“No . . . no.” She pressed her hands against her ears until the flesh answered her with pain.
An insane cackle within her head asked: “What has become of Ovid? Simple. He’s John Bartlett’s ibid!”
The names were meaningless in her extremity. She wanted to scream against them and against all the other voices but could not find her own voice.
Her guard, sent back to the roof by senior attendants, peered once more from the doorway behind the mimosa, saw Alia on the bench, spoke to a companion: “Ahhh, she is resting. You noted that she didn’t sleep well last night. It is good for her to take the zaha, the morning siesta.”
Alia did not hear her guard. Her awareness was caught by shrieks of singing: “Merry old birds are we, hurrah!” the voices echoed against the inside of her skull and she thought: I’m going insane, I’m losing my mind.
Her feet made feeble fleeing motions against the bench. She felt that if she could only command her body to run, she might escape. She had to escape lest any part of that inner tide sweep her into silence, forever contaminating her soul. But her body would not obey. The mightiest forces in the Imperial universe would obey her slightest whim, but her body would not.
An inner voice chuckled. Then: “From one viewpoint, child, each incident of creation represents a catastrophe.” It was a basso voice which rumbled against her eyes, and again that chuckle as though deriding its own pontification. “My dear child, I will help you, but you must help me in return.”
Against the swelling background clamor behind that basso voice, Alia spoke through chattering teeth: “Who . . . who . . .”
A face formed itself upon her awareness. It was a smiling face of such fatness that it could have been a baby’s except for the glittering eagerness of the eyes. She tried to pull back, but achieved only a longer view which included the body attached to that face. The body was grossly, immensely fat, clothed in a robe which revealed by subtle bulges beneath it that this fat had required the support of portable suspensors.
“You see,” the basso voice rumbled, “it is only your maternal grandfather. You know me. I was the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen.”
“You’re . . . you’re dead!” she gasped.
“But, of course, my dear! Most of us within you are dead. But none of the others are really willing to help you. They don’t understand you.”
“Go away,” she pleaded. “Oh, please go away.”
“But you need help, granddaughter,” the Baron’s voice argued.
How remarkable he looks, she thought, watching the projection of the Baron against her closed eyelids.
“I’m willing to help you,” the Baron wheedled. “The others in here would only fight to take over your entire consciousness. Any one of them would try to drive you out. But me . . . I want only a little corner of my own.”
Again the other lives within her lifted their clamor. The tide once more threatened to engulf her and she heard her mother’s voice screeching. And Alia thought: She’s not dead.
“Shut up!” the Baron commanded.
Alia felt her own desires reinforcing that command, making it felt throughout her awareness.
Inner silence washed through her like a cool bath and she felt her hammering heart begin slowing to its normal pace. Soothingly the Baron’s voice intruded: “You see? Together, we’re invincible. You help me and I help you.”
“What . . . what do you want?” she whispered.
A pensive look came over the fat face against her closed eyelids. “Ahhh, my darling granddaughter,” he said, “I wish only a few simple pleasures. Give me but an occasional moment of contact with your senses. No one else need ever know. Let me feel but a small corner of your life when, for example, you are enfolded in the arms of your lover. Is that not a small price to ask?”
"Y-yes.”
“Good, good,” the Baron chortled. “In return, my darling granddaughter, I can serve you in many ways. I can advise you, help you with my counsel. You will be invincible within and without. You will sweep away all opposition. History will forget your brother and cherish you. The future will be yours.”
“You . . . won’t let . . . the . . . the others take over?”
“They cannot stand against us! Singly we can be overcome, but together we command. I will demonstrate. Listen.”
And the Baron fell silent, withdrawing his image, his inner presence. Not one memory,