out that they have no shields and are unable to get off Arrakis.”
“The new command post is all prepared, though, m’Lord,” Gurney said.
“They’ve no need of me in the command post yet,” Paul said. “The plan would go ahead without me. We must wait for the—”
“I’m getting a message, Muad’Dib,” said the signalman at the communications equipment. The man shook his head, pressed a receiver phone against his ear. “Much static!” He began scribbling on a pad in front of him, shaking his head waiting, writing… waiting.
Paul crossed to the signalman’s side. The Fedaykin stepped back, giving him room. He looked down at what the man had written, read:
“Raid… on Sietch Tabr … captives… Alia (blank) families of (blank) dead are… they (blank) son of Muad’Dib ….”
Again, the signalman shook his head.
Paul looked up to see Gurney staring at him.
“The message is garbled,” Gurney said. “The static. You don’t know that ….”
“My son is dead,” Paul said, and knew as he spoke that it was true. “My son is dead … and Alia is a captive … hostage.” He felt emptied, a shell without emotions. Everything he touched brought death and grief. And it was like a disease that could spread across the universe.
He could feel the old-man wisdom, the accumulation out of the experiences from countless possible lives. Something seemed to chuckle and rub its hands within him.
And Paul thought: How little the universe knows about the nature of real cruelty!
***
And Muad’Dib stood before them, and he said: “Though we deem the captive dead, yet does she live. For her seed is my seed and her voice is my voice. And she sees unto the farthest reaches of possibility. Yea, unto the vale of the unknowable does she see because of me. ”
—from “Arrakis Awakening” by the Princess Irulan
THE BARON Vladimir Harkonnen stood with eyes downcast in the Imperial audience chamber, the oval selamlik within the Padishah Emperor’s hutment. With covert glances, the Baron had studied the metal-walled room and its occupants—the noukkers, the pages, the guards, the troop of House Sardaukar drawn up around the walls, standing at ease there beneath the bloody and tattered captured battle flags that were the room’s only decoration.
Voices sounded from the right of the chamber, echoing out of a high passage: “Make way! Make way for the Royal Person!”
The Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV came out of the passage into the audience chamber followed by his suite. He stood waiting while his throne was brought, ignoring the Baron, seemingly ignoring every person in the room.
The Baron found that he could not ignore the Royal Person, and studied the Emperor for a sign, any clue to the purpose of this audience. The Emperor stood poised, waiting—a slim, elegant figure in a gray Sardaukar uniform with silver and gold trim. His thin face and cold eyes reminded the Baron of the Duke Leto long dead. There was that same look of the predatory bird. But the Emperor’s hair was red, not black, and most of that hair was concealed by a Burseg’s ebon helmet with the Imperial crest in gold upon its crown.
Pages brought the throne. It was a massive chair carved from a single piece of Hagal quartz-blue-green translucency shot through with streaks of yellow fire. They placed it on the dais and the Emperor mounted, seated himself.
An old woman in a black aba robe with hood drawn down over her forehead detached herself from the Emperor’s suite, took up station behind the throne, one scrawny hand resting on the quartz back. Her face peered out of the hood like a witch caricature—sunken cheeks and eyes, an overlong nose, skin mottled and with protruding veins.
The Baron stilled his trembling at sight of her. The presence of the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, the Emperor’s Truthsayer, betrayed the importance of this audience. The Baron looked away from her, studied the suite for a clue. There were two of the Guild agents, one tall and fat, one short and fat, both with bland gray eyes. And among the lackeys stood one of the Emperor’s daughters, the Princess Irulan, a woman they said was being trained in the deepest of the Bene Gesserit ways, destined to be a Reverend Mother. She was tall, blonde, face of chiseled beauty, green eyes that looked past and through him.
“My dear Baron.”
The Emperor had deigned to notice him. The voice was baritone and with exquisite control. It managed to dismiss him while greeting him.