Dune (Page 71)

The Duke Leto Atreides came through the door. His arms were bound in chains, the eagle face streaked with dirt. His uniform was torn where someone had ripped off his insignia. There were tatters at his waist where the shield belt had been removed without first freeing the uniform ties. The Duke’s eyes held a glazed, insane look.

"Wel-l-l-l," the Baron said. He hesitated, drawing in a deep breath. He knew he had spoken too loudly. This moment, long envisioned, had lost some of its savor.

Damn that cursed doctor through all eternity!

"I believe the good Duke is drugged," Piter said. "That’s how Yueh caught him for us." Piter turned to the Duke. "Aren’t you drugged, my dear Duke?"

The voice was far away. Leto could feel the chains, the ache of muscles, his cracked lips, his burning cheeks, the dry taste of thirst whispering its grit in his mouth. But sounds were dull, hidden by a cottony blanket. And he saw only dim shapes through the blanket.

"What of the woman and the boy, Piter?" the Baron asked. "Any word yet?"

Piter’s tongue darted over his lips.

"You’ve heard something!" the Baron snapped. "What?"

Piter glanced at the guard captain, back to the Baron. "The men who were sent to do the job, m’Lord-they’ve . . . ah . . . been . . . ah . . . found."

"Well, they report everything satisfactory?"

"They’re dead, m’Lord."

"Of course they are! What I want to know is – "

"They were dead when found, m’Lord."

The Baron’s face went livid. "And the woman and boy?"

"No sign, m’Lord, but there was a worm. It came while the scene was being investigated. Perhaps it’s as we wished – an accident. Possibly – "

"We do not deal in possibilities, Piter. What of the missing ‘thopter? Does that suggest anything to my Mentat?"

"One of the Duke’s men obviously escaped in it, m’Lord. Killed our pilot and escaped."

"Which of the Duke’s men?"

"It was a clean, silent killing, m’Lord. Hawat, perhaps, or that Halleck one. Possibly Idaho . Or any top lieutenant."

"Possibilities," the Baron muttered. He glanced at the swaying, drugged figure of the Duke.

"The situation is in hand, m’Lord," Piter said.

"No, it isn’t! Where is that stupid planetologist? Where is this man Kynes?"

"We’ve word where to find him and he’s been sent for, m’Lord."

"I don’t like the way the Emperor’s servant is helping us," the Baron muttered.

They were words through a cottony blanket, but some of them burned in Leto’s mind. Woman and boy – no sign . Paul and Jessica had escaped. And the fate of Hawat, Halleck, and Idaho remained an unknown. There was still hope.

"Where is the ducal signet ring?" the Baron demanded. "His finger is bare."

"The Sardaukar say it was not on him when he was taken, my Lord," the guard captain said.

"You killed the doctor too soon," the Baron said. "That was a mistake. You should’ve warned me, Piter. You moved too precipitately for the good of our enterprise." He scowled. "Possibilities!"

The thought hung like a sine wave in Leto’s mind: Paul and Jessica have escaped! And there was something else in his memory: a bargain. He could almost remember it.

The tooth!

He remembered part of it now: a pill of poison gas shaped into a false tooth .

Someone had told him to remember the tooth. The tooth was in his mouth. He could feel its shape with his tongue. All he had to do was bite sharply on it.

Not yet!

The someone had told him to wait until he was near the Baron. Who had told him? He couldn’t remember.

"How long will he remain drugged like this?" the Baron asked.

"Perhaps another hour, m’Lord."

"Perhaps," the Baron muttered. Again, he turned to the night-blackened window. "I am hungry."

That’s the Baron, that fuzzy gray shape there , Leto thought. The shape danced back and forth, swaying with the movement of the room. And the room expanded and contracted. It grew brighter and darker. It folded into blackness and faded.

Time became a sequence of layers for the Duke. He drifted up through them. I must wait .

There was a table. Leto saw the table quite clearly. And a gross, fat man on the other side of the table, the remains of a meal in front of him. Leto felt himself sitting in a chair across from the fat man, felt the chains, the straps that held his tingling body in the chair. He was aware there had been a passage of time, but its length escaped him.

"I believe he’s coming around. Baron."

A silky voice, that one. That was Piter.

"So I see, Piter."

A rumbling basso: the Baron .

Leto sensed increasing definition in his surroundings. The chair beneath him took on firmness, the bindings were sharper.

And he saw the Baron clearly now. Leto watched the movements of the man’s hands: compulsive touchings – the edge of a plate, the handle of a spoon, a finger tracing the fold of a jowl.

Leto watched the moving hand, fascinated by it.

"You can hear me, Duke Leto," the Baron said. "I know you can hear me. We want to know from you where to find your concubine and the child you sired on her."

No sign escaped Leto, but the words were a wash of calmness through him. It’s true, then: they don’t have Paul and Jessica .

"This is not a child’s game we play," the Baron rumbled. "You must know that." He leaned toward Leto, studying the face. It pained the Baron that this could not be handled privately, just between the two of them. To have others see royalty in such straits – it set a bad precedent.

Leto could feel strength returning. And now, the memory of the false tooth stood out in his mind like a steeple in a flat landscape. The nerve-shaped capsule within that tooth – the poison gas – he remembered who had put the deadly weapon in his mouth.