= = = = = =

   “Yueh! Yueh! Yueh!” goes the refrain. “A million deaths were not enough for Yueh!”
   –from “A Child's History of Muad'Dib” by the Princess Irulan

   The door stood ajar, and Jessica stepped through it into a room with yellow walls. To her left stretched a low settee of black hide and two empty bookcases, a hanging waterflask with dust on its bulging sides. To her right, bracketing another door, stood more empty bookcases, a desk from Caladan and three chairs. At the windows directly ahead of her stood Dr. Yueh, his back to her, his attention fixed upon the outside world.
   Jessica took another silent step into the room.
   She saw that Yueh's coat was wrinkled, a white smudge near the left elbow as though he had leaned against chalk. He looked, from behind, like a fleshless stick figure in overlarge black clothing, a caricature poised for stringy movement at the direction of a puppet master. Only the squarish block of head with long ebony hair caught in its silver Suk School ring at the shoulder seemed alive–turning slightly to follow some movement outside.
   Again, she glanced around the room, seeing no sign of her son, but the closed door on her right, she knew, let into a small bedroom for which Paul had expressed a liking.
   “Good afternoon. Dr. Yueh,” she said. “Where's Paul?”
   He nodded as though to something out the window, spoke in an absent manner without turning: “Your son grew tired, Jessica. I sent him into the next room to rest.”
   Abruptly, he stiffened, whirled with mustache flopping over his purpled lips. “Forgive me, my Lady! My thoughts were far away . . . I . . . did not mean to be familiar.”
   She smiled, held out her right hand. For a moment, she was afraid he might kneel. “Wellington, please.”
   "To use your name like that . . . I . . . "
   “We've known each other six years,” she said. “It's long past time formalities should've been dropped between us–in private.”
   Yueh ventured a thin smile, thinking: I believe it has worked. Now, she'll think anything unusual in my manner is due to embarrassment. She'll not look for deeper reasons when she believes she already knows the answer.
   “I'm afraid I was woolgathering,” he said. “Whenever I . . . feel especially sorry for you. I'm afraid I think of you as . . . well, Jessica.”
   “Sorry for me? Whatever for?”
   Yueh shrugged. Long ago, he had realized Jessica was not gifted with the full Truthsay as his Wanna had been. Still, he always used the truth with Jessica whenever possible. It was safest.
   “You've seen this place, my . . . Jessica.” He stumbled over the name, plunged ahead: “So barren after Caladan. And the people! Those townswomen we passed on the way here wailing beneath their veils. The way they looked at us.”
   She folded her arms across her breast, hugging herself, feeling the crysknife there, a blade ground from a sandworm's tooth, if the reports were right. “It's just that we're strange to them–different people, different customs. They've known only the Harkonnens.” She looked past him out the windows. “What were you staring at out there?”
   He turned back to the window. “The people.”
   Jessica crossed to his side, looked to the left toward the front of the house where Yueh's attention was focused. A line of twenty palm trees grew there, the ground beneath them swept clean, barren. A screen fence separated them from the road upon which robed people were passing. Jessica detected a faint shimmering in the air between her and the people–a house shield–and went on to study the passing throng, wondering why Yueh found them so absorbing.
   The pattern emerged and she put a hand to her cheek. The way the passing people looked at the palm trees! She saw envy, some hate . . . even a sense of hope. Each person raked those trees with a fixity of expression.
   “Do you know what they're thinking?” Yueh asked.
   “You profess to read minds?” she asked.
   “Those minds,” he said. “They look at those trees and they think; 'There are one hundred of us.' That's what they think.”
   She turned a puzzled frown on him. “Why?”
   “Those are date palms,” he said. “One date palm requires forty liters of water a day. A man requires but eight liters. A palm, then, equals five men. There are twenty palms out there–one hundred men.”
   “But some of those people look at the trees hopefully.”
   “They but hope some dates will fall, except it's the wrong season.”
   “We look at this place with too critical an eye,” she said. “There's hope as well as danger here. The spice could make us rich. With a fat treasury, we can make this world into whatever we wish.”
   And she laughed silently at herself: Who am I trying to convince? The laugh broke through her restraints, emerging brittle, without humor. “But you can't buy security,” she said.
   Yueh turned away to hide his face from her. If only it were possible to hate these people instead of love them! In her manner, in many ways, Jessica was like his Wanna. Yet that thought carried its own rigors, hardening him to his purpose. The ways of the Harkonnen cruelty were devious. Wanna might not be dead. He had to be certain.
   “Do not worry for us, Wellington,” Jessica said. “The problem's ours, not yours.”
   She thinks I worry for her! He blinked back tears. And I do, of course. But I must stand before that black Baron with his deed accomplished, and take my one chance to strike him where he is weakest–in his gloating moment!
   He sighed.
   “Would it disturb Paul if I looked in on him?” she asked.
   “Not at all. I gave him a sedative.”
   “He's taking the change well?” she asked.
   “Except for getting a bit overtired. He's excited, but what fifteen-year-old wouldn't be under these circumstances?” He crossed to the door, opened it. “He's in here.”
   Jessica followed, peered into a shadowy room.
   Paul lay on a narrow cot, one arm beneath a light cover, the other thrown back over his head. Slatted blinds at a window beside the bed wove a loom of shadows across face and blanket.
   Jessica stared at her son, seeing the oval shape of face so like her own. But the hair was the Duke's–coal-colored and tousled. Long lashes concealed the lime-toned eyes. Jessica smiled, feeling her fears retreat. She was suddenly caught by the idea of genetic traces in her son's features–her lines in eyes and facial outline, but sharp touches of the father peering through that outline like maturity emerging from childhood.
   She thought of the boy's features as an exquisite distillation out of random patterns–endless queues of happenstance meeting at this nexus. The thought made her want to kneel beside the bed and take her son in her arms, but she was inhibited by Yueh's presence. She stepped back, closed the door softly.
   Yueh had returned to the window, unable to bear watching the way Jessica stared at her son. Why did Wanna never give me children? he asked himself. I know as a doctor there was no physical reason against it. Was there some Bene Gesserit reason? Was she, perhaps, instructed to serve a different purpose? What could it have been? She loved me, certainly.
   For the first time, he was caught up in the thought that he might be part of a pattern more involuted and complicated than his mind could grasp.
   Jessica stopped beside him, said: “What delicious abandon in the sleep of a child.”
   He spoke mechanically: “If only adults could relax like that.”
   “Yes.”
   “Where do we lose it?” he murmured.
   She glanced at him, catching the odd tone, but her mind was still on Paul, thinking of the new rigors in his training here, thinking of the differences in his life now–so very different from the life they once had planned for him.
   “We do, indeed, lose something,” she said.
   She glanced out to the right at a slope humped with a wind-troubled gray-green of bushes–dusty leaves and dry claw branches. The too-dark sky hung over the slope like a blot, and the milky light of the Arrakeen sun gave the scene a silver cast–light like the crysknife concealed in her bodice.
   “The sky's so dark,” she said.
   “That's partly the lack of moisture,” he said.
   “Water!” she snapped. “Everywhere you turn here, you're involved with the lack of water!”
   “It's the precious mystery of Arrakis,” he said.
   “Why is there so little of it? There's volcanic rock here. There're a dozen power sources I could name. There's polar ice. They say you can't drill in the desert–storms and sandtides destroy equipment faster than it can be installed, if the worms don't get you first. They've never found water traces there, anyway. But the mystery, Wellington, the real mystery is the wells that've been drilled up here in the sinks and basins. Have you read about those?”
   “First a trickle, then nothing,” he said.
   “But, Wellington, that's the mystery. The water was there. It dries up. And never again is there water. Yet another hole nearby produces the same result: a trickle that stops. Has no one ever been curious about this?”
   “It is curious,” he said. “You suspect some living agency? Wouldn't that have shown in core samples?”
   “What would have shown? Alien plant matter . . . or animal? Who could recognize it?” She turned back to the slope. “The water is stopped. Something plugs it. That's my suspicion.”
   “Perhaps the reason's known,” he said. “The Harkonnens sealed off many sources of information about Arrakis. Perhaps there was reason to suppress this.”
   “What reason?” she asked. “And then there's the atmospheric moisture. Little enough of it, certainly, but there's some. It's the major source of water here, caught in windtraps and precipitators. Where does that come from?”
   “The polar caps?”
   “Cold air takes up little moisture, Wellington. There are things here behind the Harkonnen veil that bear close investigation, and not all of those things are directly involved with the spice.”
   "We are indeed behind the Harkonnen veil," he said. "Perhaps we'll . . . " He broke off, noting the sudden intense way she was looking at him. "Is something wrong?"
   "The way you say 'Harkonnen,' " she said. "Even my Duke's voice doesn't carry that weight of venom when he uses the hated name. I didn't know you had personal reasons to hate them, Wellington."
   Great Mother! he thought. I've aroused her suspicions! Now I must use every trick my Wanna taught me. There's only one solution: tell the truth as far as I can.
   He said: "You didn't know that my wife, my Wanna . . . " He shrugged, unable to speak past a sudden constriction in his throat. Then: "They . . . " The words would not come out. He felt panic, closed his eyes tightly, experiencing the agony in his chest and little else until a hand touched his arm gently.
   “Forgive me,” Jessica said. “I did not mean to open an old wound.” And she thought: Those animals! His wife was Bene Gesserit–the signs are all over him. And it's obvious the Harkonnens killed her. Here's another poor victim bound to the Atreides by a cherem of hate.
   “I am sorry,” he said. “I'm unable to talk about it.” He opened his eyes, giving himself up to the internal awareness of grief. That, at least, was truth.
   Jessica studied him, seeing the up-angled cheeks, the dark sequins of almond eyes, the butter complexion, and stringy mustache hanging like a curved frame around purpled lips and narrow chin. The creases of his cheeks and forehead, she saw, were as much lines of sorrow as of age. A deep affection for him came over her.
   “Wellington, I'm sorry we brought you into this dangerous place,” she said.
   “I came willingly,” he said. And that, too, was true.
   “But this whole planet's a Harkonnen trap. You must know that.”
   “It will take more than a trap to catch the Duke Leto,” he said. And that, too, was true.
   “Perhaps I should be more confident of him,” she said. “He is a brilliant tactician.”
   “We've been uprooted,” he said. “That's why we're uneasy.”
   “And how easy it is to kill the uprooted plant,” she said. “Especially when you put it down in hostile soil.”
   “Are we certain the soil's hostile?”
   “There were water riots when it was learned how many people the Duke was adding to the population,” she said. “They stopped only when the people learned we were installing new windtraps and condensers to take care of the load.”
   “There is only so much water to support human life here,” he said. “The people know if more come to drink a limited amount of water, the price goes up and the very poor die. But the Duke has solved this. It doesn't follow that the riots mean permanent hostility toward him.”
   “And guards,” she said. “Guards everywhere. And shields. You see the blurring of them everywhere you look. We did not live this way on Caladan.”
   “Give this planet a chance,” he said.
   But Jessica continued to stare hard-eyed out the window. “I can smell death in this place,” she said. “Hawat sent advance agents in here by the battalion. Those guards outside are his men. The cargo handlers are his men. There've been unexplained withdrawals of large sums from the treasury. The amounts mean only one thing: bribes in high places.” She shook her head. “Where Thufir Hawat goes, death and deceit follow.”
   “You malign him.”
   “Malign? I praise him. Death and deceit are our only hopes now. I just do not fool myself about Thufir's methods.”
   “You should . . . keep busy,” he said. “Give yourself no time for such morbid–”
   “Busy! What is it that takes most of my time, Wellington? I am the Duke's secretary–so busy that each day I learn new things to fear . . . things even he doesn't suspect I know.” She compressed her lips, spoke thinly: “Sometimes I wonder how much my Bene Gesserit business training figured in his choice of me.”
   “What do you mean?” He found himself caught by the cynical tone, the bitterness that he had never seen her expose.
   “Don't you think, Wellington,” she asked, “that a secretary bound to one by love is so much safer?”
   “That is not a worthy thought, Jessica.”
   The rebuke came naturally to his lips. There was no doubt how the Duke felt about his concubine. One had only to watch him as he followed her with his eyes.
   She sighed. “You're right. It's not worthy.”
   Again, she hugged herself, pressing the sheathed crysknife against her flesh and thinking of the unfinished business it represented.
   “There'll be much bloodshed soon,” she said. “The Harkonnens won't rest until they're dead or my Duke destroyed. The Baron cannot forget that Leto is a cousin of the royal blood–no matter what the distance–while the Harkonnen titles came out of the CHOAM pocketbook. But the poison in him, deep in his mind, is the knowledge that an Atreides had a Harkonnen banished for cowardice after, the Battle of Corrin.”
   “The old feud,” Yueh muttered. And for a moment he felt an acid touch of hate. The old feud had trapped him in its web, killed his Wanna or–worse–left her for Harkonnen tortures until her husband did their bidding. The old feud had trapped him and these people were part of that poisonous thing. The irony was that such deadliness should come to flower here on Arrakis, the one source in the universe of melange, the prolonger of life, the giver of health.
   “What are you thinking?” she asked.
   “I am thinking that the spice brings six hundred and twenty thousand Solaris the decagram on the open market right now. That is wealth to buy many things.”
   “Does greed touch even you, Wellington?”
   “Not greed.”
   “What then?”
   He shrugged. “Futility.” He glanced at her. “Can you remember your first taste of spice?”
   “It tasted like cinnamon.”
   “But never twice the same,” he said. “It's like life–it presents a different face each time you take it. Some hold that the spice produces a learned-flavor reaction. The body, learning a thing is good for it, interprets the flavor as pleasurable–slightly euphoric. And, like life, never to be truly synthesized.”
   “I think it would've been wiser for us to go renegade, to take ourselves beyond the Imperial reach,” she said.
   He saw that she hadn't been listening to him, focused on her words, wondering: Yes–why didn't she make him do this? She could make him do virtually anything.
   He spoke quickly because here was truth and a change of subject: “Would you think it bold of me . . . Jessica, if I asked a personal question?”
   She pressed against the window ledge in an unexplainable pang of disquiet. “Of course not. You're . . . my friend.”
   “Why haven't you made the Duke marry you?”
   She whirled, head up, glaring. “Made him marry me? But–”
   “I should not have asked,” he said.
   “No.” She shrugged. “There's good political reason–as long as my Duke remains unmarried some of the Great Houses can still hope for alliance. And . . . " She sighed. " . . . motivating people, forcing them to your will, gives you a cynical attitude toward humanity. It degrades everything it touches. If I made him do . . . this, then it would not be his doing.”
   “It's a thing my Wanna might have said,” he murmured. And this, too, was truth. He put a hand to his mouth, swallowing convulsively. He had never been closer to speaking out, confessing his secret role.
   Jessica spoke, shattering the moment. “Besides, Wellington, the Duke is really two men. One of them I love very much. He's charming, witty, considerate . . . tender–everything a woman could desire. But the other man is . . . cold, callous, demanding, selfish–as harsh and cruel as a winter wind. That's the man shaped by the father.” Her face contorted. “If only that old man had died when my Duke was born!”
   In the silence that came between them, a breeze from a ventilator could be heard fingering the blinds.
   Presently, she took a deep breath, said, “Leto's right–these rooms are nicer than the ones in the other sections of the house.” She turned, sweeping the room with her gaze. “If you'll excuse me, Wellington, I want another look through this wing before I assign quarters.”
   He nodded. “Of course.” And he thought: if only there were some way not to do this thing that I must do.
   Jessica dropped her arms, crossed to the hall door and stood there a moment, hesitating, then let herself out. All the time we talked he was hiding something, holding something back, she thought. To save my feelings, no doubt. He's a good man. Again, she hesitated, almost turned back to confront Yueh and drag the hidden thing from him. But that would only shame him, frighten him to learn he's so easily read. I should place more trust in my friends.

= = = = = =

   Many have marked the speed with which Muad'Dib learned the necessities of Arrakis. The Bene Gesserit, of course, know the basis of this speed. For the others, we can say that Muad'Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It is shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult. Muad'Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson.
   –from “The Humanity of Muad'Dib” by the Princess Irulan

   Paul lay on the bed feigning sleep. It had been easy to palm Dr. Yueh's sleeping tablet, to pretend to swallow it. Paul suppressed a laugh. Even his mother had believed him asleep. He had wanted to jump up and ask her permission to go exploring the house, but had realized she wouldn't approve. Things were too unsettled yet. No. This way was best.
   If I slip out without asking I haven't disobeyed orders. And I will stay in the house where it's safe.
   He heard his mother and Yueh talking in the other room. Their words were indistinct–something about the spice . . . the Harkonnens. The conversation rose and fell.
   Paul's attention went to the carved headboard of his bed–a false headboard attached to the wall and concealing the controls for this room's functions. A leaping fish had been shaped on the wood with thick brown waves beneath it. He knew if he pushed the fish's one visible eye that would turn on the room's suspensor lamps. One of the waves, when twisted, controlled ventilation. Another changed the temperature.
   Quietly, Paul sat up in bed. A tall bookcase stood against the wall to his left. It could be swung aside to reveal a closet with drawers along one side. The handle on the door into the hall was patterned on an ornithopter thrust bar.
   It was as though the room had been designed to entice him.
   The room and this planet.
   He thought of the filmbook Yueh had shown him–"Arrakis: His Imperial Majesty's Desert Botanical Testing Station." It was an old filmbook from before discovery of the spice. Names flitted through Paul's mind, each with its picture imprinted by the book's mnemonic pulse: saguaro, burro bush, date palm, sand verbena, evening primrose, barrel cactus, incense bush, smoke tree, creosote bush . . . kit fox, desert hawk, kangaroo mouse . . .
   Names and pictures, names and pictures from man's terranic past–and many to be found now nowhere else in the universe except here on Arrakis.
   So many new things to learn about–the spice.
   And the sandworms.
   A door closed in the other room. Paul heard his mother's footsteps retreating down the hall. Dr. Yueh, he knew, would find something to read and remain in the other room.
   Now was the moment to go exploring.
   Paul slipped out of the bed, headed for the bookcase door that opened into the closet. He stopped at a sound behind him, turned. The carved headboard of the bed was folding down onto the spot where he had been sleeping. Paul froze, and immobility saved his life.
   From behind the headboard slipped a tiny hunter-seeker no more than five centimeters long. Paul recognized it at once–a common assassination weapon that every child of royal blood learned about at an early age. It was a ravening sliver of metal guided by some near-by hand and eye. It could burrow into moving flesh and chew its way up nerve channels to the nearest vital organ.
   The seeker lifted, swung sideways across the room and back.
   Through Paul's mind flashed the related knowledge, the hunter-seeker limitations: Its compressed suspensor field distorted the vision of its transmitter eye. With nothing but the dim light of the room to reflect his target, the operator would be relying on motion–anything that moved. A shield could slow a hunter, give time to destroy it, but Paul had put aside his shield on the bed. Lasguns would knock them down, but lasguns were expensive and notoriously cranky of maintenance–and there was always the peril of explosive pyrotechnics if the laser beam intersected a hot shield. The Atreides relied on their body shields and their wits.
   Now, Paul held himself in near catatonic immobility, knowing he had only his wits to meet this threat.
   The hunter-seeker lifted another half meter. It rippled through the slatted light from the window blinds, back and forth, quartering the room.
   I must try to grab it, he thought. The suspensor field will make it slippery on the bottom. I must grip tightly.
   The thing dropped a half meter, quartered to the left, circled back around the bed. A faint humming could be heard from it.
   Who is operating that thing? Paul wondered. It has to be someone near. I could shout for Yueh, but it would take him the instant the door opened.
   The hall door behind Paul creaked. A rap sounded there. The door opened.
   The hunter-seeker arrowed past his head toward the motion.
   Paul's right hand shot out and down, gripping the deadly thing. It hummed and twisted in his hand, but his muscles were locked on it in desperation. With a violent turn and thrust, he slammed the thing's nose against the metal doorplate. He felt the crunch of it as the nose eye smashed and the seeker went dead in his hand.
   Still, he held it–to be certain.
   Paul's eyes came up, met the open stare of total blue from the Shadout Mapes.
   “Your father has sent for you,” she said. “There are men in the hall to escort you.”
   Paul nodded, his eyes and awareness focusing on this odd woman in a sack-like dress of bondsman brown. She was looking now at the thing clutched in his hand.
   “I've heard of suchlike,” she said. “It would've killed me, not so?”
   He had to swallow before he could speak. “I . . . was its target.”
   “But it was coming for me.”
   “Because you were moving.” And he wondered: Who is this creature?
   “Then you saved my life,” she said.
   “I saved both our lives.”
   “Seems like you could've let it have me and made your own escape,” she said.
   “Who are you?” he asked.
   “The Shadout Mapes, housekeeper.”
   “How did you know where to find me?”
   “Your mother told me. I met her at the stairs to the weirding room down the hall.” She pointed to her right. “Your father's men are still waiting.”
   Those will be Hawat's men, he thought. We must find the operator of this thing.
   “Go to my father's men,” he said. “Tell them I've caught a hunter-seeker in the house and they're to spread out and find the operator. Tell them to seal off the house and its grounds immediately. They'll know how to go about it. The operator's sure to be a stranger among us.”
   And he wondered: Could it be this creature? But he knew it wasn't. The seeker had been under control when she entered.
   “Before I do your bidding, manling,” Mapes said, “I must cleanse the way between us. You've put a water burden on me that I'm not sure I care to support. But we Fremen pay our debts–be they black debts or white debts. And it's known to us that you've a traitor in your midst. Who it is, we cannot say, but we're certain sure of it. Mayhap there's the hand guided that flesh-cutter.”
   Paul absorbed this in silence: a traitor. Before he could speak, the odd woman whirled away and ran back toward the entry.
   He thought to call her back, but there was an air about her that told him she would resent it. She'd told him what she knew and now she was going to do his bidding. The house would be swarming with Hawat's men in a minute.
   His mind went to other parts of that strange conversation: weirding room. He looked to his left where she had pointed. We Fremen. So that was a Fremen. He paused for the mnemonic blink that would store the pattern of her face in his memory–prune-wrinkled features darkly browned, blue-on-blue eyes without any white in them. He attached the label: The Shadout Mapes.
   Still gripping the shattered seeker, Paul turned back into his room, scooped up his shield belt from the bed with his left hand, swung it around his waist and buckled it as he ran back out and down the hall to the left.
   She'd said his mother was someplace down here–stairs . . . a weirding room

= = = = = =

   What had the Lady Jessica to sustain her in her time of trial? Think you carefully on this Bene Gesserit proverb and perhaps you will see: “Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just a little bit to test that it's a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain.”
   –from “Muad'Dib: Family Commentaries” by the Princess Irulan

   At the end of the south wing, Jessica found a metal stair spiraling up to an oval door. She glanced back down the hall, again up at the door.
   Oval? she wondered. What an odd shape for a door in a house.
   Through the windows beneath the spiral stair she could see the great white sun of Arrakis moving on toward evening. Long shadows stabbed down the hall. She returned her attention to the stairs. Harsh sidelighting picked out bits of dried earth on the open metalwork of the steps.
   Jessica put a hand on the rail, began to climb. The rail felt cold under her sliding palm. She stopped at the door, saw it had no handle, but there was a faint depression on the surface of it where a handle should have been.
   Surely not a palm lock, she told herself. A palm lock must be keyed to one individual's hand shape and palm lines. But it looked like a palm lock. And there were ways to open any palm lock–as she had learned at school.
   Jessica glanced back to make certain she was unobserved, placed her palm against the depression in the door. The most gentle of pressures to distort the lines–a turn of the wrist, another turn, a sliding twist of the palm across the surface.
   She felt the click.
   But there were hurrying footsteps in the hall beneath her. Jessica lifted her hand from the door, turned, saw Mapes come to the foot of the stairs.
   “There are men in the great hall say they've been sent by the Duke to get young master Paul,” Mapes said. “They've the ducal signet and the guard has identified them.” She glanced at the door, back to Jessica.
   A cautious one, this Mapes, Jessica thought. That's a good sign.
   “He's in the fifth room from this end of the hall, the small bedroom,” Jessica said. “If you have trouble waking him, call on Dr. Yueh in the next room. Paul may require a wakeshot.”
   Again, Mapes cast a piercing stare at the oval door, and Jessica thought she detected loathing in the expression. Before Jessica could ask about the door and what it concealed, Mapes had turned away, hurrying back down the hall.
   Hawat certified this place, Jessica thought. There can't be anything too terrible in here.
   She pushed the door. It swung inward onto a small room with another oval door opposite. The other door had a wheel handle.
   An airlock! Jessica thought. She glanced down, saw a door prop fallen to the floor of the little room. The prop carried Hawat's personal mark. The door was left propped open, she thought. Someone probably knocked the prop down accidentally, not realizing the outer door would close on a palm lock.
   She stepped over the lip into the little room.
   Why an airlock in a house? she asked herself. And she thought suddenly of exotic creatures sealed off in special climates.
   Special climate!
   That would make sense on Arrakis where even the driest of off-planet growing things had to be irrigated.
   The door behind her began swinging closed. She caught it and propped it open securely with the stick Hawat had left. Again, she faced the wheel-locked inner door, seeing now a faint inscription etched in the metal above the handle. She recognized Galach words, read:
   “O, Man! Here is a lovely portion of God's Creation; then, stand before it and learn to love the perfection of Thy Supreme Friend.”
   Jessica put her weight on the wheel. It turned left and the inner door opened. A gentle draft feathered her cheek, stirred her hair. She felt change in the air, a richer taste. She swung the door wide, looked through into massed greenery with yellow sunlight pouring across it.
   A yellow sun? she asked herself. Then: Filter glass!
   She stepped over the sill and the door swung closed behind.
   “A wet-planet conservatory,” she breathed:
   Potted plants and low-pruned trees stood all about. She recognized a mimosa, a flowering quince, a sondagi, green-blossomed pleniscenta, green and white striped akarso . . . roses . . .
   Even roses!
   She bent to breathe the fragrance of a giant pink blossom, straightened to peer around the room.
   Rhythmic noise invaded her senses.
   She parted a jungle overlapping of leaves, looked through to the center of the room. A low fountain stood there, small with fluted lips. The rhythmic noise was a peeling, spooling arc of water falling thud-a-gallop onto the metal bowl.
   Jessica sent herself through the quick sense-clearing regimen, began a methodical inspection of the room's perimeter. It appeared to be about ten meters square. From its placement above the end of the hall and from subtle differences in construction, she guessed it had been added onto the roof of this wing long after the original building's completion.
   She stopped at the south limits of the room in front of the wide reach of filter glass, stared around. Every available space in the room was crowded with exotic wet-climate plants. Something rustled in the greenery. She tensed, then glimpsed a simple clock-set servok with pipe and hose arms. An arm lifted, sent out a fine spray of dampness that misted her cheeks. The arm retracted and she looked at what it had watered: a fern tree.
   Water everywhere in this room–on a planet where water was the most precious juice of life. Water being wasted so conspicuously that it shocked her to inner stillness.
   She glanced out at the filter-yellowed sun. It hung low on a jagged horizon above cliffs that formed part of the immense rock uplifting known as the Shield Wall.
   Filter glass, she thought. To turn a white sun into something softer and more familiar. Who could have built such a place? Leto? It would be like him to surprise me with such a gift, but there hasn't been time. And he's been busy with more serious problems.
   She recalled the report that many Arrakeen houses were sealed by airlock doors and windows to conserve and reclaim interior moisture. Leto had said it was a deliberate statement of power and wealth for this house to ignore such precautions, its doors and windows being sealed only against the omnipresent dust.
   But this room embodied a statement far more significant than the lack of waterseals on outer doors. She estimated that this pleasure room used water enough to support a thousand persons on Arrakis–possibly more.
   Jessica moved along the window, continuing to stare into the room. The move brought into view a metallic surface at table height beside the fountain and she glimpsed a white notepad and stylus there partly concealed by an overhanging fan leaf. She crossed to the table, noted Hawat's daysigns on it, studied a message written on the pad:

   "TO THE LADY JESSICA–
   May this place give you as much pleasure as it has given me. Please permit the room to convey a lesson we learned from the same teachers: the proximity of a desirable thing tempts one to overindulgence. On that path lies danger.
   My kindest wishes,
   MARGOT LADY FENRING"

   Jessica nodded, remembering that Leto had referred to the Emperor's former proxy here as Count Fenring. But the hidden message of the note demanded immediate attention, couched as it was in a way to inform her the writer was another Bene Gesserit. A bitter thought touched Jessica in passing: The Count married his Lady.
   Even as this thought flicked through her mind, she was bending to seek out the hidden message. It had to be there. The visible note contained the code phrase every Bene Gesserit not bound by a School Injunction was required to give another Bene Gesserit when conditions demanded it: “On that path lies danger.”
   Jessica felt the back of the note, rubbed the surface for coded dots. Nothing. The edge of the pad came under her seeking fingers. Nothing. She replaced the pad where she had found it, feeling a sense of urgency.
   Something in the position of the pad? she wondered.
   But Hawat had been over this room, doubtless had moved the pad. She looked at the leaf above the pad. The leaf! She brushed a finger along the under surface, along the edge, along the stem. It was there! Her fingers detected the subtle coded dots, scanned them in a single passage:
   “Your son and Duke are in immediate danger. A bedroom has been designed to attract your son. The H loaded it with death traps to be discovered, leaving one that may escape detection.” Jessica put down the urge to run back to Paul; the full message had to be learned. Her fingers sped over the dots; “I do not know the exact nature of the menace, but it has something to do with a bed. The threat to your Duke involves defection of a trusted companion or lieutenant. The H plan to give you as gift to a minion. To the best of my knowledge, this conservatory is safe. Forgive that I cannot tell more. My sources are few as my Count is not in the pay of the H. In haste, MF.”
   Jessica thrust the leaf aside, whirled to dash back to Paul. In that instant, the airlock door slammed open. Paul jumped through it, holding something in his right hand, slammed the door behind him. He saw his mother, pushed through the leaves to her, glanced at the fountain, thrust his hand and the thing it clutched under the falling water.
   “Paul!” She grabbed his shoulder, staring at the hand. “What is that?”
   He spoke casually, but she caught the effort behind the tone: “Hunter-seeker. Caught it in my room and smashed its nose, but I want to be sure. Water should short it out.”
   “Immerse it!” she commanded.
   He obeyed.
   Presently, she said: “Withdraw your hand. Leave the thing in the water.”
   He brought out his hand, shook water from it, staring at the quiescent metal in the fountain. Jessica broke off a plant stem, prodded the deadly sliver.
   It was dead.
   She dropped the stem into the water, looked at Paul. His eyes studied the room with a searching intensity that she recognized–the B.G. Way.
   “This place could conceal anything,” he said.
   “I've reason to believe it's safe,” she said.
   “My room was supposed to be safe, too. Hawat said–”
   “It was a hunter-seeker,” she reminded him “That means someone inside the house to operate it. Seeker control beams have a limited range. The thing could've been spirited in here after Hawat's investigation.”
   But she thought of the message of the leaf: " . . . defection of a trusted companion or lieutenant." Not Hawat, surely. Oh, surely not Hawat.
   “Hawat's men are searching the house right now,” he said. “That seeker almost got the old woman who came to wake me.”
   “The Shadout Mapes,” Jessica said, remembering the encounter at the stairs. “A summons from your father to–”
   “That can wait,” Paul said. “Why do you think this room's safe?”
   She pointed to the note, explained about it.
   He relaxed slightly.
   But Jessica remained inwardly tense, thinking: A hunter-seeker! Merciful Mother! It took all her training to prevent a fit of hysterical trembling.
   Paul spoke matter of factly: “It's the Harkonnens, of course. We shall have to destroy them.”
   A rapping sounded at the airlock door–the code knock of one of Hawat's corps.
   “Come in,” Paul called.
   The door swung wide and a tall man in Atreides uniform with a Hawat insignia on his cap leaned into the room. “There you are, sir,” he said. “The housekeeper said you'd be here.” He glanced around the room. “We found a cairn in the cellar and caught a man in it. He had a seeker console.”
   “I'll want to take part in the interrogation,” Jessica said.
   “Sorry, my Lady. We messed him up catching him. He died.”
   “Nothing to identify him?” she asked.
   “We've found nothing yet, my Lady.”
   “Was he an Arrakeen native?” Paul asked.
   Jessica nodded at the astuteness of the question.
   “He has the native look,” the man said. “Put into that cairn more'n a month ago, by the look, and left there to await our coming. Stone and mortar where he came through into the cellar were untouched when we inspected the place yesterday. I'll stake my reputation on it.”
   “No one questions your thoroughness,” Jessica said.
   “I question it, my Lady. We should've used sonic probes down there.”
   “I presume that's what you're doing now,” Paul said.
   “Yes, sir.”
   “Send word to my father that we'll be delayed.”
   “At once, sir.” He glanced at Jessica. “It's Hawat's order that under such circumstances as these the young master be guarded in a safe place.” Again, his eyes swept the room. “What of this place?”
   “I've reason to believe it safe,” she said. “Both Hawat and I have inspected it.”
   “Then I'll mount guard outside here, m'Lady, until we've been over the house once more.” He bowed, touched his cap to Paul, backed out and swung the door closed behind him.
   Paul broke the sudden silence, saying: “Had we better go over the house later ourselves? Your eyes might see things others would miss.”
   "This wing was the only place I hadn't examined," she said. "I put if off to last because . . . "
   “Because Hawat gave it his personal attention,” he said.
   She darted a quick look at his face, questioning.
   “Do you distrust Hawat?” she asked.
   “No, but he's getting old . . . he's overworked. We could take some of the load from him.”
   "That'd only shame him and impair his efficiency," she said. "A stray insect won't be able to wander into this wing after he hears about this. He'll be shamed that . . . "
   “We must take our own measures,” he said.
   “Hawat has served three generations of Atreides with honor,” she said. “He deserves every respect and trust we can pay him . . . many times over.”
   Paul said: “When my father is bothered by something you've done he says 'Bene Gesserit!' like a swear word.”
   “And what is it about me that bothers your father?”
   “When you argue with him.”
   “You are not your father, Paul.”
   And Paul thought: It'll worry her, but I must tell her what that Mapes woman said about a traitor among us.
   “What're you holding back?” Jessica asked. “This isn't like you, Paul.”
   He shrugged, recounted the exchange with Mapes.
   And Jessica thought of the message of the leaf. She came to sudden decision, showed Paul the leaf, told him its message.
   “My father must learn of this at once,” he said. “I'll radiograph it in code and get if off.”
   “No,” she said. “You will wait until you can see him alone. As few as possible must learn about it.”
   “Do you mean we should trust no one?”
   “There's another possibility,” she said. “This message may have been meant to get to us. The people who gave it to us may believe it's true, but it may be that the only purpose was to get this message to us.”
   Paul's face remained sturdily somber. “To sow distrust and suspicion in our ranks, to weaken us that way,” he said.
   "You must tell your father privately and caution him about this aspect of it, " she said.
   “I understand.”
   She turned to the tall reach of filter glass, stared out to the southwest where the sun of Arrakis was sinking–a yellowed ball above the cliffs.
   Paul turned with her, said: “I don't think it's Hawat, either. Is it possible it's Yueh?”
   “He's not a lieutenant or companion,” she said. “And I can assure you he hates the Harkonnens as bitterly as we do.”
   Paul directed his attention to the cliffs, thinking: And it couldn't be Gurney . . . or Duncan. Could it be one of the sub-lieutenants? Impossible. They're all from families that've been loyal to us for generations–for good reason.
   Jessica rubbed her forehead, sensing her own fatigue. So much peril here! She looked out at the filter-yellowed landscape, studying it. Beyond the ducal grounds stretched a high-fenced storage yard–lines of spice silos in it with stilt-legged watchtowers standing around it like so many startled spiders. She could see at least twenty storage yards of silos reaching out to the cliffs of the Shield Wall–silos repeated, stuttering across the basin.
   Slowly, the filtered sun buried itself beneath the horizon. Stars leaped out. She saw one bright star so low on the horizon that it twinkled with a clear, precise rhythm–a trembling of light: blink-blink-blink-blink-blink . . .
   Paul stirred beside her in the dusky room.
   But Jessica concentrated on that single bright star, realizing that it was too low, that it must come from the Shield Wall cliffs.
   Someone signaling!
   She tried to read the message, but it was in no code she had ever learned.
   Other lights had come on down on the plain beneath the cliffs: little yellows spaced out against blue darkness. And one light off to their left grew brighter, began to wink back at the cliff–very fast: blinksquirt, glimmer, blink!
   And it was gone.
   The false star in the cliff winked out immediately.
   Signals . . . and they filled her with premonition.
   Why were lights used to signal across the basin? she asked herself. Why couldn't they use the communications network?
   The answer was obvious: the communinet was certain to be tapped now by agents of the Duke Leto. Light signals could only mean that messages were being sent between his enemies–between Harkonnen agents.
   There came a tapping at the door behind them and the voice of Hawat's man; “All clear, sir . . . m'Lady. Time to be getting the young master to his father.”

= = = = = =

   It is said that the Duke Leto blinded himself to the perils of Arrakis, that he walked heedlessly into the pit. Would it not be more likely to suggest he had lived so long in the presence of extreme danger he misjudged a change in its intensity? Or is it possible he deliberately sacrificed himself that his son might find a better life? All evidence indicates the Duke was a man not easily hoodwinked.
   –from “Muad'Dib: Family Commentaries” by the Princess Irulan

   The Duke Leto Atreides leaned against a parapet of the landing control tower outside Arrakeen. The night's first moon, an oblate silver coin, hung well above the southern horizon. Beneath it, the jagged cliffs of the Shield Wall shone like parched icing through a dust haze. To his left, the lights of Arrakeen glowed in the haze–yellow . . . white . . . blue.
   He thought of the notices posted now above his signature all through the populous places of the planet: “Our Sublime Padishah Emperor has charged me to take possession of this planet and end all dispute.”
   The ritualistic formality of it touched him with a feeling of loneliness. Who was fooled by that fatuous legalism? Not the Fremen, certainly. Nor the Houses Minor who controlled the interior trade of Arrakis . . . and were Harkonnen creatures almost to a man.
   They have tried to take the life of my son!
   The rage was difficult to suppress.
   He saw lights of a moving vehicle coming toward the landing field from Arrakeen. He hoped it was the guard and troop carrier bringing Paul. The delay was galling even though he knew it was prompted by caution on the part of Hawat's lieutenant.
   They have tried to take the life of my son!
   He shook his head to drive out the angry thoughts, glanced back at the field where five of his own frigates were posted around the rim like monolithic sentries.
   Better a cautious delay than . . .
   The lieutenant was a good one, he reminded himself. A man marked for advancement, completely loyal.
   "Our Sublime Padishah Emperor . . . "
   If the people of this decadent garrison city could only see the Emperor's private note to his "Noble Duke"–the disdainful allusions to veiled men and women: " . . . but what else is one to expect of barbarians whose dearest dream is to live outside the ordered security of the faufreluches?"
   The Duke felt in this moment that his own dearest dream was to end all class distinctions and never again think of deadly order. He looked up and out of the dust at the unwinking stars, thought: Around one of those little lights circles Caladan . . . but I'll never again see my home. The longing for Caladan was a sudden pain in his breast. He felt that it did not come from within himself, but that it reached out to him from Caladan. He could not bring himself to call this dry wasteland of Arrakis his home, and he doubted he ever would.
   I must mask my feelings, he thought. For the boy's sake. If ever he's to have a home, this must be it. I may think of Arrakis as a hell I've reached before death, but he must find here that which will inspire him. There must be something.
   A wave of self-pity, immediately despised and rejected, swept through him, and for some reason he found himself recalling two lines from a poem Gurney Halleck often repeated–

   "My lungs taste the air of Time
   Blown past falling sands . . . "

   Well, Gurney would find plenty of falling sands here, the Duke thought. The central wastelands beyond those moon-frosted cliffs were desert–barren rock, dunes, and blowing dust, an uncharted dry wilderness with here and there along its rim and perhaps scattered through it, knots of Fremen. If anything could buy a future for the Atreides line, the Fremen just might do it.
   Provided the Harkonnens hadn't managed to infect even the Fremen with their poisonous schemes.
   They have tried to take the life of my son!
   A scraping metal racket vibrated through the tower, shook the parapet beneath his arms. Blast shutters dropped in front of him, blocking the view.
   Shuttle's coming in, he thought. Time to go down and get to work. He turned to the stairs behind him, headed down to the big assembly room, trying to remain calm as he descended, to prepare his face for the coming encounter.
   They have tried to take the life of my son!
   The men were already boiling in from the field when he reached the yellow-domed room. They carried their spacebags over their shoulders, shouting and roistering like students returning from vacation.
   “Hey! Feel that under your dogs? That's gravity, man!” “How many G's does this place pull? Feels heavy.” “Nine-tenths of a G by the book.”
   The crossfire of thrown words filled the big room.
   “Did you get a good look at this hole on the way down? Where's all the loot this place's supposed to have?” “The Harkonnens took it with 'em!” “Me for a hot shower and a soft bed!” “Haven't you heard, stupid? No showers down here. You scrub your ass with sand!” “Hey! Can it! The Duke!”
   The Duke stepped out of the stair entry into a suddenly silent room.
   Gurney Halleck strode along at the point of the crowd, bag over one shoulder, the neck of his nine-string baliset clutched in the other hand. They were long-fingered hands with big thumbs, full of tiny movements that drew such delicate music from the baliset.
   The Duke watched Halleck, admiring the ugly lump of a man, noting the glass-splinter eyes with their gleam of savage understanding. Here was a man who lived outside the faufreluches while obeying their every precept. What was it Paul had called him?
   “Gurney, the valorous.”
   Halleck's wispy blond hair trailed across barren spots on his head. His wide mouth was twisted into a pleasant sneer, and the scar of the inkvine whip slashed across his jawline seemed to move with a life of its own. His whole air was of casual, shoulder-set capability. He came up to the Duke, bowed.
   “Gurney,” Leto said.
   "My Lord." He gestured with the baliset toward the men in the room. "This is the last of them. I'd have preferred coming in with the first wave, but . . . "
   “There are still some Harkonnens for you,” the Duke said. “Step aside with me, Gurney, where we may talk.”
   “Yours to command, my Lord.”
   They moved into an alcove beside a coil-slot water machine while the men stirred restlessly in the big room. Halleck dropped his bag into a corner, kept his grip on the baliset.
   “How many men can you let Hawat have?” the Duke asked.
   “Is Thufir in trouble. Sire?”
   “He's lost only two agents, but his advance men gave us an excellent line on the entire Harkonnen setup here. If we move fast we may gain a measure of security, the breathing space we require. He wants as many men as you can spare–men who won't balk at a little knife work.”
   “I can let him have three hundred of my best,” Halleck said. “Where shall I send them?”
   “To the main gate. Hawat has an agent there waiting to take them.”
   “Shall I get about it at once, Sire?”
   “In a moment. We have another problem. The field commandant will hold the shuttle here until dawn on a pretext. The Guild Heighliner that brought us is going on about its business, and the shuttle's supposed to make contact with a cargo ship taking up a load of spice.”
   “Our spice, m'Lord?”
   “Our spice. But the shuttle also will carry some of the spice hunters from the old regime. They've opted to leave with the change of fief and the Judge of the Change is allowing it. These are valuable workers, Gurney, about eight hundred of them. Before the shuttle leaves, you must persuade some of those men to enlist with us.”
   “How strong a persuasion, Sire?”
   “I want their willing cooperation, Gurney. Those men have experience and skills we need. The fact that they're leaving suggests they're not part of the Harkonnen machine. Hawat believes there could be some bad ones planted in the group, but he sees assassins in every shadow.”
   “Thufir has found some very productive shadows in his time, m'Lord.”
   “And there are some he hasn't found. But I think planting sleepers in this outgoing crowd would show too much imagination for the Harkonnens.”
   “Possibly, Sire. Where are these men?”
   “Down on the lower level, in a waiting room. I suggest you go down and play a tune or two to soften their minds, then turn on the pressure. You may offer positions of authority to those who qualify. Offer twenty per cent higher wages than they received under the Harkonnens.”
   “No more than that, Sire? I know the Harkonnen pay scales. And to men with their termination pay in their pockets and the wanderlust on them . . . well. Sire, twenty per cent would hardly seem proper inducement to stay.”
   Leto spoke impatiently: “Then use your own discretion in particular cases. Just remember that the treasury isn't bottomless. Hold it to twenty per cent whenever you can. We particularly need spice drivers, weather scanners, dune men–any with open sand experience.”
   "I understand, Sire. 'They shall come all for violence: their faces shall sup up as the east wind, and they shall gather the captivity of the sand.' "
   “A very moving quotation,” the Duke said. “Turn your crew over to a lieutenant. Have him give a short drill on water discipline, then bed the men down for the night in the barracks adjoining the field. Field personnel will direct them. And don't forget the men for Hawat.”
   “Three hundred of the best, Sire.” He took up his spacebag. “Where shall I report to you when I've completed my chores?”
   “I've taken over a council room topside here. We'll hold staff there. I want to arrange a new planetary dispersal order with armored squads going out first.”
   Halleck stopped in the act of turning away, caught Leto's eye. “Are you anticipating that kind of trouble, Sire? I thought there was a Judge of the Change here.”
   “Both open battle and secret,” the Duke said. “There'll be blood aplenty spilled here before we're through.”
   " 'And the water which thou takest out of the river shall become blood upon the dry land,' " Halleck quoted.
   The Duke sighed. “Hurry back, Gurney.”
   “Very good, m'Lord.” The whipscar rippled to his grin. " 'Behold, as a wild ass in the desert, go I forth to my work.' " He turned, strode to the center of the room, paused to relay his orders, hurried on through the men.
   Leto shook his head at the retreating back. Halleck was a continual amazement–a head full of songs, quotations, and flowery phrases . . . and the heart of an assassin when it came to dealing with the Harkonnens.
   Presently, Leto took a leisurely diagonal course across to the lift, acknowledging salutes with a casual hand wave. He recognized a propaganda corpsman, stopped to give him a message that could be relayed to the men through channels: those who had brought their women would want to know the women were safe and where they could be found. The others would wish to know that the population here appeared to boast more women than men.
   The Duke slapped the propaganda man on the arm, a signal that the message had top priority to be put out immediately, then continued across the room. He nodded to the men, smiled, traded pleasantries with a subaltern.
   Command must always look confident, he thought. All that faith riding on your shoulders while you sit in the critical seat and never show it.
   He breathed a sigh of relief when the lift swallowed him and he could turn and face the impersonal doors.
   They have tried to take the life of my son!

= = = = = =

   Over the exit of the Arrakeen landing field, crudely carved as though with a poor instrument, there was an inscription that Muad'Dib was to repeat many times. He saw it that first night on Arrakis, having been brought to the ducal command post to participate in his father's first full staff conference. The words of the inscription were a plea to those leaving Arrakis, but they fell with dark import on the eyes of a boy who had just escaped a close brush with death. They said: "O you who know what we suffer here, do not forget us in your prayers. "
   –from “Manual of Muad'Dib” by the Princess Irulan

   “The whole theory of warfare is calculated risk,” the Duke said, “but when it comes to risking your own family, the element of calculation gets submerged in . . . other things.”
   He knew he wasn't holding in his anger as well as he should, and he turned, strode down the length of the long table and back.
   The Duke and Paul were alone in the conference room at the landing field. It was an empty-sounding room, furnished only with the long table, old-fashioned three-legged chairs around it, and a map board and projector at one end. Paul sat at the table near the map board. He had told his father the experience with the hunter-seeker and given the reports that a traitor threatened him.
   The Duke stopped across from Paul, pounded the table: “Hawat told me that house was secure!”
   Paul spoke hesitantly: “I was angry, too–at first. And I blamed Hawat. But the threat came from outside the house. It was simple, clever, and direct. And it would've succeeded were it not for the training given me by you and many others–including Hawat.”
   “Are you defending him?” the Duke demanded.
   “Yes.”
   “He's getting old. That's it. He should be–”
   “He's wise with much experience,” Paul said. “How many of Hawat's mistakes can you recall?”
   “I should be the one defending him,” the Duke said. “Not you.”
   Paul smiled.
   Leto sat down at the head of the table, put a hand over his son's. “You've . . . matured lately, Son.” He lifted his hand. “It gladdens me.” He matched his son's smile. “Hawat will punish himself. He'll direct more anger against himself over this than both of us together could pour on him.”
   Paul glanced toward the darkened windows beyond the map board, looked at the night's blackness. Room lights reflected from a balcony railing out there. He saw movement and recognized the shape of a guard in Atreides uniform. Paul looked back at the white wall behind his father, then down to the shiny surface of the table, seeing his own hands clenched into fists there.
   The door opposite the Duke banged open. Thufir Hawat strode through it looking older and more leathery than ever. He paced down the length of the table, stopped at attention facing Leto.
   “My Lord,” he said, speaking to a point over Leto's head, “I have just learned how I failed you. It becomes necessary that I tender my resig–”
   “Oh, sit down and stop acting the fool,” the Duke said. He waved to the chair across from Paul. “If you made a mistake, it was in overestimating the Harkonnens. Their simple minds came up with a simple trick. We didn't count on simple tricks. And my son has been at great pains to point out to me that he came through this largely because of your training. You didn't fail there!” He tapped the back of the empty chair. “Sit down, I say!”
   Hawat sank into the chair. “But–”
   “I'll hear no more of it,” the Duke said. “The incident is past. We have more pressing business. Where are the others?”
   “I asked them to wait outside while I–”
   “Call them in.”
   Hawat looked into Leto's eyes. “Sire, I–”
   “I know who my true friends are, Thufir,” the Duke said. “Call in the men.”
   Hawat swallowed. “At once, my Lord.” He swiveled in the chair, called to the open door: “Gurney, bring them in.”
   Halleck led the file of men into the room, the staff officers looking grimly serious followed by the younger aides and specialists, an air of eagerness among them. Brief scuffing sounds echoed around the room as the men took seats. A faint smell of rachag stimulant wafted down the table.
   “There's coffee for those who want it,” the Duke said.
   He looked over his men, thinking: They're a good crew. A man could do far worse for this kind of war. He waited while coffee was brought in from the adjoining room and served, noting the tiredness in some of the faces.
   Presently, he put on his mask of quiet efficiency, stood up and commanded their attention with a knuckle rap against the table.
   “Well, gentlemen,” he said, “our civilization appears to've fallen so deeply into the habit of invasion that we cannot even obey a simple order of the Imperium without the old ways cropping up.”
   Dry chuckles sounded around the table, and Paul realized that his father had said the precisely correct thing in precisely the correct tone to lift the mood here. Even the hint of fatigue in his voice was right.
   “I think first we'd better learn if Thufir has anything to add to his report on the Fremen,” the Duke said. “Thufir?”
   Hawat glanced up. “I've some economic matters to go into after my general report, Sire, but I can say now that the Fremen appear more and more to be the allies we need. They're waiting now to see if they can trust us, but they appear to be dealing openly. They've sent us a gift–stillsuits of their own manufacture . . . maps of certain desert areas surrounding strongpoints the Harkonnens left behind, . . .” He glanced down at the table. “Their intelligence reports have proved completely reliable and have helped us considerably in our dealings with the Judge of the Change. They've also sent some incidental things–jewelry for the Lady Jessica, spice liquor, candy, medicinals. My men are processing the lot right now. There appears to be no trickery.”
   “You like these people, Thufir?” asked a man down the table.
   Hawat turned to face his questioner. “Duncan Idaho says they're to be admired.”
   Paul glanced at his father, back to Hawat, ventured a question: “Have you any new information on how many Fremen there are?”
   Hawat looked at Paul. “From food processing and other evidence, Idaho estimates the cave complex he visited consisted of some ten thousand people, all told. Their leader said he ruled a sietch of two thousand hearths. We've reason to believe there are a great many such sietch communities. All seem to give their allegiance to someone called Liet.”
   “That's something new,” Leto said.
   “It could be an error on my part, Sire. There are things to suggest this Liet may be a local deity.”
   Another man down the table cleared his throat, asked: “Is it certain they deal with the smugglers?”
   “A smuggler caravan left this sietch while Idaho was there, carrying a heavy load of spice. They used pack beasts and indicated they faced an eighteen-day journey.”
   “It appears,” the Duke said, “that the smugglers have redoubled their operations during this period of unrest. This deserves some careful thought. We shouldn't worry too much about unlicensed frigates working off our planet–it's always done. But to have them completely outside our observation–that's not good.”
   “You have a plan. Sire,” Hawat asked.
   The Duke looked at Halleck. “Gurney, I want you to head a delegation, an embassy if you will, to contact these romantic businessmen. Tell them I'll ignore their operations as long as they give me a ducal tithe. Hawat here estimates that graft and extra fighting men heretofore required in their operations have been costing them four times that amount.”
   “What if the Emperor gets wind of this?” Halleck asked. “He's very jealous of his CHOAM profits, m'Lord.”
   Leto smiled. “We'll bank the entire tithe openly in the name of Shaddam IV and deduct it legally from our levy support costs. Let the Harkonnens fight that! And we'll be ruining a few more of the locals who grew fat under the Harkonnen system. No more graft!”
   A grin twisted Halleck's face. “Ahh, m'Lord, a beautiful low blow. Would that I could see the Baron's face when he learns of this.”
   The Duke turned to Hawat. “Thufir, did you get those account books you said you could buy?”
   “Yes, my Lord. They're being examined in detail even now. I've skimmed them, though, and can give a first approximation.”
   “Give it, then.”
   “The Harkonnens took ten billion Solaris out of here every three hundred and thirty Standard days.”
   A muted gasp ran around the table. Even the younger aides, who had been betraying some boredom, sat up straighter and exchanged wide-eyed looks.
   Halleck murmured: " 'For they shall suck of the abundance of the seas and of the treasure hid in the sand.' "
   “You see, gentlemen,” Leto said. “Is there anyone here so naive he believes the Harkonnens have quietly packed up and walked away from all this merely because the Emperor ordered it?”
   There was a general shaking of heads, murmurous agreement.
   “We will have to take it at the point of the sword,” Leto said. He turned to Hawat. “This'd be a good point to report on equipment. How many sandcrawlers, harvesters, spice factories, and supporting equipment have they left us?”
   “A full complement, as it says in the Imperial inventory audited by the Judge of the Change, my Lord,” Hawat said. He gestured for an aide to pass him a folder, opened the folder on the table in front of him. “They neglect to mention that less than half the crawlers are operable, that only about a third have carryalls to fly them to spice sands–that everything the Harkonnens left us is ready to break down and fall apart. We'll be lucky to get half the equipment into operation and luckier yet if a fourth of it's still working six months from now.”
   “Pretty much as we expected,” Leto said. “What's the firm estimate on basic equipment?”
   Hawat glanced at his folder. “About nine hundred and thirty harvester-factories that can be sent out in a few days. About sixty-two hundred and fifty ornithopters for survey, scouting, and weather observation . . . carryalls, a little under a thousand.”
   Halleck said: “Wouldn't it be cheaper to reopen negotiations with the Guild for permission to orbit a frigate as a weather satellite?”
   The Duke looked at Hawat. “Nothing new there, eh, Thufir?”
   “We must pursue other avenues for now,” Hawat said. “The Guild agent wasn't really negotiating with us. He was merely making it plain–one Mentat to another–that the price was out of our reach and would remain so no matter how long a reach we develop. Our task is to find out why before we approach him again.”
   One of Halleck's aides down the table swiveled in his chair, snapped: “There's no justice in this!”
   “Justice?” The Duke looked at the man. “Who asks for justice? We make our own justice. We make it here on Arrakis–win or die, Do you regret casting your lot with us, sir?”
   The man stared at the Duke, then: "No, Sire. You couldn't turn and I could do nought but follow you. Forgive the outburst, but . . ." He shrugged. " . . . we must all feel bitter at times."
   “Bitterness I understand,” the Duke said. “But let us not rail about justice as long as we have arms and the freedom to use them. Do any of the rest of you harbor bitterness? If so, let it out. This is friendly council where any man may speak his mind.”
   Halleck stirred, said: “I think what rankles, Sire, is that we've had no volunteers from the other Great Houses. They address you as 'Leto the Just' and promise eternal friendship, but only as long as it doesn't cost them anything.”
   “They don't know yet who's going to win this exchange,” the Duke said. “Most of the Houses have grown fat by taking few risks. One cannot truly blame them for this; one can only despise them.” He looked at Hawat. “We were discussing equipment. Would you care to project a few examples to familiarize the men with this machinery?”
   Hawat nodded, gestured to an aide at the projector.
   A solido tri-D projection appeared on the table surface about a third of the way down from the Duke. Some of the men farther along the table stood up to get a better look at it.
   Paul leaned forward, staring at the machine.
   Scaled against the tiny projected human figures around it, the thing was about one hundred and twenty meters long and about forty meters wide. It was basically a long, bug-like body moving on independent sets of wide tracks.
   “This is a harvester factory,” Hawat said. “We chose one in good repair for this projection. There's one dragline outfit that came in with the first team of Imperial ecologists, though, and it's still running . . . although I don't know how . . . or why.”
   "If that's the one they call 'Old Maria,' it belongs in a museum," an aide said. "I think the Harkonnens kept it as a punishment job, a threat hanging over their workers' heads. Be good or you'll be assigned to 'Old Maria.' "
   Chuckles sounded around the table.
   Paul held himself apart from the humor, his attention focused on the projection and the question that filled his mind. He pointed to the image on the table, said: “Thufir, are there sandworms big enough to swallow that whole?”
   Quick silence settled on the table. The Duke cursed under his breath, then thought: No–they have to face the realities here.
   “There're worms in the deep desert could take this entire factory in one gulp,” Hawat said. “Up here closer to the Shield Wall where most of the spicing's done there are plenty of worms that could cripple this factory and devour it at their leisure.”
   “Why don't we shield them?” Paul asked.
   “According to Idaho's report,” Hawat said, “shields are dangerous in the desert. A body-size shield will call every worm for hundreds of meters around. It appears to drive them into a killing frenzy. We've the Fremen word on this and no reason to doubt it. Idaho saw no evidence of shield equipment at the sietch.”
   “None at all?” Paul asked.
   “It'd be pretty hard to conceal that kind of thing among several thousand people,” Hawat said. “Idaho had free access to every part of the sietch. He saw no shields or any indication of their use.”
   “It's a puzzle,” the Duke said.
   “The Harkonnens certainly used plenty of shields here,” Hawat said. “They had repair depots in every garrison village, and their accounts show a heavy expenditure for shield replacements and parts.”
   “Could the Fremen have a way of nullifying shields?” Paul asked.
   “It doesn't seem likely,” Hawat said. “It's theoretically possible, of course–a shire-sized static counter charge is supposed to do the trick, but no one's ever been able to put it to the test.”
   “We'd have heard about it before now,” Halleck said. “The smugglers have close contact with the Fremen and would've acquired such a device if it were available. And they'd have had no inhibitions against marketing it off planet.”
   “I don't like an unanswered question of this importance,” Leto said. “Thufir, I want you to give top priority to solution of this problem.”
   “We're already working on it, my Lord.” He cleared his throat. “Ah-h, Idaho did say one thing: he said you couldn't mistake the Fremen attitude toward shields. He said they were mostly amused by them.”
   The Duke frowned, then: “The subject under discussion is spicing equipment.”
   Hawat gestured to his aide at the projector.
   The solido-image of the harvester-factory was replaced by a projection of a winged device that dwarfed the images of human figures around it. “This is a carryall,” Hawat said. “It's essentially a large 'thopter, whose sole function is to deliver a factory to spice-rich sands, then to rescue the factory when a sandworm appears. They always appear. Harvesting the spice is a process of getting in and getting out with as much as possible.”
   “Admirably suited to Harkonnen morality,” the Duke said.
   Laughter was abrupt and too loud.
   An ornithopter replaced the carryall in the projection focus.
   “These 'thopters are fairly conventional,” Hawat said. “Major modifications give them extended range. Extra care has been used in sealing essential areas against sand and dust. Only about one in thirty is shielded–possibly discarding the shield generator's weight for greater range.”
   “I don't like this de-emphasis on shields,” the Duke muttered. And he thought: Is this the Harkonnen secret? Does it mean we won't even be able to escape on shielded frigates if all goes against us? He shook his head sharply to drive out such thoughts, said: “Let's get to the working estimate. What'll our profit figure be?”
   Hawat turned two pages in his notebook. “After assessing the repairs and operable equipment, we've worked out a first estimate on operating costs. It's based naturally on a depreciated figure for a clear safety margin.” He closed his eyes in Mentat semitrance, said: “Under the Harkonnens, maintenance and salaries were held to fourteen per cent. We'll be lucky to make it at thirty per cent at first. With reinvestment and growth factors accounted for, including the CHOAM percentage and military costs, our profit margin will be reduced to a very narrow six or seven per cent until we can replace worn-out equipment. We then should be able to boost it up to twelve or fifteen per cent where it belongs.” He opened his eyes. “Unless my Lord wishes to adopt Harkonnen methods.”
   “We're working for a solid and permanent planetary base,” the Duke said. “We have to keep a large percentage of the people happy–especially the Fremen.”
   “Most especially the Fremen,” Hawat agreed.
   “Our supremacy on Caladan,” the Duke said, “depended on sea and air power. Here, we must develop something I choose to call desert power. This may include air power, but it's possible it may not. I call your attention to the lack of 'thopter shields.” He shook his head. “The Harkonnens relied on turnover from off planet for some of their key personnel. We don't dare. Each new lot would have its quota of provocateurs.”
   “Then we'll have to be content with far less profit and a reduced harvest,” Hawat said. “Our output the first two seasons should be down a third from the Harkonnen average.”
   “There it is,” the Duke said, “exactly as we expected. We'll have to move fast with the Fremen. I'd like five full battalions of Fremen troops before the first CHOAM audit.”
   “That's not much time, Sire,” Hawat said.
   “We don't have much time, as you well know. They'll be here with Sardaukar disguised as Harkonnens at the first opportunity. How many do you think they'll ship in, Thufir?”
   “Four or five battalions all told, Sire. No more. Guild troop-transport costs being what they are.”
   “Then five battalions of Fremen plus our own forces ought to do it. Let us have a few captive Sardaukar to parade in front of the Landsraad Council and matters will be much different–profits or no profits.”
   “We'll do our best, Sire.”
   Paul looked at his father, back to Hawat, suddenly conscious of the Mentat's great age, aware that the old man had served three generations of Atreides. Aged. It showed in the rheumy shine of the brown eyes, in the cheeks cracked and burned by exotic weathers, in the rounded curve of the shoulders and the thin set of his lips with the cranberry-colored stain of sapho juice.
   So much depends on one aged man, Paul thought.
   “We're presently in a war of assassins,” the Duke said, “but it has not achieved full scale. Thufir, what's the condition of the Harkonnen machine here?”
   “We've eliminated two hundred and fifty-nine of their key people, my Lord. No more than three Harkonnen cells remain–perhaps a hundred people in all.”
   “These Harkonnen creatures you eliminated,” the Duke said, “were they propertied?”
   “Most were well situated, my Lord–in the entrepreneur class.”
   “I want you to forge certificates of allegiance over the signatures of each of them,” the Duke said. “File copies with the Judge of the Change. We'll take the legal position that they stayed under false allegiance. Confiscate their property, take everything, turn out their families, strip them. And make sure the Crown gets its ten per cent. It must be entirely legal.”
   Thufir smiled, revealing red-stained teeth beneath the carmine lips. “A move worthy of your grandsire, my Lord. It shames me I didn't think of it first.”
   Halleck frowned across the table, surprised a deep scowl on Paul's face. The others were smiling and nodding.
   It's wrong, Paul thought. This'll only make the others fight all the harder. They've nothing to gain by surrendering.
   He knew the actual no-holds-barred convention that ruled in kanly, but this was the sort of move that could destroy them even as it gave them victory.
   " 'I have been a stranger in a strange land,' " Halleck quoted.
   Paul stared at him, recognizing the quotation from the O.C. Bible, wondering: Does Gurney, too, wish an end to devious plots?
   The Duke glanced at the darkness out the windows, looked back at Halleck. “Gurney, how many of those sandworkers did you persuade to stay with us?”
   “Two hundred eighty-six in all, Sire. I think we should take them and consider ourselves lucky. They're all in useful categories.”
   “No more?” The Duke pursed his lips, then: “Well, pass the word along to–”
   A disturbance at the door interrupted him. Duncan Idaho came through the guard there, hurried down the length of the table and bent over the Duke's ear.
   Leto waved him back, said: “Speak out, Duncan. You can see this is strategy staff.”
   Paul studied Idaho, marking the feline movements, the swiftness of reflex that made him such a difficult weapons teacher to emulate. Idaho's dark round face turned toward Paul, the cave-sitter eyes giving no hint of recognition, but Paul recognized the mask of serenity over excitement.
   Idaho looked down the length of the table, said: “We've taken a force of Harkonnen mercenaries disguised as Fremen. The Fremen themselves sent us a courier to warn of the false band. In the attack, however, we found the Harkonnens had waylaid the Fremen courier–badly wounded him. We were bringing him here for treatment by our medics when he died. I'd seen how badly off the man was and stopped to do what I could. I surprised him in the attempt to throw something away.” Idaho glanced down at Leto. “A knife, m'Lord, a knife the like of which you've never seen.”
   “Crysknife?” someone asked.
   “No doubt of it,” Idaho said. “Milky white and glowing with a light of its own like.” He reached into his tunic, brought out a sheath with a black-ridged handle protruding from it.
   “Keep that blade in its sheath!”
   The voice came from the open door at the end of the room, a vibrant and penetrating voice that brought them all up, staring.
   A tall, robed figure stood in the door, barred by the crossed swords of the guard. A light tan robe completely enveloped the man except for a gap in the hood and black veil that exposed eyes of total blue–no white in them at all.
   “Let him enter,” Idaho whispered.
   “Pass that man,” the Duke said.
   The guards hesitated, then lowered their swords.
   The man swept into the room, stood across from the Duke.
   “This is Stilgar, chief of the sietch I visited, leader of those who warned us of the false band,” Idaho said.
   “Welcome, sir,” Leto said. “And why shouldn't we unsheath this blade?”
   Stilgar glanced at Idaho, said: “You observed the customs of cleanliness and honor among us. I would permit you to see the blade of the man you befriended.” His gaze swept the others in the room. “But I do not know these others. Would you have them defile an honorable weapon?”
   “I am the Duke Leto,” the Duke said. “Would you permit me to see this blade?”
   “I'll permit you to earn the right to unsheath it,” Stilgar said, and, as a mutter of protest sounded around the table, he raised a thin, darkly veined hand. “I remind you this is the blade of one who befriended you.”
   In the waiting silence, Paul studied the man, sensing the aura of power that radiated from him. He was a leader–a Fremen leader.
   A man near the center of the table across from Paul muttered: “Who's he to tell us what rights we have on Arrakis?”
   “It is said that the Duke Leto Atreides rules with the consent of the governed,” the Fremen said. “Thus I must tell you the way it is with us: a certain responsibility falls on those who have seen a crysknife.” He passed a dark glance across Idaho. “They are ours. They may never leave Arrakis without our consent.”
   Halleck and several of the others started to rise, angry expressions on their faces. Halleck said: “The Duke Leto determines whether–”
   “One moment, please,” Leto said, and the very mildness of his voice held them. This must not get out of hand, he thought. He addressed himself to the Fremen: “Sir, I honor and respect the personal dignity of any man who respects my dignity. I am indeed indebted to you. And I always pay my debts. If it is your custom that this knife remain sheathed here, then it is so ordered–by me. And if there is any other way we may honor the man who died in our service, you have but to name it.”
   The Fremen stared at the Duke, then slowly pulled aside his veil, revealing a thin nose and full-lipped mouth in a glistening black beard. Deliberately he bent over the end of the table, spat on its polished surface.
   As the men around the table started to surge to their feet, Idaho's voice boomed across the room: “Hold!”
   Into the sudden charged stillness, Idaho said: “We thank you, Stilgar, for the gift of your body's moisture. We accept it in the spirit with which it is given.” And Idaho spat on the table in front of the Duke.
   Aside to the Duke, he said; “Remember how precious water is here, Sire. That was a token of respect.”
   Leto sank back into his own chair, caught Paul's eye, a rueful grin on his son's face, sensed the slow relaxation of tension around the table as understanding came to his men.
   The Fremen looked at Idaho, said: “You measured well in my sietch, Duncan Idaho. Is there a bond on your allegiance to your Duke?”
   “He's asking me to enlist with him. Sire,” Idaho said.
   “Would he accept a dual allegiance?” Leto asked.
   “You wish me to go with him, Sire?”
   “I wish you to make your own decision in the matter,” Leto said, and he could not keep the urgency out of his voice.
   Idaho studied the Fremen. “Would you have me under these conditions, Stilgar? There'd be times when I'd have to return to serve my Duke.”
   “You fight well and you did your best for our friend,” Stilgar said. He looked at Leto. “Let it be thus: the man Idaho keeps the crysknife he holds as a mark of his allegiance to us. He must be cleansed, of course, and the rites observed, but this can be done. He will be Fremen and soldier of the Atreides. There is precedent for this: Liet serves two masters.”
   “Duncan?” Leto asked.
   “I understand, Sire,” Idaho said.
   “It is agreed, then,” Leto said.
   “Your water is ours, Duncan Idaho.” Stilgar said. “The body of our friend remains with your Duke. His water is Atreides water. It is a bond between us.”
   Leto sighed, glanced at Hawat, catching the old Mentat's eye. Hawat nodded, his expression pleased.
   “I will await below,” Stilgar said, “while Idaho makes farewell with his friends. Turok was the name of our dead friend. Remember that when it comes time to release his spirit. You are friends of Turok.”
   Stilgar started to turn away.
   “Will you not stay a while?” Leto asked.
   The Fremen turned back, whipping his veil into place with a casual gesture, adjusting something beneath it. Paul glimpsed what looked like a thin tube before the veil settled into place.
   “Is there reason to stay?” the Fremen asked.
   “We would honor you,” the Duke said.
   “Honor requires that I be elsewhere soon,” the Fremen said. He shot another glance at Idaho, whirled, and strode out past the door guards.
   “If the other Fremen match him, we'll serve each other well,” Leto said.
   Idaho spoke in a dry voice: “He's a fair sample, Sire.”
   “You understand what you're to do, Duncan?”
   “I'm your ambassador to the Fremen, Sire.”
   “Much depends on you, Duncan. We're going to need at least five battalions of those people before the Sardaukar descend on us.”
   “This is going to take some doing, Sire. The Fremen are a pretty independent bunch.” Idaho hesitated, then: “And, Sire, there's one other thing. One of the mercenaries we knocked over was trying to get this blade from our dead Fremen friend. The mercenary says there's a Harkonnen reward of a million Solaris for anyone who'll bring in a single crysknife.”
   Leto's chin came up in a movement of obvious surprise. “Why do they want one of those blades so badly?”
   "The knife is ground from a sandworm's tooth; it's the mark of the Fremen, Sire. With it, a blue-eyed man could penetrate any sietch in the land. They'd question me unless I were known. I don't look Fremen. But . . . "
   “Piter de Vries,” the Duke said.
   “A man of devilish cunning, my Lord,” Hawat said.
   Idaho slipped the sheathed knife beneath his tunic.
   “Guard that knife,” the Duke said.
   “I understand, m'Lord.” He patted the transceiver on his belt kit. “I'll report soon as possible. Thufir has my call code. Use battle language.” He saluted, spun about, and hurried after the Fremen.
   They heard his footsteps drumming down the corridor.
   A look of understanding passed between Leto and Hawat. They smiled.
   “We've much to do, Sire,” Halleck said.
   “And I keep you from your work,” Leto said.
   “I have the report on the advance bases,” Hawat said. “Shall I give it another time, Sire?”
   “Will it take long?”
   “Not for a briefing. It's said among the Fremen that there were more than two hundred of these advance bases built here on Arrakis during the Desert Botanical Testing Station period. All supposedly have been abandoned, but there are reports they were sealed off before being abandoned.”
   “Equipment in them?” the Duke asked.
   “According to the reports I have from Duncan.”
   “Where are they located?” Halleck asked.
   "The answer to that question," Hawat said, "is invariably: 'Liet knows.' "
   “God knows,” Leto muttered.
   “Perhaps not. Sire,” Hawat said. “You heard this Stilgar use the name. Could he have been referring to a real person?”
   “Serving two masters,” Halleck said. “It sounds like a religious quotation.”
   “And you should know,” the Duke said.
   Halleck smiled.
   “This Judge of the Change,” Leto said, “the Imperial ecologist–Kynes . . . Wouldn't he know where those bases are?”
   “Sire,” Hawat cautioned, “this Kynes is an Imperial servant.”
   “And he's a long way from the Emperor,” Leto said. “I want those bases. They'd be loaded with materials we could salvage and use for repair of our working equipment.”
   “Sire!” Hawat said. “Those bases are still legally His Majesty's fief.”
   “The weather here's savage enough to destroy anything,” the Duke said. “We can always blame the weather. Get this Kynes and at least find out if the bases exist.”
   " 'Twere dangerous to commandeer them," Hawat said. "Duncan was clear on one thing: those bases or the idea of them hold some deep significance for the Fremen. We might alienate the Fremen if we took those bases."
   Paul looked at the faces of the men around them, saw the intensity of the way they followed every word. They appeared deeply disturbed by his father's attitude.
   “Listen to him, Father,” Paul said in a low voice. “He speaks truth.”
   “Sire,” Hawat said, “those bases could give us material to repair every piece of equipment left us, yet be beyond reach for strategic reasons. It'd be rash to move without greater knowledge. This Kynes has arbiter authority from the Imperium. We mustn't forget that. And the Fremen defer to him.”
   “Do it gently, then,” the Duke said. “I wish to know only if those bases exist.”
   “As you will, Sire.” Hawat sat back, lowered his eyes.
   “All right, then,” the Duke said. “We know what we have ahead of us–work. We've been trained for it. We've some experience in it. We know what the rewards are and the alternatives are clear enough. You all have your assignments.” He looked at Halleck. “Gurney, take care of that smuggler situation first.”
   " 'I shall go unto the rebellious that dwell in the dry land,' " Halleck intoned.
   “Someday I'll catch that man without a quotation and he'll look undressed,” the Duke said.
   Chuckles echoed around the table, but Paul heard the effort in them.
   The Duke turned to Hawat. “Set up another command post for intelligence and communications on this floor, Thufir. When you have them ready, I'll want to see you.”
   Hawat arose, glanced around the room as though seeking support. He turned away, led the procession out of the room. The others moved hurriedly, scraping their chairs on the floor, balling up in little knots of confusion.
   It ended up in confusion, Paul thought, staring at the backs of the last men to leave. Always before, Staff had ended on an incisive air. This meeting had just seemed to trickle out, worn down by its own inadequacies, and with an argument to top it off.
   For the first time, Paul allowed himself to think about the real possibility of defeat–not thinking about it out of fear or because of warnings such as that of the old Reverend Mother, but facing up to it because of his own assessment of the situation.
   My father is desperate, he thought. Things aren't going well for us at all.
   And Hawat–Paul recalled how the old Mentat had acted during the conference–subtle hesitations, signs of unrest.
   Hawat was deeply troubled by something.
   “Best you remain here the rest of the night, Son,” the Duke said. “It'll be dawn soon, anyway. I'll inform your mother.” He got to his feet, slowly, stiffly. “Why don't you pull a few of these chairs together and stretch out on them for some rest.”
   “I'm not very tired, sir.”
   “As you will.”
   The Duke folded his hands behind him, began pacing up and down the length of the table.
   Like a caged animal, Paul thought.
   “Are you going to discuss the traitor possibility with Hawat?” Paul asked.
   The Duke stopped across from his son, spoke to the dark windows. “We've discussed the possibility many times.”
   “The old woman seemed so sure of herself,” Paul said. “And the message Mother–”
   “Precautions have been taken,” the Duke said. He looked around the room, and Paul marked the hunted wildness in his father's eyes. “Remain here. There are some things about the command posts I want to discuss with Thufir.” He turned, strode out of the room, nodding shortly to the door guards.
   Paul stared at the place where his father had stood. The space had been empty even before the Duke left the room. And he recalled the old woman's warning: " . . . for the father, nothing."

= = = = = =

   On that first day when Muad'Dib rode through the streets of Arrakeen with his family, some of the people along the way recalled the legends and the prophecy and they ventured to shout: “Mahdi!” But their shout was more a question than a statement, for as yet they could only hope he was the one foretold as the Lisan al-Gaib, the Voice from the Outer World. Their attention was focused, too, on the mother, because they had heard she was a Bene Gesserit and it was obvious to them that she was like the other Lisan al-Gaib.
   –from “Manual of Muad'Dib” by the Princess Irulan

   The Duke found Thufir Hawat alone in the corner room to which a guard directed him. There was the sound of men setting up communications equipment in an adjoining room, but this place was fairly quiet. The Duke glanced around as Hawat arose from a paper-cluttered table. It was a green-walled enclosure with, in addition to the table, three suspensor chairs from which the Harkonnen “H” had been hastily removed, leaving an imperfect color patch.
   “The chairs are liberated but quite safe,” Hawat said. “Where is Paul, Sire?”
   “I left him in the conference room. I'm hoping he'll get some rest without me there to distract him.”
   Hawat nodded, crossed to the door to the adjoining room, closed it, shutting off the noise of static and electronic sparking.
   “Thufir,” Leto said, “the Imperial and Harkonnen stockpiles of spice attract my attention.”
   “M'Lord?”
   The Duke pursed his lips. “Storehouses are susceptible to destruction.” He raised a hand as Hawat started to speak. “Ignore the Emperor's hoard. He'd secretly enjoy it if the Harkonnens were embarrassed. And can the Baron object if something is destroyed which he cannot openly admit that he has?”
   Hawat shook his head. “We've few men to spare. Sire.”
   “Use some of Idaho's men. And perhaps some of the Fremen would enjoy a trip off planet. A raid on Giedi Prime–there are tactical advantages to such a diversion, Thufir.”
   “As you say, my Lord.” Hawat turned away, and the Duke saw evidence of nervousness in the old man, thought: Perhaps he suspects I distrust him. He must know I've private reports of traitors. Well–best quiet his fears immediately.
   “Thufir,” he said, “since you're one of the few I can trust completely, there's another matter bears discussion. We both know how constant a watch we must keep to prevent traitors from infiltrating our forces . . . but I have two new reports.”
   Hawat turned, stared at him.
   And Leto repeated the stories Paul had brought.
   Instead of bringing on the intense Mentat concentration, the reports only increased Hawat's agitation.
   Leto studied the old man and, presently, said: “You've been holding something back, old friend. I should've suspected when you were so nervous during Staff. What is it that was too hot to dump in front of the full conference?”
   Hawat's sapho-stained lips were pulled into a prim, straight line with tiny wrinkles radiating into them. They maintained their wrinkled stiffness as he said: “My Lord, I don't quite know how to broach this.”
   “We've suffered many a scar for each other, Thufir,” the Duke said. “You know you can broach any subject with me.”
   Hawat continued to stare at him, thinking: This is how I like him best. This is the man of honor who deserves every bit of my loyalty and service. Why must I hurt him?
   “Well?” Leto demanded.
   Hawat shrugged. “It's a scrap of a note. We took it from a Harkonnen courier. The note was intended for an agent named Pardee. We've good reason to believe Pardee was top man in the Harkonnen underground here. The note–it's a thing that could have great consequence or no consequence. It's susceptible to various interpretations.”
   “What's the delicate content of this note?”
   “Scrap of a note, my Lord. Incomplete. It was on minimic film with the usual destruction capsule attached. We stopped the acid action just short of full erasure, leaving only a fragment. The fragment, however, is extremely suggestive.”
   “Yes?”
   Hawat rubbed at his lips. “It says: ' . . . eto will never suspect, and when the blow falls on him from a beloved hand, its source alone should be enough to destroy him.' The note was under the Baron's own seal and I've authenticated the seal.”
   “Your suspicion is obvious,” the Duke said and his voice was suddenly cold.
   “I'd sooner cut off my arms than hurt you,” Hawat said. “My Lord, what if . . .”
   “The Lady Jessica,” Leto said, and he felt anger consuming him. “Couldn't you wring the facts out of this Pardee?”
   “Unfortunately, Pardee no longer was among the living when we intercepted the courier. The courier, I'm certain, did not know what he carried.”
   “I see.”
   Leto shook his head, thinking: What a slimy piece of business. There can't be anything in it. I know my woman.
   “My Lord, if–”
   “No!” the Duke barked. “There's a mistake here that–”
   “We cannot ignore it, my Lord.”
   “She's been with me for sixteen years! There've been countless opportunities for–You yourself investigated the school and the woman!”
   Hawat spoke bitterly: “Things have been known to escape me.”
   “It's impossible, I tell you! The Harkonnens want to destroy the Atreides line–meaning Paul, too. They've already tried once. Could a woman conspire against her own son?”
   “Perhaps she doesn't conspire against her son. And yesterday's attempt could've been a clever sham.”
   “It couldn't have been a sham.”
   “Sire, she isn't supposed to know her parentage, but what if she does know? What if she were an orphan, say, orphaned by an Atreides?”
   “She'd have moved long before now. Poison in my drink . . . a stiletto at night. Who has had better opportunity?”
   “The Harkonnens mean to destroy you, my Lord. Their intent is not just to kill. There's a range of fine distinctions in kanly. This could be a work of art among vendettas.”
   The Duke's shoulders slumped. He closed his eyes, looking old and tired. It cannot be, he thought. The woman has opened her heart to me.
   “What better way to destroy me than to sow suspicion of the woman I love?” he asked.
   "An interpretation I've considered," Hawat said. "Still . . . "
   The Duke opened his eyes, stared at Hawat, thinking: Let him be suspicious. Suspicion is his trade, not mine. Perhaps if I appear to believe this, that will make another man careless.
   “What do you suggest?” the Duke whispered.
   “For now, constant surveillance, my Lord. She should be watched at all times. I will see it's done unobtrusively. Idaho would be the ideal choice for the job. Perhaps in a week or so we can bring him back. There's a young man we've been training in Idaho's troop who might be ideal to send to the Fremen as a replacement. He's gifted in diplomacy.”
   “Don't jeopardize our foothold with the Fremen.”
   “Of course not, Sire.”
   “And what about Paul?”
   “Perhaps we could alert Dr. Yueh.”
   Leto turned his back on Hawat. “I leave it in your hands.”
   “I shall use discretion, my Lord.”
   At least I can count on that, Leto thought. And he said: “I will take a walk. If you need me, I'll be within the perimeter. The guard can–”
   “My Lord, before you go, I've a filmclip you should read. It's a first-approximation analysis on the Fremen religion. You'll recall you asked me to report on it.”
   The Duke paused, spoke without turning. “Will it not wait?”
   “Of course, my Lord. You asked what they were shouting, though. It was 'Mahdi!' They directed the term at the young master. When they–”
   “At Paul?”
   “Yes, my Lord. They've a legend here, a prophecy, that a leader will come to them, child of a Bene Gesserit, to lead them to true freedom. It follows the familiar messiah pattern.”
   "They think Paul is this . . . this . . . "
   “They only hope, my Lord.” Hawat extended a filmclip capsule.
   The Duke accepted it, thrust it into a pocket. “I'll look at it later.”
   “Certainly, my Lord.”
   “Right now, I need time to . . . think.”
   “Yes, my Lord.”
   The Duke took a deep sighing breath, strode out the door. He turned to his right down the hall, began walking, hands behind his back, paying little attention to where he was. There were corridors and stairs and balconies and halls . . . people who saluted and stood aside for him.
   In time he came back to the conference room, found it dark and Paul asleep on the table with a guard's robe thrown over him and a ditty pack for a pillow. The Duke walked softly down the length of the room and onto the balcony overlooking the landing field. A guard at the corner of the balcony, recognizing the Duke by the dim reflection of lights from the field, snapped to attention.
   “At ease,” the Duke murmured. He leaned against the cold metal of the balcony rail.
   A predawn hush had come over the desert basin. He looked up. Straight overhead, the stars were a sequin shawl flung over blue-black. Low on the southern horizon, the night's second moon peered through a thin dust haze–an unbelieving moon that looked at him with a cynical light.
   As the Duke watched, the moon dipped beneath the Shield Wall cliffs, frosting them, and in the sudden intensity of darkness, he experienced a chill. He shivered.
   Anger shot through him.
   The Harkonnens have hindered and hounded and hunted me for the last time, he thought. They are dung heaps with village provost minds! Here I make my stand! And he thought with a touch of sadness: I must rule with eye and claw–as the hawk among lesser birds. Unconsciously, his hand brushed the hawk emblem on his tunic.
   To the east, the night grew a faggot of luminous gray, then seashell opalescence that dimmed the stars. There came the long, bell-tolling movement of dawn striking across a broken horizon.
   It was a scene of such beauty it caught all his attention.
   Some things beggar likeness, he thought.
   He had never imagined anything here could be as beautiful as that shattered red horizon and the purple and ochre cliffs. Beyond the landing field where the night's faint dew had touched life into the hurried seeds of Arrakis, he saw great puddles of red blooms and, running through them, an articulate tread of violet . . . like giant footsteps.
   “It's a beautiful morning. Sire,” the guard said.
   “Yes, it is.”
   The Duke nodded, thinking: Perhaps this planet could grow on one. Perhaps it could become a good home for my son.
   Then he saw the human figures moving into the flower fields, sweeping them with strange scythe-like devices–dew gatherers. Water so precious, here that even the dew must be collected.
   And it could be a hideous place, the Duke thought.

= = = = = =

   “There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man–with human flesh.”
   –from “Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib” by the Princess Irulan

   The Duke said: “Paul, I'm doing a hateful thing, but I must.” He stood beside the portable poison snooper that had been brought into the conference room for their breakfast. The thing's sensor arms hung limply over the table, reminding Paul of some weird insect newly dead.
   The Duke's attention was directed out the windows at the landing field and its roiling of dust against the morning sky.
   Paul had a viewer in front of him containing a short filmclip on Fremen religious practices. The clip had been compiled by one of Hawat's experts and Paul found himself disturbed by the references to himself.
   “Mahdi!”
   “Lisan al-Gaib!”
   He could close his eyes and recall the shouts of the crowds. So that is what they hope, he thought. And he remembered what the old Reverend Mother had said: Kwisatz Haderach. The memories touched his feelings of terrible purpose, shading this strange world with sensations of familiarity that he could not understand.
   “A hateful thing,” the Duke said.
   “What do you mean, sir?”
   Leto turned, looked down at his son. “Because the Harkonnens think to trick me by making me distrust your mother. They don't know that I'd sooner distrust myself.”
   “I don't understand, sir.”
   Again, Leto looked out the windows. The white sun was well up into its morning quadrant. Milky light picked out a boiling of dust clouds that spilled over into the blind canyons interfingering the Shield Wall.
   Slowly, speaking in a slow voice to contain his anger, the Duke explained to Paul about the mysterious note.
   “You might just as well mistrust me,” Paul said.
   “They have to think they've succeeded,” the Duke said. “They must think me this much of a fool. It must look real. Even your mother may not know the sham.”
   “But, sir! Why?”
   “Your mother's response must not be an act. Oh, she's capable of a supreme act . . . but too much rides on this. I hope to smoke out a traitor. It must seem that I've been completely cozened. She must be hurt this way that she does not suffer greater hurt.”
   “Why do you tell me, Father? Maybe I'll give it away.”
   “They'll not watch you in this thing,” the Duke said. “You'll keep the secret. You must.” He walked to the windows, spoke without turning. “This way, if anything should happen to me, you can tell her the truth–that I never doubted her, not for the smallest instant. I should want her to know this.”
   Paul recognized the death thoughts in his father's words, spoke quickly: “Nothing's going to happen to you, sir. The–”
   “Be silent, Son.”
   Paul stared at his father's back, seeing the fatigue in the angle of the neck, in the line of the shoulders, in the slow movements.
   “You're just tired, Father.”
   “I am tired,” the Duke agreed. “I'm morally tired. The melancholy degeneration of the Great Houses has afflicted me at last, perhaps. And we were such strong people once.”
   Paul spoke in quick anger: “Our House hasn't degenerated!”
   “Hasn't it?”
   The Duke turned, faced his son, revealing dark circles beneath hard eyes, a cynical twist of mouth. "I should wed your mother, make her my Duchess. Yet . . . my unwedded state gives some Houses hope they may yet ally with me through their marriageable daughters." He shrugged. "So, I . . . "
   “Mother has explained this to me.”
   “Nothing wins more loyalty for a leader than an air of bravura,” the Duke said. “I, therefore, cultivate an air of bravura.”
   “You lead well,” Paul protested. “You govern well. Men follow you willingly and love you.”
   "My propaganda corps is one of the finest," the Duke said. Again, he turned to stare out at the basin. "There's greater possibility for us here on Arrakis than the Imperium could ever suspect. Yet sometimes I think it'd have been better if we'd run for it, gone renegade. Sometimes I wish we could sink back into anonymity among the people, become less exposed to . . . "
   “Father!”
   “Yes, I am tired,” the Duke said. “Did you know we're using spice residue as raw material and already have our own factory to manufacture filmbase?”
   “Sir?”
   “We mustn't run short of filmbase,” the Duke said. “Else, how could we flood village and city with our information? The people must learn how well I govern them. How would they know if we didn't tell them?”
   “You should get some rest,” Paul said.
   Again, the Duke faced his son. “Arrakis has another advantage I almost forgot to mention. Spice is in everything here. You breathe it and eat it in almost everything. And I find that this imparts a certain natural immunity to some of the most common poisons of the Assassins' Handbook. And the need to watch every drop of water puts all food production–yeast culture, hydroponics, chemavit, everything–under the strictest surveillance. We cannot kill off large segments of our population with poison–and we cannot be attacked this way, either. Arrakis makes us moral and ethical.”
   Paul started to speak, but the Duke cut him off, saying: “I have to have someone I can say these things to, Son.” He sighed, glanced back at the dry landscape where even the flowers were gone now–trampled by the dew gatherers, wilted under the early sun.
   “On Caladan, we ruled with sea and air power,” the Duke said. “Here, we must scrabble for desert power. This is your inheritance, Paul. What is to become of you if anything happens to me? You'll not be a renegade House, but a guerrilla House–running, hunted.”
   Paul groped for words, could find nothing to say. He had never seen his father this despondent.
   “To hold Arrakis,” the Duke said, “one is faced with decisions that may cost one his self-respect.” He pointed out the window to the Atreides green and black banner hanging limply from a staff at the edge of the landing field. “That honorable banner could come to mean many evil things.”
   Paul swallowed in a dry throat. His father's words carried futility, a sense of fatalism that left the boy with an empty feeling in his chest.
   The Duke took an antifatigue tablet from a pocket, gulped it dry. “Power and fear,” he said. “The tools of statecraft. I must order new emphasis on guerrilla training for you. That filmclip there–they call you 'Mahdi'–'Lisan al-Gaib'–as a last resort, you might capitalize on that.”
   Paul stared at his father, watching the shoulders straighten as the tablet did its work, but remembering the words of fear and doubt.
   “What's keeping that ecologist?” the Duke muttered. “I told Thufir to have him here early.”

= = = = = =

   My father, the Padishah Emperor, took me by the hand one day and I sensed in the ways my mother had taught me that he was disturbed. He led me down the Hall of Portraits to the ego-likeness of the Duke Leto Atreides. I marked the strong resemblance between them–my father and this man in the portrait–both with thin, elegant faces and sharp features dominated by cold eyes. “Princess-daughter,” my father said, “I would that you'd been older when it came time for this man to choose a woman.” My father was 71 at the time and looking no older than the man in the portrait, and I was but 14, yet I remember deducing in that instant that my father secretly wished the Duke had been his son, and disliked the political necessities that made them enemies.
   –"In My Father's House" by the Princess Irulan

   His first encounter with the people he had been ordered to betray left Dr. Kynes shaken. He prided himself on being a scientist to whom legends were merely interesting clues, pointing toward cultural roots. Yet the boy fitted the ancient prophecy so precisely. He had “the questing eyes,” and the air of “reserved candor.”
   Of course, the prophecy left certain latitude as to whether the Mother Goddess would bring the Messiah with her or produce Him on the scene. Still, there was this odd correspondence between prediction and persons.
   They met in midmorning outside the Arrakeen landing field's administration building. An unmarked ornithopter squatted nearby, humming softly on standby like a somnolent insect. An Atreides guard stood beside it with bared sword and the faint air-distortion of a shield around him.
   Kynes sneered at the shield pattern, thinking: Arrakis has a surprise for them there!
   The planetologist raised a hand, signaled for his Fremen guard to fall back. He strode on ahead toward the building's entrance–the dark hole in plastic-coated rock. So exposed, that monolithic building, he thought. So much less suitable than a cave.
   Movement within the entrance caught his attention. He stopped, taking the moment to adjust his robe and the set of his stillsuit at the left shoulder.
   The entrance doors swung wide. Atreides guards emerged swiftly, all of them heavily armed–slow-pellet stunners, swords and shields. Behind them came a tall man, hawk-faced, dark of skin and hair. He wore a jubba cloak with Atreides crest at the breast, and wore it in a way that betrayed his unfamiliarity with the garment. It clung to the legs of his stillsuit on one side. It lacked a free-swinging, striding rhythm.
   Beside the man walked a youth with the same dark hair, but rounder in the face. The youth seemed small for the fifteen years Kynes knew him to have. But the young body carried a sense of command, a poised assurance, as though he saw and knew things all around him that were not visible to others. And he wore the same style cloak as his father, yet with casual ease that made one think the boy had always worn such clothing.
   “The Mahdi will be aware of things others cannot see,” went the prophecy.
   Kynes shook his head, telling himself: They're just people.
   With the two, garbed like them for the desert, came a man Kynes recognized–Gurney Halleck. Kynes took a deep breath to still his resentment against Halleck, who had briefed him on how to behave with the Duke and ducal heir.
   “You may call the Duke 'my Lord ' or 'Sire.' 'Noble Born' also is correct, but usually reserved for more formal occasions. The son may be addressed as 'young Master' or 'my Lord.' The Duke is a man of much leniency, but brooks little familiarity.”
   And Kynes thought as he watched the group approach: They'll learn soon enough who's master on Arrakis. Order me questioned half the night by that Mentat, will they? Expect me to guide them on an inspection of spice mining, do they?
   The import of Hawat's questions had not escaped Kynes. They wanted the Imperial bases. And it was obvious they'd learned of the bases from Idaho.
   I will have Stilgar send Idaho's head to this Duke, Kynes told himself.
   The ducal party was only a few paces away now, their feet in desert boots crunching the sand.
   Kynes bowed. “My Lord, Duke.”
   As he had approached the solitary figure standing near the ornithopter, Leto had studied him: tall, thin, dressed for the desert in loose robe, stillsuit, and low boots. The man's hood was thrown back, its veil hanging to one side, revealing long sandy hair, a sparse beard. The eyes were that fathomless blue-within-blue under thick brows. Remains of dark stains smudged his eye sockets.
   “You're the ecologist,” the Duke said.
   “We prefer the old title here, my Lord,” Kynes said. “Planetologist.”
   “As you wish,” the Duke said. He glanced down at Paul. “Son, this is the Judge of the Change, the arbiter of dispute, the man set here to see that the forms are obeyed in our assumption of power over this fief.” He glanced at Kynes. “And this is my son.”
   “My Lord,” Kynes said.
   “Are you a Fremen?” Paul asked.
   Kynes smiled. “I am accepted in both sietch and village, young Master. But I am in His Majesty's service, the Imperial Planetologist.”
   Paul nodded, impressed by the man's air of strength. Halleck had pointed Kynes out to Paul from an upper window of the administration building: “The man standing there with the Fremen escort–the one moving now toward the ornithopter.”
   Paul had inspected Kynes briefly with binoculars, noting the prim, straight mouth, the high forehead. Halleck had spoken in Paul's ear: “Odd sort of fellow. Has a precise way of speaking–clipped off, no fuzzy edges–razor-apt.”
   And the Duke, behind them, had said: “Scientist type.”
   Now, only a few feet from the man, Paul sensed the power in Kynes, the impact of personality, as though he were blood royal, born to command.
   “I understand we have you to thank for our stillsuits and these cloaks,” the Duke said.
   “I hope they fit well, my Lord,” Kynes said. “They're of Fremen make and as near as possible the dimensions given me by your man Halleck here.”
   “I was concerned that you said you couldn't take us into the desert unless we wore these garments,” the Duke said. “We can carry plenty of water. We don't intend to be out long and we'll have air cover–the escort you see overhead right now. It isn't likely we'd be forced down.”
   Kynes stared at him, seeing the water-fat flesh. He spoke coldly: “You never talk of likelihoods on Arrakis. You speak only of possibilities.”
   Halleck stiffened. “The Duke is to be addressed as my Lord or Sire!”
   Leto gave Halleck their private handsignal to desist, said: “Our ways are new here, Gurney. We must make allowances.”
   “As you wish, Sire.”
   “We are indebted to you, Dr. Kynes,” Leto said. “These suits and the consideration for our welfare will be remembered.”
   On impulse, Paul called to mind a quotation from the O.C. Bible, said: " 'The gift is the blessing of the river.' "
   The words rang out overloud in the still air. The Fremen escort Kynes had left in the shade of the administration building leaped up from their squatting repose, muttering in open agitation. One cried out: “Lisan al-Gaib!”
   Kynes whirled, gave a curt, chopping signal with a hand, waved the guard away. They fell back, grumbling among themselves, trailed away around the building.
   “Most interesting,” Leto said.
   Kynes passed a hard glare over the Duke and Paul, said: “Most of the desert natives here are a superstitious lot. Pay no attention to them. They mean no harm.” But he thought of the words of the legend: “They will greet you with Holy Words and your gifts will be a blessing.”
   Leto's assessment of Kynes–based partly on Hawat's brief verbal report (guarded and full of suspicions)–suddenly crystallized: the man was Fremen. Kynes had come with a Fremen escort, which could mean simply that the Fremen were testing their new freedom to enter urban areas–but it had seemed an honor guard. And by his manner, Kynes was a proud man, accustomed to freedom, his tongue and his manner guarded only by his own suspicions. Paul's question had been direct and pertinent.
   Kynes had gone native.
   “Shouldn't we be going, Sire?” Halleck asked.
   The Duke nodded. “I'll fly my own 'thopter. Kynes can sit up front with me to direct me. You and Paul take the rear seats.”
   “One moment, please,” Kynes said. “With your permission, Sire, I must check the security of your suits.”
   The Duke started to speak, but Kynes pressed on: “I have concern for my own flesh as well as yours . . . my Lord. I'm well aware of whose throat would be slit should harm befall you two while you're in my care.”
   The Duke frowned, thinking: How delicate this moment! If I refuse, it may offend him. And this could be a man whose value to me is beyond measure. Yet . . . to let him inside my shield, touching my person when I know so little about him?
   The thoughts flicked through his mind with decision hard on their heels. “We're in your hands,” the Duke said. He stepped forward, opening his robe, saw Halleck come up on the balls of his feet, poised and alert, but remaining where he was. “And, if you'd be so kind,” the Duke said, “I'd appreciate an explanation of the suit from one who lives so intimately with it.”
   “Certainly,” Kynes said. He felt up under the robe for the shoulder seals, speaking as he examined the suit. “It's basically a micro-sandwich–a high-efficiency filter and heat-exchange system.” He adjusted the shoulder seals. “The skin-contact layer's porous. Perspiration passes through it, having cooled the body . . . near-normal evaporation process. The next two layers . . . " Kynes tightened the chest fit. ". . . include heat exchange filaments and salt precipitators. Salt's reclaimed.”
   The Duke lifted his arms at a gesture, said: “Most interesting.”
   “Breathe deeply,” Kynes said.
   The Duke obeyed.
   Kynes studied the underarm seals, adjusted one. “Motions of the body, especially breathing,” he said, “and some osmotic action provide the pumping force.” He loosened the chest fit slightly. “Reclaimed water circulates to catchpockets from which you draw it through this tube in the clip at your neck.”
   The Duke twisted his chin in and down to look at the end of the tube. “Efficient and convenient,” he said. “Good engineering.”
   Kynes knelt, examined the leg seals. “Urine and feces are processed in the thigh pads,” he said, and stood up, felt the neck fitting, lifted a sectioned flap there. “In the open desert, you wear this filter across your face, this tube in the nostrils with these plugs to insure a tight fit. Breathe in through the mouth filter, out through the nose tube. With a Fremen suit in good working order, you won't lose more than a thimbleful of moisture a day–even if you're caught in the Great Erg.”
   “A thimbleful a day,” the Duke said.
   Kynes pressed a finger against the suit's forehead pad, said: “This may rub a little. It if irritates you, please tell me. I could slit-patch it a bit tighter.”
   “My thanks,” the Duke said. He moved his shoulders in the suit as Kynes stepped back, realizing that it did feel better now–tighter and less irritating.
   Kynes turned to Paul. “Now, let's have a look at you, lad.”
   A good man but he'll have to learn to address us properly, the Duke thought.
   Paul stood passively as Kynes inspected the suit. It had been an odd sensation putting on the crinkling, slick-surfaced garment. In his foreconsciousness had been the absolute knowledge that he had never before worn a stillsuit. Yet, each motion of adjusting the adhesion tabs under Gurney's inexpert guidance had seemed natural, instinctive. When he had tightened the chest to gain maximum pumping action from the motion of breathing, he had known what he did and why. When he had fitted the neck and forehead tabs tightly, he had known it was to prevent friction blisters.
   Kynes straightened, stepped back with a puzzled expression. “You've worn a stillsuit before?” he asked.
   “This is the first time.”
   “Then someone adjusted it for you?”
   “No.”
   “Your desert boots are fitted slip-fashion at the ankles. Who told you to do that?”
   “It . . . seemed the right way.”
   “That it most certainly is.”
   And Kynes rubbed his cheek, thinking of the legend: “He shall know your ways as though born to them.”
   “We waste time,” the Duke said. He gestured to the waiting 'thopter, led the way, accepting the guard's salute with a nod. He climbed in, fastened his safety harness, checked controls and instruments. The craft creaked as the others clambered aboard.
   Kynes fastened his harness, focused on the padded comfort of the aircraft–soft luxury of gray-green upholstery, gleaming instruments, the sensation of filtered and washed air in his lungs as doors slammed and vent fans whirred alive.
   So soft! he thought.
   “All secure, Sire,” Halleck said.
   Leto fed power to the wings, felt them cup and dip–once, twice. They were airborne in ten meters, wings feathered tightly and afterjets thrusting them upward in a steep, hissing climb.
   “Southeast over the Shield Wall,” Kynes said. “That's where I told your sandmaster to concentrate his equipment.”
   “Right.”
   The Duke banked into his air cover, the other craft taking up their guard positions as they headed southeast.
   “The design and manufacture of these stillsuits bespeaks a high degree of sophistication,” the Duke said.
   “Someday I may show you a sietch factory,” Kynes said.
   “I would find that interesting,” the Duke said. “I note that suits are manufactured also in some of the garrison cities.”
   “Inferior copies,” Kynes said. “Any Dune man who values his skin wears a Fremen suit.”
   “And it'll hold your water loss to a thimbleful a day?”
   “Properly suited, your forehead cap tight, all seals in order, your major water loss is through the palms of your hands,” Kynes said. “You can wear suit gloves if you're not using your hands for critical work, but most Fremen in the open desert rub their hands with juice from the leaves of the creosote bush. It inhibits perspiration.”
   The Duke glanced down to the left at the broken landscape of the Shield Wall–chasms of tortured rock, patches of yellow-brown crossed by black lines of fault shattering. It was as though someone had dropped this ground from space and left it where it smashed.
   They crossed a shallow basin with the clear outline of gray sand spreading across it from a canyon opening to the south. The sand fingers ran out into the basin–a dry delta outlined against darker rock.
   Kynes sat back, thinking about the water-fat flesh he had felt beneath the stillsuits. They wore shield belts over their robes, slow pellet stunners at the waist, coin-sized emergency transmitters on cords around their necks. Both the Duke and his son carried knives in wrist sheathes and the sheathes appeared well worn. The people struck Kynes as a strange combination of softness and armed strength. There was a poise to them totally unlike the Harkonnens.
   “When you report to the Emperor on the change of government here, will you say we observed the rules?” Leto asked. He glanced at Kynes, back to their course.
   “The Harkonnens left; you came,” Kynes said.
   “And is everything as it should be?” Leto asked.
   Momentary tension showed in the tightening of a muscle along Kynes' jaw. “As Planetologist and Judge of the Change, I am a direct subject of the Imperium . . . my Lord.”
   The Duke smiled grimly. “But we both know the realities.”
   “I remind you that His Majesty supports my work.”
   “Indeed? And what is your work?”
   In the brief silence, Paul thought: He's pushing this Kynes too hard. Paul glanced at Halleck, but the minstrel-warrior was staring out at the barren landscape.
   Kynes spoke stiffly: “You, of course, refer to my duties as planetologist.”
   “Of course.”
   “It is mostly dry land biology and botany . . . some geological work–core drilling and testing. You never really exhaust the possibilities of an entire planet.”
   “Do you also investigate the spice?”
   Kynes turned, and Paul noted the hard line of the man's cheek. “A curious question, my Lord.”
   “Bear in mind, Kynes, that this is now my fief. My methods differ from those of the Harkonnens. I don't care if you study the spice as long as I share what you discover.” He glanced at the planetologist. “The Harkonnens discouraged investigation of the spice, didn't they?”
   Kynes stared back without answering.
   “You may speak plainly,” the Duke said, “without fear for your skin.”
   “The Imperial Court is, indeed, a long way off,” Kynes muttered. And he thought: What does this water-soft invader expect? Does he think me fool enough to enlist with him?
   The Duke chuckled, keeping his attention on their course. “I detect a sour note in your voice, sir. We've waded in here with our mob of tame killers, eh? And we expect you to realize immediately that we're different from the Harkonnens?”
   "I've seen the propaganda you've flooded into sietch and village," Kynes said. " 'Love the good Duke!' Your corps of–"
   “Here now!” Halleck barked. He snapped his attention away from the window, leaned forward.
   Paul put a hand on Halleck's arm.
   “Gurney!” the Duke said. He glanced back. “This man's been long under the Harkonnens.”
   Halleck sat back. “Ayah.”
   “Your man Hawat's subtle,” Kynes said, “but his object's plain enough.”
   “Will you open those bases to us, then?” the Duke asked.
   Kynes spoke curtly: “They're His Majesty's property.”
   “They're not being used.”
   “They could be used.”
   “Does His Majesty concur?”
   Kynes darted a hard stare at the Duke. “Arrakis could be an Eden if its rulers would look up from grubbing for spice!”
   He didn't answer my question, the Duke thought. And he said: “How is a planet to become an Eden without money?”
   “What is money,” Kynes asked, “if it won't buy the services you need?”
   Ah, now! the Duke thought. And he said: “We'll discuss this another time. Right now, I believe we're coming to the edge of the Shield Wall. Do I hold the same course?”
   “The same course,” Kynes muttered.
   Paul looked out his window. Beneath them, the broken ground began to drop away in tumbled creases toward a barren rock plain and a knife-edged shelf. Beyond the shelf, fingernail crescents of dunes marched toward the horizon with here and there in the distance a dull smudge, a darker blotch to tell of something not sand. Rock outcroppings, perhaps. In the heat-addled air, Paul couldn't be sure.
   “Are there any plants down there?” Paul asked.
   “Some,” Kynes said. “This latitude's life-zone has mostly what we call minor water stealers–adapted to raiding each other for moisture, gobbling up the trace-dew. Some parts of the desert teem with life. But all of it has learned how to survive under these rigors. If you get caught down there, you imitate that life or you die.”
   “You mean steal water from each other?” Paul asked. The idea outraged him, and his voice betrayed his emotion.
   “It's done,” Kynes said, “but that wasn't precisely my meaning. You see, my climate demands a special attitude toward water. You are aware of water at all times. You waste nothing that contains moisture.”
   And the Duke thought: " . . . my climate!"
   “Come around two degrees more southerly, my Lord,” Kynes said. “There's a blow coming up from the west.”
   The Duke nodded. He had seen the billowing of tan dust there. He banked the 'thopter around, noting the way the escort's wings reflected milky orange from the dust-refracted light as they turned to keep pace with him.
   “This should clear the storm's edge,” Kynes said.
   “That sand must be dangerous if you fly into it,” Paul said. “Will it really cut the strongest metals?”
   “At this altitude, it's not sand but dust,” Kynes said. “The danger is lack of visibility, turbulence, clogged intakes.”
   “We'll see actual spice mining today?” Paul asked.
   “Very likely,” Kynes said.
   Paul sat back. He had used the questions and hyperawareness to do what his mother called “registering” the person. He had Kynes now–tune of voice, each detail of face and gesture. An unnatural folding of the left sleeve on the man's robe told of a knife in an arm sheath. The waist bulged strangely. It was said that desert men wore a belted sash into which they tucked small necessities. Perhaps the bulges came from such a sash–certainly not from a concealed shield belt. A copper pin engraved with the likeness of a hare clasped the neck of Kynes' robe. Another smaller pin with similar likeness hung at the corner of the hood which was thrown back over his shoulders.
   Halleck twisted in the seat beside Paul, reached back into the rear compartment and brought out his baliset. Kynes looked around as Halleck tuned the instrument, then returned his attention to their course.
   “What would you like to hear, young Master?” Halleck asked.
   “You choose, Gurney,” Paul said.
   Halleck bent his ear close to the sounding board, strummed a chord and sang softly:

   "Our fathers ate manna in the desert,
   In the burning places where whirlwinds came.
   Lord, save us from that horrible land!
   Save us . . . oh-h-h-h, save us
   From the dry and thirsty land."

   Kynes glanced at the Duke, said: “You do travel with a light complement of guards, my Lord. Are all of them such men of many talents?”
   “Gurney?” The Duke chuckled. “Gurney's one of a kind. I like him with me for his eyes. His eyes miss very little.”
   The planetologist frowned.
   Without missing a beat in his tune, Halleck interposed:

   "For I am like an owl of the desert, o!
   Aiyah! am like an owl of the des-ert!"

   The Duke reached down, brought up a microphone from the instrument panel, thumbed it to life, said: “Leader to Escort Gemma. Flying object at nine o'clock, Sector B. Do you identify it?”
   “It's merely a bird,” Kynes said, and added: “You have sharp eyes.”
   The panel speaker crackled, then: “Escort Gemma. Object examined under full amplification. It's a large bird.”
   Paul looked in the indicated direction, saw the distant speck: a dot of intermittent motion, and realized how keyed up his father must be. Every sense was at full alert.
   “I'd not realized there were birds that large this far into the desert,” the Duke said.
   “That's likely an eagle,” Kynes said. “Many creatures have adapted to this place.”
   The ornithopter swept over a bare rock plain. Paul looked down from their two thousand meters' altitude, saw the wrinkled shadow of their craft and escort. The land beneath seemed flat, but shadow wrinkles said otherwise.
   “Has anyone ever walked out of the desert?” the Duke asked.
   Halleck's music stopped. He leaned forward to catch the answer.
   “Not from the deep desert,” Kynes said. “Men have walked out of the second zone several times. They've survived by crossing the rock areas where worms seldom go.”
   The timbre of Kynes' voice held Paul's attention. He felt his sense come alert the way they were trained to do.
   “Ah-h, the worms,” the Duke said. “I must see one sometime.”
   “You may see one today,” Kynes said. “Wherever there is spice, there are worms.”
   “Always?” Halleck asked.
   “Always.”
   “Is there relationship between worm and spice?” the Duke asked.
   Kynes turned and Paul saw the pursed lips as the man spoke. “They defend spice sands. Each worm has a–territory. As to the spice . . . who knows? Worm specimens we've examined lead us to suspect complicated chemical interchanges within them. We find traces of hydrochloric acid in the ducts, more complicated acid forms elsewhere. I'll give you my monograph on the subject.”
   “And a shield's no defense?” the Duke asked.
   “Shields!” Kynes sneered. “Activate a shield within the worm zone and you seal your fate. Worms ignore territory lines, come from far around to attack a shield. No man wearing a shield has ever survived such attack.”
   “How are worms taken, then?”
   “High voltage electrical shock applied separately to each ring segment is the only known way of killing and preserving an entire worm,” Kynes said. “They can be stunned and shattered by explosives, but each ring segment has a life of its own. Barring atomics, I know of no explosive powerful enough to destroy a large worm entirely. They're incredibly tough.”
   “Why hasn't an effort been made to wipe them out?” Paul asked.
   “Too expensive,” Kynes said. “Too much area to cover.”
   Paul leaned back in his corner. His truthsense, awareness of tone shadings, told him that Kynes was lying and telling half-truths. And he thought: If there's a relationship between spice and worms, killing the worms would destroy the spice.
   “No one will have to walk out of the desert soon,” the Duke said. “Trip these little transmitters at our necks and rescue is on its way. All our workers will be wearing them before long. We're setting up a special rescue service.”
   “Very commendable,” Kynes said.
   “Your tone says you don't agree,” the Duke said.
   “Agree? Of course I agree, but it won't be much use. Static electricity from sandstorms masks out many signals. Transmitters short out. They've been tried here before, you know. Arrakis is tough on equipment. And if a worm's hunting you there's not much time. Frequently, you have no more than fifteen or twenty minutes.”
   “What would you advise?” the Duke asked.
   “You ask my advice?”
   “As planetologist, yes.”
   “You'd follow my advice?”
   “If I found it sensible.”
   “Very well, my Lord. Never travel alone.”
   The Duke turned his attention from the controls. “That's all?”
   “That's all. Never travel alone.”
   “What if you're separated by a storm and forced down?” Halleck asked. “Isn't there anything you could do?”
   “Any thing covers much territory,” Kynes said.
   “What would you do?” Paul asked.
   Kynes turned a hard stare at the boy, brought his attention back to the Duke. “I'd remember to protect the integrity of my stillsuit. If I were outside the worm zone or in rock, I'd stay with the ship. If I were down in open sand, I'd get away from the ship as fast as I could. About a thousand meters would be far enough. Then I'd hide beneath my robe. A worm would get the ship, but it might miss me.”
   “Then what?” Halleck asked.
   Kynes shrugged. “Wait for the worm to leave.”
   “That's all?” Paul asked.
   “When the worm has gone, one may try to walk out,” Kynes said. “You must walk softly, avoid drum sands, tidal dust basins–head for the nearest rock zone. There are many such zones. You might make it.”
   “Drum sand?” Halleck asked.
   “A condition of sand compaction,” Kynes said. “The slightest step sets it drumming. Worms always come to that.”
   “And a tidal dust basin?” the Duke asked.
   “Certain depressions in the desert have filled with dust over the centuries. Some are so vast they have currents and tides. All will swallow the unwary who step into them.”
   Halleck sat back, resumed strumming the baliset. Presently, he sang:

   "Wild beasts of the desert do hunt there,
   Waiting for the innocents to pass.
   Oh-h-h, tempt not the gods of the desert,
   Lest you seek a lonely epitaph.
   The perils of the–"

   He broke off, leaned forward. “Dust cloud ahead, Sire.”
   “I see it, Gurney.”
   “That's what we seek,” Kynes said.
   Paul stretched up in the seat to peer ahead, saw a rolling yellow cloud low on the desert surface some thirty kilometers ahead.
   “One of your factory crawlers,” Kynes said. “It's on the surface and that means it's on spice. The cloud is vented sand being expelled after the spice has been centrifugally removed. There's no other cloud quite like it.”
   “Aircraft over it,” the Duke said.
   “I see two . . . three . . . four spotters,” Kynes said. “They're watching for wormsign.”
   “Wormsign?” the Duke asked.
   “A sandwave moving toward the crawler. They'll have seismic probes on the surface, too. Worms sometimes travel too deep for the wave to show.” Kynes swung his gaze around the sky. “Should be a carryall wing around, but I don't see it.”
   “The worm always comes, eh?” Halleck asked.
   “Always.”
   Paul leaned forward, touched Kynes' shoulder. “How big an area does each worm stake out?”
   Kynes frowned. The child kept asking adult questions.
   “That depends on the size of the worm.”
   “What's the variation?” the Duke asked.
   “Big ones may control three or four hundred square kilometers. Small ones–” He broke off as the Duke kicked on the jet brakes. The ship bucked as its tail pods whispered to silence. Stub wings elongated, cupped the air. The craft became a full 'thopter as the Duke banked it, holding the wings to a gentle beat, pointing with his left hand off to the east beyond the factory crawler.
   “Is that wormsign?”
   Kynes leaned across the Duke to peer into the distance.
   Paul and Halleck were crowded together, looking in the same direction, and Paul noted that their escort, caught by the sudden maneuver, had surged ahead, but now was curving back. The factory crawler lay ahead of them, still some three kilometers away.
   Where the Duke pointed, crescent dune tracks spread shadow ripples toward the horizon and, running through them as a level line stretching into the distance, came an elongated mount-in-motion–a cresting of sand. It reminded Paul of the way a big fish disturbed the water when swimming just under the surface.
   “Worm,” Kynes said. “Big one.” He leaned back, grabbed the microphone from the panel, punched out a new frequency selection. Glancing at the grid chart on rollers over their heads, he spoke into the microphone: “Calling crawler at Delta Ajax niner. Wormsign warning. Crawler at Delta Ajax niner. Wormsign warning. Acknowledge, please.” He waited.
   The panel speaker emitted static crackles, then a voice: “Who calls Delta Ajax niner? Over.”
   “They seem pretty calm about it,” Halleck said.
   Kynes spoke into the microphone: “Unlisted flight–north and east of you about three kilometers. Wormsign is on intercept course, your position, estimated contact twenty-five minutes.”
   Another voice rumbled from the speaker: “This is Spotter Control. Sighting confirmed. Stand by for contact fix.” There was a pause, then: “Contact in twenty-six minutes minus. That was a sharp estimate. Who's on that unlisted flight? Over.”
   Halleck had his harness off and surged forward between Kynes and the Duke. “Is this the regular working frequency, Kynes?”
   “Yes. Why?”
   “Who'd be listening?”
   “Just the work crews in this area. Cuts down interference.”
   Again, the speaker crackled, then: “This is Delta Ajax niner. Who gets bonus credit for that spot? Over.”
   Halleck glanced at the Duke.
   Kynes said: “There's a bonus based on spice load for whoever gives first worm warning. They want to know–”
   “Tell them who had first sight of that worm,” Halleck said.
   The Duke nodded.
   Kynes hesitated, then lifted the microphone; “Spotter credit to the Duke Leto Atreides. The Duke Leto Atreides. Over.”
   The voice from the speaker was flat and partly distorted by a burst of static: “We read and thank you.”
   “Now, tell them to divide the bonus among themselves,” Halleck ordered. “Tell them it's the Duke's wish.”
   Kynes took a deep breath, then: “It's the Duke's wish that you divide the bonus among your crew. Do you read? Over.”
   “Acknowledged and thank you,” the speaker said.
   The Duke said: “I forgot to mention that Gurney is also very talented in public relations.”
   Kynes turned a puzzled frown on Halleck.
   “This lets the men know their Duke is concerned for their safety,” Halleck said. “Word will get around. It was on an area working frequency–not likely Harkonnen agents heard.” He glanced out at their air cover. “And we're a pretty strong force. It was a good risk.”
   The Duke banked their craft toward the sandcloud erupting from the factory crawler. “What happens now?”
   “There's a carryall wing somewhere close,” Kynes said. “It'll come in and lift off the crawler.”
   “What if the carryall's wrecked?” Halleck asked.
   “Some equipment is lost,” Kynes said. “Get in close over the crawler, my Lord; you'll find this interesting.”
   The Duke scowled, busied himself with the controls as they came into turbulent air over the crawler.
   Paul looked down, saw sand still spewing out of the metal and plastic monster beneath them. It looked like a great tan and blue beetle with many wide tracks extending on arms around it. He saw a giant inverted funnel snout poked into dark sand in front of it.
   “Rich spice bed by the color,” Kynes said. “They'll continue working until the last minute.”
   The Duke fed more power to the wings, stiffened them for a steeper descent as he settled lower in a circling glide above the crawler. A glance left and right showed his cover holding altitude and circling overhead.
   Paul studied the yellow cloud belching from the crawler's pipe vents, looked out over the desert at the approaching worm track.
   “Shouldn't we be hearing them call in the carryall?” Halleck asked.
   “They usually have the wing on a different frequency,” Kynes said.
   “Shouldn't they have two carryalls standing by for every crawler?” the Duke asked. “There should be twenty-six men on that machine down there, not to mention cost of equipment.”
   Kynes said: “You don't have enough ex–”
   He broke off as the speaker erupted with an angry voice: “Any of you see the wing? He isn't answering.”
   A garble of noise crackled from the speaker, drowned in an abrupt override signal, then silence and the first voice: “Report by the numbers! Over.”
   “This is Spotter Control. Last I saw, the wing was pretty high and circling off northwest. I don't see him now. Over.”
   “Spotter one: negative. Over.”
   “Spotter two: negative. Over.”
   “Spotter three: negative. Over.”
   Silence.
   The Duke looked down. His own craft's shadow was just passing over the crawler. “Only four spotters, is that right?”
   “Correct,” Kynes said.
   “There are five in our party,” the Duke said. “Our ships are larger. We can crowd in three extra each. Their spotters ought to be able to lift off two each.”
   Paul did the mental arithmetic, said: “That's three short.”
   “Why don't they have two carryalls to each crawler?” barked the Duke.
   “You don't have enough extra equipment,” Kynes said.
   “All the more reason we should protect what we have!”
   “Where could that carryall go?” Halleck asked.
   “Could've been forced down somewhere out of sight,” Kynes said.
   The Duke grabbed the microphone, hesitated with thumb poised over its switch. “How could they lose sight of a carryall?”
   “They keep their attention on the ground looking for wormsign,” Kynes said.
   The Duke thumbed the switch, spoke into the microphone. “This is your Duke. We are coming down to take off Delta Ajax niner's crew. All spotters are ordered to comply. Spotters will land on the east side. We will take the west. Over.” He reached down, punched out his own command frequency, repeated the order for his own air cover, handed the microphone back to Kynes.
   Kynes returned to the working frequency and a voice blasted from the speaker: " . . . almost a full load of spice! We have almost a full load! We can't leave that for a damned worm! Over."
   “Damn the spice!” the Duke barked. He grabbed back the microphone, said: “We can always get more spice. There are seats in our ships for all but three of you. Draw straws or decide any way you like who's to go. But you're going, and that's an order!” He slammed the microphone back into Kynes' hands, muttered: “Sorry,” as Kynes shook an injured finger.
   “How much time?” Paul asked.
   “Nine minutes,” Kynes said.
   The Duke said: “This ship has more power than the others. If we took off under jet with three-quarter wings, we could crowd in an additional man.”
   “That sand's soft,” Kynes said.
   “With four extra men aboard on a jet takeoff, we could snap the wings, Sire,” Halleck said.
   “Not on this ship,” the Duke said. He hauled back on the controls as the 'thopter glided in beside the crawler. The wings tipped up, braked the 'thopter to a skidding stop within twenty meters of the factory.
   The crawler was silent now, no sand spouting from its vents. Only a faint mechanical rumble issued from it, becoming more audible as the Duke opened his door.
   Immediately, their nostrils were assailed by the odor of cinnamon–heavy and pungent.
   With a loud flapping, the spotter aircraft glided down to the sand on the other side of the crawler. The Duke's own escort swooped in to land in line with him.
   Paul, looking out at the factory, saw how all the 'thopters were dwarfed by it–gnats beside a warrior beetle.
   “Gurney, you and Paul toss out that rear seat,” the Duke said. He manually cranked the wings out to three-quarters, set their angle, checked the jet pod controls. “Why the devil aren't they coming out of that machine?”
   “They're hoping the carryall will show up,” Kynes said. “They still have a few minutes.” He glanced off to the east.
   All turned to look the same direction, seeing no sign of the worm, but there was a heavy, charged feeling of anxiety in the air.
   The Duke took the microphone, punched for his command frequency, said: “Two of you toss out your shield generators. By the numbers. You can carry one more man that way. We're not leaving any men for that monster.” He keyed back to the working frequency, barked: “All right, you in Delta Ajax niner! Out! Now! This is a command from your Duke! On the double or I'll cut that crawler apart with a lasgun!”
   A hatch snapped open near the front of the factory, another at the rear, another at the top. Men came tumbling out, sliding and scrambling down to the sand. A tall man in a patched working robe was the last to emerge. He jumped down to a track and then to the sand.
   The Duke hung the microphone on the panel, swung out onto the wing step, shouted: “Two men each into your spotters.”
   The man in the patched robe began lolling off pairs of his crew, pushing them toward the craft waiting on the other side.
   “Four over here!” the Duke shouted. “Four into that ship back there!” He jabbed a finger at an escort 'thopter directly behind him. The guards were just wrestling the shield generator out of it. “And four into that ship over there!” He pointed to the other escort that had shed its shield generator. “Three each into the others! Run, you sand dogs!”
   The tall man finished counting off his crew, came slogging across the sand followed by three of his companions.
   “I hear the worm, but I can't see it,” Kynes said.
   The others heard it then–an abrasive slithering, distant and growing louder.
   “Damn sloppy way to operate,” the Duke muttered.
   Aircraft began flapping off the sand around them. It reminded the Duke of a time in his home planet's jungles, a sudden emergence into a clearing, and carrion birds lifting away from the carcass of a wild ox.
   The spice workers slogged up to the side of the 'thopter, started climbing in behind the Duke. Halleck helped, dragging them into the rear.
   “In you go, boys!” he snapped. “On the double!”
   Paul, crowded into a corner by sweating men, smelled the perspiration of fear, saw that two of the men had poor neck adjustments on their stillsuits. He filed the information in his memory for future action. His father would have to order tighter stillsuit discipline. Men tended to become sloppy if you didn't watch such things.
   The last man came gasping into the rear, said. “The worm! It's almost on us! Blast off!”
   The Duke slid into his seat, frowning, said: “We still have almost three minutes on the original contact estimate. Is that right, Kynes?” He shut his door, checked it.
   “Almost exactly, my Lord,” Kynes said, and he thought: A cool one, this duke.
   “All secure here, Sire,” Halleck said.
   The Duke nodded, watched the last of his escort take off. He adjusted the igniter, glanced once more at wings and instruments, punched the jet sequence.
   The take-off pressed the Duke and Kynes deep into their seats, compressed the people in the rear. Kynes watched the way the Duke handled the controls–gently, surely. The 'thopter was fully airborne now, and the Duke studied his instruments, glanced left and right at his wings.
   “She's very heavy, Sire,” Halleck said.
   “Well within the tolerances of this ship,” the Duke said. “You didn't really think I'd risk this cargo, did you, Gurney?”
   Halleck grinned, said: “Not a bit of it, Sire.”
   The Duke banked his craft in a long easy curve–climbing over the crawler.
   Paul, crushed into a corner beside a window, stared down at the silent machine on the sand. The wormsign had broken off about four hundred meters from the crawler. And now, there appeared to be turbulence in the sand around the factory.
   “The worm is now beneath the crawler,” Kynes said. “You are about to witness a thing few have seen.”
   Flecks of dust shadowed the sand around the crawler now. The big machine began to tip down to the right. A gigantic sand whirlpool began forming there to the right of the crawler. It moved faster and faster. Sand and dust filled the air now for hundreds of meters around.
   Then they saw it!
   A wide hole emerged from the sand. Sunlight flashed from glistening white spokes within it. The hole's diameter was at least twice the length of the crawler, Paul estimated. He watched as the machine slid into that opening in a billow of dust and sand. The hole pulled back.
   “Gods, what a monster!” muttered a man beside Paul.
   “Got all our floggin' spice!” growled another.
   “Someone is going to pay for this,” the Duke said. “I promise you that.”
   By the very flatness of his father's voice, Paul sensed the deep anger. He found that he shared it. This was criminal waste!
   In the silence that followed, they heard Kynes.
   “Bless the Maker and His water,” Kynes murmured. “Bless the coming and going of Him. May His passage cleanse the world. May He keep the world for His people.”
   “What's that you're saying?” the Duke asked.
   But Kynes remained silent.
   Paul glanced at the men crowded around him. They were staring fearfully at the back of Kynes' head. One of them whispered: “Liet.”
   Kynes turned, scowling. The man sank back, abashed.
   Another of the rescued men began coughing–dry and rasping. Presently, he gasped: “Curse this hell hole!”
   The tall Dune man who had come last out of the crawler said; “Be you still, Coss. You but worsen your cough.” He stirred among the men until he could look through them at the back of the Duke's head. “You be the Duke Leto, I warrant,” he said. “It's to you we give thanks for our lives. We were ready to end it there until you came along.”
   “Quiet, man, and let the Duke fly his ship,” Halleck muttered.
   Paul glanced at Halleck. He, too, had seen the tension wrinkles at the corner of his father's jaw. One walked softly when the Duke was in a rage.
   Leto began easing his 'thopter out of its great banking circle, stopped at a new sign of movement on the sand. The worm had withdrawn into the depths and now, near where the crawler had been, two figures could be seen moving north away from the sand depression. They appeared to glide over the surface with hardly a lifting of dust to mark their passage.
   “Who's that down there?” the Duke barked.
   “Two Johnnies who came along for the ride, Soor,” said the tall Dune man.
   “Why wasn't something said about them?”
   “It was the chance they took, Soor,” the Dune man said.
   “My Lord,” said Kynes, “these men know it's of little use to do anything about men trapped on the desert in worm country.”
   “We'll send a ship from base for them!” the Duke snapped.
   “As you wish, my Lord,” Kynes said. “But likely when the ship gets here there'll be no one to rescue.”
   “We'll send a ship, anyway,” the Duke said.
   “They were right beside where the worm came up,” Paul said. “How'd they escape?”
   “The sides of the hole cave in and make the distances deceptive,” Kynes said.
   “You waste fuel here, Sire,” Halleck ventured.
   “Aye, Gurney.”
   The Duke brought his craft around toward the Shield Wall. His escort came down from circling stations, took up positions above and on both sides.
   Paul thought about what the Dune man and Kynes had said. He sensed half-truths, outright lies. The men on the sand had glided across the surface so surely, moving in a way obviously calculated to keep from luring the worm back out of its depths.
   Fremen! Paul thought. Who else would be so sure on the sand? Who else might be left out of your worries as a matter of course–because they are in no danger? They know how to live here! They know how to outwit the worm!
   “What were Fremen doing on that crawler?” Paul asked.
   Kynes whirled.
   The tall Dune man turned wide eyes on Paul–blue within blue within blue. “Who be this lad?” he asked.
   Halleck moved to place himself between the man and Paul, said: “This is Paul Atreides, the ducal heir.”
   “Why says he there were Fremen on our rumbler?” the man asked.
   “They fit the description,” Paul said.
   Kynes snorted. “You can't tell Fremen just by looking at them!” He looked at the Dune man. “You. Who were those men?”
   “Friends of one of the others,” the Dune man said. “Just friends from a village who wanted to see the spice sands.”
   Kynes turned away. “Fremen!”
   But he was remembering the words of the legend: “The Lisan al-Gaib shall see through all subterfuge.”
   “They be dead now, most likely, young Soor,” the Dune man said. “We should not speak unkindly on them.”
   But Paul heard the falsehood in their voices, felt the menace that had brought Halleck instinctively into guarding position.
   Paul spoke dryly: “A terrible place for them to die.”
   Without turning, Kynes said; “When God hath ordained a creature to die in a particular place. He causeth that creature's wants to direct him to that place.”
   Leto turned a hard stare at Kynes.
   And Kynes, returning the stare, found himself troubled by a fact he had observed here: This Duke was concerned more over the men that he was over the spice. He risked his own life and that of his son to save the men. He passed off the loss of a spice crawler with a gesture. The threat to men's lives had him in a rage. A leader such as that would command fanatic loyalty. He would be difficult to defeat.
   Against his own will and all previous judgments, Kynes admitted to himself: I like this Duke.

= = = = = =

   Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.
   –from “Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib” by the Princess Irulan

   In the dining hall of the Arrakeen great house, suspensor lamps had been lighted against the early dark. They cast their yellow glows upward onto the black bull's head with its bloody horns, and onto the darkly glistening oil painting of the Old Duke.
   Beneath these talismans, white linen shone around the burnished reflections of the Atreides silver, which had been placed in precise arrangements along the great table–little archipelagos of service waiting beside crystal glasses, each setting squared off before a heavy wooden chair. The classic central chandelier remained unlighted, and its chain twisted upward into shadows where the mechanism of the poison-snooper had been concealed.
   Pausing in the doorway to inspect the arrangements, the Duke thought about the poison-snooper and what it signified in his society.
   All of a pattern, he thought. You can plumb us by our language–the precise and delicate delineations for ways to administer treacherous death. Will someone try chaumurky tonight–poison in the drink? Or will it be chaumas–poison in the food?
   He shook his head.
   Beside each plate on the long table stood a flagon of water. There was enough water along the table, the Duke estimated, to keep a poor Arrakeen family for more than a year.
   Flanking the doorway in which he stood were broad laving basins of ornate yellow and green tile. Each basin had its rack of towels. It was the custom, the housekeeper had explained, for guests as they entered to dip their hands ceremoniously into a basin, slop several cups of water onto the floor, dry their hands on a towel and fling the towel into the growing puddle at the door. After the dinner, beggars gathered outside to get the water squeezings from the towels.
   How typical of a Harkonnen fief, the Duke thought. Every degradation of the spirit that can be conceived. He took a deep breath, feeling rage tighten his stomach.
   “The custom stops here!” he muttered.
   He saw a serving woman–one of the old and gnarled ones the housekeeper had recommended–hovering at the doorway from the kitchen across from him. The Duke signaled with upraised hand. She moved out of the shadows, scurried around the table toward him, and he noted the leathery face, the blue-within-blue eyes.
   “My Lord wishes?” She kept her head bowed, eyes shielded.
   He gestured. “Have these basins and towels removed.”
   “But . . . Noble Born . . .” She looked up, mouth gaping.
   “I know the custom!” he barked. “Take these basins to the front door. While we're eating and until we've finished, each beggar who calls may have a full cup of water. Understood?”
   Her leathery face displayed a twisting of emotions: dismay, anger . . .
   With sudden insight, Leto realized that she must have planned to sell the water squeezings from the foot-trampled towels, wringing a few coppers from the wretches who came to the door. Perhaps that also was a custom.
   His face clouded, and he growled: “I'm posting a guard to see that my orders are carried out to the letter.”
   He whirled, strode back down the passage to the Great Hall. Memories rolled in his mind like the toothless mutterings of old women. He remembered open water and waves–days of grass instead of sand–dazed summers that had whipped past him like windstorm leaves.
   All gone.
   I'm getting old, he thought. I've felt the cold hand of my mortality. And in what? An old woman's greed.
   In the Great Hall, the Lady Jessica was the center of a mixed group standing in front of the fireplace. An open blaze crackled there, casting flickers of orange light onto jewels and laces and costly fabrics. He recognized in the group a stillsuit manufacturer down from Carthag, an electronics equipment importer, a water-shipper whose summer mansion was near his polar-cap factory, a representative of the Guild Bank (lean and remote, that one), a dealer in replacement parts for spice mining equipment, a thin and hard-faced woman whose escort service for off-planet visitors reputedly operated as cover for various smuggling, spying, and blackmail operations.
   Most of the women in the hall seemed cast from a specific type–decorative, precisely turned out, an odd mingling of untouchable sensuousness.
   Even without her position as hostess, Jessica would have dominated the group, he thought. She wore no jewelry and had chosen warm colors–a long dress almost the shade of the open blaze, and an earth-brown band around her bronzed hair.
   He realized she had done this to taunt him subtly, a reproof against his recent pose of coldness. She was well aware that he liked her best in these shades–that he saw her as a rustling of warm colors.
   Nearby, more an outflanker than a member of the group, stood Duncan Idaho in glittering dress uniform, flat face unreadable, the curling black hair neatly combed. He had been summoned back from the Fremen and had his orders from Hawat–"Under pretext of guarding her, you will keep the Lady Jessica under constant surveillance."
   The Duke glanced around the room.
   There was Paul in the corner surrounded by a fawning group of the younger Arrakeen richece, and, aloof among them, three officers of the House Troop. The Duke took particular note of the young women. What a catch a ducal heir would make. But Paul was treating all equally with an air of reserved nobility.
   He'll wear the title well, the Duke thought, and realized with a sudden chill that this was another death thought.
   Paul saw his father in the doorway, avoided his eyes. He looked around at the clusterings of guests, the jeweled hands clutching drinks (and the unobtrusive inspections with tiny remote-cast snoopers). Seeing all the chattering faces, Paul was suddenly repelled by them. They were cheap masks locked on festering thoughts–voices gabbling to drown out the loud silence in every breast.
   I'm in a sour mood, he thought, and wondered what Gurney would say to that.
   He knew his mood's source. He hadn't wanted to attend this function, but his father had been firm. “You have a place–a position to uphold. You're old enough to do this. You're almost a man.”
   Paul saw his father emerge from the doorway, inspect the room, then cross to the group around the Lady Jessica.
   As Leto approached Jessica's group, the water-shipper was asking: “Is it true the Duke will put in weather control?”
   From behind the man, the Duke said: “We haven't gone that far in our thinking, sir.”
   The man turned, exposing a bland round face, darkly tanned. “Ah-h, the Duke,” he said. “We missed you.”
   Leto glanced at Jessica. “A thing needed doing.” He returned his attention to the water-shipper, explained what he had ordered for the laving basins, adding: “As far as I'm concerned, the old custom ends now.”
   “Is this a ducal order, m'Lord?” the man asked.
   “I leave that to your own . . . ah . . . conscience,” the Duke said. He turned, noting Kynes come up to the group.
   One of the women said: “I think it's a very generous gesture–giving water to the–” Someone shushed her.
   The Duke looked at Kynes, noting that the planetologist wore an old-style dark brown uniform with epaulets of the Imperial Civil Servant and a tiny gold teardrop of rank at his collar.
   The water-shipper asked in an angry voice: “Does the Duke imply criticism of our custom?”
   “This custom has been changed,” Leto said. He nodded to Kynes, marked the frown on Jessica's face, thought: A frown does not become her, but it'll increase rumors of friction between us.
   “With the Duke's permission,” the water-shipper said, “I'd like to inquire further about customs.”
   Leto heard the sudden oily tone in the man's voice, noted the watchful silence in this group, the way heads were beginning to turn toward them around the room.
   “Isn't it almost time for dinner?” Jessica asked.
   "But our guest has some questions," Leto said. And he looked at the water-shipper, seeing a round-faced man with large eyes and thick lips, recalling Hawat's memorandum: ". . . and this water-shipper is a man to watch–Lingar Bewt, remember the name. The Harkonnens used him but never fully controlled him."
   “Water customs are so interesting,” Bewt said, and there was a smile on his face. “I'm curious what you intend about the conservatory attached to this house. Do you intend to continue flaunting it in the people's faces . . . m'Lord?”
   Leto held anger in check, staring at the man. Thoughts raced through his mind. It had taken bravery to challenge him in his own ducal castle, especially since they now had Bewt's signature over a contract of allegiance. The action had taken, also, a knowledge of personal power. Water was, indeed, power here. If water facilities were mined, for instance, ready to be destroyed at a signal . . . The man looked capable of such a thing. Destruction of water facilities might well destroy Arrakis. That could well have been the club this Bewt held over the Harkonnens.
   “My Lord, the Duke, and I have other plans for our conservatory,” Jessica said. She smiled at Leto. “We intend to keep it, certainly, but only to hold it in trust for the people of Arrakis. It is our dream that someday the climate of Arrakis may be changed sufficiently to grow such plants anywhere in the open.”
   Bless her! Leto thought. Let our water-shipper chew on that.
   “Your interest in water and weather control is obvious,” the Duke said. “I'd advise you to diversify your holdings. One day, water will not be a precious commodity on Arrakis.”
   And he thought: Hawat must redouble his efforts at infiltrating this Bewt's organization. And we must start on stand-by water facilities at once. No man is going to hold a club over my head!
   Bewt nodded, the smile still on his face. “A commendable dream, my Lord.” He withdrew a pace.
   Leto's attention was caught by the expression on Kynes' face. The man was staring at Jessica. He appeared transfigured–like a man in love . . . or caught in a religious trance.
   Kynes' thoughts were overwhelmed at last by the words of prophecy: "And they shall share your most precious dream. "He spoke directly to Jessica: "Do you bring the shortening of the way?"
   “Ah, Dr. Kynes,” the water-shipper said. “You've come in from tramping around with your mobs of Fremen. How gracious of you.”
   Kynes passed an unreadable glance across Bewt, said: “It is said in the desert that possession of water in great amount can inflict a man with fatal carelessness.”
   “They have many strange sayings in the desert,” Bewt said, but his voice betrayed uneasiness.
   Jessica crossed to Leto, slipped her hand under his arm to gain a moment in which to calm herself. Kynes had said: " . . . the shortening of the way." In the old tongue, the phrase translated as "Kwisatz Haderach." The planetologist's odd question seemed to have gone unnoticed by the others, and now Kynes was bending over one of the consort women, listening to a low-voiced coquetry.
   Kwisatz Haderach, Jessica thought. Did our Missionaria Protectiva plant that legend here, too? The thought fanned her secret hope for Paul. He could be the Kwisatz Haderach. He could be.
   The Guild Bank representative had fallen into conversation with the water-shipper, and Bewt's voice lifted above the renewed hum of conversations: “Many people have sought to change Arrakis.”
   The Duke saw how the words seemed to pierce Kynes, jerking the planetologist upright and away from the flirting woman.
   Into the sudden silence, a house trooper in uniform of a footman cleared his throat behind Leto, said: “Dinner is served, my Lord.”
   The Duke directed a questioning glance down at Jessica.
   “The custom here is for host and hostess to follow their guests to table,” She said, and smiled; “Shall we change that one, too, my Lord?”
   He spoke coldly: “That seems a goodly custom. We shall let it stand for now.”
   The illusion that I suspect her of treachery must be maintained, he thought. He glanced at the guests filing past them. Who among you believes this lie?
   Jessica, sensing his remoteness, wondered at it as she had done frequently the past week. He acts like a man struggling with himself, she thought. Is it because I moved so swiftly setting up this dinner party? Yet, he knows how important it is that we begin to mix our officers and men with the locals on a social plane. We are father and mother surrogate to them all. Nothing impresses that fact more firmly than this sort of social sharing.
   Leto, watching the guests file past, recalled what Thufir Hawat had said when informed of the affair: “Sire! I forbid it!”
   A grim smile touched the Duke's mouth. What a scene that had been. And when the Duke had remained adamant about attending the dinner. Hawat had shaken his head. “I have bad feelings about this, my Lord,” he'd said. “Things move too swiftly on Arrakis. That's not like the Harkonnens. Not like them at all.”
   Paul passed his father escorting a young woman half a head taller than himself. He shot a sour glance at his father, nodded at something the young woman said.
   “Her father manufactures stillsuits,” Jessica said. “I'm told that only a fool would be caught in the deep desert wearing one of the man's suits.”
   “Who's the man with the scarred face ahead of Paul?” the Duke asked. “I don't place him.”
   “A late addition to the list,” she whispered. “Gurney arranged the invitation. Smuggler.”
   “Gurney arranged?”
   “At my request. It was cleared with Hawat, although I thought Hawat was a little stiff about it. The smuggler's called Tuek, Esmar Tuek. He's a power among his kind. They all know him here. He's dined at many of the houses.”
   “Why is he here?”
   “Everyone here will ask that question,” she said. “Tuek will sow doubt and suspicion just by his presence. He'll also serve notice that you're prepared to back up your orders against graft–by enforcement from the smugglers' end as well. This was the point Hawat appeared to like.”
   “I'm not sure I like it.” He nodded to a passing couple, saw only a few of their guests remained to precede them. “Why didn't you invite some Fremen?”
   “There's Kynes,” she said.
   “Yes, there's Kynes,” he said. “Have you arranged any other little surprises for me?” He led her into step behind the procession.
   “All else is most conventional,” she said.
   And she thought: My darling, can't you see that this smuggler controls fast ships, that he can be bribed? We must have a way out, a door of escape from Arrakis if all else fails us here.
   As they emerged into the dining hall, she disengaged her arm, allowed Leto to seat her. He strode to his end of the table. A footman held his chair for him. The others settled with a swishing of fabrics, a scraping of chairs, but the Duke remained standing. He gave a hand signal, and the house troopers in footman uniform around the table stepped back, standing at attention.
   Uneasy silence settled over the room.
   Jessica, looking down the length of the table, saw a faint trembling at the corners of Leto's mouth, noted the dark flush of anger on his cheeks. What has angered him? she asked herself. Surely not my invitation to the smuggler.
   “Some question my changing of the laving basin custom,” Leto said. “This is my way of telling you that many things will change.”
   Embarrassed silence settled over the table.
   They think him drunk, Jessica thought.
   Leto lifted his water flagon, held it aloft where the suspensor, lights shot beams of reflection off it. “As a Chevalier of the Imperium, then,” he said, “I give you a toast.”
   The others grasped their flagons, all eyes focused on the Duke. In the sudden stillness, a suspensor light drifted slightly in an errant breeze from the serving kitchen hallway. Shadows played across the Duke's hawk features.
   “Here I am and here I remain!” he barked.
   There was an abortive movement of flagons toward mouths–stopped as the Duke remained with arm upraised. "My toast is one of those maxims so dear to our hearts: 'Business makes progress! Fortune passes everywhere!' "
   He sipped his water.
   The others joined him. Questioning glances passed among them.
   “Gurney!” the Duke called.
   From an alcove at Leto's end of the room came Halleck's voice. “Here, my Lord.”
   “Give us a tune, Gurney.”
   A minor chord from the baliset floated out of the alcove. Servants began putting plates of food on the table at the Duke's gesture releasing them–roast desert hare in sauce cepeda, aplomage sirian, chukka under glass, coffee with melange (a rich cinnamon odor from the spice wafted across the table), a true pot-a-oie served with sparkling Caladan wine.
   Still, the Duke remained standing.
   As the guests waited, their attention torn between the dishes placed before them and the standing Duke, Leto said: “In olden times, it was the duty of the host to entertain his guests with his own talents.” His knuckles turned white, so fiercely did he grip his water flagon. “I cannot sing, but I give you the words of Gurney's song. Consider it another toast–a toast to all who've died bringing us to this station.”
   An uncomfortable stirring sounded around the table.
   Jessica lowered her gaze, glanced at the people seated nearest her–there was the round-faced water-shipper and his woman, the pale and austere Guild Bank representative (he seemed a whistle-faced scarecrow with his eyes fixed on Leto), the rugged and scar-faced Tuck, his blue-within-blue eyes downcast.
   “Review, friends–troops long past review,” the Duke intoned. “All to fate a weight of pains and dollars. Their spirits wear our silver collars. Review, friends–troops long past review: Each a dot of time without pretense or guile. With them passes the lure of fortune. Review, friends–troops long past review. When our time ends on its rictus smile, we'll pass the lure of fortune.”
   The Duke allowed his voice to trail off on the last line, took a deep drink from his water flagon, slammed it back onto the table. Water slopped over the brim onto the linen.
   The others drank in embarrassed silence.
   Again, the Duke lifted his water flagon, and this time emptied its remaining half onto the floor, knowing that the others around the table must do the same.
   Jessica was first to follow his example.
   There was a frozen moment before the others began emptying their flagons. Jessica saw how Paul, seated near his father, was studying the reactions around him. She found herself also fascinated by what her guests' actions revealed–especially among the women. This was clean, potable water, not something already cast away in a sopping towel. Reluctance to just discard it exposed itself in trembling hands, delayed reactions' nervous laughter . . . and violent obedience to the necessity. One woman dropped her flagon, looked the other way as her male companion recovered it.
   Kynes, though, caught her attention most sharply. The planetotogist hesitated, then emptied his flagon into a container beneath his jacket. He smiled at Jessica as he caught her watching him, raised the empty flagon to her in a silent toast. He appeared completely unembarrassed by his action.
   Halleck's music still wafted over the room, but it had come out of its minor key, lilting and lively now as though he were trying to lift the mood.
   “Let the dinner commence,” the Duke said, and sank into his chair.
   He's angry and uncertain, Jessica thought. The loss of that factory crawler hit him more deeply than it should have. It must be something more than that loss. He acts like a desperate man. She lifted her fork, hoping in the motion to hide her own sudden bitterness. Why not? He is desperate.
   Slowly at first, then with increasing animation, the dinner got under way. The stillsuit manufacturer complimented Jessica on her chef and wine.
   “We brought both from Caladan,” she said.
   “Superb!” he said, tasting the chukka. “Simply superb! And not a hint of melange in it. One gets so tired of the spice in everything.”
   The Guild Bank representative looked across at Kynes. “I understand, Doctor Kynes, that another factory crawler has been lost to a worm.”
   “News' travels fast,” the Duke said.
   “Then it's true?” the banker asked, shifting his attention to Leto.
   “Of course, it's true!” the Duke snapped. “The blasted carry-all disappeared. It shouldn't be possible for anything that big to disappear!”
   “When the worm came, there was nothing to recover the crawler,” Kynes said.
   “It should not be possible!” the Duke repeated.
   “No one saw the carryall leave?” the banker asked.
   “Spotters customarily keep their eyes on the sand,” Kynes said. “They're primarily interested in wormsign. A carryall's complement usually is four men–two pilots and two journeymen attachers. If one–or even two of this crew were in the pay of the Duke's foes–”
   “Ah-h-h, I see,” the banker said. “And you, as Judge of the Change, do you challenge this?”
   “I shall have to consider my position carefully,” Kynes said, “and I certainly will not discuss it at table.” And he thought: That pale skeleton of a man! He knows this is the kind of infraction I was instructed to ignore.
   The banker smiled, returned his attention to his food.
   Jessica sat remembering a lecture from her Bene Gesserit school days. The subject had been espionage and counter-espionage. A plump, happy-faced Reverend Mother had been the lecturer, her jolly voice contrasting weirdly with the subject matter.
   A thing to note about any espionage and/or counter-espionage school is the similar basic reaction pattern of all its graduates. Any enclosed discipline sets its stamp, its pattern, upon its students. That pattern is susceptible to analysis and prediction.
   “Now, motivational patterns are going to be similar among all espionage agents. That is to say: there will be certain types of motivation that are similar despite differing schools or opposed aims. You will study first how to separate this element for your analysis–in the beginning, through interrogation patterns that betray the inner orientation of the interrogators; secondly, by close observation of language-thought orientation of those under analysis. You will find it fairly simple to determine the root languages of your subjects, of course, both through voice inflection and speech pattern.”
   Now, sitting at table with her son and her Duke and their guests, hearing that Guild Bank representative, Jessica felt a chill of realization: the man was a Harkonnen agent. He had the Giedi Prime speech pattern–subtly masked, but exposed to her trained awareness as though he had announced himself.
   Does this mean the Guild itself has taken sides against House Atreides? she asked herself. The thought shocked her, and she masked her emotion by calling for a new dish, all the while listening for the man to betray his purpose. He will shift the conversation next to something seemingly innocent, but with ominous overtones, she told herself. It's his pattern.
   The banker swallowed, took a sip of wine, smiled at something said to him by the woman on his right. He seemed to listen for a moment to a man down the table who was explaining to the Duke that native Arrakeen plants had no thorns.
   “I enjoy watching the flights of birds on Arrakis,” the banker said, directing his words at Jessica. “All of our birds, of course, are carrion-eaters, and many exist without water, having become blood-drinkers.”
   The stillsuit manufacturer's daughter, seated between Paul and his father at the other end of the table, twisted her pretty face into a frown, said: “Oh, Soo-Soo, you say the most disgusting things.”
   The banker smiled. "They call me Soo-Soo because I'm financial adviser to the Water Peddlers Union." And, as Jessica continued to look at him without comment, he added: "Because of the water-sellers' cry–'Soo-Soo Sook!' " And he imitated the call with such accuracy that many around the table laughed.
   Jessica heard the boastful tone of voice, but noted most that the young woman had spoken on cue–a set piece. She had produced the excuse for the banker to say what he had said. She glanced at Lingar Bewt. The water magnate was scowling, concentrating on his dinner. It came to Jessica that the banker had said: “I, too, control that ultimate source of power on Arrakis–water.”
   Paul had marked the falseness in his dinner companion's voice, saw that his mother was following the conversation with Bene Gesserit intensity. On impulse, he decided to play the foil, draw the exchange out. He addressed himself to the banker.
   “Do you mean, sir, that these birds are cannibals?”
   “That's an odd question, young Master,” the banker said. “I merely said the birds drink blood. It doesn't have to be the blood of their own kind, does it?”
   “It was not an odd question,” Paul said, and Jessica noted the brittle riposte quality of her training exposed in his voice. “Most educated people know that the worst potential competition for any young organism can come from its own kind.” He deliberately forked a bite of food from his companion's plate, ate it. “They are eating from the same bowl. They have the same basic requirements.”
   The banker stiffened, scowled at the Duke.
   “Do not make the error of considering my son a child,” the Duke said. And he smiled.
   Jessica glanced around the table, noted that Bewt had brightened, that both Kynes and the smuggler, Tuek, were grinning.
   “It's a rule of ecology,” Kynes said, “that the young Master appears to understand quite well. The struggle between life elements is the struggle for the free energy of a system. Blood's an efficient energy source.”
   The banker put down his fork, spoke in an angry voice: “It's said that the Fremen scum drink the blood of their dead.”
   Kynes shook his head, spoke in a lecturing tone: “Not the blood, sir. But all of a man's water, ultimately, belongs to his people–to his tribe. It's a necessity when you live near the Great Flat. All water's precious there, and the human body is composed of some seventy per cent water by weight. A dead man, surely, no longer requires that water.”
   The banker put both hands against the table beside his plate, and Jessica thought he was going to push himself back, leave in a rage.
   Kynes looked at Jessica. “Forgive me, my Lady, for elaborating on such an ugly subject at table, but you were being told falsehood and it needed clarifying.”
   “You've associated so long with Fremen that you've lost all sensibilities,” the banker rasped.
   Kynes looked at him calmly, studied the pale, trembling face. “Are you challenging me, sir?”
   The banker froze. He swallowed, spoke stiffly: “Of course not. I'd not so insult our host and hostess.”
   Jessica heard the fear in the man's voice, saw it in his face, in his breathing, in the pulse of a vein at his temple. The man was terrified of Kynes!
   “Our host and hostess are quite capable of deciding for themselves when they've been insulted,” Kynes said. “They're brave people who understand defense of honor. We all may attest to their courage by the fact that they are here . . . now . . . on Arrakis.”
   Jessica saw that Leto was enjoying this. Most of the others were not. People all around the table sat poised for flight, hands out of sight under the table. Two notable exceptions were Bewt, who was openly smiling at the banker's discomfiture, and the smuggler, Tuek, who appeared to be watching Kynes for a cue. Jessica saw that Paul was looking at Kynes in admiration.
   “Well?” Kynes said.
   “I meant no offense,” the banker muttered. “If offense was taken, please accept my apologies.”
   “Freely given, freely accepted,” Kynes said. He smiled at Jessica, resumed eating as though nothing had happened.
   Jessica saw that the smuggler, too, had relaxed. She marked this: the man had shown every aspect of an aide ready to leap to Kynes' assistance. There existed an accord of some sort between Kynes and Tuek.
   Leto toyed with a fork, looked speculatively at Kynes. The Geologist's manner indicated a change in attitude toward the House of Atreides. Kynes had seemed colder on their trip over the desert.
   Jessica signaled for another course of food and drink. Servants appeared with langues de lapins de garenne–red wine and a sauce of mushroom-yeast on the side.
   Slowly, the dinner conversation resumed, but Jessica heard the agitation in it, the brittle quality, saw that the banker ate in sullen silence. Kynes would have killed him without hesitating, she thought. And she realized that there was an offhand attitude toward killing in Kynes' manner. He was a casual killer, and she guessed that this was a Fremen quality.
   Jessica turned to the stillsuit manufacturer on her left, said: “I find myself continually amazed by the importance of water on Arrakis.”
   “Very important,” he agreed. “What is this dish? It's delicious.”
   “Tongues of wild rabbit in a special sauce,” she said. “A very old recipe.”
   “I must have that recipe,” the man said.
   She nodded. “I'll see that you get it.”
   Kynes looked at Jessica, said: “The newcomer to Arrakis frequently underestimates the importance of water here. You are dealing, you see, with the Law of the Minimum.”
   She heard the testing quality in his voice, said, “Growth is limited by that necessity which is present in the least amount. And, naturally, the least favorable condition controls the growth rate.”
   “It's rare to find members of a Great House aware of planetological problems,” Kynes said. “Water is the least favorable condition for life on Arrakis. And remember that growth itself can produce unfavorable conditions unless treated with extreme care.”
   Jessica sensed a hidden message in Kynes' words, but knew she was missing it. “Growth,” she said. “Do you mean Arrakis can have an orderly cycle of water to sustain human life under more favorable conditions?”
   “Impossible!” the water magnate barked.
   Jessica turned her attention to Bewt. “Impossible?”
   “Impossible on Arrakis,” he said. “Don't listen to this dreamer. All the laboratory evidence is against him.”
   Kynes looked at Bewt, and Jessica noted that the other conversations around the table had stopped while people concentrated on this new interchange.
   “Laboratory evidence tends to blind us to a very simple fact,” Kynes said. “That fact is this: we are dealing here with matters that originated and exist out-of-doors where plants and animals carry on their normal existence.”
   “Normal!” Bewt snorted. “Nothing about Arrakis is normal!”
   “Quite the contrary,” Kynes said. “Certain harmonies could be set up here along self-sustaining lines. You merely have to understand the limits of the planet and the pressures upon it.”
   “It'll never be done,” Bewt said.
   The Duke came to a sudden realization, placing the point where Kynes' attitude had changed–it had been when Jessica had spoken of holding the conservatory plants in trust for Arrakis.
   “What would it take to set up the self-sustaining system, Doctor Kynes?” Leto asked.
   “If we can get three per cent of the green plant element on Arrakis involved in forming carbon compounds as foodstuffs, we've started the cyclic system,” Kynes said.
   “Water's the only problem?” the Duke asked. He sensed Kynes' excitement, felt himself caught up in it.
   “Water overshadows the other problems,” Kynes said. “This planet has much oxygen without its usual concomitants–widespread plant life and large sources of free carbon dioxide from such phenomena as volcanoes. There are unusual chemical interchanges over large surf ace areas here.”
   “Do you have pilot projects?” the Duke asked.
   “We've had a long time in which to build up the Tansley Effect–small-unit experiments on an amateur basis from which my science may now draw its working facts.” Kynes said.
   “There isn't enough water,” Bewt said. “There just isn't enough water.”
   “Master Bewt is an expert on water,” Kynes said. He smiled, turned back to his dinner.
   The Duke gestured sharply down with his right hand, barked: “No! I want an answer! Is there enough water, Doctor Kynes?”
   Kynes stared at his plate.
   Jessica watched the play of emotion on his face. He masks himself well, she thought, but she had him registered now and read that he regretted his words.
   “Is there enough water?” the Duke demanded.
   “There . . . maybe,” Kynes said.
   He's faking uncertainty! Jessica thought.
   With his deeper truthsense, Paul caught the underlying motive, had to use every ounce of his training to mask his excitement. There is enough water! But Kynes doesn't wish it to be known.
   “Our planetologist has many interesting dreams,” Bewt said. “He dreams with the Fremen–of prophecies and messiahs.”
   Chuckles sounded at odd places around the table Jessica marked them–the smuggler, the stillsuit manufacturer's daughter, Duncan Idaho, the woman with the mysterious escort service.
   Tensions are oddly distributed here tonight, Jessica thought. There's too much going on of which I'm not aware. I'll have to develop new information sources.
   The Duke passed his gaze from Kynes to Bewt to Jessica. He felt oddly let down, as though something vital had passed him here. “May be,” he muttered.
   Kynes spoke quickly: “Perhaps we should discuss this another time, my Lord. There are so many–”
   The planetologist broke off as an uniformed Atreides trooper hurried in through the service door, was passed by the guard and rushed to the Duke's side. The man bent, whispering into Leto's ear.
   Jessica recognized the capsign of Hawat's corps, fought down uneasiness. She addressed herself to the stillsuit manufacturer's feminine companion–a tiny, dark-haired woman with a doll face, a touch of epicanthic fold to the eyes.
   “You've hardly touched your dinner, my dear,” Jessica said. “May I order you something?”
   The woman looked at the stillsuit manufacturer before answering, then: “I'm not very hungry.”
   Abruptly, the Duke stood up beside his trooper, spoke in a harsh tone of command: “Stay seated, everyone. You will have to forgive me, but a matter has arisen that requires my personal attention.” He stepped aside. “Paul, take over as host for me, if you please.”
   Paul stood, wanting to ask why his father had to leave, knowing he had to play this with the grand manner. He moved around to his father's chair, sat down in it.
   The Duke turned to the alcove where Halleck sat, said: “Gurney, please take Paul's place at table. We mustn't have an odd number here. When the dinner's over, I may want you to bring Paul to the field C.P. Wait for my call.”
   Halleck emerged from the alcove in dress uniform, his lumpy ugliness seeming out of place in the glittering finery. He leaned his baliset against the wall, crossed to the chair Paul had occupied, sat down.
   “There's no need for alarm,” the Duke said, “but I must ask that no one leave until our house guard says it's safe. You will be perfectly secure as long as you remain here, and we'll have this little trouble cleared up very shortly.”
   Paul caught the code words in his father's message–guard-safe-secure-shortly. The problem was security, not violence. He saw that his mother had read the same message. They both relaxed.
   The Duke gave a short nod, wheeled and strode through the service door followed by his trooper.
   Paul said: “Please go on with your dinner. I believe Doctor Kynes was discussing water.”
   “May we discuss it another time?” Kynes asked.
   “By all means,” Paul said.
   And Jessica noted with pride her son's dignity, the mature sense of assurance.
   The banker picked up his water flagon, gestured with it at Bewt. “None of us here can surpass Master Lingar Bewt in flowery phrases. One might almost assume he aspired to Great House status. Come, Master Bewt, lead us in a toast. Perhaps you've a dollop of wisdom for the boy who must be treated like a man.”
   Jessica clenched her right hand into a fist beneath the table. She saw a handsignal pass from Halleck to Idaho, saw the house troopers along the walls move into positions of maximum guard.
   Bewt cast a venomous glare at the banker.
   Paul glanced at Halleck, took in the defensive positions of his guards, looked at the banker until the man lowered the water flagon. He said: “Once, on Caladan, I saw the body of a drowned fisherman recovered. He–”
   “Drowned?” It was the stillsuit manufacturer's daughter.
   Paul hesitated, then: “Yes. Immersed in water until dead. Drowned.”
   “What an interesting way to die,” she murmured.
   Paul's smile became brittle. He returned his attention to the banker. “The interesting thing about this man was the wounds on his shoulders–made by another fisherman's claw-boots. This fisherman was one of several in a boat–a craft for traveling on water–that foundered . . . sank beneath the water. Another fisherman helping recover the body said he'd seen marks like this man's wounds several times. They meant another drowning fisherman had tried to stand on this poor fellow's shoulders in the attempt to reach up to the surface–to reach air.”
   “Why is this interesting?” the banker asked.
   “Because of an observation made by my father at the time. He said the drowning man who climbs on your shoulders to save himself is understandable–except when you see it happen in the drawing room.” Paul hesitated just long enough for the banker to see the point coming, then: “And, I should add, except when you see it at the dinner table.”
   A sudden stillness enfolded the room.
   That was rash, Jessica thought. This banker might have enough rank to call my son out. She saw that Idaho was poised for instant action. The House troopers were alert. Gurney Halleck had his eyes on the men opposite him.
   “Ho-ho-ho-o-o-o!” It was the smuggler, Tuek, head thrown back laughing with complete abandon.
   Nervous smiles appeared around the table.
   Bewt was grinning.
   The banker had pushed his chair back, was glaring at Paul.
   Kynes said: “One baits an Atreides at his own risk.”
   “Is it Atreides custom to insult their guests?” the banker demanded.
   Before Paul could answer, Jessica leaned forward, said: “Sir!” And she thought: We must learn this Harkonnen creature's game. Is he here to try for Paul? Does he have help?
   “My son displays a general garment and you claim it's cut to your fit?” Jessica asked. “What a fascinating revelation.” She slid a hand down to her leg to the crysknife she had fastened in a calf-sheath.
   The banker turned his glare on Jessica. Eyes shifted away from Paul and she saw him ease himself back from the table, freeing himself for action. He had focused on the code word: garment. "Prepare for violence. "
   Kynes directed a speculative look at Jessica, gave a subtle hand signal to Tuek.
   The smuggler lurched to his feet, lifted his flagon. “I'll give you a toast,” he said. “To young Paul Atreides, still a lad by his looks, but a man by his actions.”
   Why do they intrude? Jessica asked herself.
   The banker stared now at Kynes, and Jessica saw terror return to the agent's face.
   People began responding all around the table.
   Where Kynes leads, people follow, Jessica thought. He has told us he sides with Paul. What's the secret of his power? It can't be because he's Judge of the Change. That's temporary. And certainly not because he's a civil servant.
   She removed her hand from the crysknife hilt, lifted her flagon to Kynes, who responded in kind.
   Only Paul and the banker– (Soo-Soo! What an idiotic nickname! Jessica thought.)–remained empty-handed. The banker's attention stayed fixed on Kynes. Paul stared at his plate.
   I was handling it correctly, Paul thought. Why do they interfere? He glanced covertly at the male guests nearest him. Prepare for violence? From whom? Certainly not from that banker fellow.
   Halleck stirred, spoke as though to no one in particular, directing his words over the heads of the guests across from him: “In our society, people shouldn't be quick to take offense. It's frequently suicidal.” He looked at the stillsuit manufacturer's daughter beside him. “Don't you think so, miss?”
   “Oh, yes. Yes. Indeed I do,” She said. “There's too much violence. It makes me sick. And lots of times no offense is meant, but people die anyway. It doesn't make sense.”
   “Indeed it doesn't,” Halleck said.
   Jessica saw the near perfection of the girl's act, realized: That empty-headed little female is not an empty-headed little female. She saw then the pattern of the threat and understood that Halleck, too, had detected it. They had planned to lure Paul with sex. Jessica relaxed. Her son had probably been the first to see it–his training hadn't overlooked that obvious gambit.
   Kynes spoke to the banker: “Isn't another apology in order?”
   The banker turned a sickly grin toward Jessica, said: “My Lady, I fear I've overindulged in your wines. You serve potent drink at table, and I'm not accustomed to it.”
   Jessica heard the venom beneath his tone, spoke sweetly: “When strangers meet, great allowance should be made for differences of custom and training.”
   “Thank you, my Lady,” he said.
   The dark-haired companion of the stillsuit manufacturer leaned toward Jessica, said: “The Duke spoke of our being secure here. I do hope that doesn't mean more fighting.”
   She was directed to lead the conversation this way, Jessica thought.
   "Likely this will prove unimportant," Jessica said. "But there's so much detail requiring the Duke's personal attention in these times. As long as enmity continues between Atreides and Harkonnen we cannot be too careful. The Duke has sworn kanly. He will leave no Harkonnen agent alive on Arrakis, of course." She glanced at the Guild Bank agent. "And the Conventions, naturally, support him in this." She shifted her attention to Kynes." Is this not so, Dr. Kynes?"
   “Indeed it is,” Kynes said.
   The stillsuit manufacturer pulled his companion gently back. She looked at him, said: “I do believe I'll eat something now. I'd like some of that bird dish you served earlier.”
   Jessica signaled a servant, turned to the banker: “And you, sir, were speaking of birds earlier and of their habits. I find so many interesting things about Arrakis. Tell me, where is the spice found? Do the hunters go deep into the desert?”
   “Oh, no, my Lady,” he said. “Very little's known of the deep desert. And almost nothing of the southern regions.”
   “There's a tale that a great Mother Lode of spice is to be found in the southern reaches,” Kynes said, “but I suspect it was an imaginative invention made solely for purposes of a song. Some daring spice hunters do, on occasion, penetrate into the edge of the central belt, but that's extremely dangerous–navigation is uncertain, storms are frequent. Casualties increase dramatically the farther you operate from Shield Wall bases. It hasn't been found profitable to venture too far south. Perhaps if we had a weather satellite . . .”
   Bewt looked up, spoke around a mouthful of food: “It's said the Fremen travel there, that they go anywhere and have hunted out soaks and sip-wells even in the southern latitudes.”
   “Soaks and sip-wells?” Jessica asked.
   Kynes spoke quickly: “Wild rumors, my Lady. These are known on other planets, not on Arrakis. A soak is a place where water seeps to the surface or near enough to the surface to be found by digging according to certain signs. A sip-well is a form of soak where a person draws water through a straw . . . so it is said.”
   There's deception in his words, Jessica thought.
   Why is he lying? Paul wondered.
   “How very interesting,” Jessica said. And she thought. “It is said . . .” What a curious speech mannerism they have here. If they only knew what it reveals about their dependence on superstitions.
   “I've heard you have a saying,” Paul said, “that polish comes from the cities, wisdom from the desert.”
   “There are many sayings on Arrakis,” Kynes said.
   Before Jessica could frame a new question, a servant bent over her with a note. She opened it, saw the Duke's handwriting and code signs, scanned it.
   “You'll all be delighted to know,” she said, “that our Duke sends his reassurances. The matter which called him away has been settled. The missing carryall has been found. A Harkonnen agent in the crew overpowered the others and flew the machine to a smugglers' base, hoping to sell it there. Both man and machine were turned over to our forces.” She nodded to Tuek.
   The smuggler nodded back.
   Jessica refolded the note, tucked it into her sleeve.
   “I'm glad it didn't come to open battle,” the banker said. “The people have such hopes the Atreides will bring peace and prosperity.”
   “Especially prosperity,” Bewt said.
   “Shall we have our dessert now?” Jessica asked. “I've had our chef prepare a Caladan sweet: pongi rice in sauce dolsa.”
   “It sounds wonderful,” the stillsuit manufacturer said. “Would it be possible to get the recipe?”
   “Any recipe you desire,” Jessica said, registering the man for later mention to Hawat. The stillsuit manufacturer was a fearful little climber and could be bought.
   Small talk resumed around her: “Such a lovely fabric . . .” “He is having a setting made to match the jewel . . .” “We might try for a production increase next quarter . . .”
   Jessica stared down at her plate, thinking of the coded part of Leto's message: “The Harkonnens tried to get in a shipment of lasguns. We captured them. This may mean they've succeeded with other shipments. It certainly means they don't place much store in shields. Take appropriate precautions.”
   Jessica focused her mind on lasguns, wondering. The white-hot beams of disruptive light could cut through any known substance, provided that substance was not shielded. The fact that feedback from a shield would explode both lasgun and shield did not bother the Harkonnens. Why? A lasgun-shield explosion was a dangerous variable, could be more powerful than atomics, could kill only the gunner and his shielded target.
   The unknowns here filled her with uneasiness.
   Paul said: “I never doubted we'd find the carryall. Once my father moves to solve a problem, he solves it. This is a fact the Harkonnens are beginning to discover.”
   He's boasting, Jessica thought. He shouldn't boast. No person who'll be sleeping far below ground level this night as a precaution against lasguns has the right to boast.

= = = = = =

   "There is no escape–we pay for the violence of our ancestors. "
   –from “The Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib” by the Princess Irulan

   Jessica heard the disturbance in the great hall, turned on the light beside her bed. The clock there had not been properly adjusted to local time, and she had to subtract twenty-one minutes to determine that it was about 2 A.M.
   The disturbance was loud and incoherent.
   Is this the Harkonnen attack? she wondered.
   She slipped out of bed, checked the screen monitors to see where her family was. The screen showed Paul asleep in the deep cellar room they'd hastily converted to a bedroom for him. The noise obviously wasn't penetrating to his quarters. There was no one in the Duke's room, his bed was unrumpled. Was he still at the field C.P.?
   There were no screens yet to the front of the house.
   Jessica stood in the middle of her room, listening.
   There was one shouting, incoherent voice. She heard someone call for Dr. Yueh. Jessica found a robe, pulled it over her shoulders, pushed her feet into slippers, strapped the crysknife to her leg.
   Again, a voice called out for Yueh.
   Jessica belted the robe around her, stepped into the hallway. Then the thought struck her: What if Leto's hurt?
   The hall seemed to stretch out forever under her running feet. She turned through the arch at the end, dashed past the dining hall and down the passage to the Great Hall, finding the place brightly lighted, all the wall suspensors glowing at maximum.
   To her right near the front entry, she saw two house guards holding Duncan Idaho between them. His head lolled forward, and there was an abrupt, panting silence to the scene.
   One of the house guards spoke accusingly to Idaho: “You see what you did? You woke the Lady Jessica.”
   The great draperies billowed behind the men, showing that the front door remained open. There was no sign of the Duke or Yueh. Mapes stood to one side staring coldly at Idaho. She wore a long brown robe with serpentine design at the hem. Her feet were pushed into unlaced desert boots.
   “So I woke the Lady Jessica,” Idaho muttered. He lifted his face toward the ceiling, bellowed: “My sword was firs' blooded on Grumman!”
   Great Mother! He's drunk! Jessica thought.
   Idaho's dark, round face was drawn into a frown. His hair, curling like the fur of a black goat, was plastered with dirt. A jagged rent in his tunic exposed an expanse of the dress shirt he had worn at the dinner party earlier.
   Jessica crossed to him.
   One of the guards nodded to her without releasing his hold on Idaho. “We didn't know what to do with him, my Lady. He was creating a disturbance out front, refusing to come inside. We were afraid locals might come along and see him. That wouldn't do at all. Give us a bad name here.”
   “Where has he been?” Jessica asked.
   “He escorted one of the young ladies home from the dinner, my Lady. Hawat's orders.”
   “Which young lady?”
   “One of the escort wenches. You understand, my Lady?” He glanced at Mapes, lowered his voice. “They're always calling on Idaho for special surveillance of the ladies.”
   And Jessica thought: So they are. But why is he drunk?
   She frowned, turned to Mapes. “Mapes, bring a stimulant. I'd suggest caffeine. Perhaps there's some of the spice coffee left.”
   Mapes shrugged, headed for the kitchen. Her unlaced desert boots slap-slapped against the stone floor.
   Idaho swung his unsteady head around to peer at an angle toward Jessica. “Killed more'n three hunner' men f'r the Duke,” he muttered. “Whadduh wanna know is why'm mere? Can't live unner th' groun' here. Can't live onna groun' here. Wha' kinna place is 'iss, huh?”
   A sound from the side hall entry caught Jessica's attention. She turned, saw Yueh crossing to them, his medical kit swinging in his left hand. He was fully dressed, looked pale, exhausted. The diamond tattoo stood out sharply on his forehead.
   “Th' good docker!” Idaho shouted. “Whad're you, Doc? Splint 'n' pill man?” He turned blearily toward Jessica. “Makin' uh damn fool uh m'self, huh?”
   Jessica frowned, remained silent, wondering: Why would Idaho get drunk? Was he drugged?
   “Too much spice beer,” Idaho said, attempting to straighten.
   Mapes returned with a steaming cup in her hands, stopped uncertainly behind Yueh. She looked at Jessica, who shook her head.
   Yueh put his kit on the floor, nodded greeting to Jessica, said: “Spice beer, eh?”
   “Bes' damn stuff ever tas'ed,” Idaho said. He tried to pull himself to attention. “My sword was firs' blooded on Grumman! Killed a Harkon . . . Harkon . . . killed 'im f'r th' Duke.”
   Yueh turned, looked at the cup in Mapes' hand.
   “What is that?”
   “Caffeine,” Jessica said.
   Yueh took the cup, held it toward Idaho. “Drink this, lad.”
   “Don't wan' any more f drink.”
   “Drink it, I say!”
   Idaho's head wobbled toward Yueh, and he stumbled one step ahead, dragging the guards with him. “I'm almighdy fed up with pleasin' th' 'Mperial Universe, Doc. Jus' once, we're gonna do th' thing my way.”
   “After you drink this,” Yueh said. “It's just caffeine.”
   " 'Sprolly like all res' uh this place! Damn' sun 'stoo brighd. Nothin' has uh righd color. Ever'thing's wrong or . . . "
   “Well, it's nighttime now,” Yueh said. He spoke reasonably. “Drink this like a good lad. It'll make you feel better.”
   “Don' wanna feel bedder!”
   “We can't argue with him all night,” Jessica said. And she thought: This calls for shock treatment.
   “There's no reason for you to stay, my Lady,” Yueh said. “I can take care of this.”
   Jessica shook her head. She stepped forward, slapped Idaho sharply across the cheek.
   He stumbled back with his guards, glaring at her.
   “This is no way to act in your Duke's home,” she said. She snatched the cup from Yueh's hands, spilling part of it, thrust the cup toward Idaho. “Now drink this! That's an order!”
   Idaho jerked himself upright, scowling down at her. He spoke slowly, with careful and precise enunciation: “I do not take orders from a damn' Harkonnen spy.”
   Yueh stiffened, whirled to face Jessica.
   Her face had gone pale, but she was nodding. It all became clear to her–the broken stems of meaning she had seen in words and actions around her these past few days could now be translated. She found herself in the grip of anger almost too great to contain. It took the most profound of her Bene Gesserit training to quiet her pulse and smooth her breathing. Even then she could feel the blaze flickering.
   They were always calling on Idaho for surveillance of the ladies!
   She shot a glance at Yueh. The doctor lowered his eyes.
   “You knew this?” she demanded.
   “I . . . heard rumors, my Lady. But I didn't want to add to your burdens.”
   “Hawat!” she snapped. “I want Thufir Hawat brought to me immediately!”
   "But, my Lady . . . "
   “Immediately!”
   It has to be Hawat, she thought. Suspicion such as this could come from no other source without being discarded immediately.
   Idaho shook his head, mumbled. “Chuck th' whole damn thing.”
   Jessica looked down at the cup in her hand, abruptly dashed its contents across Idaho's face. “Lock him in one of the guest rooms of the east wing,” she ordered. “Let him sleep it off.”
   The two guards stared at her unhappily. One ventured: "Perhaps we should take him someplace else, m'Lady. We could . . . "
   “He's supposed to be here!” Jessica snapped. “He has a job to do here.” Her voice dripped bitterness. “He's so good at watching the ladies.”
   The guard swallowed.
   “Do you know where the Duke is?” she demanded.
   “He's at the command post, my Lady.”
   “Is Hawat with him?”
   “Hawat's in the city, my Lady.”
   “You will bring Hawat to me at once,” Jessica said. “I will be in my sitting room when he arrives.”
   "But, my Lady . . . "
   “If necessary, I will call the Duke,” she said. “I hope it will not be necessary. I would not want to disturb him with this.”
   “Yes, my Lady.”
   Jessica thrust the empty cup into Mapes' hands, met the questioning stare of the blue-within-blue eyes. “You may return to bed, Mapes.”
   “You're sure you'll not need me?”
   Jessica smiled grimly. “I'm sure.”
   "Perhaps this could wait until tomorrow," Yueh said. "I could give you a sedative and . . . "
   “You will return to your quarters and leave me to handle this my way,” she said. She patted his arm to take the sting out of her command. “This is the only way.”
   Abruptly, head high, she turned and stalked off through the house to her rooms. Cold walls . . . passages . . . a familiar door . . . She jerked the door open, strode in, and slammed it behind her. Jessica stood there glaring at the shield-blanked windows of her sitting room. Hawat! Could he be the one the Harkonnens bought? We shall see.
   Jessica crossed to the deep, old-fashioned armchair with an embroidered cover of schlag skin, moved the chair into position to command the door. She was suddenly very conscious of the crysknife in its sheath on her leg. She removed the sheath and strapped it to her arm, tested the drop of it. Once more, she glanced around the room, placing everything precisely in her mind against any emergency: the chaise near the corner, the straight chairs along the wall, the two low tables, her stand-mounted zither beside the door to her bedroom.
   Pale rose light glowed from the suspensor lamps. She dimmed them, sat down in the armchair, patting the upholstery, appreciating the chair's regal heaviness for this occasion.
   Now, let him come, she thought. We shall see what we shall see. And she prepared herself in the Bene Gesserit fashion for the wait, accumulating patience, saving her strength.
   Sooner than she had expected, a rap sounded at the door and Hawat entered at her command.
   She watched him without moving from the chair, seeing the crackling sense of drug-induced energy in his movements, seeing the fatigue beneath. Hawat's rheumy old eyes glittered. His leathery skin appeared faintly yellow in the room's light, and there was a wide, wet stain on the sleeve of his knife arm.
   She smelled blood there.
   Jessica gestured to one of the straight-backed chairs, said: “Bring that chair and sit facing me.”
   Hawat bowed, obeyed. That drunken fool of an Idaho! he thought. He studied Jessica's face, wondering how he could save this situation.
   “It's long past time to clear the air between us,” Jessica said.
   “What troubles my Lady?” He sat down, placed hands on knees.
   “Don't play coy with me!” she snapped. “If Yueh didn't tell you why I summoned you, then one of your spies in my household did. Shall we be at least that honest with each other?”
   “As you wish, my Lady.”
   “First, you will answer me one question,” she said. “Are you now a Harkonnen agent?”
   Hawat surged half out of his chair, his face dark with fury, demanding: “You dare insult me so?”
   “Sit down,” she said. “You insulted me so.”
   Slowly, he sank back into the chair.
   And Jessica, reading the signs of this face that she knew so well, allowed herself a deep breath. It isn't Hawat.
   “Now I know you remain loyal to my Duke,” she said. “I'm prepared, therefore, to forgive your affront to me.”
   “Is there something to forgive?”
   Jessica scowled, wondering: Shall I play my trump? Shall I tell him of the Duke's daughter I've carried within me these few weeks? No . . . Leto himself doesn't know. This would only complicate his life, divert him in a time when he must concentrate on our survival. There is yet time to use this.
   “A Truthsayer would solve this,” she said, “but we have no Truthsayer qualified by the High Board.”
   “As you say. We've no Truthsayer.”
   “Is there a traitor among us?” she asked. “I've studied our people with great care. Who could it be? Not Gurney. Certainly not Duncan. Their lieutenants are not strategically enough placed to consider. It's not you, Thufir. It cannot be Paul. I know it's not me. Dr. Yueh, then? Shall I call him in and put him to the test?”
   “You know that's an empty gesture,” Hawat said. “He's conditioned by the High College. That I know for certain.”
   “Not to mention that his wife was a Bene Gesserit slain by the Harkonnens,” Jessica said.
   “So that's what happened to her,” Hawat said.
   “Haven't you heard the hate in his voice when he speaks the Harkonnen name?”
   “You know I don't have the ear,” Hawat said.
   “What brought this base suspicion on me?” she asked.
   Hawat frowned. “My Lady puts her servant in an impossible position. My first loyalty is to the Duke.”
   “I'm prepared to forgive much because of that loyalty,” she said.
   “And again I must ask: Is there something to forgive?”
   “Stalemate?” she asked.
   He shrugged.
   “Let us discuss something else for a minute, then,” she said. “Duncan Idaho, the admirable fighting man whose abilities at guarding and surveillance are so esteemed. Tonight, he overindulged in something called spice beer. I hear reports that others among our people have been stupefied by this concoction. Is that true?”
   “You have your reports, my Lady.”
   “So I do. Don't you see this drinking as a symptom, Thufir?”
   “My Lady speaks riddles.”
   “Apply your Mentat abilities to it!” she snapped. “What's the problem with Duncan and the others? I can tell you in four words–they have no home.”
   He jabbed a finger at the floor. “Arrakis, that's their home.”
   “Arrakis is an unknown! Caladan was their home, but we've uprooted them. They have no home. And they fear the Duke's failing them.”
   He stiffened. “Such talk from one of the men would be cause for–”
   “Oh, stop that, Thufir. Is it defeatist or treacherous for a doctor to diagnose a disease correctly? My only intention is to cure the disease.”
   “The Duke gives me charge over such matters.”
   “But you understand I have a certain natural concern over the progress of this disease,” she said. “And perhaps you'll grant I have certain abilities along these lines.”
   Will I have to shock him severely? she wondered. He needs shaking up–something to break him from routine.
   “There could be many interpretations for your concern,” Hawat said. He shrugged.
   “Then you've already convicted me?”
   “Of course not, my Lady. But I cannot afford to take any chances, the situation being what it is.”
   “A threat to my son got past you right here in this house,” she said. “Who took that chance?”
   His face darkened. “I offered my resignation to the Duke.”
   “Did you offer your resignation to me . . . or to Paul?”
   Now he was openly angry, betraying it in quickness of breathing, in dilation of nostrils, a steady stare. She saw a pulse beating at his temple.
   “I'm the Duke's man,” he said, biting off the words.
   "There is no traitor," she said. "The threat's something else. Perhaps it has to do with the lasguns. Perhaps they'll risk secreting a few lasguns with timing mechanisms aimed at house shields. Perhaps they'll . . . "
   “And who could tell after the blast if the explosion wasn't atomic?” he asked. “No, my Lady. They'll not risk anything that illegal. Radiation lingers. The evidence is hard to erase. No. They'll observe most of the forms. It has to be a traitor.”
   “You're the Duke's man,” she sneered. “Would you destroy him in the effort to save him?”
   He took a deep breath, then: “If you're innocent, you'll have my most abject apologies.”
   “Look at you now, Thufir,” she said. “Humans live best when each has his own place, when each knows where he belongs in the scheme of things. Destroy the place and destroy the person. You and I, Thufir, of all those who love the Duke, are most ideally situated to destroy the other's place. Could I not whisper suspicions about you into the Duke's ear at night? When would he be most susceptible to such whispering, Thufir? Must I draw it for you more clearly?”
   “You threaten me?” he growled.
   “Indeed not. I merely point out to you that someone is attacking us through the basic arrangement of our lives. It's clever, diabolical. I propose to negate this attack by so ordering our lives that there'll be no chinks for such barbs to enter.”
   “You accuse me of whispering baseless suspicions?”
   “Baseless, yes.”
   “You'd meet this with your own whispers?”
   “Your life is compounded of whispers, not mine, Thufir.”
   “Then you question my abilities?”
   She sighed. “Thufir, I want you to examine your own emotional involvement in this. The natural human's an animal without logic. Your projections of logic onto all affairs is unnatural, but suffered to continue for its usefulness. You're the embodiment of logic–a Mentat. Yet, your problem solutions are concepts that, in a very real sense, are projected outside yourself, there to be studied and rolled around, examined from all sides.”
   “You think now to teach me my trade?” he asked, and he did not try to hide the disdain in his voice.
   “Anything outside yourself, this you can see and apply your logic to it,” she said. “But it's a human trait that when we encounter personal problems, those things most deeply personal are the most difficult to bring out for our logic to scan. We tend to flounder around, blaming everything but the actual, deep-seated thing that's really chewing on us.”
   “You're deliberately attempting to undermine my faith in my abilities as a Mentat,” he rasped. “Were I to find one of our people attempting thus to sabotage any other weapon in our arsenal, I should not hesitate to denounce and destroy him.”
   “The finest Mentats have a healthy respect for the error factor in their computations,” she said.
   “I've never said otherwise!”
   “Then apply yourself to these symptoms we've both seen: drunkenness among the men, quarrels–they gossip and exchange wild rumors about Arrakis; they ignore the most simple–”
   “Idleness, no more,” he said. “Don't try to divert my attention by trying to make a simple matter appear mysterious.”
   She stared at him, thinking of the Duke's men rubbing their woes together in the barracks until you could almost smell the charge there, like burnt insulation. They're becoming like the men of the pre-Guild legend, she thought: Like the men of the lost star-searcher, Ampoliros–sick at their guns–forever seeking, forever prepared and forever unready.
   “Why have you never made full use of my abilities in your service to the Duke?” she asked. “Do you fear a rival for your position?”
   He glared at her, the old eyes blazing. "I know some of the training they give you Bene Gesserit . . . " He broke off, scowling.
   “Go ahead, say it,” she said. “Bene Gesserit witches.”
   “I know something of the real training they give you,” he said. “I've seen it come out in Paul. I'm not fooled by what your schools tell the public: you exist only to serve.”
   The shock must be severe and he's almost ready for it, she thought.
   “You listen respectfully to me in Council,” she said, “yet you seldom heed my advice. Why?”
   “I don't trust your Bene Gesserit motives,” he said. “You may think you can look through a man; you may think you can make a man do exactly what you–”
   “You poor fool, Thufir!” she raged.
   He scowled, pushing himself back in the chair.
   “Whatever rumors you've heard about our schools,” she said, “the truth is far greater. If I wished to destroy the Duke . . . or you, or any other person within my reach, you could not stop me.”
   And she thought: Why do I let pride drive such words out of me? This is not the way I was trained. This is not how I must shock him.
   Hawat slipped a hand beneath his tunic where he kept a tiny projector of poison darts. She wears no shield, he thought. Is this just a brag she makes? I could slay her now . . . but, ah-h-h-h, the consequences if I'm wrong.
   Jessica saw the gesture toward his pocket, said: “Let us pray violence shall never be necessary between us.”
   “A worthy prayer,” he agreed.
   “Meanwhile, the sickness spreads among us,” she said. “I must ask you again: Isn't it more reasonable to suppose the Harkonnens have planted this suspicion to pit the two of us against each other?”
   “We appear to've returned to stalemate,” he said.
   She sighed, thinking: He's almost ready for it.
   “The Duke and I are father and mother surrogates to our people,” she said. “The position–”
   “He hasn't married you,” Hawat said.
   She forced herself to calmness, thinking: A good riposte, that.
   “But he'll not marry anyone else,” she said. “Not as long as I live. And we are surrogates, as I've said. To break up this natural order in our affairs, to disturb, disrupt, and confuse us–which target offers itself most enticingly to the Harkonnens?”
   He sensed the direction she was taking, and his brows drew down in a lowering scowl.
   “The Duke?” she asked. “Attractive target, yes, but no one with the possible exception of Paul is better guarded. Me? I tempt them, surely, but they must know the Bene Gesserit make difficult targets. And there's a better target, one whose duties create, necessarily, a monstrous blind spot. One to whom suspicion is as natural as breathing. One who builds his entire life on innuendo and mystery.” She darted her right hand toward him. “You!”
   Hawat started to leap from his chair.
   “I have not dismissed you, Thufir!” she flared.
   The old Mentat almost fell back into the chair, so quickly did his muscles betray him.
   She smiled without mirth.
   “Now you know something of the real training they give us,” she said.
   Hawat tried to swallow in a dry throat. Her command had been regal, preemptory–uttered in a tone and manner he had found completely irresistible. His body had obeyed her before he could think about it. Nothing could have prevented his response–not logic, not passionate anger . . . nothing. To do what she had done spoke of a sensitive, intimate knowledge of the person thus commanded, a depth of control he had not dreamed possible.
   “I have said to you before that we should understand each other,” she said. “I meant you should understand me. I already understand you. And I tell you now that your loyalty to the Duke is all that guarantees your safety with me.”
   He stared at her, wet his lips with his tongue.
   “If I desired a puppet, the Duke would marry me,” she said. “He might even think he did it of his own free will.”
   Hawat lowered his head, looked upward through his sparse lashes. Only the most rigid control kept him from calling the guard. Control . . . and the suspicion now that woman might not permit it. His skin crawled with the memory of how she had controlled him. In the moment of hesitation, she could have drawn a weapon and killed him!
   Does every human have this blind spot? he wondered. Can any of us be ordered into action before he can resist? The idea staggered him. Who could stop a person with such power?
   “You've glimpsed the fist within the Bene Gesserit glove,” she said. “Few glimpse it and live. And what I did was a relatively simple thing for us. You've not seen my entire arsenal. Think on that,”
   “Why aren't you out destroying the Duke's enemies?” he asked.
   “What would you have me destroy?” she asked. “Would you have me make a weakling of our Duke, have him forever leaning on me?”
   "But, with such power . . . "
   “Power's a two-edged sword, Thufir,” she said; “You think: 'How easy for her to shape a human tool to thrust into an enemy's vitals.' True, Thufir; even into your vitals. Yet, what would I accomplish? If enough of us Bene Gesserit did this, wouldn't it make all Bene Gesserit suspect? We don't want that, Thufir. We do not wish to destroy ourselves.” She nodded. “We truly exist only to serve.”
   “I cannot answer you,” he said. “You know I cannot answer.”
   “You'll say nothing about what has happened here to anyone,” she said. “I know you, Thufir.”
   "My Lady . . . " Again the old man tried to swallow in a dry throat.
   And he thought: She has great powers, yes. But would these not make her an even more formidable tool for the Harkonnens?
   “The Duke could be destroyed as quickly by his friends as by his enemies,” she said. “I trust now you'll get to the bottom of this suspicion and remove it.”
   “If it proves baseless,” he said.
   “If,” she sneered.
   “If,” he said.
   “You are tenacious,” she said.
   “Cautious,” he said, “and aware of the error factor.”
   “Then I'll pose another question for you: What does it mean to you that you stand before another human, that you are bound and helpless and the other human holds a knife at your throat–yet this other human refrains from killing you, frees you from your bonds and gives you the knife to use as you will?”
   She lifted herself out of the chair, turned her back on him. “You may go now, Thufir.”
   The old Mentat arose, hesitated, hand creeping toward the deadly weapon beneath his tunic. He was reminded of the bull ring and of the Duke's father (who'd been brave, no matter what his other failings) and one day of the corrida long ago: The fierce black beast had stood there, head bowed, immobilized and confused. The Old Duke had turned his back on the horns, cape thrown flamboyantly over one arm, while cheers rained down from the stands.
   I am the bull and she the matador, Hawat thought. He withdrew his hand from the weapon, glanced at the sweat glistening in his empty palm.
   And he knew that whatever the facts proved to be in the end, he would never forget this moment nor lose this sense of supreme admiration for the Lady Jessica.
   Quietly, he turned and left the room.
   Jessica lowered her gaze from the reflection in the windows, turned, and stared at the closed door.
   “Now we'll see some proper action,” she whispered.