Bringing up the rear was the green-robed High Priest of Dur, who had by tradition crowned every Emperor since the fall of the thinking machines. Despite the varying fortunes of his ancient religion, the High Priest proudly sprinkled the iron-red holy dust of Dur right and left onto the audience.
Seeing Shaddam’s stately pace and how smartly uniformed he was, Leto recalled when the Crown Prince had marched up another aisle only days earlier to testify on his behalf. In a way, it seemed to him that his royal cousin had looked even more regal then, swathed in the fine silks and jewels of an Emperor. Now he looked more like a soldier— the commander in chief of all Imperial forces.
“An obvious political move,” Hawat said, leaning over to mutter in his ear. “Do you notice? Shaddam is letting the Sardaukar know that their new Emperor considers himself a member of their organization, that they are important to his reign.”
Leto nodded, understanding this practice well. Like his father before him, the young Duke fraternized with his men, dining with them and joining them in everyday functions to show that he would never ask his troops to do what he wouldn’t do himself.
“Looks to me like more show than substance,” Rhombur said.
“In ruling a vast empire, there’s a place for show,” Kailea said. With a pang, Leto recalled the Old Duke’s penchant for bullfights and other spectacles.
Shaddam reveled in the grandeur, bathed himself in glory. He bowed as he strutted past his future wife and the Bene Gesserit contingent. His coronation would come first. At the designated place, Shaddam came to a stop and turned to face the High Priest of Dur, who now held the glittering Imperial crown on a gilded pillow.
Behind the Crown Prince, a wide curtain opened to reveal the royal dais, which had been moved here. The massive Imperial throne, empty now, had been carved from a single piece of blue-green quartz— the largest such gem ever found, dating back to the days of Emperor Hassik III. Hidden projectors shot fine-tuned lasers into the depths of the block of crystal, refracting a nova of rainbows. The audience gasped at the translucent beauty of the throne.
Indeed, there is a place for ceremony in the daily workings of the Imperium, Leto thought. It has a unifying influence, making people feel they belong to something significant.
Such ceremonies cemented the impression that Humanity, not Chaos, reigned over the universe. Even a self-serving Emperor like Shaddam could do some good, Leto felt . . . and fervently hoped.
Solemnly, the Crown Prince climbed the steps of the royal dais and seated himself on the throne, staring fixedly ahead. Following time-honored procedure, the High Priest moved behind him and raised the jeweled crown high in the air.
“Do you, Crown Prince Shaddam Raphael Corrino IV, swear fidelity to the Holy Empire?”
The priest’s voice carried throughout the theatre, over speakers of such high quality that everyone in the audience heard completely natural, undistorted sounds. The same words were transmitted around the planet of Kaitain, and would be spread throughout the Imperium.
“I do,” Shaddam said, his voice booming.
The High Priest lowered the symbol of office onto the seated man’s brow, and to the gathered dignitaries he said, “I give you the new Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV, may his reign shine as long as the stars!”
“May his reign shine as long as the stars!” the audience intoned in a thunderous response.
When Shaddam rose from the throne with the glittering crown on his head, he did so as Emperor of the Known Universe. Thousands inside the chamber applauded and cheered him. He looked across the audience that was a microcosm of everything he ruled, and his gaze came to rest on doe-eyed Anirul, who had moved to stand just below the dais with her honor guard and ladies-in-waiting. The Emperor extended a hand, beckoning her.
Harishka, Mother Superior of the Bene Gesserit, guided Anirul to Shaddam’s side. The magnificent women moved with the faultless glide-walk of the Sisterhood, as if Shaddam were a magnet drawing them into his presence. Then ancient Harishka returned to her seat with the other Bene Gesserit.
The priest said words over the couple, while the new Emperor slipped two diamond rings onto the marriage finger of Anirul’s hand, followed by a breathtaking red soostone band that had belonged to his paternal grandmother.
When they were pronounced Emperor and Lady, the High Priest of Dur presented them to the assemblage. In the audience, Hasimir Fenring leaned over and whispered to Margot, “Shall we step forward and see if the High Priest can squeeze in another quick ceremony?”
She giggled, nudged him playfully.
• • •
That evening, hedonism in the capital city reached a fever pitch of adrenaline, pheromones, and music. The royal couple attended a sumptuous dinner banquet followed by a grand ball and then by a magnificent culinary orgy that made the earlier meal appear to have been no more than an appetizer. As the newlyweds departed for the Imperial Palace, they were showered with merh-silk roses and chased by the nobles.
Finally Emperor Shaddam IV and Lady Anirul retired to their marriage bed. Outside their room drunken noblemen and ladies rang crystal bells and floated bright glowglobes at the windows— the traditional shivaree that would bring blessings of fertility upon the union.
These festivities continued much as they had for millennia, going back to pre-Butlerian days, to the very roots of the Imperium. More than a thousand expensive gifts were arrayed on the lawn of the Palace. These offerings would be gathered by Imperial servants and distributed later to the populace, in conjunction with an additional week of festivities on Kaitain.
After all the celebrations were complete, Shaddam would finally be able to get down to the business of ruling his Empire of a Million Worlds.
In the final analysis, the legendary event called Leto’s Gambit became the basis of the young Duke Atreides’s immense popularity. He successfully projected himself as a shining beacon of honor in a galactic sea of darkness. To many members of the Landsraad, Leto’s honesty and naÏveté became a symbol of honor that shamed many of the Great and Minor Houses to alter their behavior toward each other . . . for a short time, at least, until familiar old patterns reemerged.
—Origins of House Atreides: Seeds of the Future
in the Galactic Imperium, by Bronso of Ix
Furious that his plot had failed, Baron Harkonnen raged up and down the halls of his family Keep on Giedi Prime. He screamed demands that his personal staff find a dwarf for him to torture; he needed a creature to dominate, something he could crush entirely.
When Yh’imm, one of the Baron’s entertainment monitors, complained that it wasn’t exactly sporting for him to persecute a man solely on the basis of his physical size, the Baron ordered Yh’imm’s legs amputated at the knees. In that way, the soon-to-be-shortened entertainment monitor would fit the Procrustean bill nicely.
As the howling, pleading man was hauled away to the Harkonnen surgeons, the Baron summoned his nephew Glossu Rabban and the Mentat Piter de Vries to attend him for a vital discussion, to be held in the Baron’s workroom.
Waiting for them at a worktable spread with papers and ridulian crystal reports, the Baron boomed in his basso voice, “Damn the Atreides, from the boy-Duke to his bastard ancestors! I wish they’d all died in the Battle of Corrin.”
He whirled when de Vries entered the workroom doorway, and the Baron nearly lost his balance with suddenly clumsy muscle control. He grasped the edge of the table to steady himself. “How could Leto survive that trial? He had no proof, no defense.” Muted glowglobes floated overhead in the room. “He still doesn’t have a clue what really happened.”
The Baron’s bellow echoed through the enclosure and out an open door into the halls, which were lined with polished stone and brasswork. Rabban hurried down the corridor. “And damn Shaddam for his meddling! Just because he’s Emperor, what gives him the right to take sides? What’s in it for him?”
Both Rabban and de Vries hesitated at the iron-arched entrance to the workr
oom, not anxious to step into the maelstrom of the Baron’s wrath. The Mentat closed his eyes and rubbed his thick eyebrows, trying to think of what to say or do. Rabban went to an alcove and poured himself a strong glass of kirana brandy. He made slurping animal noises as he drank.
The Baron stepped away from the table and paced the floor, his movements oddly jerky, as if he were having difficulty controlling his equilibrium. His clothes seemed tight on him from his recent weight gains.
“It was supposed to start a sudden war, and after the carnage who could pick up the pieces? But somehow the damned Atreides kept everyone from killing each other. By insisting on a risky Trial by Forfeiture— ancient rites be damned!— and his willingness to sacrifice himself just to protect his precious friends and crew, Leto Atreides has gained favorable attention in the Landsraad. His popularity is soaring.”
Piter de Vries cleared his throat. “Perhaps, my Baron, it was a mistake to pit them against the Tleilaxu. Nobody cares about the Tleilaxu. It was difficult to foster a general sense of outrage among the Houses. We never planned for this matter to come to trial.”
“We made no mistakes!” Rabban grunted, immediately defending his uncle. “Do you value your life, Piter?”
De Vries didn’t respond, nor did he show any fear. He was a formidable fighter in his own right, with tricks and experience that could undoubtedly defeat Rabban’s brawn, should it come to physical combat.
The Baron looked at his nephew, disappointed. You never seem to grasp anything buried beneath even a single layer of subtlety.
Rabban glared at the Mentat. “Duke Leto is just an impetuous young ruler from an unremarkable family. House Atreides makes its income through selling . . . pundi rice!” He spat the words.
“The fact is, Rabban,” the twisted Mentat said smoothly, with the voice of a snake, “that the other members of the Landsraad Council actually seem to like him. They admire what this boy-Duke has accomplished. We’ve made him a hero.”
Rabban finished his drink, poured another, slurped it.
“The Landsraad Council becoming altruistic?” The Baron snorted. “That’s even more unbelievable than Leto winning his case.”
From the surgery rooms down the long, dim halls, grisly noises could be heard, screams of agony that echoed along the corridors all the way to the Baron’s workroom. The muted glowglobes flickered, but maintained their low level of illumination.
The Baron looked piercingly at de Vries, then gestured toward the operating rooms. “Perhaps you’d better attend to this yourself, Piter. I want to make certain that idiot entertainment monitor survives his surgery . . . at least until I’ve made sufficient use of him.”
“Yes, my Baron,” the Mentat said and scuttled down the halls to the medical chambers. The screams grew higher-pitched and womanish. The Baron heard the sounds of sizzling cutterays and a grinding saw.
The Baron thought of his newly shortened plaything and what he would do to Yh’imm as soon as the painkillers began to wear off. Or could it be possible the doctors had managed their task without using any painkillers? Perhaps.
Rabban let his thick-lidded eyes fall closed in supreme pleasure, just listening and enjoying. Given the choice, he would rather have hunted the man down in Giedi Prime’s wilderness preserve. But the Baron thought that sounded like too much trouble— all that running and chasing and climbing snow-covered rocks. He could come up with far better ways of spending his time. Besides, the Baron’s limbs and joints had been growing increasingly sore of late, his muscles were weakened and trembled, his body was losing its edge. . . .
For now the Baron would simply make up his own sport. Once Yh’imm’s stumps were cauterized and sealed, he would pretend the hapless monitor was Duke Atreides himself. That would be fun.
The Baron paused and realized how foolish it was for him to be so upset over the failure of a single plan. For uncounted generations the Harkonnens had spun subtle traps for their hated mortal enemies. But the Atreides were difficult to kill, especially when their backs were to the wall. The feud extended all the way back to the Great Revolt, the betrayal, the accusations of cowardice. Since that time, Harkonnen had always hated Atreides, and vice versa.
And so it would always be.
“We still have Arrakis,” the Baron said. “We still control melange production, even though we’re under CHOAM’s thumb and the watchful eye of the Padishah Emperor.” He grinned at Rabban, who grinned back at him, strictly out of habit.
Deep in the heart of the dirty and dark grandeur of Harkonnen Keep, the Baron clenched his fist and raised it high in the air. “As long as we control Arrakis, we control our own fortunes.” He clapped a hand on his nephew’s padded shoulder. “We will wring spice from the sands until Arrakis is nothing more than an empty husk!”
The universe contains untapped and heretofore unimagined energy sources. They are before your very eyes, yet you cannot see them. They are in your mind, yet you cannot think them. But I can!
—TIO HOLTZMAN,
Collected Lectures
On the Spacing Guild world of Junction, the one who had been D’murr Pilru was brought before a tribunal of Navigators. They didn’t tell him the reason, and even with all his intuition and conceptual understanding of the universe, he could not fathom what they wanted from him.
No other trainees joined D’murr, none of the new Pilots who had learned the ways of foldspace with him. On a huge open parade ground of stunted blakgras, the sealed spice-filled tanks of the high-level tribunal were arrayed in a semicircle on grooved flagstones, where tracks from thousands of previous convocations could still be seen.
D’murr’s smaller tank sat in front of them all, solitary at the center of the semicircle. Relatively new to his life as a Navigator, still a low-ranking Pilot, he retained much of his human shape inside the enclosed tank. The members of the tribunal— Steersmen all, each inside his own tank— showed only bloated heads and monstrously altered eyes peering out through the murk of cinnamon-orange.
I will be like them someday, D’murr thought. At one time he would have recoiled in horror; now he accepted it as inevitable. He thought of all the new revelations he would have along the way.
The Guild tribunal spoke to him in their shorthand, higher-order mathematical language, thoughts and words communicated through the fabric of space itself— vastly more efficient than any human conversation. Grodin, the Head Instructor, acted as their mouthpiece.
“You have been monitored,” said Grodin. By long-standing procedure, Guild Instructors set up holorecording devices in every Heighliner navigation chamber and every training tank of the new and unproven Pilots. Periodically in the ships’ circuitous routes between the stars, these recordings were removed from the transports and cargo ships and delivered to Junction.
“All evidence is studied in detail as a routine matter.” D’murr knew that Guild Bank officials and their economic partners in CHOAM had to make certain that important navigation rules and safeguards were being followed. He questioned none of it.
“The Guild is perplexed by targeted and unauthorized transmissions being directed to your navigation chamber.”
His brother’s communication device! D’murr reeled inside his tank, floating free, seeing all the dizzy possibilities, the punishments and retributions he might face. He could become one of those pathetic failed Navigators, stunted and inhuman— the physical price paid, but the benefits not reaped. But D’murr knew his ability was strong! Perhaps the Steersmen would forgive. . . .
“We are curious,” Grodin said.
D’murr told them everything, explained everything he knew, gave them every detail. Trying to remember what C’tair had told him, he reported on the conditions inside sealed Ix, the Tleilaxu decision to return to more primitive Heighliner designs. The Heighliner decision disturbed them, but the tribunal was more interested in the functioning of the “Rogo transceiver” itself.
“Never have we had instantaneous foldspace transmission,” Grodin
said. For centuries all messages had been carried by Couriers, in physical form, on a physical ship that traveled through foldspace much faster than any known method of transmission could skim across space. “Can we exploit this innovation?”
D’murr realized the military and economic potential of such a device, if it could ever prove feasible. Though he didn’t know all the technical details, his brother had created an unprecedented system, and one most intriguing to the Spacing Guild. They wanted it for themselves.
A senior tribunal member suggested the possibility of using a mentally enhanced Navigator on both ends, rather than a mere human, like C’tair Pilru. Another questioned whether the link was more mental than technological, an enhanced connection because of the former closeness of the twins, the similarity of their brain patterns.
Perhaps, among the vast pool of Pilots, Navigators, and Steersmen, the Guild could find others with similar mental connections . . . though it would likely be rare. Nevertheless, despite the cost and difficulty, this method of communication was perhaps a service that could be tested, and then offered at great expense to the Emperor.
“You may retain your status as Pilot,” Grodin said, releasing him from the inquiry.
• • •
For several weeks after returning in triumph from Kaitain, Duke Leto Atreides and Rhombur Vernius had awaited a response from the new Emperor to their request for an Imperial audience. Leto was prepared to board a shuttle and travel to the Imperial Palace the moment a Courier arrived with a confirmed slot in the Emperor’s calendar. He had vowed to make no mention of his bluff message, decided not to pursue the matter of a Corrino-Tleilaxu connection . . . but Shaddam IV had to be curious.
If another week passed without a response, however, Leto would go there even without an appointment.
Dune: House Atreides Page 63