Dune by Frank Herbert
op, the glowglobe in Stilgar's hands dropped below the level of the heads in front of Paul. Presently he felt steps beneath his feet, curving down to the left. Light reflected back up across hooded heads and a winding movement of people spiraling down the steps.
Jessica sensed mounting tension in the people around her, a pressure of silence that rasped her nerves with its urgency.
The steps ended and the troop passed through another low door. The light of the glowglobe was swallowed in a great open space with a high curved ceiling.
Paul felt Chani's hand on his arm, heard a faint dripping sound in the chill air, felt an utter stillness come over the Fremen in the cathedral presence of water.
I have seen this place in a dream, he thought.
The thought was both reassuring and frustrating. Somewhere ahead of him on this path, the fanatic hordes cut their gory path across the universe in his name. The green and black Atreides banner would become a symbol of terror. Wild legions would charge into battle screaming their war cry: "Muad'Dib!"
It must not be, he thought. I cannot let it happen.
But he could feel the demanding race consciousness within him, his own terrible purpose, and he knew that no small thing could deflect the juggernaut. It was gathering weight and momentum. If he died this instant, the thing would go on through his mother and his unborn sister. Nothing less than the deaths of all the troop gathered here and now--himself and his mother included--could stop the thing.
Paul stared around him, saw the troop spread out in a line. They pressed him forward against a low barrier carved from native rock. Beyond the barrier in the glow of Stilgar's globe, Paul saw an unruffled dark surface of water. It stretched away into shadows--deep and black--the far wall only faintly visible, perhaps a hundred meters away.
Jessica felt the dry pulling of skin on her cheeks and forehead relaxing in the presence of moisture. The water pool was deep; she could sense its deepness, and resisted a desire to dip her hands into it.
A splashing sounded on her left. She looked down the shadowy line of Fremen, saw Stilgar with Paul standing beside him and the watermasters emptying their load into the pool through a flowmeter. The meter was a round gray eye above the pool's rim. She saw its glowing pointer move as the water flowed through it, saw the pointer stop at thirty-three liters, seven and three-thirty-seconds drachms.
Superb accuracy in water measurement, Jessica thought. And she noted that the walls of the meter trough held no trace of moisture after the water's passage. The water flowed off those walls without binding tension. She saw a profound clue to Fremen technology in the simple fact: they were perfectionists.
Jessica worked her way down the barrier to Stilgar's side. Way was made for her with casual courtesy. She noted the withdrawn look in Paul's eyes, but the mystery of this great pool of water dominated her thoughts.
Stilgar looked at her. "There were those among us in need of water," he said, "yet they would come here and not touch this water. Do you know that?"
"I believe it," she said.
He looked at the pool. "We have more than thirty-eight million decaliters here," he said. "Walled off from the little makers, hidden and preserved."
"A treasure trove," she said.
Stilgar lifted the globe to look into her eyes. "It is greater than treasure. We have thousands of such caches. Only a few of us know them all." He cocked his head to one side. The globe cast a yellow-shadowed glow across face and beard. "Hear that?"
They listened.
The dripping of water precipitated from the windtrap filled the room with its presence. Jessica saw that the entire troop was caught up in a rapture of listening. Only Paul seemed to stand remote from it.
To Paul, the sound was like moments ticking away. He could feel time flowing through him, the instants never to be recaptured. He sensed a need for decision, but felt powerless to move.
"It has been calculated with precision," Stilgar whispered. "We know to within a million decaliters how much we need. When we have it, we shall change the face of Arrakis."
A hushed whisper of response lifted from the troop: "Bi-lal kaifa."
"We will trap the dunes beneath grass plantings," Stilgar said, his voice growing stronger. "We will tie the water into the soil with trees and undergrowth."
"Bi-lal kaifa," intoned the troop.
"Each year the polar ice retreats," Stilgar said.
"Bi-lal kaifa," they chanted.
"We shall make a homeworld of Arrakis--with melting lenses at the poles, with lakes in the temperate zones, and only the deep desert for the maker and his spice."
"Bi-lal kaifa."
"And no man ever again shall want for water. It shall be his for dipping from well or pond or lake or canal. It shall run down through the qanats to feed our plants. It shall be there for any man to take. It shall be his for holding out his hand."
"Bi-lal kaifa."
Jessica felt the religious ritual in the words, noted her own instinctively awed response. They're in league with the future, she thought. They have their mountain to climb. This is the scientist's dream ... and these simple people, these peasants, are filled with it.
Her thoughts turned to Liet-Kynes, the Emperor's planetary ecologist, the man who had gone native--and she wondered at him. This was a dream to capture men's souls, and she could sense the hand of the ecologist in it. This was a dream for which men would die willingly. It was another of the essential ingredients that she felt her son needed: people with a goal. Such people would be easy to imbue with fervor and fanaticism. They could be wielded like a sword to win back Paul's place for him.
"We leave now," Stilgar said, "and wait for the first moon's rising. When Jamis is safely on his way, we will go home."
Whispering their reluctance, the troop fell in behind him, turned back along the water barrier and up the stairs.
And Paul, walking behind Chani, felt that a vital moment had passed him, that he had missed an essential decision and was now caught up in his own myth. He knew he had seen this place before, experienced it in a fragment of prescient dream on faraway Caladan, but details of the place were being filled in now that he had not seen. He felt a new sense of wonder at the limits of his gift. It was as though he rode within the wave of time, sometimes in its trough, sometimes on a crest--and all around him the other waves lifted and fell, revealing and then hiding what they bore on their surface.
Through it all, the wild jihad still loomed ahead of him, the violence and the slaughter. It was like a promontory above the surf.
The troop filed through the last door into the main cavern. The door was sealed. Lights were extinguished, hoods removed from the cavern openings, revealing the night and the stars that had come over the desert.
Jessica moved to the dry lip of the cavern's edge, looked up at the stars. They were sharp and near. She felt the stirring of the troop around her, heard the sound of a baliset being tuned somewhere behind her, and Paul's voice humming the pitch. There was a melancholy in his tone that she did not like.
Chani's voice intruded from the deep cave darkness: "Tell me about the waters of your birthworld, Paul Muad'Dib."
And Paul: "Another time, Chani. I promise."
Such sadness.
"It's a good baliset," Chani said.
"Very good," Paul said. "Do you think Jamis'll mind my using it?"
He speaks of the dead in the present tense, Jessica thought. The implications disturbed her.
A man's voice intruded: "He liked music betimes, Jamis did."
"Then sing me one of your songs," Chani pleaded.
Such feminine allure in that girl-child's voice, Jessica thought. I must caution Paul about their women ... and soon.
"This was a song of a friend of mine," Paul said. "I expect he's dead now, Gurney is. He called it his evensong."
The troop grew still, listening as Paul's voice lifted in a sweet boy tenor with the baliset tinkling and strumming beneath it: "This clear time of seeing embers--
A gold-bright sun's lost in first dusk.
What frenzied senses, desp'rate musk
Are consort of rememb'ring."
Jessica felt the verbal music in her breast--pagan and charged with sounds that made her suddenly and intensely aware of herself, feeling her own body and its needs. She listened with a tense stillness.
"Night's pearl-censered requi-em ...
'Tis for us!
What joys run, then--
Bright in your eyes--
What flower-spangled amores
Pull at our hearts ...
What flower-spangled amores
Fill our desires."
And Jessica heard the after-stillness that hummed in the air with the last note. Why does my son sing a love song to that girl-child? she asked herself. She felt an abrupt fear. She could sense life flowing around her and she had no grasp on its reins. Why did he choose that song? she wondered. The instincts are true sometimes. Why did he do this?
Paul sat silently in the darkness, a single stark thought dominating his awareness: My mother is my enemy. She does not know it, but she is. She is bringing the jihad. She bore me; she trained me. She is my enemy.
The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future.
--from "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
ON HIS seventeenth birthday, Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen killed his one hundredth slave-gladiator in the family games. Visiting observers from the Imperial Court--a Count and Lady Fenring--were on the Harkonnen homeworld of Giedi Prime for the event, invited to sit that afternoon with the immediate family in the golden box above the triangular arena.
In honor of the na-Baron's nativity and to remind all Harkonnens and subjects that Feyd-Rautha was heir-designate, it was holiday on Giedi Prime. The old Baron had decreed a meridian-to-meridian rest from labors, and effort had been spent in the family city of Harko to create the illusion of gaiety: banners flew from buildings, new paint had been splashed on the walls along Court Way.
But off the main way, Count Fenring and his lady noted the rubbish heaps, the scabrous brown walls reflected in the dark puddles of the streets, and the furtive scurrying of the people.
In the Baron's blue-walled keep, there was fearful perfection, but the Count and his lady saw the price being paid--guards everywhere and weapons with that special sheen that told a trained eye they were in regular use. There were checkpoints for routine passage from area to area even within the keep. The servants revealed their military training in the way they walked, in the set of their shoulders ... in the way their eyes watched and watched and watched.
"The pressure's on," the Count hummed to his lady in their secret language. "The Baron is just beginning to see the price he really paid to rid himself of the Duke Leto."
"Sometime I must recount for you the legend of the phoenix," she said.
They were in the reception hall of the keep waiting to go to the family games. It was not a large hall--perhaps forty meters long and half that in width--but false pillars along the sides had been shaped with an abrupt taper, and the ceiling had a subtle arch, all giving the illusion of much greater space.
"Ah-h-h, here comes the Baron," the Count said.
The Baron moved down the length of the hall with that peculiar waddling-glide imparted by the necessities of guiding suspensor-hung weight. His jowls bobbed up and down; the suspensors jiggled and shifted beneath his orange robe. Rings glittered on his hands and opafires shone where they had been woven into the robe.
At the Baron's elbow walked Feyd-Rautha. His dark hair was dressed in close ringlets that seemed incongruously gay above sullen eyes. He wore a tight-fitting black tunic and snug trousers with a suggestion of bell at the bottom. Soft-soled slippers covered his small feet.
Lady Fenring, noting the young man's poise and the sure flow of muscles beneath the tunic thought: Here's one who won't let himself go to fat.
The Baron stopped in front of them, took Feyd-Rautha's arm in a possessive grip, said, "My nephew, the na-Baron, Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen." And, turning his baby-fat face toward Feyd-Rautha, he said, "The Count and Lady Fenring of whom I've spoken."
Feyd-Rautha dipped his head with the required courtesy. He stared at the Lady Fenring. She was golden-haired and willowy, her perfection of figure clothed in a flowing gown of ecru--simple fitness of form without ornament. Gray-green eyes stared back at him. She had that Bene Gesserit serene repose about her that the young man found subtly disturbing.
"Um-m-m-m-ah-hm-m-m-m," said the Count. He studied Feyd-Rautha. "The, hm-m-m-m, precise young man, ah, my ... hm-m-m-m ... dear?" The Count glanced at the Baron. "My dear Baron, you say you've spoken of us to this precise young man? What did you say?"
"I told my nephew of the great esteem our Emperor holds for you, Count Fenring," the Baron said, And he thought: Mark him well, Feyd! A killer with the manners of a rabbit--this is the most dangerous kind.
"Of course!" said the Count, and he smiled at his lady.
Feyd-Rautha found the man's actions and words almost insulting. They stopped just short of something overt that would require notice. The young man focused his attention on the Count: a small man, weak-looking. The face was weaselish with overlarge dark eyes. There was gray at the temples. And his movements--he moved a hand or turned his head one way, then he spoke another way. It was difficult to follow.
"Um-m-m-m-m-ah-h-h-hm-m-m, you come upon such, mm-m-m, preciseness so rarely," the Count said, addressing the Baron's shoulder. "I ... ah, congratulate you on the hm-m-m perfection of your ah-h-h heir. In the light of the hm-m-m elder, one might say."
"You are too kind," the Baron said. He bowed, but Feyd-Rautha noted that his uncle's eyes did not agree with the courtesy.
"When you're mm-m-m ironic, that ah-h-h suggests you're hm-m-m-m thinking deep thoughts," the Count said.
There he goes again, Feyd-Rautha thought. It sounds like he's being insulting, but there's nothing you can call out for satisfaction.
Listening to the man gave Feyd-Rautha the feeling his head was being pushed through mush ... um-m-m-ah-h-h-hm-m-m-m! Feyd-Rautha turned his attention back to the Lady Fenring.
"We're ah-h-h taking up too much of this young man's time," she said. "I understand he's to appear in the arena today."
By the houris of the Imperial hareem, she's a lovely one! Feyd-Rautha thought. He said: "I shall make a kill for you this day, my Lady. I shall make the dedication in the arena, with your permission."
She returned his stare serenely, but her voice carried whiplash as she said: "You do not have my permission."
"Feyd!" the Baron said. And he thought: That imp! Does he want this deadly Count to call him out?
But the Count only smiled and said: "Hm-m-m-m-um-m-m."
"You really must be getting ready for the arena, Feyd," the Baron said. "You must be rested and not take any foolish risks."
Feyd-Rautha bowed, his face dark with resentment. "I'm sure everything will be as you wish, Uncle." He nodded to Count Fenring. "Sir." To the lady: "My Lady." And he turned, strode out of the hall, barely glancing at the knot of Families Minor near the double doors.
"He's so young," the Baron sighed.
"Um-m-m-m-ah indeed hmmm," the Count said.
And the Lady Fenring thought: Can that be the young man the Reverend Mother meant? Is that a bloodline we must preserve?
"We've more than an hour before going to the arena," the Baron said. "Perhaps we could have our little talk now, Count Fenring." He tipped his gross head to the right. "There's a considerable amount of progress to be discussed."
And the Baron thought: Let us see now how the Emperor's errand boy gets across whatever message he carries without ever being so crass as to speak it right out.
The Count spoke to his lady: "Um-m-m-m-ah-h-h-hm-m-m, you mm-m will ah-h-h excuse us, my dear?"
"Each day, some time each hour, brings change," she said. "Mm-m-m-m." And she smiled sweetly at the Baron before turning away. Her long skirts swished and she walked with a straight-backed regal stride toward the double doors at the end of the hall.
The Baron noted how all conversation among the Houses Minor there stopped at her approach, how the eyes followed her. Bene Gesserit! the Baron thought. The universe would be better rid of them all!
"There's a cone of silence between two of the pillars over here on our left," the Baron said. "We can talk there without fear of being overheard." He led the way with his waddling gait into the sound-deadening field, feeling the noises of the keep become dull and distant.
The Count moved up beside the Baron, and they turned, facing the wall so their lips could not be read.
"We're not satisfied with the way you ordered the Sardaukar off Arrakis," the Count said.
Straight talk! the Baron thought.
"The Sardaukar could not stay longer without risking that others would find out how the Emperor helped me," the Baron said.
"But your nephew Rabban does not appear to be pressing strongly enough toward a solution of the Fremen problem."
"What does the Emperor wish?" the Baron asked. "There cannot be more than a handful of Fremen left on Arrakis. The southern desert is uninhabitable. The northern desert is swept regularly by our patrols."
"Who says the southern desert is uninhabitable?"
"Your own planetologist said it, my dear Count."
"But Doctor Kynes is dead."
"Ah, yes ... unfortunate, that."
"We've word from an overflight across the southern reaches," the Count said. "There's evidence of plant life."
"Has the Guild then agreed to a watch from space?"
"You know better than that, Baron. The Emperor cannot legally post a watch on Arrakis."
"And I cannot afford it," the Baron said. "Who made this overflight?"
"A ... smuggler."
"Someone has lied to you, Count," the Baron said. "Smugglers cannot navigate the southern reaches any better than can Rabban's men. Storms, sand-static, and all that, you know. Navigation markers are knocked out faster than they can be installed."
"We'll discuss various types of static another time," the Count said.
Ah-h-h-h, the Baron thought. "Have you found some mistake in my accounting then?" he demanded.
"When you imagi
Jessica sensed mounting tension in the people around her, a pressure of silence that rasped her nerves with its urgency.
The steps ended and the troop passed through another low door. The light of the glowglobe was swallowed in a great open space with a high curved ceiling.
Paul felt Chani's hand on his arm, heard a faint dripping sound in the chill air, felt an utter stillness come over the Fremen in the cathedral presence of water.
I have seen this place in a dream, he thought.
The thought was both reassuring and frustrating. Somewhere ahead of him on this path, the fanatic hordes cut their gory path across the universe in his name. The green and black Atreides banner would become a symbol of terror. Wild legions would charge into battle screaming their war cry: "Muad'Dib!"
It must not be, he thought. I cannot let it happen.
But he could feel the demanding race consciousness within him, his own terrible purpose, and he knew that no small thing could deflect the juggernaut. It was gathering weight and momentum. If he died this instant, the thing would go on through his mother and his unborn sister. Nothing less than the deaths of all the troop gathered here and now--himself and his mother included--could stop the thing.
Paul stared around him, saw the troop spread out in a line. They pressed him forward against a low barrier carved from native rock. Beyond the barrier in the glow of Stilgar's globe, Paul saw an unruffled dark surface of water. It stretched away into shadows--deep and black--the far wall only faintly visible, perhaps a hundred meters away.
Jessica felt the dry pulling of skin on her cheeks and forehead relaxing in the presence of moisture. The water pool was deep; she could sense its deepness, and resisted a desire to dip her hands into it.
A splashing sounded on her left. She looked down the shadowy line of Fremen, saw Stilgar with Paul standing beside him and the watermasters emptying their load into the pool through a flowmeter. The meter was a round gray eye above the pool's rim. She saw its glowing pointer move as the water flowed through it, saw the pointer stop at thirty-three liters, seven and three-thirty-seconds drachms.
Superb accuracy in water measurement, Jessica thought. And she noted that the walls of the meter trough held no trace of moisture after the water's passage. The water flowed off those walls without binding tension. She saw a profound clue to Fremen technology in the simple fact: they were perfectionists.
Jessica worked her way down the barrier to Stilgar's side. Way was made for her with casual courtesy. She noted the withdrawn look in Paul's eyes, but the mystery of this great pool of water dominated her thoughts.
Stilgar looked at her. "There were those among us in need of water," he said, "yet they would come here and not touch this water. Do you know that?"
"I believe it," she said.
He looked at the pool. "We have more than thirty-eight million decaliters here," he said. "Walled off from the little makers, hidden and preserved."
"A treasure trove," she said.
Stilgar lifted the globe to look into her eyes. "It is greater than treasure. We have thousands of such caches. Only a few of us know them all." He cocked his head to one side. The globe cast a yellow-shadowed glow across face and beard. "Hear that?"
They listened.
The dripping of water precipitated from the windtrap filled the room with its presence. Jessica saw that the entire troop was caught up in a rapture of listening. Only Paul seemed to stand remote from it.
To Paul, the sound was like moments ticking away. He could feel time flowing through him, the instants never to be recaptured. He sensed a need for decision, but felt powerless to move.
"It has been calculated with precision," Stilgar whispered. "We know to within a million decaliters how much we need. When we have it, we shall change the face of Arrakis."
A hushed whisper of response lifted from the troop: "Bi-lal kaifa."
"We will trap the dunes beneath grass plantings," Stilgar said, his voice growing stronger. "We will tie the water into the soil with trees and undergrowth."
"Bi-lal kaifa," intoned the troop.
"Each year the polar ice retreats," Stilgar said.
"Bi-lal kaifa," they chanted.
"We shall make a homeworld of Arrakis--with melting lenses at the poles, with lakes in the temperate zones, and only the deep desert for the maker and his spice."
"Bi-lal kaifa."
"And no man ever again shall want for water. It shall be his for dipping from well or pond or lake or canal. It shall run down through the qanats to feed our plants. It shall be there for any man to take. It shall be his for holding out his hand."
"Bi-lal kaifa."
Jessica felt the religious ritual in the words, noted her own instinctively awed response. They're in league with the future, she thought. They have their mountain to climb. This is the scientist's dream ... and these simple people, these peasants, are filled with it.
Her thoughts turned to Liet-Kynes, the Emperor's planetary ecologist, the man who had gone native--and she wondered at him. This was a dream to capture men's souls, and she could sense the hand of the ecologist in it. This was a dream for which men would die willingly. It was another of the essential ingredients that she felt her son needed: people with a goal. Such people would be easy to imbue with fervor and fanaticism. They could be wielded like a sword to win back Paul's place for him.
"We leave now," Stilgar said, "and wait for the first moon's rising. When Jamis is safely on his way, we will go home."
Whispering their reluctance, the troop fell in behind him, turned back along the water barrier and up the stairs.
And Paul, walking behind Chani, felt that a vital moment had passed him, that he had missed an essential decision and was now caught up in his own myth. He knew he had seen this place before, experienced it in a fragment of prescient dream on faraway Caladan, but details of the place were being filled in now that he had not seen. He felt a new sense of wonder at the limits of his gift. It was as though he rode within the wave of time, sometimes in its trough, sometimes on a crest--and all around him the other waves lifted and fell, revealing and then hiding what they bore on their surface.
Through it all, the wild jihad still loomed ahead of him, the violence and the slaughter. It was like a promontory above the surf.
The troop filed through the last door into the main cavern. The door was sealed. Lights were extinguished, hoods removed from the cavern openings, revealing the night and the stars that had come over the desert.
Jessica moved to the dry lip of the cavern's edge, looked up at the stars. They were sharp and near. She felt the stirring of the troop around her, heard the sound of a baliset being tuned somewhere behind her, and Paul's voice humming the pitch. There was a melancholy in his tone that she did not like.
Chani's voice intruded from the deep cave darkness: "Tell me about the waters of your birthworld, Paul Muad'Dib."
And Paul: "Another time, Chani. I promise."
Such sadness.
"It's a good baliset," Chani said.
"Very good," Paul said. "Do you think Jamis'll mind my using it?"
He speaks of the dead in the present tense, Jessica thought. The implications disturbed her.
A man's voice intruded: "He liked music betimes, Jamis did."
"Then sing me one of your songs," Chani pleaded.
Such feminine allure in that girl-child's voice, Jessica thought. I must caution Paul about their women ... and soon.
"This was a song of a friend of mine," Paul said. "I expect he's dead now, Gurney is. He called it his evensong."
The troop grew still, listening as Paul's voice lifted in a sweet boy tenor with the baliset tinkling and strumming beneath it: "This clear time of seeing embers--
A gold-bright sun's lost in first dusk.
What frenzied senses, desp'rate musk
Are consort of rememb'ring."
Jessica felt the verbal music in her breast--pagan and charged with sounds that made her suddenly and intensely aware of herself, feeling her own body and its needs. She listened with a tense stillness.
"Night's pearl-censered requi-em ...
'Tis for us!
What joys run, then--
Bright in your eyes--
What flower-spangled amores
Pull at our hearts ...
What flower-spangled amores
Fill our desires."
And Jessica heard the after-stillness that hummed in the air with the last note. Why does my son sing a love song to that girl-child? she asked herself. She felt an abrupt fear. She could sense life flowing around her and she had no grasp on its reins. Why did he choose that song? she wondered. The instincts are true sometimes. Why did he do this?
Paul sat silently in the darkness, a single stark thought dominating his awareness: My mother is my enemy. She does not know it, but she is. She is bringing the jihad. She bore me; she trained me. She is my enemy.
The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future.
--from "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
ON HIS seventeenth birthday, Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen killed his one hundredth slave-gladiator in the family games. Visiting observers from the Imperial Court--a Count and Lady Fenring--were on the Harkonnen homeworld of Giedi Prime for the event, invited to sit that afternoon with the immediate family in the golden box above the triangular arena.
In honor of the na-Baron's nativity and to remind all Harkonnens and subjects that Feyd-Rautha was heir-designate, it was holiday on Giedi Prime. The old Baron had decreed a meridian-to-meridian rest from labors, and effort had been spent in the family city of Harko to create the illusion of gaiety: banners flew from buildings, new paint had been splashed on the walls along Court Way.
But off the main way, Count Fenring and his lady noted the rubbish heaps, the scabrous brown walls reflected in the dark puddles of the streets, and the furtive scurrying of the people.
In the Baron's blue-walled keep, there was fearful perfection, but the Count and his lady saw the price being paid--guards everywhere and weapons with that special sheen that told a trained eye they were in regular use. There were checkpoints for routine passage from area to area even within the keep. The servants revealed their military training in the way they walked, in the set of their shoulders ... in the way their eyes watched and watched and watched.
"The pressure's on," the Count hummed to his lady in their secret language. "The Baron is just beginning to see the price he really paid to rid himself of the Duke Leto."
"Sometime I must recount for you the legend of the phoenix," she said.
They were in the reception hall of the keep waiting to go to the family games. It was not a large hall--perhaps forty meters long and half that in width--but false pillars along the sides had been shaped with an abrupt taper, and the ceiling had a subtle arch, all giving the illusion of much greater space.
"Ah-h-h, here comes the Baron," the Count said.
The Baron moved down the length of the hall with that peculiar waddling-glide imparted by the necessities of guiding suspensor-hung weight. His jowls bobbed up and down; the suspensors jiggled and shifted beneath his orange robe. Rings glittered on his hands and opafires shone where they had been woven into the robe.
At the Baron's elbow walked Feyd-Rautha. His dark hair was dressed in close ringlets that seemed incongruously gay above sullen eyes. He wore a tight-fitting black tunic and snug trousers with a suggestion of bell at the bottom. Soft-soled slippers covered his small feet.
Lady Fenring, noting the young man's poise and the sure flow of muscles beneath the tunic thought: Here's one who won't let himself go to fat.
The Baron stopped in front of them, took Feyd-Rautha's arm in a possessive grip, said, "My nephew, the na-Baron, Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen." And, turning his baby-fat face toward Feyd-Rautha, he said, "The Count and Lady Fenring of whom I've spoken."
Feyd-Rautha dipped his head with the required courtesy. He stared at the Lady Fenring. She was golden-haired and willowy, her perfection of figure clothed in a flowing gown of ecru--simple fitness of form without ornament. Gray-green eyes stared back at him. She had that Bene Gesserit serene repose about her that the young man found subtly disturbing.
"Um-m-m-m-ah-hm-m-m-m," said the Count. He studied Feyd-Rautha. "The, hm-m-m-m, precise young man, ah, my ... hm-m-m-m ... dear?" The Count glanced at the Baron. "My dear Baron, you say you've spoken of us to this precise young man? What did you say?"
"I told my nephew of the great esteem our Emperor holds for you, Count Fenring," the Baron said, And he thought: Mark him well, Feyd! A killer with the manners of a rabbit--this is the most dangerous kind.
"Of course!" said the Count, and he smiled at his lady.
Feyd-Rautha found the man's actions and words almost insulting. They stopped just short of something overt that would require notice. The young man focused his attention on the Count: a small man, weak-looking. The face was weaselish with overlarge dark eyes. There was gray at the temples. And his movements--he moved a hand or turned his head one way, then he spoke another way. It was difficult to follow.
"Um-m-m-m-m-ah-h-h-hm-m-m, you come upon such, mm-m-m, preciseness so rarely," the Count said, addressing the Baron's shoulder. "I ... ah, congratulate you on the hm-m-m perfection of your ah-h-h heir. In the light of the hm-m-m elder, one might say."
"You are too kind," the Baron said. He bowed, but Feyd-Rautha noted that his uncle's eyes did not agree with the courtesy.
"When you're mm-m-m ironic, that ah-h-h suggests you're hm-m-m-m thinking deep thoughts," the Count said.
There he goes again, Feyd-Rautha thought. It sounds like he's being insulting, but there's nothing you can call out for satisfaction.
Listening to the man gave Feyd-Rautha the feeling his head was being pushed through mush ... um-m-m-ah-h-h-hm-m-m-m! Feyd-Rautha turned his attention back to the Lady Fenring.
"We're ah-h-h taking up too much of this young man's time," she said. "I understand he's to appear in the arena today."
By the houris of the Imperial hareem, she's a lovely one! Feyd-Rautha thought. He said: "I shall make a kill for you this day, my Lady. I shall make the dedication in the arena, with your permission."
She returned his stare serenely, but her voice carried whiplash as she said: "You do not have my permission."
"Feyd!" the Baron said. And he thought: That imp! Does he want this deadly Count to call him out?
But the Count only smiled and said: "Hm-m-m-m-um-m-m."
"You really must be getting ready for the arena, Feyd," the Baron said. "You must be rested and not take any foolish risks."
Feyd-Rautha bowed, his face dark with resentment. "I'm sure everything will be as you wish, Uncle." He nodded to Count Fenring. "Sir." To the lady: "My Lady." And he turned, strode out of the hall, barely glancing at the knot of Families Minor near the double doors.
"He's so young," the Baron sighed.
"Um-m-m-m-ah indeed hmmm," the Count said.
And the Lady Fenring thought: Can that be the young man the Reverend Mother meant? Is that a bloodline we must preserve?
"We've more than an hour before going to the arena," the Baron said. "Perhaps we could have our little talk now, Count Fenring." He tipped his gross head to the right. "There's a considerable amount of progress to be discussed."
And the Baron thought: Let us see now how the Emperor's errand boy gets across whatever message he carries without ever being so crass as to speak it right out.
The Count spoke to his lady: "Um-m-m-m-ah-h-h-hm-m-m, you mm-m will ah-h-h excuse us, my dear?"
"Each day, some time each hour, brings change," she said. "Mm-m-m-m." And she smiled sweetly at the Baron before turning away. Her long skirts swished and she walked with a straight-backed regal stride toward the double doors at the end of the hall.
The Baron noted how all conversation among the Houses Minor there stopped at her approach, how the eyes followed her. Bene Gesserit! the Baron thought. The universe would be better rid of them all!
"There's a cone of silence between two of the pillars over here on our left," the Baron said. "We can talk there without fear of being overheard." He led the way with his waddling gait into the sound-deadening field, feeling the noises of the keep become dull and distant.
The Count moved up beside the Baron, and they turned, facing the wall so their lips could not be read.
"We're not satisfied with the way you ordered the Sardaukar off Arrakis," the Count said.
Straight talk! the Baron thought.
"The Sardaukar could not stay longer without risking that others would find out how the Emperor helped me," the Baron said.
"But your nephew Rabban does not appear to be pressing strongly enough toward a solution of the Fremen problem."
"What does the Emperor wish?" the Baron asked. "There cannot be more than a handful of Fremen left on Arrakis. The southern desert is uninhabitable. The northern desert is swept regularly by our patrols."
"Who says the southern desert is uninhabitable?"
"Your own planetologist said it, my dear Count."
"But Doctor Kynes is dead."
"Ah, yes ... unfortunate, that."
"We've word from an overflight across the southern reaches," the Count said. "There's evidence of plant life."
"Has the Guild then agreed to a watch from space?"
"You know better than that, Baron. The Emperor cannot legally post a watch on Arrakis."
"And I cannot afford it," the Baron said. "Who made this overflight?"
"A ... smuggler."
"Someone has lied to you, Count," the Baron said. "Smugglers cannot navigate the southern reaches any better than can Rabban's men. Storms, sand-static, and all that, you know. Navigation markers are knocked out faster than they can be installed."
"We'll discuss various types of static another time," the Count said.
Ah-h-h-h, the Baron thought. "Have you found some mistake in my accounting then?" he demanded.
"When you imagi