squeezed back the memory of terror. I must remain calm, alert, and prepared. I may get only one chance. Again, she forced the inner calmness.
The ungainly thumping of her heartbeats evened, shaping out time. She counted back. I was unconscious about an hour. She closed her eyes, focused her awareness onto the approaching footsteps.
Four people.
She counted the differences in their steps.
I must pretend I’m still unconscious. She relaxed against the cold floor, testing her body’s readiness, heard a door open, sensed increased light through her eyelids.
Feet approached: someone standing over her.
“You are awake,” rumbled a basso voice. “Do not pretend.”
She opened her eyes.
The Baron Vladimir Harkonnen stood over her. Around them, she recognized the cellar room where Paul had slept, saw his cot at one side—empty. Suspensor lamps were brought in by guards, distributed near the open door. There was a glare of light in the hallway beyond that hurt her eyes.
She looked up at the Baron. He wore a yellow cape that bulged over his portable suspensors. The fat cheeks were two cherubic mounds beneath spider-black eyes.
“The drug was timed,” he rumbled. “We knew to the minute when you’d be coming out of it.”
How could that be? she wondered. They’d have to know my exact weight, my metabolism, my…. Yueh!
“Such a pity you must remain gagged,” the Baron said. “We could have such an interesting conversation.”
Yueh’s the only one it could be, she thought. How?
The Baron glanced behind him at the door. “Come in, Piter.”
She had never before seen the man who entered to stand beside the Baron, but the face was known—and the man: Piter de Vries, the Mentat-Assassin. She studied him—hawk features, blue-ink eyes that suggested he was a native of Arrakis, but subtleties of movement and stance told her he was not. And his flesh was too well firmed with water. He was tall, though slender, and something about him suggested effeminacy.
“Such a pity we cannot have our conversation, my dear Lady Jessica,” the Baron said. “However, I’m aware of your abilities.” He glanced at the Mentat. “Isn’t that true, Piter?”
“As you say, Baron,” the man said.
The voice was tenor. It touched her spine with a wash of coldness. She had never heard such a chill voice. To one with the Bene Gesserit training, the voice screamed: Killer!
“I have a surprise for Piter,” the Baron said. “He thinks he has come here to collect his reward—you, Lady Jessica. But I wish to demonstrate a thing: that he does not really want you.”
“You play with me, Baron?” Piter asked, and he smiled.
Seeing that smile, Jessica wondered that the Baron did not leap to defend himself from this Piter. Then she corrected herself. The Baron could not read that smile. He did not have the Training.
“In many ways, Piter is quite naive,” the Baron said. “He doesn’t admit to himself what a deadly creature you are, Lady Jessica. I’d show him, but it’d be a foolish risk.” The Baron smiled at Piter, whose face had become a waiting mask. “I know what Piter really wants. Piter wants power.”
“You promised I could have her,” Piter said. The tenor voice had lost some of its cold reserve.
Jessica heard the clue-tones in the man’s voice, allowed herself an inward shudder. How could the Baron have made such an animal out of a Mentat?
“I give you a choice, Piter,” the Baron said.
“What choice?”
The Baron snapped fat fingers. “This woman and exile from the Imperium, or the Duchy of Atreides on Arrakis to rule as you see fit in my name.”
Jessica watched the Baron’s spider eyes study Piter.
“You could be Duke here in all but name,” the Baron said.
Is my Leto dead, then? Jessica asked herself. She felt a silent wail begin somewhere in her mind.
The Baron kept his attention on the Mentat. “Understand yourself, Piter. You want her because she was a Duke’s woman, a symbol of his power—beautiful, useful, exquisitely trained for her role. But an entire duchy, Piter! That’s more than a symbol; that’s the reality. With it you could have many women… and more.”
“You do not joke with Piter?”
The Baron turned with that dancing lightness the suspensors gave him. “Joke? I? Remember—I am giving up the boy. You heard what the traitor said about the lad’s training. They are alike, this mother and son—deadly.” The Baron smiled. “I must go now. I will send in the guard I’ve reserved for this moment. He’s stone deaf. His orders will be to convey you on the first leg of your journey