“I’ve learned much from Hawat,” Feyd-Rautha agreed, and felt the truth of the words as he spoke them. “But the more I learn, the more I feel we should dispose of him… and soon.”
“You don’t like the idea of his watching you?”
“Hawat watches everybody.”
“And he may put you on a throne. Hawat is subtle. He is dangerous, devious. But I’ll not yet withhold the antidote from him. A sword is dangerous, too, Feyd. We have the scabbard for this one, though. The poison’s in him. When we withdraw the antidote, death will sheathe him.”
“In a way, it’s like the arena,” Feyd-Rautha said. “Feints within feints within feints. You watch to see which way the gladiator leans, which way he looks, how he holds his knife.”
He nodded to himself, seeing that these words pleased his uncle, but thinking: Yes! Like the arena! And the cutting edge is the mind!
“Now you see how you need me,” the Baron said. “I’m yet of use, Feyd.”
A sword to be wielded until he’s too blunt for use, Feyd-Rautha thought.
“Yes, Uncle,” he said.
“And now,” the Baron said, “we will go down to the slave quarters, we two. And I will watch while you, with your own hands, kill all the women in the pleasure wing.”
“Uncle!”
“There will be other women, Feyd. But I have said that you do not make a mistake casually with me.”
Feyd-Rautha’s face darkened. “Uncle, you—”
“You will accept your punishment and learn something from it,” the Baron said.
Feyd-Rautha met the gloating stare in his uncle’s eyes. And I must remember this night, he thought. And remembering it, I must remember other nights.
“You will not refuse,” the Baron said.
What could you do if I refused, old man? Feyd-Rautha asked himself. But he knew there might be some other punishment, perhaps a more subtle one, a more brutal lever to bend him.
“I know you, Feyd,” the Baron said. “You will not refuse.”
All right, Feyd-Rautha thought. I need you now. I see that. The bargain’s made. But I’ll not always need you. And… someday …
***
Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.
—from “The Sayings of Muad’Dib” by the Princess Irulan
I’VE SAT across from many rulers of Great Houses, but never seen a more gross and dangerous pig than this one, Thufir Hawat told himself.
“You may speak plainly with me, Hawat,” the Baron rumbled. He leaned back in his suspensor chair, the eyes in their folds of fat boring into Hawat.
The old Mentat looked down at the table between him and the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, noting the opulence of its grain. Even this was a factor to consider in assessing the Baron, as were the red walls of this private conference room and the faint sweet herb scent that hung on the air, masking a deeper musk.
“You didn’t have me send that warning to Rabban as an idle whim,” the Baron said.
Hawat’s leathery old face remained impassive, betraying none of the loathing he felt. “I suspect many things, my Lord,” he said.
“Yes. Well, I wish to know how Arrakis figures in your suspicions about Salusa Secundus. It is not enough that you say to me the Emperor is in a ferment about some association between Arrakis and his mysterious prison planet. Now, I rushed the warning out to Rabban only because the courier had to leave on that Heighliner. You said there could be no delay. Well and good. But now I will have an explanation.”
He babbles too much, Hawat thought. He’s not like Leto who could tell me a thing with the lift of an eyebrow or the wave of a hand. Nor like the Old Duke who could express an entire sentence in the way he accented a single word. This is a clod! Destroying him will be a service to mankind.
“You will not leave here until I’ve had a full and complete explanation,” the Baron said.
“You speak too casually of Salusa Secundus,” Hawat said.
“It’s a penal colony,” the Baron said. “The worst riff-raff in the galaxy are sent to Salusa Secundus. What else do we need to know?”
“That conditions on the prison planet are more oppressive than anywhere else,” Hawat said. “You hear that the mortality rate among new prisoners is higher than sixty per cent. You hear that the Emperor practices every form of oppression there. You hear all this and do not ask questions?”
“The Emperor doesn’t permit the Great Houses to inspect his prison,” the