Herbert, Frank - Dune 01 - Dune

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Dune
Frank Herbert
Copyright 1965
Book 1
DUNE
= = = = = =
A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are
correct. This every sister of the Bene Gesserit knows. To begin your study of
the life of Muad'Dib, then, take care that you first place him in his time: born
in the 57th year of the Padishah Emperor, Shaddam IV. And take the most special
care that you locate Muad'Dib in his place: the planet Arrakis. Do not be
deceived by the fact that he was born on Caladan and lived his first fifteen
years there. Arrakis, the planet known as Dune, is forever his place.
-from "Manual of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
In the week before their departure to Arrakis, when all the final scurrying
about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, an old crone came to visit the
mother of the boy, Paul.
It was a warm night at Castle Caladan, and the ancient pile of stone that
had served the Atreides family as home for twenty-six generations bore that
cooled-sweat feeling it acquired before a change in the weather.
The old woman was let in by the side door down the vaulted passage by Paul's
room and she was allowed a moment to peer in at him where he lay in his bed.
By the half-light of a suspensor lamp, dimmed and hanging near the floor,
the awakened boy could see a bulky female shape at his door, standing one step
ahead of his mother. The old woman was a witch shadow -- hair like matted
spiderwebs, hooded 'round darkness of features, eyes like glittering jewels.
"Is he not small for his age, Jessica?" the old woman asked. Her voice
wheezed and twanged like an untuned baliset.
Paul's mother answered in her soft contralto: "The Atreides are known to
start late getting their growth, Your Reverence."
"So I've heard, so I've heard," wheezed the old woman. "Yet he's already
fifteen."
"Yes, Your Reverence."
"He's awake and listening to us," said the old woman. "Sly little rascal."
She chuckled. "But royalty has need of slyness. And if he's really the Kwisatz
Haderach . . . well . . ."
Within the shadows of his bed, Paul held his eyes open to mere slits. Two
bird-bright ovals -- the eyes of the old woman -- seemed to expand and glow as
they stared into his.
"Sleep well, you sly little rascal," said the old woman. "Tomorrow you'll
need all your faculties to meet my gom jabbar."
And she was gone, pushing his mother out, closing the door with a solid
thump.
Paul lay awake wondering: What's a gom jabbar?
In all the upset during this time of change, the old woman was the strangest
thing he had seen.
Your Reverence.
And the way she called his mother Jessica like a common serving wench
instead of what she was -- a Bene Gesserit Lady, a duke's concubine and mother
of the ducal heir.
Is a gom jabbar something of Arrakis I must know before we go there? he
wondered.
He mouthed her strange words: Gom jabbar . . . Kwisatz Haderach.
There had been so many things to learn. Arrakis would be a place so
different from Caladan that Paul's mind whirled with the new knowledge. Arrakis
-- Dune -- Desert Planet.
Thufir Hawat, his father's Master of Assassins, had explained it: their
mortal enemies, the Harkonnens, had been on Arrakis eighty years, holding the
planet in quasi-fief under a CHOAM Company contract to mine the geriatric spice,
melange. Now the Harkonnens were leaving to be replaced by the House of Atreides
in fief-complete -- an apparent victory for the Duke Leto. Yet, Hawat had said,
this appearance contained the deadliest peril, for the Duke Leto was popular
among the Great Houses of the Landsraad.
"A popular man arouses the jealousy of the powerful," Hawat had said.
Arrakis -- Dune -- Desert Planet.
Paul fell asleep to dream of an Arrakeen cavern, silent people all around
him moving in the dim light of glowglobes. It was solemn there and like a
cathedral as he listened to a faint sound -- the drip-drip-drip of water. Even
while he remained in the dream, Paul knew he would remember it upon awakening.
He always remembered the dreams that were predictions.
The dream faded.
Paul awoke to feel himself in the warmth of his bed -- thinking . . .
thinking. This world of Castle Caladan, without play or companions his own age,
perhaps did not deserve sadness in farewell. Dr. Yueh, his teacher, had hinted
that the faufreluches class system was not rigidly guarded on Arrakis. The
planet sheltered people who lived at the desert edge without caid or bashar to
command them: will-o'-the-sand people called Fremen, marked down on no census of
the Imperial Regate.
Arrakis -- Dune -- Desert Planet.
Paul sensed his own tensions, decided to practice one of the mind-body
lessons his mother had taught him. Three quick breaths triggered the responses:
he fell into the floating awareness . . . focusing the consciousness . . .
aortal dilation . . . avoiding the unfocused mechanism of consciousness . . . to
be conscious by choice . . . blood enriched and swift-flooding the overload
regions . . . one does not obtain food-safety-freedom by instinct alone . . .
animal consciousness does not extend beyond the given moment nor into the idea
that its victims may become extinct . . . the animal destroys and does not
produce . . . animal pleasures remain close to sensation levels and avoid the
perceptual . . . the human requires a background grid through which to see his
universe . . . focused consciousness by choice, this forms your grid . . .
bodily integrity follows nerve-blood flow according to the deepest awareness of
cell needs . . . all things/cells/beings are impermanent . . . strive for flow-
permanence within . . .
Over and over and over within Paul's floating awareness the lesson rolled.
When dawn touched Paul's window sill with yellow light, he sensed it through
closed eyelids, opened them, hearing then the renewed bustle and hurry in the
castle, seeing the familiar patterned beams of his bedroom ceiling.
The hall door opened and his mother peered in, hair like shaded bronze held
with a black ribbon at the crown, her oval face emotionless and green eyes
staring solemnly.
"You're awake," she said. "Did you sleep well?"
"Yes."
He studied the tallness of her, saw the hint of tension in her shoulders as
she chose clothing for him from the closet racks. Another might have missed the
tension, but she had trained him in the Bene Gesserit Way -- in the minutiae of
observation. She turned, holding a semiformal jacket for him. It carried the red
Atreides hawk crest above the breast pocket.
"Hurry and dress," she said. "Reverend Mother is waiting."
"I dreamed of her once," Paul said. "Who is she?"
"She was my teacher at the Bene Gesserit school. Now, she's the Emperor's
Truthsayer. And Paul . . . " She hesitated. "You must tell her about your
dreams."
"I will. Is she the reason we got Arrakis?"
"We did not get Arrakis." Jessica flicked dust from a pair of trousers, hung
them with the jacket on the dressing stand beside his bed. "Don't keep Reverend
Mother waiting."
Paul sat up, hugged his knees. "What's a gom jabbar?"
Again, the training she had given him exposed her almost invisible
hesitation, a nervous betrayal he felt as fear.
Jessica crossed to the window, flung wide the draperies, stared across the
river orchards toward Mount Syubi. "You'll learn about . . . the gom jabbar soon
enough," she said.
He heard the fear in her voice and wondered at it.
Jessica spoke without turning. "Reverend Mother is waiting in my morning
room. Please hurry."
The Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam sat in a tapestried chair watching
mother and son approach. Windows on each side of her overlooked the curving
southern bend of the river and the green farmlands of the Atreides family
holding, but the Reverend Mother ignored the view. She was feeling her age this
morning, more than a little petulant. She blamed it on space travel and
association with that abominable Spacing Guild and its secretive ways. But here
was a mission that required personal attention from a Bene Gesserit-with-the-
Sight. Even the Padishah Emperor's Truthsayer couldn't evade that responsibility
when the duty call came.
Damn that Jessica! the Reverend Mother thought. If only she 'd borne us a
girl as she was ordered to do!
Jessica stopped three paces from the chair, dropped a small curtsy, a gentle
flick of left hand along the line of her skirt. Paul gave the short bow his
dancing master had taught -- the one used "when in doubt of another's station."
The nuances of Paul's greeting were not lost on the Reverend Mother. She
said: "He's a cautious one, Jessica."
Jessica's hand went to Paul's shoulder, tightened there. For a heartbeat,
fear pulsed through her palm. Then she had herself under control. "Thus he has
been taught, Your Reverence."
What does she fear? Paul wondered.
The old woman studied Paul in one gestalten flicker: face oval like
Jessica's, but strong bones . . . hair: the Duke's black-black but with browline
of the maternal grandfather who cannot be named, and that thin, disdainful nose;
shape of directly staring green eyes: like the old Duke, the paternal
grandfather who is dead.
Now, there was a man who appreciated the power of bravura -- even in death,
the Reverend Mother thought.
"Teaching is one thing," she said, "the basic ingredient is another. We
shall see." The old eyes darted a hard glance at Jessica. "Leave us. I enjoin
you to practice the meditation of peace."
Jessica took her hand from Paul's shoulder. "Your Reverence, I --"
"Jessica, you know it must be done."
Paul looked up at his mother, puzzled.
Jessica straightened. "Yes . . . of course."
Paul looked back at the Reverend Mother. Politeness and his mother's obvious
awe of this old woman argued caution. Yet he felt an angry apprehension at the
fear he sensed radiating from his mother.
"Paul . . . " Jessica took a deep breath. ". . . this test you're about to
receive . . . it's important to me."
"Test?" He looked up at her.
"Remember that you're a duke's son, "Jessica said. She whirled and strode
from the room in a dry swishing of skirt. The door closed solidly behind her.
Paul faced the old woman, holding anger in check. "Does one dismiss the Lady
Jessica as though she were a serving wench?"
A smile flicked the corners of the wrinkled old mouth. "The Lady Jessica was
my serving wench, lad, for fourteen years at school." She nodded. "And a good
one, too. Now, you come here!"
The command whipped out at him. Paul found himself obeying before he could
think about it. Using the Voice on me, he thought. He stopped at her gesture,
standing beside her knees.
"See this?" she asked. From the folds of her gown, she lifted a green metal
cube about fifteen centimeters on a side. She turned it and Paul saw that one
side was open -- black and oddly frightening. No light penetrated that open
blackness.
"Put your right hand in the box," she said.
Fear shot through Paul. He started to back away, but the old woman said: "Is
this how you obey your mother?"
He looked up into bird-bright eyes.
Slowly, feeling the compulsions and unable to inhibit them, Paul put his
hand into the box. He felt first a sense of cold as the blackness closed around
his hand, then slick metal against his fingers and a prickling as though his
hand were asleep.
A predatory look filled the old woman's features. She lifted her right hand
away from the box and poised the hand close to the side of Paul's neck. He saw a
glint of metal there and started to turn toward
"Stop!" she snapped.
Using the Voice again! He swung his attention back to her face.
"I hold at your neck the gom jabbar," she said. "The gom jabbar, the high-
handed enemy. It's a needle with a drop of poison on its tip. Ah-ah! Don't pull
away or you'll feel that poison."
Paul tried to swallow in a dry throat. He could not take his attention from
the seamed old face, the glistening eyes, the pale gums around silvery metal
teeth that flashed as she spoke.
"A duke's son must know about poisons," she said. "It's the way of our
times, eh? Musky, to be poisoned in your drink. Aumas, to be poisoned in your
food. The quick ones and the slow ones and the ones in between. Here's a new one
for you: the gom jabbar. It kills only animals."
Pride overcame Paul's fear. "You dare suggest a duke's son is an animal?" he
demanded.
"Let us say I suggest you may be human," she said. "Steady! I warn you not
to try jerking away. I am old, but my hand can drive this needle into your neck
before you escape me."
"Who are you?" he whispered. "How did you trick my mother into leaving me
alone with you? Are you from the Harkonnens?"
"The Harkonnens? Bless us, no! Now, be silent." A dry finger touched his
neck and he stilled the involuntary urge to leap away.
"Good," she said. "You pass the first test. Now, here's the way of the rest
of it: If you withdraw your hand from the box you die. This is the only rule.
Keep your hand in the box and live. Withdraw it and die."
Paul took a deep breath to still his trembling. "If I call out there'll be
servants on you in seconds and you'll die."
"Servants will not pass your mother who stands guard outside that door.
Depend on it. Your mother survived this test. Now it's your turn. Be honored. We
seldom administer this to men-children."
Curiosity reduced Paul's fear to a manageable level. He heard truth in the
old woman's voice, no denying it. If his mother stood guard out there . . . if
this were truly a test . . . And whatever it was, he knew himself caught in it,
trapped by that hand at his neck: the gom jabbar. He recalled the response from
the Litany against Fear as his mother had taught him out of the Bene Gesserit
rite.
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that
brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me
and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its
path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
He felt calmness return, said: "Get on with it, old woman."
"Old woman!" she snapped. "You've courage, and that can't be denied. Well,
we shall see, sirra." She bent close, lowered her voice almost to a whisper.
"You will feel pain in this hand within the box. Pain. But! Withdraw the hand
and I'll touch your neck with my gom jabbar -- the death so swift it's like the
fall of the headsman's axe. Withdraw your hand and the gom jabbar takes you.
Understand?"
"What's in the box?"
"Pain."
He felt increased tingling in his hand, pressed his lips tightly together.
How could this be a test? he wondered. The tingling became an itch.
The old woman said; "You've heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a
trap? There's an animal kind of trick. A human would remain in the trap, endure
the pain, feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove a threat to
his kind."
The itch became the faintest burning. "Why are you doing this?" he demanded.
"To determine if you're human. Be silent."
Paul clenched his left hand into a fist as the burning sensation increased
in the other hand. It mounted slowly: heat upon heat upon heat . . . upon heat.
He felt the fingernails of his free hand biting the palm. He tried to flex the
fingers of the burning hand, but couldn't move them.
"It burns," he whispered.
"Silence!"
Pain throbbed up his arm. Sweat stood out on his forehead. Every fiber cried
out to withdraw the hand from that burning pit . . . but . . . the gom jabbar.
Without turning his head, he tried to move his eyes to see that terrible needle
poised beside his neck. He sensed that he was breathing in gasps, tried to slow
his breaths and couldn't.
Pain!
His world emptied of everything except that hand immersed in agony, the
ancient face inches away staring at him.
His lips were so dry he had difficulty separating them.
The burning! The burning!
He thought he could feel skin curling black on that agonized hand, the flesh
crisping and dropping away until only charred bones remained.
It stopped!
As though a switch had been turned off, the pain stopped.
Paul felt his right arm trembling, felt sweat bathing his body.
"Enough," the old woman muttered. "Kull wahad! No woman child ever withstood
that much. I must've wanted you to fail." She leaned back, withdrawing the gom
jabbar from the side of his neck. "Take your hand from the box, young human, and
look at it."
He fought down an aching shiver, stared at the lightless void where his hand
seemed to remain of its own volition. Memory of pain inhibited every movement.
Reason told him he would withdraw a blackened stump from that box.
"Do it!" she snapped.
He jerked his hand from the box, stared at it astonished. Not a mark. No
sign of agony on the flesh. He held up the hand, turned it, flexed the fingers.
"Pain by nerve induction," she said. "Can't go around maiming potential
humans. There're those who'd give a pretty for the secret of this box, though."
She slipped it into the folds of her gown.
"But the pain --" he said.
"Pain," she sniffed. "A human can override any nerve in the body."
Paul felt his left hand aching, uncurled the clenched fingers, looked at
four bloody marks where fingernails had bitten his palm. He dropped the hand to
his side, looked at the old woman. "You did that to my mother once?"
"Ever sift sand through a screen?" she asked.
The tangential slash of her question shocked his mind into a higher
awareness: Sand through a screen, he nodded.
"We Bene Gesserit sift people to find the humans."
He lifted his right hand, willing the memory of the pain. "And that's all
there is to it -- pain?"
"I observed you in pain, lad. Pain's merely the axis of the test. Your
mother's told you about our ways of observing. I see the signs of her teaching
in you. Our test is crisis and observation."
He heard the confirmation in her voice, said: "It's truth!"
She stared at him. He senses truth! Could he be the one? Could he truly be
the one? She extinguished the excitement, reminding herself: "Hope clouds
observation."
"You know when people believe what they say," she said.
"I know it."
The harmonics of ability confirmed by repeated test were in his voice. She
heard them, said: "Perhaps you are the Kwisatz Haderach. Sit down, little
brother, here at my feet."
"I prefer to stand."
"Your mother sat at my feet once."
"I'm not my mother."
"You hate us a little, eh?" She looked toward the door, called out:
"Jessica!"
The door flew open and Jessica stood there staring hard-eyed into the room.
Hardness melted from her as she saw Paul. She managed a faint smile.
"Jessica, have you ever stopped hating me?" the old woman asked.
"I both love and hate you," Jessica said. "The hate -- that's from pains I
must never forget. The love -- that's . . . "
"Just the basic fact," the old woman said, but her voice was gentle. "You
may come in now, but remain silent. Close that door and mind it that no one
interrupts us."
Jessica stepped into the room, closed the door and stood with her back to
it. My son lives, she thought. My son lives and is . . . human. I knew he was .
. . but . . . he lives. Now, I can go on living. The door felt hard and real
against her back. Everything in the room was immediate and pressing against her
senses.
My son lives.
Paul looked at his mother. She told the truth. He wanted to get away alone
and think this experience through, but knew he could not leave until he was
dismissed. The old woman had gained a power over him. They spoke truth. His
mother had undergone this test. There must be terrible purpose in it . . . the
pain and fear had been terrible. He understood terrible purposes. They drove
against all odds. They were their own necessity. Paul felt that he had been
infected with terrible purpose. He did not know yet what the terrible purpose
was.
"Some day, lad," the old woman said, "you, too, may have to stand outside a
door like that. It takes a measure of doing."
Paul looked down at the hand that had known pain, then up to the Reverend
Mother. The sound of her voice had contained a difference then from any other
voice in his experience. The words were outlined in brilliance. There was an
edge to them. He felt that any question he might ask her would bring an answer
that could lift him out of his flesh-world into something greater.
"Why do you test for humans?" he asked.
"To set you free."
"Free?"
"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would
set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."
" 'Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind,' " Paul
quoted.
"Right out of the Butlerian Jihad and the Orange Catholic Bible," she said.
"But what the O.C. Bible should've said is: 'Thou shalt not make a machine to
counterfeit a human mind.' Have you studied the Mentat in your service?"
"I've studied with Thufir Hawat."
"The Great Revolt took away a crutch," she said. "It forced human minds to
develop. Schools were started to train human talents. "
"Bene Gesserit schools?"
She nodded. "We have two chief survivors of those ancient schools: the Bene
Gesserit and the Spacing Guild. The Guild, so we think, emphasizes almost pure
mathematics. Bene Gesserit performs another function."
"Politics," he said.
"Kull wahad!" the old woman said. She sent a hard glance at Jessica.
"I've not told him. Your Reverence," Jessica said.
The Reverend Mother returned her attention to Paul. "You did that on
remarkably few clues," she said. "Politics indeed. The original Bene Gesserit
school was directed by those who saw the need of a thread of continuity in human
affairs. They saw there could be no such continuity without separating human
stock from animal stock -- for breeding purposes."
The old woman's words abruptly lost their special sharpness for Paul. He
felt an offense against what his mother called his instinct for rightness. It
wasn't that Reverend Mother lied to him. She obviously believed what she said.
It was something deeper, something tied to his terrible purpose.
He said: "But my mother tells me many Bene Gesserit of the schools don't
know their ancestry."
"The genetic lines are always in our records," she said. "Your mother knows
that either she's of Bene Gesserit descent or her stock was acceptable in
itself."
"Then why couldn't she know who her parents are?"
"Some do . . . Many don't. We might, for example, have wanted to breed her
to a close relative to set up a dominant in some genetic trait. We have many
reasons."
Again, Paul felt the offense against rightness. He said: "You take a lot on
yourselves."
The Reverend Mother stared at him, wondering: Did I hear criticism in his
voice? "We carry a heavy burden," she said.
Paul felt himself coming more and more out of the shock of the test. He
leveled a measuring stare at her, said: "You say maybe I'm the . . . Kwisatz
Haderach. What's that, a human gom jabbar?"
"Paul," Jessica said. "You mustn't take that tone with --"
"I'll handle this, Jessica," the old woman said. "Now, lad, do you know
about the Truthsayer drug?"
"You take it to improve your ability to detect falsehood," he said. "My
mother's told me."
"Have you ever seen truthtrance?"
He shook his head. "No."
"The drug's dangerous," she said, "but it gives insight. When a Truthsayer's
gifted by the drug, she can look many places in her memory -- in her body's
memory. We look down so many avenues of the past . . . but only feminine
avenues." Her voice took on a note of sadness. "Yet, there's a place where no
Truthsayer can see. We are repelled by it, terrorized. It is said a man will
come one day and find in the gift of the drug his inward eye. He will look where
we cannot -- into both feminine and masculine pasts."
"Your Kwisatz Haderach?"
"Yes, the one who can be many places at once: the Kwisatz Haderach. Many men
have tried the drug . . . so many, but none has succeeded."
"They tried and failed, all of them?"
"Oh, no." She shook her head. "They tried and died."
= = = = = =
To attempt an understanding of Muad'Dib without understanding his mortal
enemies, the Harkonnens, is to attempt seeing Truth without knowing Falsehood.
It is the attempt to see the Light without knowing Darkness. It cannot be.
-from "Manual of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
It was a relief globe of a world, partly in shadows, spinning under the
impetus of a fat hand that glittered with rings. The globe sat on a freeform
stand at one wall of a windowless room whose other walls presented a patchwork
of multicolored scrolls, filmbooks, tapes and reels. Light glowed in the room
from golden balls hanging in mobile suspensor fields.
An ellipsoid desk with a top of jade-pink petrified elacca wood stood at the
center of the room. Veriform suspensor chairs ringed it, two of them occupied.
In one sat a dark-haired youth of about sixteen years, round of face and with
sullen eyes. The other held a slender, short man with effeminate face.
Both youth and man stared at the globe and the man half-hidden in shadows
spinning it.
A chuckle sounded beside the globe. A basso voice rumbled out of the
chuckle: "There it is, Piter -- the biggest mantrap in all history. And the
Duke's headed into its jaws. Is it not a magnificent thing that I, the Baron
Vladimir Harkonnen, do?"
"Assuredly, Baron," said the man. His voice came out tenor with a sweet,
musical quality.
The fat hand descended onto the globe, stopped the spinning. Now, all eyes
in the room could focus on the motionless surface and see that it was the kind
of globe made for wealthy collectors or planetary governors of the Empire. It
had the stamp of Imperial handicraft about it. Latitude and longitude lines were
laid in with hair-fine platinum wire. The polar caps were insets of finest
cloud-milk diamonds.
The fat hand moved, tracing details on the surface. "I invite you to
observe," the basso voice rumbled. "Observe closely, Piter, and you, too, Feyd-
Rautha, my darling: from sixty degrees north to seventy degrees south -- these
exquisite ripples. Their coloring: does it not remind you of sweet caramels? And
nowhere do you see blue of lakes or rivers or seas. And these lovely polar caps
-- so small. Could anyone mistake this place? Arrakis! Truly unique. A superb
setting for a unique Victory."
A smile touched Piter's lips. "And to think. Baron: the Padishah Emperor
believes he's given the Duke your spice planet. How poignant."
"That's a nonsensical statement," the Baron rumbled. "You say this to
confuse young Feyd-Rautha, but it is not necessary to confuse my nephew."
The sullen-faced youth stirred in his chair, smoothed a wrinkle in the black
leotards he wore. He sat upright as a discreet tapping sounded at the door in
the wall behind him.
Piter unfolded from his chair, crossed to the door, cracked it wide enough
to accept a message cylinder. He closed the door, unrolled the cylinder and
scanned it. A chuckle sounded from him. Another.
"Well?" the Baron demanded.
"The fool answered us, Baron!"
"Whenever did an Atreides refuse the opportunity for a gesture?" the Baron
asked. "Well, what does he say?"
"He's most uncouth, Baron. Addresses you as 'Harkonnen' -- no 'Sire et Cher
Cousin,' no title, nothing."
"It's a good name," the Baron growled, and his voice betrayed his
impatience. "What does dear Leto say?"
"He says: 'Your offer of a meeting is refused. I have ofttimes met your
treachery and this all men know.' "
"And?" the Baron asked.
"He says: 'The art of kanly still has admirers in the Empire.' He signs it:
'Duke Leto of Arrakis.' " Piter began to laugh. "Of Arrakis! Oh, my! This is
almost too rich!"
"Be silent, Piter," the Baron said, and the laughter stopped as though shut
off with a switch. "Kanly, is it?" the Baron asked. "Vendetta, heh? And he uses
the nice old word so rich in tradition to be sure I know he means it."
"You made the peace gesture," Piter said. "The forms have been obeyed."
"For a Mentat, you talk too much, Piter," the Baron said. And he thought: I
must do away with that one soon. He has almost outlived his usefulness. The
Baron stared across the room at his Mental assassin, seeing the feature about
him that most people noticed first: the eyes, the shaded slits of blue within
blue, the eyes without any white in them at all.
A grin flashed across Piter's face. It was like a mask grimace beneath those
eyes like holes. "But, Baron! Never has revenge been more beautiful. It is to
see a plan of the most exquisite treachery: to make Leto exchange Caladan for
Dune -- and without alternative because the Emperor orders it. How waggish of
you!"
In a cold voice, the Baron said: "You have a flux of the mouth, Piter."
"But I am happy, my Baron. Whereas you . . . you are touched by jealousy."
"Piter!"
"Ah-ah. Baron! Is it not regrettable you were unable to devise this
delicious scheme by yourself?"
"Someday I will have you strangled, Piter."
"Of a certainty, Baron. Enfin! But a kind act is never lost, eh?"
"Have you been chewing verite or semuta, Piter?"
"Truth without fear surprises the Baron," Piter said. His face drew down
into a caricature of a frowning mask. "Ah, hah! But you see, Baron, I know as a
Mentat when you will send the executioner. You will hold back just so long as I
am useful. To move sooner would be wasteful and I'm yet of much use. I know what
it is you learned from that lovely Dune planet -- waste not. True, Baron?"
The Baron continued to stare at Piter.
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