“That isn’t the important part,” Feyd said, looking a little too knowledgeable. “Viscount Moritani was placed on a prison frigate bound for Kaitain so that he could be charged before a Landsraad Court. He vowed to testify and expose all his little secrets.”
Rabban flushed red. “You mean he’ll reveal his involvement with us?”
“Oh no, of course not,” the Baron said with treacly sarcasm. “Once he lost everything, his life on the line, and in total disgrace, we should expect the Viscount to keep our secrets because, after all, we’re such good friends.” He glowered at his nephew, and Rabban looked away.
Rabban was a first-order thinker: To him, actions were concrete, standing by themselves. If he threw a rock into a pond, he didn’t expect to see ripples. Rabban had his strengths, though the Baron rarely complimented him for them. He had various advantageous qualities. There were times when brute force was necessary, and Rabban had few peers in that arena. More important, he truly did not have any lofty ambitions. He wasn’t devious enough to seize more responsibility. The Baron didn’t have to fear a dagger in the back or poison in his drink from that nephew.
Feyd, on the other hand, had a sharp and nimble mind. It often darted from topic to topic, yet like a careful juggler, he never lost his grip on any one concept. Devious? Yes, perhaps. And for all his youth, he was already showing signs of impatience to be named the successor to House Harkonnen. The Baron didn’t need to announce his decision yet, but Feyd… lovely Feyd was the future of House Harkonnen. The Baron could see that by watching the earnest expression on the young man’s face, the shrewd eyes, the obvious eagerness to learn.
But could the young man be trusted?
“Moritani has no incentive to protect us,” Feyd pointed out. “In fact, there is every reason for him to exaggerate our participation.”
Looking at Rabban, the Baron let his older nephew stew for a few moments, then eased the man’s mind. “Fortunately, this is not a problem so great that it cannot be repaired. In fact, while you were taking your leisurely path back home, I set an alternative solution in motion.”
Rabban looked almost childishly relieved that his uncle had a plan. He didn’t even need to hear the Baron’s explanation of what he had done, only the simple comment that things would be all right.
The Baron withdrew a document from his private desk, a slender filmpaper scroll. “This came from an official news courier, telling of a tragic and mysterious incident. The prison frigate transporting Viscount Moritani was in transit aboard a Guild Heighliner, berthed alongside other passenger ships — even some leftover Imperial vessels withdrawing from Grumman. As you know, Heighliners do not pressurize their cargo holds. Alas, a freak accident depressurized several airlocks in the prison frigate and the Viscount was exposed to vacuum. I’m afraid he didn’t survive long, and his body was found bloated and frozen. The expression on his face must have been quite hideous.”
“And you arranged for this, Uncle?” Rabban said enthusiastically.
The Baron scowled at him.
Feyd snickered. “It was an accident.”
“You admire me, Feyd, I can tell,” the Baron nodded. “Someday — though not anytime soon — you will be just like me.”
Feyd’s retort was quick and surprising. “But not so fat, I trust.”
The greatest personality change in a young man’s maturity occurs when he discovers that his own father is mortal, human, and fallible.
—The Life of Muad’Dib, Volume 2, by the PRINCESS IRULAN
Over the nightside of Caladan, the Heighliner disgorged troop carriers and fighter craft, followed by the Atreides family frigate. Ever respectful of those who had fought so valiantly for him in the War of Assassins, Duke Leto insisted on sending all of his soldiers home first.
With Paul sitting beside him near a wide observation window, Leto mused, “I look forward to seeing your mother again, especially after what we have just been through. She… she can make me feel alive again. Right now, I am too numb.” Restless, the Duke stood, motioned for his son to follow, and strode down a corridor on the starboard side of the craft as the frigate descended into the atmosphere. They passed a bank of portholes that showed the running lights of the Duke’s escort ships disappearing below.
“I understand how you feel, Father. I learned a great deal from what I experienced. Most of all, I hope I never have to see battle again.”
“You may hope for that, but I fear it isn’t likely. You are the son of a Duke. Even if you don’t seek out conflict, it will find you.”
The Atreides frigate broke through the last layers of cloud cover, enabling Paul to see the twinkling lights of coastal villages below and the bright target of the Cala City Spaceport. A capricious wind buffeted the descending ship, and Leto braced himself against the unexpected movement. The frigate bounced down through the edge of the storm. Peering through wind-driven rain, Paul caught glimpses of Castle Caladan and the first group of ships already landing at the spaceport, taking indicated positions like pieces on a large game board.
A large monitor screen on the bulkhead showed a tally of ships, and each time one of the vessels set down safely, an amber blip turned green. The Duke fired instructions to his officers over the comline and received reports back from them. He was satisfied and relieved to see them all come safely home.
Their family frigate circled over the spaceport, then swooped toward the main landing field. Through a starboard window Paul saw the windblown sea crashing against the cliffs. Before sunset, the fishing fleet had come back to harbor ahead of the storm, and even though the boats were lashed to their docks, they rocked heavily against the pilings. Paul knew the good people of Caladan could easily survive storms. There would always be rough weather, but that did not diminish their love for their planet.
The frigate made a bumpy landing and taxied into a large hangar, where other landed ships had already taken shelter. As Paul and his father disembarked and stepped onto a floor wet from rain running off the smooth hull, they found Lady Jessica already there waiting for them. Damp streaks in her bronze hair and speckles of water on her cloak showed that she had been caught in the downpour on her way to the hangar.
Eschewing formality, Leto pulled her close and kissed her gently. “I’m sorry you were caught in the storm.”
“Just a little rain. Not so bad.” They held each other, speaking little although Paul knew they had much to say to each other. During Leto’s betrothal to Ilesa Ecaz, Jessica had been like a rudderless boat on the open sea. The wedding-day massacre and the War of Assassins had swept over their relationship like a rogue wave. Now, they both had decisions to make and damage to repair. Neither of them was the same as before.
Wrestling with his thoughts, Leto stared at her with his steely-gray eyes, while Jessica simply waited. Paul watched his parents until finally his father said, “There is no better time to say this, Jessica, and our son should hear it, too. I am weary of politics and feuds, and I will no longer entertain further proposals of marriage alliances from other noble Houses.” He took her hands in his. “You are my one and only lady, my one and only love for all time. Though I cannot marry you, I will never agree to marry anyone else.”
She seemed flustered. “You can’t give me such a promise, Leto. You have to keep the other nobles guessing. You must at least keep the option available, for I am only a bound concubine.”
“My love, you are much more than that to me.” Reaching over to Paul, he gathered the boy into his embrace. “And you are the mother of our son, the next Duke.”
PART VII
Emperor Muad’Dib
10,198 AG
Is there anything more deadly than innocence, anything more disarming?
—The Stilgar Commentaries
Leaving the scarred Celestial Audience Chamber empty, Emperor Paul-Muad’Dib sat on the great Hagal quartz chair and held court in his original throne room. Every day, he heard the clear, heart-wrenching misery expressed by so many faithful p
eople, but he could not allow himself to be swayed. Yes, some of them had been crushed under the wheels of Paul’s own government, but he could not allow himself to care for all of them, to feel the million little cuts of their individual pain. In a sense, their suffering was essential to humanity’s continued existence. Paul’s prescience had forced him to look at the larger picture, and hold a steady course. It was the greater, terrible purpose within him, the only way he could lead humankind to the end result. He had to be Muad’Dib, even if that meant he must appear harsh and cold.
Duke Leto Atreides, and before him Old Duke Paulus, had loved to meet the people face to face. They considered direct interaction with their subjects a vital aspect of remaining in touch, ruler to ruled. After Bludd’s shocking actions, though, and the subsequent discoveries of one embryonic conspiracy after another, Paul found the process of holding court to be exhausting, frustrating, and dangerous. The previous Caladan dukes had managed a single group of people, a single planet — but Paul had to shoulder the burden of so many planets that he could not name them all without calling upon his Mentat training.
Henceforth, he decided that he would delegate more of these responsibilities to Alia. She seemed to have a different relationship with her conscience, a way to compartmentalize what must be done. His sister, with all her past lives and remembered experiences, could govern with a firm, stern hand. And because the people were frightened of the girl’s strangeness, they would see her more as a priestess than a ruler. Alia could use that to her advantage.
One morning, before the first group of supplicants was allowed into the heavily guarded chamber, Princess Irulan appeared before Paul, asking permission to speak with him. Beside the throne, Stilgar and Alia looked at Irulan with their usual suspicions, but Paul understood her motives better and trusted her to behave according to established patterns.
She wore a look of concern and puzzlement on her face. “My Husband, I have received a message from a Guild courier. It was addressed to me, asking for my intercession.” Frowning, she extended the cylinder to Paul.
Intrigued, he took the document, noted the intricate seals that Irulan had already broken open. As Paul read, Irulan explained to Stilgar and Alia, “Lady Margot Fenring requests a favor.”
“Lady Margot?” Alia asked, drawing upon her mother’s memories as well as her own. “We have heard nothing from her in years.”
The Count and his Lady, after initially joining Shaddam IV in exile on Salusa Secundus following the Battle of Arrakeen, had remained only a brief time before embarking on their own and disappearing from view — apparently with no love lost between them and the fallen Emperor. Paul knew the Count was quite a dangerous character, a schemer to rival the most Machiavellian of the Bene Gesserits or the Harkonnens.
Paul read the message, feeling a flicker of warning in his prescient senses, though nothing distinct. Much about Hasimir Fenring — another failed Bene Gesserit attempt to breed a Kwisatz Haderach — had always been murky to him. “It is odd that they took sanctuary among the Tleilaxu,” he said. “I did not foresee this request. I had forgotten that Lady Margot has a daughter.”
“And what does this woman want from you, Usul?” Stilgar asked.
After nearly drowning on Jericha, the faithful naib had returned to Arrakis and now chose to serve directly at the side of Muad’Dib, as Minister of State. Stilgar had decided his true worth was in leadership, rather than fighting on distant planets, and Paul had to agree.
The Emperor set the message cylinder aside. “She asks permission to send her daughter Marie here, wants her to be raised and trained in our Imperial court.”
Irulan was clearly unsettled by the idea. “I do not understand why.”
“A better question is, why would you be suspicious of her, rather than advocating it?” Alia countered. “Count Fenring was a close friend of your father’s, while Lady Margot is a prominent Bene Gesserit. Wasn’t Margot a boon companion to your own mother, Lady Anirul?”
“And to your mother as well,” the Princess replied. “But I am always troubled by things I do not understand.”
“Is Count Fenring the natural father of the child?” Paul asked.
“Lady Margot does not suggest otherwise. I cannot tell either way.”
“And if Count Fenring is no longer with Shaddam, was there truly a falling-out between them, or is this part of an overall scheme?” Alia added. “Our spies have suggested that the Count has a great deal of antipathy toward Shaddam. Is the rift real, or merely an act?”
Paul remembered the dire insult and the obvious coolness that Fenring had exhibited toward the Emperor in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Arrakeen, while Paul himself had felt an odd sort of kinship with Fenring. Though they were entirely dissimilar men, he and the Count had certain exceptional qualities in common.
“Salusa Secundus is not a pleasant place,” Stilgar said. “Or so I have heard.”
“Comforts mean little to Count Fenring,” Paul said. “For years, he served on Arrakis as the Imperial Spice Minister. I suspect that he left Salusa, not because he wanted a finer palace, but because he could no longer stand being with Shaddam.”
Irulan’s demeanor hardened. “My father often took action before he possessed all the facts. He simply expected the rest of the Imperium to bow to his will, whether or not his decisions were wise or rational. He often acted without consulting Count Fenring, and as a result got himself into terrible debacles. The Count grew tired of cleaning up after my father’s messes.”
With a sigh, Paul leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees.
“The question remains — how shall we respond to this request? Lady Margot wishes to send her little daughter here for schooling, and no doubt to make connections. The girl is only six years old. Could their motives be as straightforward as wanting to get into my good graces, since they abandoned Shaddam IV?”
“Occam’s Razor suggests that may be the real answer,” Irulan said. “The simplest answer does make perfect sense.”
“Occam’s Razor is dull where the Bene Gesserit are concerned,” Alia said. “I know from the clatter in my head that they have always schemed and plotted.”
Paul lifted the filmy sheets again and read the words Margot had imprinted there: “‘Emperor Paul-Muad’Dib Atreides, I humbly and respectfully request a favor. Though my husband has chosen to take refuge among the Tleilaxu, I am convinced that this is not the environment in which our daughter should be raised. The misogynist Tleilaxu culture is reprehensible in my eyes. I ask leave for Marie to come to your court in Arrakeen and spend the remainder of her formative years there, if her company should prove acceptable to you.’”
Paul set down the sheets. “Then Lady Margot also reminds me — unnecessarily — that she was the one who left a message in the conservatory of the Arrakeen Residency to warn my mother of a hidden Harkonnen threat. There is no disputing that, or the accuracy of her information.”
“She has placed a water-debt on you,” Stilgar said. The old naib’s brow furrowed, and he ran his fingers along the dark beard on his chin. “And yet, I cannot understand why she would offer us such an important hostage.”
“That works both ways,” Paul said. “We may have the little girl as a hostage, but we are also allowing a potential spy into the royal court.”
Irulan was surprised. “She’s only a child, my Lord. Just six years old.”
“I am just a little girl too,” Alia said, letting the rest of them draw their own comparisons and conclusions. Then she crossed her legs and sat down on the step in front of the Lion Throne, adjusting her child-sized black aba robe. “I think I would like to have a playmate, Brother.”
Increasingly, I am only able to see myself through the eyes of the monster.
—from Muad’Dib and the Jihad by the PRINCESS IRULAN
Paul hadn’t slept well for seven nights in a row, and he couldn’t hide the fact from Chani. She got up in the still darkness and came to stand by him on the b
alcony. Paul had passed through the moisture seal and wore only a loose, lightweight tunic in the dry air, wasting water. No stillsuit. Chani did the same.
When did I forget the basic lessons of Arrakis? he thought. Just because I am Emperor, does that mean water costs me nothing?
Listening to the humming restlessness of the vast city, he absorbed the vibrations in the air, the mixture of scents that filled every breath, unfiltered by stillsuit nose plugs. Arrakeen reminded him of an insect hive, filled with countless skittering subjects, all needing someone else to think for them, to decide for them, to command them.
He looked up into the night sky, saw the stars and imagined all the worlds out there, all the battles still taking place. With a faint smile, he recalled something Irulan had added to one of her stories, an obvious yet mythic fabrication — that at the moment of Duke Leto’s death, a meteor had streaked across the skies above his ancestral palace on Caladan….
“It pains me to see you so troubled every night, Beloved.” He turned to Chani, let out a long sigh. “My Sihaya, the people trouble me. I have known since childhood that this must come to pass, and I wanted them to trust me, to join me in this journey, to cooperate instead of forcing me to become a tyrant. Now they obey not because it is the right thing to do for the ultimate good of humanity, but because Muad’Dib commands it. If I walked out in the streets during any hour of the day, crowds would form and demand incessantly ‘Guide us, my Lord! Guide us!’ Is that what humanity needs, the danger of relying on a charismatic leader?”
“Perhaps you need guidance yourself, Usul,” Chani said quietly, stroking his dark hair away from his ear. “The guidance of Shai-Hulud. Perhaps you need to remember what it means to be a Fremen. Go out in the desert, summon a worm, and make your own hajj.”
He turned to kiss her on the mouth. “As always, you make me see clearly. Only in the desert can a man’s thoughts be still enough for him to think.” This was exactly what both Paul Atreides and the Emperor Muad’Dib needed.
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