Dune (Page 126)

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.