Dune (Page 74)

The colonel bashar remained planted facing the Baron. Not by flicker of eye or muscle did he acknowledge he had been dismissed. "How?" he growled.

Really! the Baron thought. This is too much .

"By his own hand, if you must know," the Baron said. "He took poison."

"I will see the body now," the colonel Bashar said.

The Baron raised his gaze to the ceiling in feigned exasperation while his thoughts raced. Damnation! This sharp-eyed Sardaukar will see the room before a thing’s been changed!

"Now," the Sardaukar growled. "I’ll see it with my own eyes."

There was no preventing it, the Baron realized. The Sardaukar would see all. He’d know the Duke had killed Harkonnen men . . . that the Baron most likely had escaped by a narrow margin. There was the evidence of the dinner remnants on the table, and the dead Duke across from it with destruction around him.

No preventing it at all.

"I’ll not be put off," the colonel bashar snarled.

"You’re not being put off," the Baron said, and he stared into the Sardaukar’s obsidian eyes. "I hide nothing from my Emperor." He nodded to Nefud . "The colonel bashar is to see everything, at once. Take him in by the door where you stood, Nefud ."

"This way, sir," Nefud said.

Slowly, insolently, the Sardaukar moved around the Baron, shouldered a way through the guardsmen.

Insufferable , the Baron thought. Now, the Emperor will know how I slipped up. He’ll recognize it as a sign of weakness .

And it was agonizing to realize that the Emperor and his Sardaukar were alike in their disdain for weakness. The Baron chewed at his lower lip, consoling himself that the Emperor, at least, had not learned of the Atreides raid on Giedi Prime, the destruction of the Harkonnen spice stores there.

Damn that slippery Duke!

The Baron watched the retreating backs – the arrogant Sardaukar and the stocky, efficient Nefud .

We must adjust , the Baron thought. I’ll have to put Rabban over this damnable planet once more. Without restraint. I must spend my own Harkonnen blood to put Arrakis into a proper condition for accepting Feyd-Rautha. Damn that Piter! He would get himself killed before I was through with him .

The Baron sighed.

And I must send at once to Tleielax for a new Mentat. They undoubtedly have the new one ready for me by now.

One of the guardsmen beside him coughed.

The Baron turned toward the man. "I am hungry."

"Yes, m’Lord."

"And I wish to be diverted while you’re clearing out that room and studying its secrets for me," the Baron rumbled.

The guardsman lowered his eyes. "What diversion does m’Lord wish?"

"I’ll be in my sleeping chambers," the Baron said. "Bring me that young fellow we bought on Gamont, the one with the lovely eyes. Drug him well. I don’t feel like wrestling."

"Yes, m’Lord."

The Baron turned away, began moving with his bouncing, suspensor-buoyed pace toward his chambers. Yes , he thought. The one with the lovely eyes, the one who looks so much like the young Paul Atreides .

O Seas of Caladan,

O people of Duke Leto –

Citadel of Leto fallen,

Fallen forever . . .

– from "Songs of Muad’Dib" by the Princess Irulan

Paul felt that all his past, every experience before this night, had become sand curling in an hourglass. He sat near his mother hugging his knees within a small fabric and plastic hutment – a stilltent – that had come, like the Fremen clothing they now wore, from the pack left in the ‘thopter.

There was no doubt in Paul’s mind who had put the Fremkit there, who had directed the course of the ‘thopter carrying them captive.

Yueh .

The traitor doctor had sent them directly into the hands of Duncan Idaho.

Paul stared out the transparent end of the stilltent at the moonshadowed rocks that ringed this place where Idaho had hidden them.

Hiding like a child when I’m now the Duke , Paul thought. He felt the thought gall him, but could not deny the wisdom in what they did.

Something had happened to his awareness this night – he saw with sharpened clarity every circumstance and occurrence around him. He felt unable to stop the inflow of data or the cold precision with which each new item was added to his knowledge and the computation was centered in his awareness. It was Mentat power and more.

Paul thought back to the moment of impotent rage as the strange ‘thopter dived out of the night onto them, stooping like a giant hawk above the desert with wind screaming through its wings. The thing in Paul’s mind had happened then. The ‘thopter had skidded and slewed across a sand ridge toward the running figures – his mother and himself. Paul remembered how the smell of burned sulfur from abrasion of ‘thopter skids against sand had drifted across them.

His mother, he knew, had turned, expected to meet a lasgun in the hands of Harkonnen mercenaries, and had recognized Duncan Idaho leaning out the ‘thopter’s open door shouting: "Hurry! There’s wormsign south of you!"

But Paul had known as he turned who piloted the ‘thopter. An accumulation of minutiae in the way it was flown, the dash of the landing – clues so small even his mother hadn’t detected them – had told Paul precisely who sat at those controls.

Across the stilltent from Paul, Jessica stirred, said: "There can be only one explanation. The Harkonnens held Yueh’s wife. He hated the Harkonnens! I cannot be wrong about that. You read his note. But why has he saved us from the carnage?"

She is only now seeing it and that poorly , Paul thought. The thought was a shock. He had known this fact as a by-the-way thing while reading the note that had accompanied the ducal signet in the pack.

"Do not try to forgive me," Yueh had written. "I do not want your forgiveness. I already have enough burdens. What I have done was done without malice or hope of another’s understanding. It is my own tahaddi al-burhan, my ultimate test. I give you the Atreides ducal signet as token that I write truly. By the time you read this, Duke Leto will be dead. Take consolation from my assurance that he did not die alone, that one we hate above all others died with him."