Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson - The Road To Dune

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THE ROAD TO

DUNE

THE DUNE SERIES

FRANK HERBERT'S DUNE NOVELS

Dune God Emperor of Dune

Dune Messiah Heretics of Dune

Children of Dune Chapterhouse: Dune

DUNE COLLECTION BY FRANK HERBERT, BRIAN HERBERT, AND KEVIN J. ANDERSON

Dune Novels by

Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson Dune: House Atreides Dune: The Battle of Comin

Dune: House Harkonnen Spice Planet (in The Road to Dune)

Dune: House Corrino Hunters of Dune (forthcoming)

Dune: The Butlerian Jihad Sandworms of Dune (forthcoming)

Dune: The Machine Crusade Paul of Dune (forthcoming)

Dune Short Stories by

Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson

A Whisper of Caladan Seas

Hunting Harkonnens

Whipping Mek The Faces of a Martyr

Dune Films

Dune

Frank Herbert's Dune (television miniseries) Frank Herbert's Children of Dune (television miniseries)

THE ROAD TO

Frank Herbert, Brian Herbert,

and

Kevin J. Anderson

TOR®

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK NEW YORK

FOR BEVERLY HERBERT

There is no more moving tribute in all of literature than the three pages Frank Herbert wrote about Beverly Herbert

in Chapterhouse: Dune, a novel that he completed at her side in Hawaii, while she was dying. Concerning his loving

wife and best friend during more than thirty-seven years of marriage, he said, "Is it any wonder that I look back on

our years together with a happiness transcending anything words can describe? Is it any wonder I do not want or

need to forget one moment of it? Most others merely touched her life at the periphery. I shared it in the most intimate

ways and everything she did strengthened me. It would not have been possible for me to do what necessity

demanded of me during the final ten years of her life, strengthening her in return, had she not given of herself in the

preceding years, holding back nothing. I consider that to be my great good fortune and most miraculous privilege."

His earlier dedication in Children of Dune spoke of other dimensions of this remarkable woman:

FOR BEV:

Out of the wonderful commitment of our love

and to share her beauty and her wisdom,

for she truly inspired this book.

Frank Herbert modeled Lady Jessica Atreides after Beverly Herbert, as well as many aspects of the Bene Gesserit

Sisterhood. Beverly was his writing companion and his intellectual equal. She was Frank Herbert's universe, his

inspiration, and—more than anyone else—his spiritual guide on the Road to Dune.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

WE ARE GRATEFUL to the people who contributed to this book, in particular to Frank Herbert, Beverly

Herbert, Jan Herbert, Rebecca Moesta, Penny Merritt, Ron Merritt, Bruce Herbert, Bill Ransom, Howie

Hansen, Tom Doherty, Pat LoBrutto, Sharon Perry, Robert Gottlieb, John Silbersack, Kate Scherler,

Kimberly Whalen, Harlan Ellison, Anne McCaffrey, Paul Stevens, Eric Raab, Sterling E. Lanier, Lurton

Blassingame, Lurton Blassingame, Jr., John W. Campbell, Jr., Catherine Sidor, Diane Jones, Louis

Moesta, Carolyn Caughey, Damon Knight, Kate Wilhelm, and Eleanor Wood.

FOREWORD

FRANK HERBERT HAD more fun with life than anyone I've known. He laughed more, joked more, and

produced more than any writer I've ever met. With modest beginnings just across the Puyallup River from

my own birthplace, and passionate about outdoor life, he judged people by their creativity, and by whether

they met hardship with humor or with bile. Humor helped him to endure hardship and to enjoy his rise

above it, Frank believed the suffering-in-the-garret stereotype was foisted onto writers by publishers so

that they could get away with small advances. The only true currency that Frank recognized was time to

create.

"Here it is, Ransom," he said. "First class buys you more time to write."

Never ostentatious, he lived as comfortably as he wanted but not as extravagantly as he could, always with

close ties to the outdoors. Enjoyment A.D. ("After Dune") came from trying new writing adventures and

from helping others succeed; Frank offered opportunities, not handouts, saying, "I'd rather give a man a

hand up than step on his fingers." This echoes my favorite Dostoevsky line: "Feed men, then ask of them

virtue."

Everything and everyone fell into two rough categories for Frank: It/he/she either contributed to his

writing time or interfered with it. I've always had pretty much the same attitude. We knew of each other

through our publication successes, but we noticed each other's successes because we both came from the

Puyallup Valley, we both had fathers who were in law enforcement in the same district, and we'd had

shirttail relatives marry. We moved to Port Townsend in the same week in the early seventies and

discovered this when the local paper ran stories on each of us. I wanted to meet him, finally, but I wanted

to be respectful of his writing time. Frank wrote a piece under a pseudonym for the Helix, my favorite

underground newspaper in Seattle, just a few years earlier. I dropped Frank a postcard addressed to the

pseudonym ("H. Bert Frank"), saying I wrote until noon but would love to meet for coffee sometime. The

next afternoon at 12:10 he called: "Hello, Ransom. Herbert here. Is that coffee on?" It was, and thus began

our fifteen-year routine of coffee or lunch nearly every day.

Frank believed poetry to be the finest distillation of the language, whether written in open or closed form.

He read voraciously in contemporary poetry through literary and "little" magazines, and he wrote poetry

as he worked through issues of life and of fiction. As a very young man, he discovered that he could make

somewhat of a living from his nonfiction prose style, which was far more readable than most of the

journalism of the time. His prose style, his eye for detail, and his ear for true vernacular coupled with that

ever-persistent "What if?" question in his ear made for a natural transition to fiction. Success came to

Frank in prose, but inspiration filled his notebooks and his fiction with poetry.

My first poetry collection, Finding True North & Critter, was nominated for the National Book Award the

same year Frank's Soul Catcher was nominated in fiction. Perhaps if Frank and I had both been fiction

writers off the bat, or both poets, our friendship may have developed

differently. As it was, we refreshed and reenthused each other with our writing, and encouraged each other

to risk something in our work, like crossing over into other genres, such as screenplays. The greatest risk

of all, to friendship and to our writing reputations, came when we co-wrote The Jesus Incident and

submitted it under both of our names. Frank pointed out that if the book were published we would each

face specific criticisms for working together. People would say that Frank Herbert ran out of ideas, and

that Bill Ransom was riding on the coat-tails of the Master. When these statements did, indeed, come up,

we were better prepared psychologically for having predicted them in advance. Circumstances leading up

to our collaboration were complex, but our personal agreement was simple: Nothing that either of us

wanted would stand in the way of the friendship, and we shook hands. Nothing did, not even the

publisher's preference that we release it just with Frank's name (the advance offer under this potential

agreement was larger by a decimal point than what we received with both names on the cover). The power

people also would accept a pseudonym, but they were adamant that a novel acknowledged to be by two

authors would not fly with the reading public, and equally adamant about talking only with Frank. In

addition, they believed that my reputation in poetry circles would contribute nothing toward marketing the

book; therefore, I should get 25% and Frank 75% of whatever we agreed on. Frank literally hung up the

phone and bought a ticket to New York. The way he told the story upon his return with contract in hand,

he simply repeated a mantra throughout his visit: "Half the work earns half the credit and half the pay."

Frank took a 90% cut in pay and split the cover byline in order to work with me, only one example of the

strength of his character and of his friendship.

The gamble paid off. We'd heard that The New York Times Book Re-view would cover it, and I was

nervous. "Relax, Ransom," Frank said. "Even a scathing review in The New York Times sells ten thousand

hardbacks the next day." John Leonard wrote a wonderful review, and we were launched. Now the

publisher wanted two more books in the series, The Lazarus Effect and The Ascension Factor, with no

further discussion about names on the cover. For two rustic, self-taught Puyallup Valley boys who ran

traplines as kids, we did well because our focus always was on The Story. We had no ego conflicts while

writing together, largely because Frank didn't have much ego as "Author." I learned from him that authors

exist merely for the story's sake, not the other way around, and a good story had to do two things: inform

and entertain. The informing part must be entertaining enough to let readers live the story without feeling

like they're on the receiving end of a sermon. Writing entertainment without information, without some in-

sight into what it is to be human, is a waste of good trees.

Frank believed that poetry was the apex of human language; he also believed that science fiction was the

only genre whose subject matter attempted to define what it is to be human. We use contact with aliens or

alien environments as impetus or backdrop for human interaction. Science fiction characters solve their

own problems—neither magic spells nor gods come to their aid—and sometimes they have to build some

intriguing gadgets to save their skins. Humans go to books to see how other humans solve human

problems. Frank admired and championed human resolve and ingenuity in his life and in his work. He had

a practical side about this, too: "Remember, Ransom," he said, "aliens don't buy books. Humans buy

books."

Frank raised chickens, and he even did that first-class, with a two-story, solar-heated chicken house with

automatic feeders that abutted the garden to enrich the compost. Beside the chicken mansion, but

mercifully out of sight of the chickens, was a processing station complete with wood stove, steamer, and

automatic plucking machine. Every activity of Frank's daily life was fair game for ingenuity and fun. He

admired the very intellectual writers, like Pound, but had a particular soft spot for other blue-collar, self-

taught writers who investigated human nature, such as Hemingway and Faulkner.

William Faulkner's work influenced Frank in many ways, not the least of which was creating a believable

fictional universe built on a

complex genealogy. Frank saw science fiction as a great opportunity to reach a very wide audience with

"the big stuff." He was moved by Faulkner's 1950 Nobel Prize acceptance speech and he took it to heart in

everything he wrote: "... the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human

heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about,

worth the agony and the sweat. . . the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking

which any story is ephemeral and doomed—love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and

sacrifice." Story itself provides the foundation for every human culture, and storytellers must respect this

responsibility.

Frank had a guardian angel, someone who protected him and his writing time at all costs for almost four

decades. Beverly Stuart Herbert honeymooned with him in a fire lookout, packed the kids up in a hearse to

live in a village in Mexico while he wrote, and encouraged him to quit dead-end jobs to write what he

loved, come what may. She had uncanny radar for detecting buffoons, hangers-on, con artists, and other

fools, and Frank was pretty good at this, too. Not many got past Bev to test Frank. But Bev had the

diplomacy and good graces to protect Frank while also protecting the dignity of those who would intrude

on him. Later, over coffee and homemade pie, came the jokes.

Bev was the one who suggested that we collaborate on a novel. She was Frank's first reader and critic, and

her opinion held serious water. Over our daily coffee sessions we'd been tossing a story back and forth just

for fun. "You two should just write this story and get it out of your systems," she said. Each of us took on

the project for very different reasons. I wanted to learn how to sustain a narrative for a novel's length, and

Frank wanted to practice collaboration because he was interested in screenwriting, a notoriously

collaborative medium. We both got what we wanted, and with his usual wit Frank referred to our process

as "... a private act of collaboration between consenting adults."

Not all of our experiences together were celebratory. My writing work with Frank is bracketed by sadness

for both of us. We began our

first collaboration when Bev was diagnosed with cancer and I was going through a divorce; we wrote The

Lazarus Effect as Bev fought her second round of illness (Frank wrote The White Plague at the same time)

and it was published shortly before her death. Our collaboration on The Ascension Factor ended with

Frank's death.

An unexpected benefit of our exercise in collaboration became Frank's collaboration with his son Brian.

Frank said that he had hoped that one day one of his children might follow in Dad's writing footsteps, and

Brian began with some humorous science fiction. Father and son working together on Man of Two Worlds

marked a breakthrough for Frank after the long ordeal of Bev's final illness. Brian learned the fine art of

collaboration at Frank's side, and Frank would be proud that the dual legacies of the Dune universe and the

Herbert writing gene survive him. Brian and Kevin J. Anderson are having the kind of fun with writing

that Frank and I enjoyed, and they've added a new physical depth and enriched the sociopolitical detail of

the greater tapestry on which Dune was woven.

I was at about mid-point in writing the first draft of The Ascension Factor when the morning radio

announced that Frank had passed away. Typically, he believed he would beat this challenge as he'd beaten

so many others. Also typically, he was typing a new short story into a laptop when he died, a story that

he'd told me might lead to another non-genre novel like Soul Catcher. In the crowding and confusion of

those final lifesaving attempts, that laptop and his last story were lost, like Einstein's final words were lost

because the nurse at his side didn't speak German.

I think of Frank every time I touch a keyboard, hoping I'm writing up to his considerable standards. In the

Old English, "poet" was "shaper" or "maker." Frank Herbert was a Maker on a grand scale, the most loyal

friend a person could ask for—and a funny, savvy, first-class guy. He continues to be missed.

—Bill Ransom

PREFACE

A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct.

— FROM FRANK HERBERT'S Dune

IT WAS LIKE finding a buried treasure chest.

Actually, they were cardboard boxes stuffed full of folders, manuscripts, correspondence, drawings, and

loose notes. Some of the box corners were sagging, crumpled by the weight of their contents or partially

crushed from languishing under a stack of heavy objects.

As Brian described in his Hugo-nominated biography Dreamer of Dune, Frank Herbert's wife, Beverly,

was very ill in her last years and unable to keep up with the deluge of paper. For a long time before that,

she had kept her prolific husband highly organized, using an ingenious filing system to keep track of old

manuscripts, contracts, royalty reports, correspondence, reviews, and publicity.

In the boxes we found old manuscripts for Frank Herbert's various novels, along with unpublished or

incomplete novels and short stories,

and an intriguing folder full of unused story ideas. There were old movie scripts, travel itineraries, and

legal documents from Frank Herbert's work on various films, including The Hellstrom Chronicle, Thresh'

old: The Blue Angels Experience, The Tillers, David Lynch's Dune, and even Dino de Laurentiis's film Flash

Gordon, on which Frank had worked in London as a script consultant. There were contracts and

screenplays for numerous uncompleted film projects as well, including Soul Catcher, The Santaroga Barrier,

and The Green Brain.

Salted among the various boxes full of materials for Dune Messiah and God Emperor of Dune (under its

working title of Sandworm of Dune), we found other gems: drafts of chapters, ruminations about ecology,

handwritten snippets of poetry, and lyrical descriptions of the desert and the Fremen. Some of these were

scrawled on scraps of paper, bedside notepads, or in pocket-sized newspaper reporter notebooks. There

were pages and pages of epigraphs that had never appeared in Frank's six Dune novels, along with

historical summaries and fascinating descriptions of characters and settings. Once we started the laborious

process of sifting through these thousands of pages, we felt like archaeologists who had discovered a

verified map to the Holy Grail.

And this was just the material in the attic of Brian Herbert's garage.

It didn't include the two safe-deposit boxes of materials found more than a decade after Frank's death, as

we described in the afterword to our first Dune prequel, House Atreides. In addition, Frank had

bequeathed dozens of boxes of his drafts and working notes to a university archive, which the university

generously opened to us. After spending time in the silent back rooms of academia, we uncovered further

bounty. Kevin later returned for more days of photocopying and double-checking, while Brian tended to

other Dune projects.

The wealth of newly discovered material was a Dune fan's dream come true. And make no mistake: We

are Dune fans. We pored over hoards of wondrous and fascinating information, valuable not only for

its historical significance but also for its pure entertainment value. This included an outline (along with

scene and character notes) for Spice Planet, a completely different, never-before-seen version of Dune.

We also found previously unpublished chapters and scenes from Dune and Dune Messiah, along with

correspondence that shed light on the crucial development of the Dune universe—even a scrap of paper

torn from a notepad on which Frank Herbert had written in pencil: "Damn the spice. Save the men!" This,

the defining moment in the character of Duke Leto Atreides, might well have been written when Frank

Herbert switched on his bedside lamp and jotted it down just before drifting off to sleep.

The Road to Dune features the true gems from this science-fiction treasure trove, including Spice Planet,

which we wrote from Frank's outline. We are also including four of our original short stories: "A Whisper

of Caladan Seas" (set during the events of Dune) and three connecting "chapters" surrounding our novels

in the Butlerian Jihad saga: "Hunting Harkonnens," "Whipping Mek," and "The Faces of a Martyr."

Had Frank Herbert lived longer, he would have presented the world with many more stories set in his

fantastic, unparalleled universe. Now, almost two decades after his untimely death, we are honored to

share this classic legacy with millions of Frank Herbert's fans worldwide.

The spice must flow!

—Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson

SPICE PLANET

The Alternate Dune Novel

By Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, from Frank Herbert's original outline

INTRODUCTION

FINDING SUCH A wealth of notes was just one step down the road, but the fresh material, ideas, clues, and

explanations suddenly crystallized many things in the chronology of the Dune epic. It rekindled in us a

kind of honeymoon excitement for the whole universe.

We photocopied boxes of this material and then sorted, labeled, and organized everything. The biggest

challenge was to make sense of it all. As part of the preparation work before writing our first Dune

prequel, we had compiled a detailed concordance and electronically scanned all the text from the original

six novels so that we could better search the source material. Now, with highlighter pens, we marked im-

portant information in the stacks of notes, illuminating unused blocks of text and descriptions that we

might want to incorporate into our novels, character backgrounds, and story ideas.

Scattered among the boxes, we found some sheets of paper marked with letters—Chapter B, Chapter N, et

cetera—that were at first puzzling. These pages gave brief descriptions of dramatic scenes that dealt with

sandworms, storms, and unexpected new spice-mining techniques. Some of the action took place in

recognizable but skewed places, as if viewed through a fractured lens: Dune Planet or Duneworld instead

of Dune, Catalan instead of Caladan, Carthage instead of Carthag, and the like. In Spice Planet, unlike

Dune, the characters do not break the rhythm of their strides on the desert sand to prevent a sandworm

from hearing them and attacking. Apparently, this had not yet occurred to Frank Herbert in the evolution

of Dune.

The chapters of Spice Planet were populated by unfamiliar characters— Jesse Linkam, Valdemar

Hoskanner, Ulla Bauers, William English, Esmar Tuek, and a concubine named Dorothy Mapes. These

strangers were interacting with well-known characters such as Gurney Halleck, Dr. Yueh (Cullington

Yueh instead of Wellington Yueh), Wanna Yueh, and a familiar-sounding planetary ecologist named Dr.

Bryce Haynes. Although a minor character (a spice smuggler) had been named Esmar Tuek in the final

published version of Dune, he was quite different in the newly discovered notes, a major player and

clearly the original model for a well-loved figure, the warrior-Mentat Thufir Hawat. Dorothy Mapes filled

a role similar to that of Lady Jessica. The nobleman Jesse Linkam himself was obviously the basis for

Duke Leto Atreides, and Valdemar Hoskanner was the embryonic Baron Vladimir Harkonnen.

When we arranged all the chapters and read through the remarkable outline, we found that Spice Planet

was a unique and worthy story in its own right, not just a precursor to Dune. Although the harsh desert is

very similar to the one familiar to millions of fans, the tale itself is thematically different, focusing on

decadence and drug addiction instead of ecology, finite resources, freedom, and religious fanaticism. In

part of the short novel, the main character, Jesse Linkam, must survive in the desert with his son, Barri (an

eight-year-old version of Paul Atreides, without his powers). This scene echoes the escape in Dune of

Lady Jessica into the desert with her son Paul. Spice Planet, like Dune, is filled with political intrigues and

a ruling class of self-indulgent noblemen, so there are plenty of parallels. Above all, this earlier concept

gives us an insight into the complex mind of Frank Herbert.

Somewhere along the way, the author shelved his detailed outline for Spice Planet. Starting from scratch,

with input from legendary editor John W. Campbell, Jr., he developed the concept into a much more vast

and more important novel, yet one that he found nearly impossible to sell. It was rejected by more than

twenty publishers before being picked up, finally, by Chilton Book Co., best known for publishing auto

repair manuals.

Ironically, if Frank had written Spice Planet according to his original plan—a science-fiction adventure

novel about the same length as most paperback books published at the time—he might have had a much

easier task finding an editor and a publishing house.

Using Frank's outline, we have written the novel Spice Planet according to the original design, providing a

window into the Dune that might have been.

PART ONE

Duneworld is like the Empire and life itself: Regardless of what one sees on the surface, a clever investigator can uncover deeper and deeper

layers of complexity.

— DR. BRYCE HAYNES, planetary ecologist assigned to study Duneworld

When the Imperial ship arrived at Catalan's main spaceport, the

high rank and notoriety of the passenger told Jesse Linkam that the news must be important. The

Emperor's representative directed his transmission to the House Linkam "protocol office," demanding to

be met with full honors, and without delay.

Jesse politely acknowledged, not revealing who he was or that his household had no need for a formal

protocol office. He preferred not to make an issue of his rank and enjoyed spending his free time among

the working class. In fact, he had spent that very afternoon fishing on Catalan's vast and fertile sea,

making a sweep for glimmerfish before an expected storm hammered the coast. When the message

arrived, he'd been hauling in the sonic nets full of fish, laughing with the rough

crewmen who struggled to get over their awe of the nobleman and accept him as one of their own.

Though he was the foremost aristocrat on Catalan, Jesse Linkam didn't mind getting his hands dirty. Tall

and middle-aged, he was a quiet man with hidden strengths. The gray eyes measured, weighed, and

counted everything. His classic features bore a rugged cast, thanks to a once-broken nose that gave his

face the look of an offbeat metronome.

He was not soft and preoccupied with silly diversions like most of his noble peers on other worlds, who

treated leadership like little more than a game of dress-up. Here on the "uncivilized" fringes of the Empire,

too much real work needed to be done to bother with fashions and courtly intrigues. Jesse loved the fresh,

salty air and considered sweaty clothes a better badge of honor than the finest whisper-lace from the

Imperial capital world of Renaissance. How could anyone expect to rule a people well without knowing

their daily toil, their joys and concerns?

However, because of his high station, Jesse was required by law to be at the beck and call of the Grand

Emperor's envoy. Returning to his mansion, the Catalan nobleman changed his clothes and scrubbed the

fish smell from his hands, while a doting servant spread a perfumed ointment on his chapped knuckles. As

a last touch, Jesse pinned badges of office onto his own surcoat. He had no time for further grooming:

Counselor Bauers would have to accept him as he was.

Out in front, he joined a hastily organized groundcar entourage already waiting to depart for the spaceport.

"I hope this is important," Jesse muttered to his security chief.

"Important to you? Or to the Grand Emperor?" Esmar Tuek sat beside him in the lead vehicle as the

motorcade moved with stately haste toward the landed ship. "How often does Emperor Wuda take notice

of our little Catalan?" Since they were in private, Jesse allowed the old veteran to use familiar speech with

him.

The question was a fair one, and Jesse hoped it would be answered soon enough. Banners fluttering, the

groundcars approached the gaudy Imperial ship. The vessel's ramp was already extended, but no one had

emerged, as if waiting for an official reception.

Jesse stepped out of the lead car. In the breeze, his dark hair whipped about like loose strands of sea kelp.

He straightened his formal jacket and waited while the honor guard scrambled into position.

No doubt, the impromptu procession would only foster the impression of Catalan being a rude backwater

world. On other worlds, noblemen drilled their soldiers in relentless parades and exhibitions. In stark

contrast, though Jesse's volunteers would fight fiercely to defend their homes, they had little interest in

twirling batons or marching in lock-step.

On the Imperial spacecraft's ramp, Counselor Ulla Bauers stepped out. His nose twitched as he sniffed the

ocean-mist air, and his forehead wrinkled. The Grand Emperor's representative—a prissy and ferretlike

man with a demeanor of foppish incompetence—wore a voluminous high-collared robe and dandy

ornamentation that made his head seem too small.

Jesse knew not to underestimate this man, however. The Counselor's overemphasis on fashion and

trappings might be a mere disguise; Bauers was rumored to be a swift and highly effective assassin. The

fact that he had come here did not bode well.

With a flick of his fingers to one eyebrow, the traditional sign of allegiance to the Emperor, Jesse said,

"Counselor Bauers, I welcome you to my humble Catalan. Won't you come and join us?"

The Imperial advisor descended halfway down the ramp with a smooth gait, as if his feet were on wheels.

Bauers's piercing eyes swept the docks, the fishing boats, the weather-hardened shacks, the warehouses,

and shops that ringed the harbor. He soaked up droplets of information like a dry sponge. "Hmm-ahh, yes .

.. humble indeed, Nobleman Linkam."

The local guardsmen stiffened. Hearing an impolite grumble and a

sharp, whispered rebuke from General Tuek, Jesse merely smiled. "We will gladly provide you with our

most comfortable rooms, Counselor, and an invitation to this evening's banquet. My concubine is as

skilled at managing our household kitchens as she is at organizing my business affairs."

"I have my own chef aboard this diplomatic craft." Bauers removed an ornately inlaid metal cylinder from

one of his billowing sleeves and extended the messagestat like a scepter toward Jesse. "As for this eve-

ning, you would be better advised to spend your time packing. I return to Renaissance in the morning, and

the Grand Emperor wishes you to accompany me. All the details are contained in this dispatch."

Feeling an icy dread, Jesse accepted the cylinder. Bowing slightly, he forced himself to say, "Thank you,

Counselor. I will study it carefully."

"Be here at dawn, Nobleman." Turning with a swirl of his robes, Bauers marched back up the ramp. The

dignitary had not even set foot on Catalan, as if afraid it might soil his shoes.

A COLD RAIN stretched into the darkest hours of the night, while clouds masked the canvas of stars.

Standing on an open balcony above the sea, Jesse watched raindrops sizzling against the electrostatic

weather screen around him. Each sparkle was like a variable star, form ing transient constellations just

above his head.

For most of an hour, he had been brooding. He picked up the messagestat from where it rested on the

balcony rail. When he pulled on each end of the cylinder, mirrors and lenses popped up, and words

spooled out in Grand Emperor Wuda's voice: "His Imperial Majesty requests the immediate presence of

Nobleman Jesse Linkam in the Central Palace to hear our decision in the matter of the spice-production

dispute over Duneworld in the Arrakis system. As the complainant, and as a duly elected representative of

the Nobles' Council, you are hereby notified that the defendant, Nobleman Hoskanner, has offered

a compromise. If you refuse to appear, we shall dismiss your action, and no further arguments will be

heard."

Jesse snapped the cylinder shut before the Grand Emperor's voice could reel off his tedious vocal

signature, which included the customary list of titles and responsibilities.

Dorothy Mapes, his beloved concubine and business manager, came up behind him and touched his arm.

After serving eleven years at Jesse's side, she knew how to interpret his moods. "Most nobles would be

honored to receive a personal summons from the Grand Emperor. Shouldn't you give him the benefit of

the doubt?"

Jesse turned to her with a quick frown. "It is couched in the best diplomatic language, but I fear this could

be the end of us, my darling. Any offer from Valdemar Hoskanner comes with more than strings

attached—a noose is more likely."

"Then be cautious. Nevertheless, you know you have to deal with Valdemar. You've been drawn into this

dispute, and the other nobles are counting on you."

He gave her a wan, loving smile. She had short, dark hair interspersed with lighter peppery flecks. Set in

an oval, attractive face, her large rusty brown eyes were the color of the polished myrtle wood found in the

headlands. For a moment, he stared at the unusual diagem ring she wore on her right hand—his

nobleman's pledge of love to her. Though a commoner, Dorothy was not at all common.

"For years, Dor, you've been my inspiration, my guiding light, and my closest advisor. You've turned our

family's finances around, repairing most of the damage my father and brother did before their deaths. But

I'm not so sure about Duneworld . . ." He shook his head.

The petite woman looked up at him. "See if this helps clarify your thinking." She placed a pinch of the

spice melange on his lips. "From Duneworld. It's what this is all about."

He savored the cinnamon flavor, felt the pleasurable rush of the drug. It seemed everyone was using it

these days. Shortly after the discovery of the substance on the inhospitable world, the Emperor's survey

crews had installed forward bases and mapped the desert, laying the groundwork for exploitation of the

spice. Since then, melange had become an extremely popular commodity.

In a commercial coup that left many suspecting bribery or blackmail, House Hoskanner had been granted

a monopoly on Duneworld operations. Ever since, Hoskanner crews had worked the hostile dunes,

harvesting and selling spice at huge profits, from which the Grand Emperor took an extravagant

percentage. Imperial penal planets provided an army of sandminers as veritable slave labor.

At first the other noble families, preoccupied with court follies, didn't notice the preferential deal the

Hoskanners received. Jesse was one of the few who had called attention to the imbalance, and finally,

eyeing the wealth reaped by the wily Hoskanners, the other nobles agitated for a piece of the action. They

shouted in the Imperial Assembly, issued charges, and finally appointed the no-nonsense Jesse Linkam as

their spokesman to deliver a formal complaint.

"The nobles didn't select me because of my abilities, Dor, but because they hold nostalgic memories of my

foolish father and Hugo, my inept brother." He glared at the messagestat cylinder, sorely tempted to fling

it off the balcony into the waters that churned far below.

"Jesse, your father and brother may have been bad businessmen, but they did earn considerable goodwill

with the other nobles."

He frowned. "By playing games at the Renaissance court."

"Take advantage of that, my love, and turn it to our own profit."

"Little enough profit will come of this."

After his older brother's pointless death in the bullring, Jesse had become the leader of House Linkam

before his twentieth birthday. Soon afterward, his concubine discovered the muddled mess of Catalan's

finances and industries.

After meeting with the Nobles' Council, Jesse soon learned that few of the modern nobles, having

inherited their holdings, were good leaders or competent businessmen. Once vastly wealthy and powerful,

but

now sliding into decadence, many families groaned inexorably toward bankruptcy, most without even

realizing it.

With extravagant festivals and poorly financed construction projects, Jesse's father and brother had

brought House Linkam to the brink of ruin. But in recent years Dorothy's careful management and auster-

ity measures, along with his own rallying of the people to increase productivity, had begun to turn the tide.

He gazed out into the rain-swept night, then sighed with resignation. "It always rains here. Our house is

forever dank, no matter how many shields or heaters we install. This year the kelp harvest is down, and

the fishermen have not caught enough for export." He paused. "Even so, this is my home and the home of

my ancestors. I have no interest in other places, not even Duneworld."

Dorothy eased closer and slipped an arm around Jesse's waist. "I wish you could take Barri along. Every

noble son should see Renaissance at least once."

"Not this time. Too dangerous." Jesse adored their eight-year-old boy, proud of the way Barri had matured

under the careful tutelage of his mother as well as the old household doctor, Cullington Yueh. Barri was

learning to be a good businessman and a good leader, too—traits that would serve him well in these days

of fading Imperial grandeur. Everything Jesse did was for the future, for Barri and the advancement of

House Linkam. Even his love for his concubine had to be second to that.

"I'll make this trip, Dor," Jesse said, "but I don't have a good feeling about it."

Beware of compromises. They are more often weapons of attack than tools of peace.

— GENERAL ESMAR TUEK, strategy concepts

Ulla Bauers sat alone in the executive cabin of his diplomatic craft, thinking about the foolish nobleman

he was transporting to Renaissance. Fishing! Jesse Linkam had been out on a boat performing the work of

common laborers. What a complete waste of time.

The quarters aboard Bauers's spacecraft were crowded and austere, but he understood the reason. For such

a long journey between star systems, fuel costs placed strict limitations on discretionary mass. Meals were

nothing more than tablets of concentrated melange, another sign of the widespread importance of

Duneworld's product; after more than a week in transit, the passengers and crew would begin eating great

quantities of real food upon reaching their destination. Bauers was perpetually hungry when he traveled

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