitude of ancient ones within offered their advice, their fears, their warnings. They could no longer keep their knowledge of the Kwisatz Haderach silent, as they had always done before. Mohiam could call to them now, and at their discretion they would come forth, individually or in multitudes. She might ask them for collective guidance, but she didn’t want that. They had already revealed enough to awaken her with a scream on her lips.

Mistakes must not be allowed to happen.

Mohiam had to make her own decision, choose her own path into the future and determine how best to prevent the hideous blood-filled fate she had foreseen.

Rising from her bed, straightening her nightclothes, Mohiam moved ponderously through darkness into the next room, the creche where the babies were kept. Her swollen belly made it more difficult to walk. Mohiam wondered if the Sisterhood’s watchdogs would stop her.

Her own churning thoughts made her pause. Inside the dim, warm nursery, she detected the irregular, imperfect breathing of her first Harkonnen daughter, now nine months old. And in her womb the unborn sister kicked and twisted — was this one driving her forward? Had the baby inside triggered the premonition?

The Sisterhood needed a perfect daughter, healthy and strong. Flawed offspring were irrelevant. In any other circumstance, the Bene Gesserit could have found a use even for a sickly and crippled child. But Mohiam had seen her vital place in the Kwisatz Haderach program — and seen what would happen if the program went down the wrong path.

The dream was bright in her mind, like a holo-schematic. She simply had to follow it, without thinking. Do it. Heavy consumption of melange often offered prescient visions, and Mohiam had no doubt of what she had seen. The vision was clear as Hagal crystal — billions murdered, the Imperium toppled, the Bene Gesserit nearly destroyed, another jihad raging across the galaxy, sweeping away all in its path.

All of that would happen if the breeding plan went wrong. What did one unwanted life matter in the face of such epochal threats?

Her sickly first daughter by the Baron Harkonnen was in the way, a risk. That girl-child had the potential to ruin the orderly progression along the genetic ladder. Mohiam had to remove any possibility of that mistake, or she could find the blood of billions on her hands.

But my own child?

She reminded herself that this was not really her child; it was a product of the Bene Gesserit mating index and the property of every Sister who had committed herself — knowingly or unknowingly — to the overall breeding program. She’d borne other offspring in her service to the Sisterhood, but only two would carry such a dangerous combination of genes.

Two. But there could be only one. Otherwise, the risk was too great.

This weak baby would never suit the master plan. The Sisterhood had already discarded her. Perhaps someday the child could be raised as a servant or cook at the Mother School, but she would never achieve anything of significance. Anirul rarely looked at the disappointing infant anyway, and it received little attention from anyone.

I care about you, Mohiam thought, then chastised herself for the emotion. Difficult decisions had to be made, prices had to be paid. In a cold wave, memories of the nightmare vision washed over her again, strengthening her resolve.

Standing over the child in the nursery, she gently massaged its neck and temple … then drew back. A Bene Gesserit did not feel or show love — not romantic love, not familial love; emotions were considered dangerous and unseemly.

Once again blaming the chemical changes in her pregnant body, Mohiam tried to make sense of her feelings, to reconcile them with what she had been taught all her life. If she didn’t love the child … because love was forbidden … then why not … She swallowed hard, unable to form the horrible thought into words. And if she did love this baby — against all dictates — then that was even more reason to do what she was about to do.

Eliminate the temptation.

Was she feeling love for the child, or just pity? She didn’t want to share these thoughts with any of her Sisters. She felt shame for experiencing them, but not for what she was about to do.

Move quickly. Get it over with!

The future demanded that Mohiam do this. If she did not act on the prescient warning, whole planets would die. This new child would be a daughter with an immense destiny, and to ensure that destiny, the other had to be sacrificed.

But still Mohiam hesitated, as if a great maternal weight restrained her, trying to hold back whatever vision had driven her.

She stroked the child’s throat. Skin warm … breathing slow and regular. In the shadows Mohiam couldn’t see the misshapen facial bones and sloping shoulder. The skin was pale … the baby seemed so weak. She stirred and whimpered.

Mohiam felt her daughter’s breath hot against her hand. Clenching her fist, the Reverend Mother worked hard to control herself and whispered, “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer…” But she was shaking.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw another comeye, glowing purple to pierce the darkness of the nursery room. She positioned her body between the comeye and the child, with her back to the watchers. She looked into the future, not at what she was doing. Even a Reverend Mother sometimes had a conscience … .

Mohiam did what the dream had commanded her to do, holding a small pillow over the child’s face until sound and movement stopped.

Finished, still shaking, she arranged the bedding around the little body, then positioned the dead child’s head on the pillow and covered her tiny arms and deformed shoulder with a blanket. Suddenly she felt very, very old. Ancient beyond her years.

It is done. Mohiam rested the palm of her right hand on her swollen belly. Now you must not fail us, daughter.

One who rules assumes irrevocable responsibility for the ruled. You are a husbandman. This demands, at times, a selfless act of love which may be amusing only to those you rule.

-DUKE PAULUS ATREIDES

In the Plaza de Toros, up in the spectacular box seats reserved for House Atreides, Leto chose a green-cushioned chair beside Rhombur and Kailea. The Lady Helena Atreides, who had no fondness for such public displays, was late arriving. For the occasion Kailea Vernius wore silks and ribbons, colorful veils, and a lush, flowing gown that Atreides seamstresses had made specially for her. Leto thought she was breathtaking.

The gloomy skies did not threaten rain, but the temperature remained cool and the air damp. Even from up here he could smell the dust and old blood in the bullring, the packed bodies of the populace, the stone of the pillars and benches.

In a grand pronouncement carried by the news crier network all over Caladan, Duke Paulus Atreides had dedicated this bullfight to the exiled children of House Vernius. He would fight in their honor, symbolizing their struggle against the illegal takeover of Ix and the blood price that had been placed on their parents, Earl Dominic and Lady Shando.

Beside Leto, Rhombur leaned forward eagerly, his square chin on his hands as he gazed down at the packed sand of the bullring. His blond hair had been combed and cut, but somehow it still looked mussed. With tremendous anticipation and some concern for the safety of the Old Duke, they waited for the paseo, the introductory parade that would precede the fight itself.

Colorful banners hung in the humid air, along with Atreides hawk pennants over the royal box. In this case, however, the leader of House Atreides was not in his prime seat; he was out in the arena, as performer rather than spectator.

All around them, the Plaza de Toros was filled with the humming, chattering sounds of thousands of spectators. People waved and cheered. A local band played balisets, bone flutes, and brassy wind instruments — energetic music that heightened the mood of excitement.

Leto looked around the guarded stands, listening to the music and the happy noises of the crowd. He wondered what could be taking his mother so long. Soon, people would notice her absence.

Finally, with a flurry of female attendants, the Lady Helena arrived, moving through the throng. She walked smoothly, head held high, though her face carried shadows. The ladies-in-waiting left her at the doorway to the ducal box and returned to their assigned seats in the lower level.

Without speaking a word to her son or even looking at his guests, Helena settled herself in the tall carved chair beside the empty post where the Duke sat on those occasions when he watched the matadors. She had gone to the chapel an hour beforehand to commune with her God. Traditionally, the matador was supposed to spend time in religious contemplation before his fight, but Duke Paulus was more concerned with testing his equipment and exercising.

“I had to pray for your father to be saved from his stupidity,” she murmured, looking at Leto. “I had to pray for all of us. Someone has to.”

Smiling tentatively at his mother, Leto said, “I’m sure he appreciates it.”

She shook her head, sighed, and looked down into the arena as a loud fanfare of trumpets played, sounds that blasted and overlapped in resonating echoes from speakers encircling the Plaza de Toros.

Stableboys jogged around the ring in unaccustomed finery, waving bright flags and pennants as they rushed across the packed sand. Moments later, in a grand entrance that he performed so exquisitely, Duke Paulus Atreides rode out, sitting high on a groomed white stallion. Green plumes rose from the animal’s headdress, while ribbons trailed from the horse’s mane to flow back around the rider’s arms and hands.

Today, the Duke wore a dashing black-and-magenta costume with sequins, a brilliant emerald sash, and a matador’s traditional hat, marked with tiny Atreides crests to indicate the number of bulls he had killed. Ballooning sleeves and pantaloons concealed the apparatus of his protective bodyshield. A brilliant purple cape draped over his shoulders.

Leto scanned the figures below, trying to pick out the face of the stableboy Duncan Idaho, who had so boldly positioned himself working for the Duke. He should have been part of the paseo, but Leto didn’t see him.

The white stallion snorted and cantered around in a circle as Paulus raised his gloved hand to greet his subjects. Then he stopped in front of the ducal box and bowed deeply to his wife, who sat rigid in her chair. As expected, she waved a blood-red flower and blew him a kiss. The people shouted and cheered as they imagined fairy tales of romance between their Duke and his Lady.

Rhombur hunched forward on his plush but uncomfortable seat, smiling at Leto. “I’ve never seen anything like this. I, uh, can’t wait.”

INSIDE THE STABLES, behind force-field bars, the chosen Salusan bull issued a muffled bellow and charged against the wall. Wood splintered. The reinforced iron supports screeched.

Duncan scrambled backward, terrified. The creature’s multifaceted eyes burned a coppery red, as if embers inside the orbs had glowed to life. The bull seemed angry and evil, a child’s nightmare come true.

For the paseo, the boy wore special white-and-green merh-silks the Duke had given all the stableboys for the day’s performance. Duncan had never before worn or even touched such fancy clothes, and it made him uncomfortable to bring them into the dirty stables. But he had a greater sense of uneasiness now.

The fabric felt slick on his clean and lotioned skin. Attendants had scrubbed him, trimmed his hair, cleaned his fingernails. His body felt raw from the cleansing. White lace rode at the wrists above his callused hands. Working in the stables, his pristine condition would not last long.

Safe enough from the bull now, Duncan straightened the cap on his head. He watched the beast as it snorted, pawed the plank floor, and rammed the side of the cage again. Duncan shook his head in dismay and concern.

Turning, he spotted Yresk standing close beside him. The stablemaster nodded coolly at the ferocious Salusan bull, his puffy eyes haunted and tired. “Looks like he’s eager to fight our Duke.”

“Something’s still wrong, sir,” Duncan insisted. “I’ve never seen the animal this riled.”

Yresk raised his bushy eyebrows and scratched his shock of white hair. “Oh, in all your years of experience? I told you not to trouble yourself.”

Duncan bridled at the sarcasm. “Can’t you see it yourself, sir?”

“Stable-rat, Salusan bulls are bred to be vicious. The Duke knows what he’s doing.” Yresk crossed his scarecrow arms over his chest, but he didn’t move closer to the cage. “Besides, the more keyed-up this one is, the better he’ll fight, and our Duke certainly likes to give a good performance. His people love it.”

As if to emphasize Yresk’s point, the bull battered itself against the force field, bellowing a deep roar from the vast engine of its chest. Its horned head and leathery hide were gashed in places where it had injured itself trying to trample anything in sight.

“I think we should pick a different bull, Master Yresk.”

“Nonsense,” the other replied, growing more impatient now. “The Atreides’s own stable veterinarian has performed body tissue tests, and everything checked out. You should be ready for the paseo, not in here causing trouble. Run along now, before you miss your chance.”

“I’m trying to prevent trouble, sir,” Duncan insisted. He looked defiantly at Yresk. “I’m going to go talk to the Duke myself. Maybe he’ll listen.”

“You’ll do no such thing, stable-rat.” Moving like an eel, Yresk grabbed him by the slippery fabric of the costume. “I’ve been patient enough with you, for the Duke’s sake, but I can’t let you ruin his bullfight. Don’t you see all the people out there?”

Duncan struggled and cried for help. But the others had already lined up at the gates for the grand parade around the arena. The fanfare sounded a deafening note, and the crowd cheered in anticipation.

Without being unduly rough, Yresk tossed him into one of the empty stalls, turning on the containment field to keep him in it. Duncan stumbled onto piles of trampled feed smeared with green-brown manure.

“You can sit out the event here,” Yresk said, looking sad. “I should have known to expect trouble from you, a Harkonnen sympathizer.”

“But I hate the Harkonnens!” Duncan stood up, trembling with rage. His silk clothes were ruined. He hurled himself against the bars just as the bull had done, but he had no chance of escaping.

Brushing himself off to look presentable again, Yresk strode toward the arched openings for the paseo. The stablemaster flashed a glance over his shoulder. “The only reason you’re here, stable-rat, is because the Duke likes you. But I’ve run his stables for nigh on twenty years, and I know exactly what I’m doing. You just leave it be — I’ve got work to do.”

In the cage beside Duncan, the Salusan bull simmered like a boiler about to explode.

DUKE PAULUS ATREIDES stood in the center of the arena. He turned slowly, drawing energy from the enthusiasm of the crowd; residual heat rose from the packed stands. He flashed them all a sparkling, confident grin. They roared with approval. Oh, how his people loved to be entertained!

Paulus switched on his bodyshield at partial setting. He would have to maneuver carefully for his protection. The element of danger kept him on his toes, and it made for greater suspense among the spectators. He held the muleta, a brightly colored cloth on a pole, which he would use to distract the attacking animal and divert its attention from his body core.

The long barbed staffs, poison-dipped banderillas, were wrapped close to the pole for Paulus to use when he needed them. He would get near to the creature and spike them into its neck muscles, injecting a neuropoison that would gradually weaken the Salusan bull so that he could deliver the coup de grace.

Paulus had been through these performances dozens of times before, often for major Caladan holidays. He was at the top of his form in front of crowds and enjoyed showing off his bravery and skills. It was his way of repaying his subjects for their devotion. Each time, it seemed, his physical abilities rose to their peak as he rode the narrow edge in the contest between living his own life to the hilt and risking it as he fought a raging beast. He hoped Rhombur and Kailea would enjoy the show and feel more at home.

Only once, back when he was younger, had Paulus actually felt threatened: A sluggish, plodding bull had lured him into switching off his shield during a practice session, and then had turned into a whirlwind of horns and hooves. These mutated creatures were not just violent, but two-brain smart as well, and Paulus had made the mistake of forgetting that — but only once. The bull had slashed him with its horns, laying his side open. Paulus had fallen onto the sand and would have been gored to death had he not been practicing at the same time as a much younger Thufir Hawat.

Seeing the danger, the warrior Mentat had instantly dropped all pretense of protocol in the bullring and leaped forth single-handedly to attack and dispatch the creature. During the ensuing fight, the ferocious bull had ripped a long wound in Hawat’s leg, leaving him with a permanent, curling scar. The scar had become a reminder to all of the Mentat’s intense devotion to his Duke.

Now, under the cloudy skies and surrounded by his subjects, Duke Paulus waved and took a long, deep breath. Fanfare signaled that the fight was to begin.

House Atreides was not the most powerful family in the Landsraad, nor the wealthiest. Still, Caladan provided many resources: the pundi rice fields, the bountiful fish in the seas, the kelp harvest, all the fruit and produce from the arable land, and handmade musical instruments and bone carvings done by the aboriginal people in the south. In recent years there had been an increased demand for tapestries woven by the Sisters in Isolation, a religious group sequestered in the terraced hills of the eastern continent. In all, Caladan provided everything its people could possibly want, and Duke Paulus knew his family’s fortunes were secure. He was immensely pleased that one day he could pass it all on to his son Leto.

The mutated Salusan bull charged.

“Ho, ho!” The Duke laughed and flailed his multihued muleta, skittering backward as the bull thundered past. Its head tossed from side to side, thrashing with its spiny shovel of a skull. One of the horns moved slowly enough to ripple through the pulsing Holtzman shield, and the Duke slid sideways, just enough so that the bone spike barely scratched his outer armor.

Seeing how close the horn had come to their beloved leader, the audience let out a collective gasp. The Duke sidestepped the bull as it charged past, kicking up powdered sand. The beast skidded to a stop. Paulus held his muleta with one hand, jiggling the cloth, and snatched out one of his barbed banderillas.

He glanced up at the ducal box, touching the hooked tip of the banderilla to his forehead in a salute. Leto and Prince Rhombur had leaped to their feet in excitement, but Helena remained frozen in her chair, her expression clouded, hands clasped in her lap.

The bull wheeled about and reoriented itself. Normally, Salusan bulls became dizzy after missing their target, but this one did not slow a bit. Duke Paulus realized that his monstrous opponent had a greater energy than he had ever seen, keener eyesight, hotter fury. Still, he smiled. Defeating this worthy opponent would be his finest hour, and a fitting tribute to the exiled Ixians in his care.

The Duke played with the bull for a few more passes, dancing beyond the reach of its horns, completing his expected performance for the excited spectators. Around him the partial shield shimmered.

Seeing that the bull did not tire after the better part of an hour, though, and that it remained focused on killing him, Duke Paulus grew concerned enough that he made up his mind to end the contest as swiftly as possible. He would use his shield, a trick he had learned from one of the finest matadors in the Imperium.

The next time the creature shot past, hooves hammering the packed sand, its horns ricocheted off the Duke’s personal shield, a collision that finally disoriented the beast.

The Duke grasped the banderilla and plunged it into the bull’s back like a stake, setting the barbed hook into cable-thick neck muscles. Oily blood spilled out from the slash in its hide. Paulus released the handle of the poisoned spear as he twirled out of the way. The drug on the barbed tip should begin to act immediately, burning out the neurotransmitters in the beast’s double brain.

The crowd cheered, and the bull roared with pain. It spun about and stumbled as its legs seemed to give way. The Duke thought this was caused by the poison, but to his surprise the Salusan bull floundered to its feet once more and rocketed toward him. Paulus again sidestepped, but the bull managed to snag the muleta on its multiple horns, thrashing its head and tearing the bright ceremonial cloth to shreds.

The Duke narrowed his eyes and released his hold. This was going to be a greater challenge than he had expected. The audience cried out in dismay, and he couldn’t stop himself from offering them a brave smile. Yes, the difficult fights are the best, and the people of Caladan will remember this one for a long, long time.

Paulus held up his second banderilla, slashing it in the air like a thin fencing sword, and turned to face the heavily muscled oncoming bull. He had no cape to distract the animal now, so it would see his body core as its main target. He had only one short, barbed spear as his weapon, and a partial shield for protection.

He saw Atreides guards, even Thufir Hawat, standing at the ringside, ready to race out and assist him. But the Duke raised his hand, forcing them back. He must do this himself. It simply would not do to have a mob of other fighters rushing to his rescue the moment things got a little sticky.

The Salusan bull pawed the ground, glaring at him with its multifaceted eyes, and the Duke thought he saw a flash of understanding there. This creature knew exactly who he was — and it intended to kill him. But the Duke had similar thoughts in his own mind.

The bull charged directly toward him and picked up speed. Paulus wondered why the neurotoxin hadn’t yet slowed it down. Deadly questions occurred to him: How can this be? I dipped the banderillas in poison myself. But was it really poison?

Wondering if there had been sabotage, the Duke held out the banderilla, its sharp barb glinting in the cloudy sunlight. The bull approached, steaming, frothing. Foam from its nostrils and mouth flew up to fleck its black scaly face.

As they closed to within meters of each other, the bull feinted to the right. Duke Paulus jabbed with his short spear, but the beast instantly swerved and attacked from a different direction. This time the barb caught on a knob of the bull’s horny skin, but did not sink in. The small weapon tore out of the Duke’s grasp and dropped to the sand as the bull dashed past.

For a moment Paulus was weaponless. He scrambled backward and snatched for the banderilla on the ground. Turning his back on the bull, he listened for it to grind to a stop, spin around, and come back — but as he bent over to retrieve his weapon, the huge bull was suddenly there with impossible speed, horns lowered.

The Duke scrambled to one side, trying to get out of the way, but the bull was already within his safety zone, ducking under the partial shield and ramming home. Its long, curved horns gouged deep into the Duke’s back, breaking through his ribs and into his lungs and heart.

The bull roared with triumph. To the horror of the crowd, it lifted Paulus up, thrashing him from side to side. Blood sprayed on the sand, red droplets slowed by the concave surface of the small shield. The doomed Duke flailed and twitched, impaled on the forest of horns.

The audience fell deathly silent.

Within seconds, Thufir Hawat and the Atreides guards surged out onto the field, their lasguns cutting the rampaging Salusan bull into piles of smoking meat. The creature’s own momentum caused pieces of the carcass to fly apart in different directions. The decapitated but otherwise intact head thumped onto the ground.

The Duke’s body pirouetted in the air and landed on its back in the trampled sand.

Up in the ducal box, Rhombur cried out in disbelief. Kailea sobbed. The Lady Helena let her chin sink against her chest and wept.

Leto rose to his feet, all color draining from his skin. His mouth opened and closed, but he could find no words to express his utter shock. He wanted to run down into the arena, but saw from the mangled condition of his father that he would never reach him in time. There would be no gasping and whispering of last words.

Duke Paulus Atreides, this magnificent man of his people, was dead.

Deafening wails erupted from the spectator stands. Leto could feel the vibration rumbling through the ducal box. He couldn’t tear his eyes from his father, lying broken and bloodied on the ground, and he knew it was a nightmare vision that would remain with him for the rest of his life.

Thufir Hawat stood next to the fallen Old Duke, but even a warrior Mentat could do nothing for him now.

Oddly, his mother’s quiet voice cut through the surrounding din, and Leto heard the words clearly, like ice picks. “Leto, my son,” Helena said, “you are Duke Atreides now.”

Machine-vaccine principle: Every technological device contains within it the tools of its opposite, and of its own destruction.

-GIAN KANA,