Dune: List 1

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.

She was feeling her age this morning, more than a little petulant.

"Leave us. I enjoin you to practice the meditation of peace."

He fought down an aching shiver, stared at the lightless void where his hand seemed to remain of its own volition.

It was a relief globe of a world, partly in shadows, spinning under the impetus of a fat hand that glittered with rings.

"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!"

Piter took five curiously mincing steps into the room, stopped directly behind Feyd-Rautha.

"Now, Piter, outline for my nephew the salient features of our campaign against the House of Atreides. Function as a Mentat for us, if you please."

"There are several tangential possibilities," Piter said. "I indicate that House Atreides will go to Arrakis. We must not, however, ignore the possibility the Duke has contracted with the Guild to remove him to a place of safety outside the System. Others in like circumstances have become renegade Houses, taking family atomics and shields and fleeing beyond the Imperium."

"Go ahead, tell him all of it," the Baron said. "We'll move in strengthened by two legions of Sardaukar disguised in Harkonnen livery."

"If matters go as planned," he said, "House Harkonnen will have a subfief on Arrakis within a Standard year. Your uncle will have dispensation of that fief. His own personal agent will rule on Arrakis."

"That's certainly what I need right now," Jessica said. "A review of history."
"Don't be facetious, girl!..."

She said purpose and he felt the word buffet him, reinfecting him with terrible purpose.

He experienced a sudden anger at her: fatuous old witch with her mouth full of platitudes.

A training table remained, and a fencing mirror with its crystal prisms quiescent, the target dummy beside it patched and padded, looking like an ancient foot soldier maimed and battered in the wars.

Paul stepped back, chagrined.

And he thought: I must catch his mind as well as his cupidity.

A silvered shield belt with the patina of much use girded his narrow waist.

"Logs, donkeys, horses, cows, lumber, dung, sharks, whale fur—the most prosaic and the most exotic...even our poor pundi rice from Caladan. Anything the Guild will transport, the art forms of Ecaz, the machines of Richesse and Ix. But all fades before melange. A handful of spice will buy a home on Tupile. It cannot be manufactured, it must be mined on Arrakis. It is unique and it has true geriatric properties."

The Emperor would deny it. Who could gainsay him?

"But the supporting levies the Emperor demands from—"
"That's what we're led to believe: they're just the Emperor's levies trained young and superbly. You hear an occasional muttering about the Emperor's training cadres, but the balance of our civilization remains the same: the military forces of the Landsraad Great Houses on one side, the Sardaukar and their supporting levies on the other. And their supporting levies, Paul. The Sardaukar remain the Sardaukar."

"Yes, they're big. We'll be riding a Heighliner because it's a long trip. A Heighliner is truly big. Its hold will tuck all our frigates and transports into a little corner—we'll be just a small part of the ship's manifest."

All the special training from Hawat and his mother—the mnemonics, the focusing of awareness, the muscle control and sharpening of sensitivities, the study of languages and nuances of voices—all of it clicked into a new kind of understanding in his mind.

She moved in a slow turn, looking up and around at shadowed carvings, crannies and deeply recessed windows. This giant anachronism of a room reminded her of the Sisters' Hall at her Bene Gesserit school.

Some architect had reached far back into history for these buttressed walls and dark hangings, she thought.

This had been the government mansion in the days of the Old Empire. Costs had been of less importance then. It had been before the Harkonnens and their new megalopolis of Carthag—a cheap and brassy place some two hundred kilometers northeast across the Broken Land.

The woman looked as wrinkled and desiccated as any member of the mob that had greeted them along the way from the landing field that morning.

My answer could precipitate violence or...what?

She's getting restive. I must answer now. Delay is as dangerous as the wrong answer.

Some hold that the spice produces a learned-flavor reaction. The body, learning a thing is good for it, interprets the flavor as pleasurable—slightly euphoric.

Now, Paul held himself in near catatonic immobility, knowing he had only his wits to meet this threat.

"A wet-planet conservatory," she breathed.
Potted plants and low-pruned trees stood all about.

The Duke Leto Atreides leaned against a parapet of the landing control tower outside Arrakeen.

Who was fooled by that fatuous legalism?

He shook his head to drive out the angry thoughts, glanced back at the field where five of his own frigates were posted around the rim like monolithic sentries.

Here was a man who lived outside the faufreluches while obeying their every precept.

He wants as many men as you can spare—men who won't balk at a little knife work.

The field commandant will hold the shuttle here until dawn on a pretext.

"No more than that, Sire? I know the Harkonnen pay scales. And to men with their termination pay in their pockets and the wanderlust on them...well. Sire, twenty per cent would hardly seem proper inducement to stay."

"Then use your own discretion in particular cases. Just remember that the treasury isn't bottomless. Hold it to twenty per cent whenever you can. We particularly need spice drivers, weather scanners, dune men—any with open sand experience."